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

From: COMEDY ITALIAN STYLE

by Ernesto G. Laura

Sometimes, but rarely, the Italian-style comedy turned to the theater as a source of inspiration (it is even so the exception andnot the rule as is instead the case with the frequent passing of stage hits from Broadway to Hollywood). Such was the case with LIOLA which Alessandro Blasetti directed in 1964 on the Luigi Pirandello play in which Tognazzi skillfully portrays the leading character, an incorrigible woman-chaser in a Sicilian village, surrounded by a swarm of children. It was also the case with IL MAGNIFICO CORNUTO (THE MAGNIFICENT CUCKOLD: 1964) by Antonio Pietrangeli, based on the charming play by Fernand Commelynck, where the Parisian "vaudeville" is taken as a model for an ironical speculation on the meaning of jealousy, revealing, under the equivocations, an almost Pirandellian search for the "truth" and non-superficial human meanings. A certain Pirandellian flavor, though based on an original story (by Enzo Gicca Palli), also marks UNA QUESTIONE D'ONORE (A QUESTION OF HONOR) with which Luigi Zampa in 1966 aimed his satirical darts at the codes of honor typical of certain ancient and rigid mores in Sardinia. The conflict between the forms to be respected and the truth which cannot be revealed is the main problem of the protagonist, Efisio Mulas (Tognazzi), convinced by relatives and friends to kill his wife for supposed adultery which he cannot deny without implicating himself in a murder, so he is forced to kill his innocent spouse.

A return to the subject of the middle-aged man who loses his head over a young girl is successfully handled in LA BAMBOLONA (THE BIG DOLLL: 1968) by Franco Giraldi, on the novel of the same title by Alba de Cespedes. Giraldi also directed Tognazzi in CUORI SOLITARI (LONELY HEARTS: 1970) which is a scathing satire of "couple swapping" in the framework of an indolent and bored provincial society looking for amusement.

5. The Episode Films part ten

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

Other episode films "d'autore" (of high quality) appeared in 1962-63 in Italo-French coproductions: LE QUATTRO VERITA (THE FOUR TRUTHS) and ROGOPAG. The first consisted of the modern adaptation of some of the best-known fables by La Fontaine. The only Italian episode was La lepre e la tartaruga (The Hare And The Tortoise) by Alessandro Blasetti, where the director, who also wrote the script with Suso Cecchi D'Amico, turned the "hare" into a very sexy mistress (Sylva Koscina) and the "tortroise" into a sensible wife (Monica Vitti), capable of winning back an unfaithful husband (Rossano Brazzi) with her brains rather than her legs. ROGOPAG took its strange title from the initials of the four directors who had a hand in it: Rossellini, Jean-Luc Godard, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Ugo Gregoretti. Aside from the little science-fiction story of Godard and the tragic tale of Pasolini, the other two episodes are part and parcel of the Italian-style comedy. Gregoretti puts his whimsical imagination to work in a caustic caricature of the average consumer (Ugo Tognazzi), conditioned by advertising, and Rossellini deals ironically with an American in Bangkok who pursues and Italian hostess who has bewitched him with her would-be "purity," so that the girl, in order to get rid of him, has no choice but to pretend she is anything but "pure."

5. The Episode Films part seven

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

For a few years, episode films were almost a fad. Producers turned out one film after the other of unequal value, each one of which sought to weave a unifying thread: the revocation of Italy between the 19th and early 20th century, retracing the path opened by Blasetti with ALTRI TEMPI (OLDEN TIMES): CENTO ANNI D'AMORE (A HUNDRED YEARS OF LOVE: 1954) by Lionello De Felice; a series of love stories, each set in a particular historical moment: AMORE DI MEZZO SECOLO (A HALF CENTURY OF LOVE: 1953) by, among others, Rossellini and Pietro Germi; the recollection of old-time theater: GRAN VARIETA (VAUDEVILLE: 1954) by Domenico Paolella; popular songs as the representatives and reflections of the customs and tastes of a given period: CANZONI DI MEZZO SECOLO (A HALF CENTURY OF SONGS: 1952) and CANZONI, CANZONI, CANZONI (SONGS, SONGS, SONGS: 1953) by Domenico Paolella.

5. The Episode Films part two

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

In the wake of the two "Zibaldoni" of Alessandro Blasetti, episode films flooded the Italian market in the '50s. Vittorio De Sica, after the austere and desperate UMBERTO D., tried to apply his human curiosity as a tireless explorer of social "spaces" to a film of broad box-office appeal. So turning to a story by Cesare Zavattini, he came up with STAZIONE TERMINI, or as it was called in the United States, INDISCRETIONS OF AN AMERICAN WIFE (1953), which, centered around a couple of Americans lost in the confusion of the main station of Rome (Jennifer Jones and Montgomery Clift), should have resulted in a broad, teeming, but unified canvas of a microcosm like a railroad station in a big city. Despite the blessing of a script signed by people like Zavattini, Luigi Chiarini, Giorgio Prosperi with dialogue by Truman Capote, the film ended as a sum total of little sketches, of fleeting, often negligible portraits, without being convincing.

Much more successful in its results was the following L'ORO DI NAPOLI (THE GOLD OF NAPLES: 1956), based on several stories from a charming book by Giuseppe Marotto, a Neapolitan writer who had settled in Milan and had been one of the main figures responsible for the success of the humorous journals, and who succeeded in creating an image, now festive, now suddenly sad, but always colorful and lively, of his beloved Naples. Suffice it to remember the first episode, with a Totò more jerky and puppet-like than ever, immortalizing on the screen the figure of the "pazzariello" (who wander the streets eccentrically dressed playing cymbals and drums to earn a few pennies from the crowd). Equally memorable I giocatori (The Gamblers), the story in which Vittorio De Sica, an inveterate gambler and bettor who has seen better days, is reduced to gambling with a little boy, who naturally ends up winning. Pizze a credito (Pizzas On Credit), lastly, established the role that for a long time remained identified with Sophia Loren, namely the "pizzaiola", a beautiful, sexy plebeian, a character that was to reappear in other films.

5. The Episode Films part one

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

The episode film is not very popular today on the international scene. In Italy, instead, it has occupied a rather important place over the last thirty years, especially in the field of comedy.

Aside from the advantages of a commercial nature that can be brought forward, it is also true that the short story pertains to an uninterrupted and glorious tradition in Italian literature, from the DECAMERON of Giovanni Boccaccio to the NOVELLE PER UN ANNO (SHORT STORIES FOR A YEAR) by Luigi Pirandello.

It has been seen that the first examples of an episode film that sought to establish an Italian model was in recent times no less a classic than PAISA by Rossellini. The same Rossellini would divide the poetic FRANCESCO GIULLARE DI DIO (FRANCIS, JESTER OF GOD: 1950) into seperate chapters.

Alessandro Blasetti, with his passionate and polemical nature, was fighting, at the decline of the neo-realistic season for a return to "literary" films, based that is on the great works of Italian and foreign fiction. Thus came into being, one after another, ALTRI TEMPI (OLDEN TIMES: 1952) and TEMPI NOSTRI (OUR TIMES: 1954), which was sub-titled Zibaldone No. 1 and No. 2 ("zibaldone" in Italian means "anthology," but in using, rather tongue-in-cheek, this high-sounding term, the director was referring back to a famous work by Giacomo Leopardi, the greatest 19th century Italian poet).

Following the tenuous story-line of an itinerant bookseller who craves the literature of the past (Aldo Fabrizi) and offers passers by second-hand books from his stand, the various episodes unfold, situated between the 18th and early 19th century in a loving tribute that moves from the dramatic to the comic, depending on the texts taken from writers like Edmondo De Amicis, Camillo Boito, Renato Fucini, Guido Nobili and Edoardo Scarfoglio. A story by the latter writer, Il processo di Frine (Frine's Trial), provides the basis of the most amusing episode, where Gina Lollobrigida is a beautiful peasant girl on trial for poisoning, whom the lawyer for the defense, a historonic Vittorio De Sica, succeeds in getting acquitted, basing his defense exclusively on her sex appeal. TEMPI NOSTRI (OUR TIMES) followed the same plan, but utilizing only writers of this century: Mario Moretti, Alberto Moravia, Vasco Patrolini, Achille Campanile, Ercole Patti, Silvio D'Arzo, Anton Germano Rossi, Giuseppe Marotta. Particularly exhilirating the short episodes based on humorous stories, like Il bacio (The Kiss), taken from Campanile, where two lovebirds make arrangements to meet at the station, the only place where it is "lawful" to kiss, pretending to leave; Il pupo (The Kid), from Moravia, which Marcello Mastroianni and Lea Padovani, as two parents who "forget" their baby on the threshold of a church; La macchina fotografica (The Camera), written by Age and Scarpelli with Sandro Continenza, with a riotous Totò involved in photographing Sophia Loren. Immediately after, Blasetti would turn to a Moravia short story for PECCATO CHE SIA UNA CANAGLIA (A PITY SHE'S A SCOUNDREL: 1955) about an honest young Roman boy, Mastroianni, madly in love with a gorgeous girl with the slight drawback of being a professional thief (Sophia Loren), the daughter of a Vittorio De Sica, who is a positive virtuoso of the "profession." The director would return to episode films in 1965 with IO, IO, IO... E GLI ALTRI (ME, ME, ME... AND THE OTHERS), which is a sort of "lecture with examples" on human selfishness.

2. The Forties: The Season Of Neo-Realism 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

Many simple stories of simple folk, recapturing that fondness for the anti-hero which had been typical of Mario Camerini and Alessandro Blasetti in the '30s and '40s, were set against the background of post-war Rome. Alessandro Blasetti in PRIMA COMUNIONE [FIRST COMMUNION: 1950] tells about the hours preceding the religious ceremony of the title, which should be a peaceful family celebration. But the little communion girl's despotic father loses his temper because the white dress ordered for her is not ready and from incident to incident the tension mounts, completely destroying the idyllic atmosphere of the beginning. Written by Cesare Zavattini, the comedy is a ferocious attack on conventions and Aldo Fabrizi plays the lead with rage and authority. Zavattini provided Camerini with the story of MOLTI SOGNI PER LE STRADE [MANY DREAMS ON THE ROAD: 1948], in which a poor devil, assailed by debts, steals a car. But his wife thinks he has rented the car to take her for a ride and goes off with him. The improvised thief is unable to get the car to the "fence" and the deal goes up in smoke, so there's nothing to be done but to take the car back to the garage where it had been stolen. A charming little tale, typical of the pre-war Zavattini more than of the author of LADRI DI BICICLETTE [BICYCLE THIEVES]. It was Zavattini again who gave Gianni Franciolini (1910-1960) the idea for a particular film BUONGIORNO, ELEFANTE! [GOOD MORNING, ELEPHANT!: 1952], in which an Indian prince (played by Sabu), in order to return a favor done him by, a simple grade-school teacher (Vittorio De Sica), sends him a present from India: nothing less than an elephant. With all the imaginable troubles the poor teacher runs into trying to dispose of the cumbersome beast. The film remains one of the finest examples of a light sentimental comedy that succeeds in appealing to audiences without sacrificing a realistic portrayal of characters and setting.

1. The Thirties: The Age of the "White Telephones" 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

On June 11, 1940, Mussolini, carried away by what English historian F.W. Deakin called the "brutal friendship" with Hitler, declared war on France and England. In a couple of years, the Axis, initially victorious, retreated on all fronts. With the loss already in 1940 of Ethiopia, which had been Mussolini's "imperial dream", the loss of Libya in 1942, the invasion of Russia ending in a ghastly retreat littered with corpses, Italy at the beginning of 1943 was already defeated and preparing to fight on its own soil, as was to be the case in June with the Allied landing in Sicily.

Fascism by now was in a serious crisis, Mussolini's popularity had completely faded. Many young people, who had grown up under Fascism, started to open their eyes and look for new directions.

Between 1941 and 1943, that is in the period when the war took a disastrous turn and the regime was in shambles, the Italian cinema also started looking for new directions. Neo-realism, which was to "explode" in 1945 after the Liberation, got its start in those dark tormented years. On the one hand, there were directors, old and young, who sought refuge in films of literary inspiration, elaborate and refined, exclusively devoted to bringing to the screen, with lavish sets adn costumes: the sources were Alessandro Manzoni, Aleksander Pushkin, Thomas Hardy, Antonio Fogazzaro, Stendhal. On the other hand, beginning directors like Francesco De Robertis and his pupil, Roberto Rossellini, made war films, but devoid of propaganda, interested primarily in showing the pain and suffering caused by the war.

There was one director, however, who with participation and intelligence, made use of comedy to bring audiences into contact with lower-class reality. In 1942, Alessandro Blasetti directed QUATTRO PASSI FRA LE NUVOLE [FOUR STEPS AMONG THE CLOUDS] on a story by Cesare Zavattini. The script by Zavattini, Blasetti himself, Amato the producer and Aldo De Benedetti, whose name could not appear on the credit titles: he was Jewish and the racial laws prohibited him from working. A traveling salesman leaves the big city to follow an unwed mother who has gone to her parents' farm in the country and who lacks the courage to confess her condition. So the man, with all the predictable misunderstandings, passes himself off as her husband, gradually helping the woman to be accepted by her father and mother. Delicate and sentimental, but also full of life, the film gives audiences an insight into the Italian peasant world, till then somewhat neglected by a primarily urban and bourgeois cinema.