13. The "Second Wave" of Comedy Actors part ten

From: COMEDY ITALIAN STYLE
by Ernesto G. Laura
Other actors, some of them international stars, have not been taken into detailed consideration here because their comedy appearances fall into a larger and more complex framework of motion picture activities. Such is the case with Marcello Mastroianni and Monica Vitti. Both have important dramatic interpretations to their credit: suffice it to remember Michelangelo Antonioni's LA NOTTE (NIGHT), in which they appeared together. As to Mastroianni, mention must be made of the Fellini films, from LA DOLCE VITA (THE SWEET LIFE) to LA CITTA DELLA DONNE (CITY OF WOMEN), as to Vitti those of Antonioni, from L'AVVENTURA (THE ADVENTURE) to IL MISTERIO DI OBERWALD (THE MYSTERY OF OBERWALD). Even so, the former's natural inclination to irony, the latter's to caricature, often made it possible to introduce moments of genuine humor into dramatic films.
In the 1950s, Marcello Mastroianni was often one of the young leads in the humorous-sentimental comedies that were in fashion. He then reappears in Ferreri's LA GRANDE ABBUFFATA (THE BIG FEED) and in many more recent comedies (among other things, he starred in the musical comedy, VALENTINO, where in the role of the famous silent film star he danced and sang).
Monica Vitti, instead, appeared more regularly in the film comedy genre. Indeed, several films were made especially to show off her particular whimsical personality. For example, the movie versions of several successful stage works: TI HO SPOSATO PER ALLEGRIA (I MARRIED YOU OUT OF MIRTH: 1967) by Luciano Salce, on the play by Natalia Ginzburg, with Giorgio Albertazzi and Maria Grazia Buccella, L'ANATRA ALL'ARANCIA (DUCK A L'ORANGE: 1975), it too by Salce, from the play by Home and Sauvajon, adapted to the screen by Bernardino Zapponi, with Ugo Tognazzi, John Richardson and Barbara Bouchet, AMORI MIEI (MY DARLINGS: 1978) by Steno, from the play by Jaja Fiastri, with Dorelli and Enrico Maria Salerno, NON TI CONOSCO PIU AMORE (DON'T KNOW YOU ANYMORE, DARLING: 1980) by Corbucci, from an old play by Aldo De Benedetti which had already been made into a film in 1936 at the time of the "white telephone" comedies. The film which revealed most completely the gifts of Monica Vitti, a modern actress who even so identifies herself with the character emotionally, from within, was LA RAGAZZA CON LA PISTOLA (THE GIRL WITH THE PISTOL), directed in 1968 by Mario Monicelli from a story by Sonego adapted to the screen by Sonego and Magni. She is a farm girl from a small Southern town with a very closed mentality, who is "dishonored" by a local boy and goes looking for him in America to kill him and "wash away the disgrace," imagining at every stage of the journey the different ways the execution will take place. Vitti is extraordinary in depicting the various stages in the evolution of the girl, who, as the journey proceeds and she gains new experience, gradually begins to feel less and less disposed to carry out the ritual murder, more a woman, more modern, more mature.

5. The Episode Films part fifteen

From: COMEDY ITALIAN STYLE

by Ernesto G. Laura - Compiled by A.N.I.C.A. (National Association of Motion Picturese and Affiliated Industries) Rome, Italy, edited by CIES So. Coop. r. 1. (Institute for the Promotion of Italian Motion Pictures Abroad) Rome, Italy, under the auspices of the Ministry of Tourism and Entertainment

As a curiosity, mention may be made in this period of I TRE VOLTI (THE THREE FACES), organized in 1965 by the producer Dino De Laurentiis to launch - in vain - the former Empress of Iran, Soraya, as a film star. The opening "number," entitled Prefazione (Preface), half-way between the alleged objective of a would-be documentary and the ironical desecration of a tabloid myth, in which Michelangelo Antonioni reconstructed the secret screen test given by De Laurentiis to the Shah's repudiated wife. The most amusing story, however, was the last, Latin Lover, directed by a young director, who died before his time, Franco Indovina (1932-1972), with elegant and restrained humor. Alberto Sordi, co-author of the script, with the faithful Sonego, dominated the screen however, reducing Soraya to the purely decorative role of "foil".

In many other films where the link between the episodes is accidental, often determined by the demands of distribution (more big box-office stars) or footage (enough episodes to fill the standard hundred minutes), only the really important episode need be mentioned. In I COMPLESSI (THE COMPLEXES: 1966), Luigi Filippo D'Amico (script by Sonego) tells the amusing story of a man with enormous buckteeth who wins a contest for television announcers only because no one, in the face of his brazen self-assurance, has the courage to tell him he is not suited to television. In LE FATE (THE FAIRIES: 1966), Antonio Pietrangeli (another story by Sonego) describes in Fata Marta (Martha The Fay) a situation similar to that of Chaplin's CITY LIGHTS: this time it's a rich lady who makes love to her butler only when she is under the effects of alcohol. In I NOSTRI MARITI (OUR HUSBANDS: 1966), the episode Il marito di Attilia (Attilia's Husband) by Dino Risi (written by Age, Scarpelli and Stefano Strucchi) tells the story of the uncomfortable situation of a carabineer (Tognazzi) finds himself in on a secret mission to the suburban underworld, disguised as a streetcleaner and forced to deal with a local crook's fierce jealousy of his wife. In LE COPPIE (THE COUPLES: 1968), it is the third episode, La camera (The Room), that stands out for its acuteness and brilliance of representations; directed and interpreted by Sordi, it tells the story of an ordinary man of modest means who decides to experience at least once a rich man's holiday and goes to a luxurious hotel on the Costa Smeralda in Sardinia , where he is icily disregarded as not being "up to" either the clientele or the personnel. In LA CONTESTAZIONE GENERALE (THE GENERAL DISSENT: 1970) by Luigi Zampa, the episode Concerto a tre pifferi (Three-Fife Concerto), made in the still-heated atmosphere of student dissent which started on the Berkeley campus in the United States, then exploded in Paris in May, 1968, and from there spread to Italy), effectively portrays the awkward attempt of a respectful office worker to contradict for once the industrial tycoon whose "errand-boy" he is, all this in order not to make a bad impression on his dissenter son. The contrast between the subtly nuanced performance of Nino Manfredi and the wonderful olf-fashioned show-stealing of French actor Michel Simon is a joy to watch.

In any case, at the beginning of the '70s, episode films went out of fashion, though some were produced from time to time. But it was precisely then that one of the most unique Italian directors (and poet, novelist, literary critic), Pier Paolo Pasolini, set the seal on the genre with three successive films in which comedy and in particular episode comedy was carried to a high level of artistic quality: IL DECAMERON (THE DECAMERON: 1971), I RACCONTI DI CANTEBURY (THE CANTERBURY TALES: 1972) and IL FIORE DELLE MILLE E UNA NOTTE (ARABIAN NIGHTS: 1974), the first derived from the book by Giovanni Boccaccio, the second from Chaucer and the third from the collection of Arabian folk tales by the same name. The best is probably IL DECAMERON, where some of the short stories by Boccaccio, literary gems of 14th century Italy, are moved from Florence to Naples and recreated in an atmosphere of exuberant vitality, set into motion by a taste for even cruel derision and incessant eroticism, and in a popular key effectively applied to the world of the Middle Ages.

Episode comedy reaches its highest moment in the literary trilogy of Pasolini. Spectacle and entertainment, neither of which are lacking, provide constant glimpses of human reality, the smile, or rather the open, often "wicked" laughter of the popular jest, conceal behind the mask of merriment sudden and unexpected dramatic turns.