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

From: COMEDY ITALIAN STYLE

by Ernesto G. Laura

As has been seen, the "second wave" of Italian-style comedy actors were almost always from Northern Italy, introducing into the world of comedy, situations and figures, mentalities and customs far removed from the traditional Roman milieu. By no accident, the script-writers were also different.

Cochi Ponzoni and Renato Pozzetto are Milanese. As "Cochi and Renato" they appeared in cabaret theaters around the end of the 1960s and from there went on to television where they presented their repertoire in a series of highly popular broadcasts, both in shows of their own and as entertainers. Skinny, properly groomed, restrained in word and gesture, Cochi served as a counter-attraction of the more conspicuous humor of Renato, fat and indolent, with the drooping eyelids of the hypocritical "lamb". Without the help of important scripts, mostly improvising, Cochi and Renato were the kings of "nonsense". They made a point of looking provincial, with their Milanese Italian, their little daily experiences as nice lower middle-class youngsters. Which is the very reason for their popularity: their brand of humor (delightful, certain little songs with utterly absurd texts) did not have people rolling in the aisles as happened with the older generation of comedians, but sought rather to keep audiences on an intermediate, but constant level of merriment, also with fleeting, but lucid glimpses of sadness.

In motion pictures, even though they did make some films together, their paths divided right from the start. Cochi, resuming his full name, Cochi Ponzoni, aimed at carefully constructed characterizations that were different on each occasion. His most important picture was perhaps CUORI DI CANE (A DOG'S HEART: 1976) by Alberto Lattuada, from the fine allegorical novel by Nikolai Bulgakov. Moscow in the immediate post-revolutionary years, the years of Lenin, reconstructed with great figurative imagination in the Cinecitta studios (utilizing basically the same set as Fellini's AMARCORD), is the setting of the strange adventure of the dog, Bobikov, whom a scientist, with a complicated operation, changes into a man, only to change him back into a dog when the man claims his spiritual independence, his freedom. The film, like the novel, is an allegory of the period of the NEP ("New Economic Policy") and uses the dog to portray the proletariat admitted to the Palace of Power but then driven out again by the de facto alliance between the new Soviet bourgeoisie and the surviving Czarist bourgeoisie. In this grotesque, bitter parable, in which satire is a vehicle for sharp historical criticism, only an actor of great resources like Cochi Ponzoni could manage the transition, not so much physical as psychological and spiritual, of the dog into a man, which on the one hand means the transition from instinct to reason, on the other the discovery of the tender feelings of the heart.

11. Comedy Dresses Up part five

From: COMEDY ITALIAN STYLE

by Ernesto G. Laura

Among the comedies in costume, set in other periods and other countries, the representation of characters and environments of old Russia was chosen by a sensitive director, Alberto Lattuada, capable of completely identifying himself with that world, uniting a sense of humor, a knowledge of the culture and a gift for recreating its particular flavor (through scenery, costumes, the style of acting).

IL CAPPOTTO (THE OVERCOAT: 1953) brought to the screen one of the finest novels by Nikolai Gogol, but contrary to the director's usually scrupulous attention to historical detail, he moved the story from the 19th century to the present day and, while avoiding any specific geographical indications, from Russia to Italy. Akakij Akakievich became Carmine De Carmine, the film was shot on location in the Lombardy city of Pavia. It is the story of a little man oppressed by the authorities. One day Carmine decides to put together the little money he owns to buy himself a new overcoat, which is so handsome that the modest tailor who made it shadows him to admire the effect it has on passers-by. But the coat is soon stolen and for Carmine nothing remains of the sole blessing that had made him happy for a day. Carmine dies and as a ghost has a much more lively time compared to his grey and monotonous existence; constantly appearing and reappearing in the life of the city mayor, his persecutor, the symbol of cynical and self-interested "power", he persuades him to mend his ways. The script-writers, including Cesare Zavattini who contributed many amusing gags, provided the director with a script respectful of the Gogol original but also full of new inventions. Stylistically, the film deliberately wavers between realism and the surreal fable, benefiting enormously from the presence of a comedian at that time famous for certain elements of "nonsense" introduced into the light theater revue and instead poorly exploited by motion pictures which up till then had humiliated his talents in farces of no importance: Renato Rascel. Placed in a specific psychological framework, Rascel endows his Carmine with a quality of suffering that is never over-stated and can also find expression in a sudden comic twist. Italian comedy, by combining Lattuada's narrative and dramatic talent and Rascel's gifts for humor, attains with IL CAPPOTTO (THE OVERCOAT) one of its highest and most ambitious achievements. (Lattuada would go on to direct CUORE DI CANE - A DOG'S HEART, which will be discussed in a later chapter).

9. Ugo Tognazzi: From the Farce To the Comedy of Manners part five

From: COMEDY ITALIAN STYLE

by Ernesto G. Laura

While, as has been observed,the interchange between film comedy and stage comedy was rare in Italy, that between films and literature was instead quite intense. One of the directors most skilled in translating the written word into visual imagery, Alberto Lattuada, was the first to bring to the screen the particular world of the writer Pietro Chiara, adapting his novel, LA SPARTIZIONE, in the film VENGA A PRENDERE IL CAFFE...DA NOI (COME HAVE A CUP OF COFFEE...AT OUR HOUSE: 1970), on a script written by Chiara, Tullio Kezich and Adriano Baracco. Chiara is a Lombardy writer, stinging in his attacks on certain backstairs carryings-on among the apparently irreprehensible bougeoisie of his district. Emerenziano is a middle-aged Internal Revenue officer who moves to a small town on the Lake of Como and there marries an old maid recently come into money, settling down in the house where she and her two sisters live, with all of whom (including the maid) he establishes a discreet and perfect sexual menage, to the delight and satisfaction of one and all.

The case of well-known writers who take up film directing is also not uncommon. Alberto Bevilacqua came out in 1970 with LA CALIFFA (THE CALIPHESS), based on his novel, where Tognazzi, in a story with a tragic ending, vigorously and intensely portrays the figure of an industrialist who has an affair with a working girl who until then has heartily opposed him as her "boss". In the affair, both of them are forced to pay a price: he, persuaded, by frequenting the girl, to have a clearer understanding of the arguments of his dependents, is unpopular and accused of being "progressive" by his business colleagues, and she is viewed suspiciously by her fellow workers who fear she has gone over to the boss' side. Subtler and more disturbing, the second psychological comedy, it too with specific social references, filmed by Alberto Bevilacqua: QUESTA SPECIE D'AMORE (THIS SORT OF LOVE: 1972). Tognazzi plays the double role of Federico, a forty-year old man of lowly origins who lives in Rome at his rich wife's expense, and of Federico's father, who has stayed behind in Parma and lives among the simple people. Whent he marriage starts to break up, destroyed by emptiness and boredom, Federico goes back to Parma to visit his father and rediscover the real roots of his own world and hence of his own life. His wife, who joins him, also discovers she has changed and their marriage seems to find new strength because their love has not completely died. But once back in Rome, they pick up the old routine and their separation is inevitable.

5. The Episode Films part eight

From: COMEDY ITALIAN STYLE

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

Cesare Zavattini, that motivating force in all seasons of new ideas for the Italian cinema, tried to exploit the formula of the episode film for several films half-way between the inquiry and the documentary. AMORE IN CITTA (LOVE IN THE CITY) was the first in a series and the intention of continuing it was apparent in the sub-title, Rivisita cinematografica n. 1 (Film Review No. 1). Taking the common theme of love in its various accepted meanings and nuances, a group of new directors was supposed to "explore" the emotions of a city, Rome of course. What happened instead was that each one went his seperate way, some undertaking an authentic inquiry, others telling a completely invented story, still others simply going through the streets armed with a motion-picture camera. The latter was the case with Alberto Lattuada in the episode Gli Italiani si voltano (Italians Turn To Look), a sort of "cinema-verite" exercise which catches the reactions of Roman males when a beautiful girl passes by. Un'agenzi matrimoniale (A Matrimonial Agency), an episode entirely constructed in the studio with unknown actors, was a "fake inquiry" conducted by Federico Fellini in the sad, shoddy world of those agencies which arrange (or try to arrange) marriages between shy and lonely people. This is the first indication of that "fictional" cinema, with the appearances of a documentary, that Fellini would later develop in I CLOWNS (THE CLOWNS), ROMA (ROME) and PROVA D'ORCHESTRA (ORCHESTRA REHEARSAL). But the best episode was Paradiso per quattro ore (Paradise For Four Hours) which revealed the talents of Dino Risi as a fond and ironic observer of the common people who spend their Saturdays at a "balera" (a popular dance hall which has nothing to do with the luxury of a night club or the rowdy modernity of the discotheque).