10. Vittorio Gassman From Great Tragedian To Subtle Comedian part five

From: COMEDY ITALIAN STYLE

by Ernesto G. Laura

IL GAUCHO (THE GAUCHO: 1964), written by Scola, Maccari and Tullio Pinelli and shot in Argentina, puts Gassman in the role of a press-agent full of debts who tries to make money in Buenos Aires and utterly fails, returning to Italy empty-handed. IL TIGRE (THE TIGER: 1967), with a script by Age and Scarpelli, recounts the emotional crisis of a forty-year old who falls in love with a young, but not exactly innocent little girl (Ann-Margaret). IL PROFETA (THE PROPHET: 1968), on a script by Scola and Maccari, relates the ironical parable of a sort of hermit who has abandoned the city, his family and his profession and, because of the success of his "personage", is led to give up his act of protest, letting himself get tangled up with women and money, until in the end he opens a restaurant. These are three examples of the way the director Dino Risi succeeds in administrating Gassman's box-office popularity with films that are at once enjoyable and sustained by ideas. But Risi tends toward comedy the moves more and more towards the dramatic film and comes up with an excellent PROFUMO DI DONNA (FRAGRANCE OF WOMAN), from a story by Giovanni Arpino about a trip through Italy of a blind officer accompanied by a young soldier. Incidents and accidents lend a humorous touch to the story, until one realizes what the unspoken purpose of the trip is: the officer, destroyed more psychologically than physically by his blindness, has decided to commit suicide, but will be saved by the love of a woman. One of the most mysterious and harrowing novels by Arpino supplied Risi with the idea for ANIMA PERSA (LOST SOUL: 1976) in which a young man gradually discovers, in a Venice full of enchantment, depicted outside the usual tourist cliches, a double life of his uncle, an incorrigible gambler by night, a would-be office-worker, actually a lunatic locked up at home, during the day. In CARO PAPA (DEAR DAD: 1979), Gassman is instead a parent grappling with the drama of lots of people who discover they have a child who has passed from dissent to terrorism.

10. Vittorio Gassman From Great Tragedian To Subtle Comedian part four

From: COMEDY ITALIAN STYLE

by Ernesto G. Laura

The Gassman-Tognazzi team worked much better than the Gassman-Sordi team: both were actors, for example, with a fondness for disguises, impersonations, for "re-inventing" themselves from top to toe, and the arrogance, presumptiousness and impetuosity of Gassman's character type contrasted nicely with the falsely submissive slyboots played by Tognazzi. In I MOSTRI (THE MONSTERS: 1963) Risi brought them face to face in a memorable contest of acting skill which reached moments of sublime hilarity in the episode, La nobile arte (The Noble Art), where they play two punch-drunk boxers, one reduced to poverty, the other a small-time waiter, both yearning for the victory that would bring them fame and riches. Many years later, in 1977, a sequel was made, I NUOVI MOSTRI (THE NEW MONSTERS), directed by Risi, together with Monicelli and Scola.

In 1971, Risi brought the two actors together again in non-farcical, much more restrained character parts in the film IN NOME DEL POPOLO ITALIANO (IN THE NAME OF THE ITALIAN PEOPLE), written by Age and Scarpelli, where Tognazzi is a magistrate of the utmost integrity who prosecutes a dishonest and arrogant industrialist (Gassman) for a crime he strongly suspects he has committed. But when he had proof that the man is innocent, he destroys it in order to punish in him, above and beyond the innocence of his specific case, the symbol of the corruption and ills of society.

The best film Risi directed with Gassman is IL SORPASSO (THE OVER-TAKE, aka THE EASY LIFE: 1962), a caustic psychological comedy based on the moral duel between the arrogant Bruno (Vittorio Gassman) and the mild-mannered student Robert (Jean-Louis Trintignant), ending, after a wild car race that becomes the symbol of a way of life, with the tragic death of the boy. The comedy is not afraid of ignoring the "happy end" and of leaving the spectator with the disconcertion of an abruptly tragic conclusion. Bruno, at the sight of the young man's body thrown out of his car, has for the first time a look of amazement and dismay on his face and perhaps begins to realize he has lived up till then in the most absolute moral void.

10. Vittorio Gassman From Great Tragedian To Subtle Comedian part three

From: COMEDY ITALIAN STYLE

by Ernesto G. Laura

With I SOLITI IGNOTI (UNKNOWN, AS USUAL), a new Italian film star was born and the star was a comedian: Vittorio Gassman. The following year confirmed it with LA GRANDE GUERRA (THE GREAT WAR), again by Monicelli, which has already been discussed with regard to Sordi, who was teamed up with Gassman. In IL MATTATORE (THE MUMMER: 1960) by Dino Risi, the actor finally had a vehicle devised and tailored especially for him, where, through the story of an international swindler who presents himself in different disguises, he could show off all his virtuoso skill in constantly changing make-up and character. Risi is the director most responsible for consolidating Gassman's role within the framework of Italian-style comedy. In LA MARCIA SU ROMA (THE MARCH ON ROME: 1962), he replaces the team of opposites, Gassman-Sordi, invented by Monicelli, with the team of Gassman and Ugo Tognazzi.

The march on Rome was a parody of revolution, that is the march on the Capital by four different columns of Fascists in 1922, poorly equipped and under-armed, which would have taken only a few soldiers to stop. But the King, as is know, didn't have the courage to give orders to fire and yielded, immediately after giving the task of forming the government to Mussolini, who hadn't taken part in the march and cautiously staying in Milan, ready to flee to Switzerland if things turned out for the worse; and when the King summoned him to Rome, he demanded a written invitation so as to avoid any nasty surprises, then rode down in a sleeping-car like any normal citizen. To base a film on the "march" of one of these columns from the North to the Capital was a good idea. Ghigo De Chiara, Continenza, Age, Scarpelli, Scola and Maccari wrote the script. The parts played by Gassman and Tognazzi resemble the ones that had given them success: the former is a cocky, blustering Fascist, basically naive deep down inside, like the Giovanni Busacca in LA GRANDE GUERRA (THE GREAT WAR); the latter a slightly dim-witted farmboy, convinced by Fascism but prepared to take stock of reality, like IL FEDERALE (THE FEDERALIST) in Salce's film.

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

From: COMEDY ITALIAN STYLE

by Ernesto G. Laura

Gian Luigi Polidoro is, among the directors of comedy, one of the ones who has sought to innovate within the tradition. An example of this is PERMETTETE, SIGNORA, CHE AMI VOSTRA FIGLIA? (YOU MIND, MADAM, MY LOVING YOUR DAUGHTER?: 1974), based on a script written by Rafael Azcona, Leo Benvenuti and Pietro De Bernardi, in which Tognazzi, in a highly complex performance, wholly constructed from within, depicts a "ham" actor who, by dint of acting in a play about Mussolini for small-town audiences, identifies himself with the memory of the late dictator and when, as a joke, they put him to the wall he thinks he is really about to be executed like the "Duce". The film is uneven, with moments of banality alternating with flashes of great satire, but the reconstruction on the poor company's stage of certain moments in the life of Mussolini constitute a pungent and convincing piece of cinema.

With ROMANZO POPOLARE (POPULAR NOVEL: 1974), Mario Monicelli, supported by a script written by him with Age and Scarpelli, also seek new paths for Italian-style comedy. As the title indicates, he attempts to transfer a mechanism till then typical of bourgeois comedy (him, her, the other man, suspicions of adultery, separations, quarrels and reconciliations) into a popular setting. So Tognazzi is a Milanese worker of middle age, married to a girl who then betrays him with another young worker. Faced with the facts, old as the world, the man's "liberal" and "open" views melt away like snow in summer and he kicks the adultress out of the house. Tognazzi, Ornella Muti, Michele Placido play their parts, expressing themselves in a language realistically based on the normal speech to be found among the Milanese working classes, with detached amusement, engaged in a playful game not lacking in bitterness.

Dino Risi takes Tognazzi back to the characters of Pietro Chiara in LA STANZA DEL VESCOVO (THE BISHOP'S ROOM), a novel that the writer himself adapted to the screen together with Benvenuti and De Barnardi. The film is set on Lago Maggiore, with a handsome villa overlooking the lake and peaceful boat rides, and is centered around the figure of Orimbelli (Ugo Tognazzi), falsely cocky in his rich man's vulgarity and virile exhibitionism who in the end kills himself instead. In PRIMO AMORE (FIRST LOVE: 1979), Risi deals with the familiar subject of an older man's passion for a young girl, but endowing it with richer meanings, seeing as how Tognazzi is an old retired vaudeville comedian and the girl a maid in the rest home where he lives. The elopment of the lovers to Rome collides brutally with reality: the girl, going from one bed to the other, makes a career for herself on television, he without a cent to his name, a professional failure, goes back to the rest home, resigned to being old. Despite a few vague similarities to Neil Simon's THE SUNSHINE BOYS, the film leads the comedy genre, with its humorous contents, to reflect upon, in an original fashion, the transition from middle age to old age, from active life to retirement.

Ugo Tognazzi, like Sordi and Manfredi, directed a film from time to time, though they weren't his best films. After IL MANTENUTO (THE GIGOLO: 1961), still primitive, he attained better results in IL FISCHIO AL NASO (FEELING FUNNY) in 1967, based on one of the most successful short stories of Dino Buzzati, SETTE PIANI (SEVEN FLOORS), adapted to the screen by the actor-director himself with the collaboration of the writers he used at the time for his theater and television work, the Florentines Giulio Scarnicci and Renzo Tarabusi, as well as Alfredo Pigna. Buzzati tells the harrowing story of a man who is admitted to a clinic for a silly ailment that doesn't worry him in the least. In the clinic, the patients are divided by floor, from the highest to the ground floor, according to the seriousness of their condition. So he is obviously assigned to one of the upper floors, except, under various pretexts, he is moved lower every day and realizes he is condemned to death. Tognazzi replaces the atmosphere of metaphysical anguish of the original story with motivations of a lighter and more easily understandable sort, and that is a very concrete affair of interests between relatives and the managers of the clinic, and the accent shifts, without explanation, from a pure and simple thriller to the grotesque. Even so, the film works, thanks to a finely-wrought performance and a driving pace. Tognazzi took a story by Tonino Guerra, Franco Indovina and Luigi Malerba for his third film, SISSIGNORE (YES SIR: 1968), the ludicrous portrait of a chauffeur who spends his life covering up the misdeeds, the swindles and love-affairs of his boss, in the end being sentenced to prison for life. While his fourth film, CATTIVI PENSIERI (EVIL THOUGHTS: 1976), seems less important, I VIAGGIATORI DELLA SERA (THE NIGHT TRAVELERS), a science-fiction fable, based on a novel by Umberto Simonetta, about a future society in which old people kill themselves, is of a certain distinction, despite some rather slow moments.

8. Nino Manfredi Outside the Set Character part five

From: COMEDY ITALIAN STYLE

by Ernesto G. Laura

That Manfredi refused to limit herself to a set character does not mean, however, that he denied those Ciociaria peasant roots which go to make up an important part of his personality. His Marino Balestrini, a village barber, in STRAZIAMI, MA DI BACI SAZIAMI (TORTURE ME, BUT FILL ME WITH KISSES: 1968) by Dino Risi, extracts from precisely this social and geographical background its perfect description as a character. The story, written by Age and Scarpelli, more than once touches upon death creating out of it occasions for laughter: when the young engaged couple tries to commit suicide for love, when Marino, out of a job, jumps into the Tiber, lastly when he and his former girlfriend try to bump off her deaf-mute husband. A paradoxical plot leads to a complex story, now caricatural now pathetic, where the American actress, Pamela Tiffin, is the pretty village girl fought over by the barber, Nino Manfredi, and her husband, Ugo Tognazzi. RIUSCIRANNO, I NOSTRI EROI A RITROVARE IL LORO AMICO MISTERIOSAMENTE SCOMPARSO IN AFRICA? (WILL OUR HEROES SUCCEED IN FINDING THEIR FRIEND WHO HAS MYSTERIOUSLY DISAPPEARED IN AFRICA?) is the mile-long title of a bizarre film Ettore Scola made in 1968 on a script by Age, Scarpelli and the director. The remote inspiration of the film is Stanley's trip to find Livingstone, but bought up to date and adapted to modern times. It would be a Roman publisher, Alberto Sordi, accompanied by one of his employees, Bernard Blier, in the capacity of collaborator, driver and in other words, slave, to go to Africa to follow the traces, at first feeble then more and more substantial, of his brother-in-law, Nino Manfredi, who had disappeared months before. They would find him in a native village, acting as witch doctor to the tribe and not the least bit anxious to go home: in that particular status he makes his protest against industrial civilization. Age and Scarpelli were also the authors of ROSOLINO PATERNO, SOLDATO... (ROSOLINO PATERNO, SOLDIER...), directed in 1970 by Nanni Loy and meant as a vehicle to launch Manfredi on the American market. But after TUTTI A CASA (EVERYBODY HOME), it was difficult to say something new about the war in Italy in 1943, and the comedy with pretences of historical popularization did not turn out as incisive as it could have been. It tells of the vicissitudes of an Allied commando unit parachuted into Sicily at the beginning of 1943 to prepare for the Anglo-American landing. One member of it is an Italian prisoner-of-war, the soldier of the title, who is supposed to act as guide but who is interested only in escaping to go see his home-town girl-friend. Manfredi co-starred with three American actors: Peter Falk, Jason Robards, Jr. and Martin Landau (who later became popular on television in the Space 1999 series).

8. Nino Manfredi Outside the Set Character part four

From: COMEDY ITALIAN STYLE

by Ernesto G. Laura

Manfredi steps out of the sphere of merely national prestige with the light-hearted OPERAZIONE SAN GENNARO (OPERATION SAN GENNARO: 1966) by Dino Risi, a sort of parody of the American "hard-boiled film" set in Naples amidst the Song Festival and the procession of San Gennaro, with a "guappo" (that is, a local gang leader) who joins up with three Americans (the leader of the three was played by Harry Guardino) to steal the fabulous treasure of San Gennaro preserved in the underground vaults of the Naples Cathedral. Everything goes wrong, despite the advice of the expert Don Vincenzo (Toto), who receives his clients in jail, and the unfortunate thieves end up carrying the statue of the saint in procession, after having unintentionally helped discover the treasure. Neapolitan folklore and parody of American action films intermingle in a comicalness of high quality. In 1966, it was awarded a silver medal at the Moscow Festival.

In the '60s, many Italian directors were anxious to weigh the pros and cons of their own generation which at an early age had known Fascism and experienced the war and the postwar period. In 1967, Nanni Loy made what was essentially an autobiographical film, IL PADRE DI FAMIGLIA (THE HEAD OF THE FAMILY), which narrated twenty years in the life of a couple - Nino Manfredi, an architect, Republican and Socialist, and Leslie Caron, a girl who believed in the monarchy - from when they met in 1946 during the institutional referendum which gave birth to the Republic up to the middle of the 1960s. It is the exemplary story of a family with children, the crisis of ideals, the fraying of their emotional relations, the temptation of non-commitment, ending with the wife, who has borne most of the weight of the family on her shoulders, being admitted to a clinic with a nervous breakdown. Void of great moments, the film moves in the intermediate range of a good story, with satirical episodes tempered by moments of pathos.

7. Alberto Sordi Personification of the Average Italian part seven

From: COMEDY ITALIAN STYLE

by Ernesto G. Laura

The ideal sequel to TUTTI A CASA (EVERYBODY HOME), but more facile and conventional in its development, is the succeeding I DUE NEMICI (THE TWO ENEMIES, aka THE BEST OF ENEMIES), written again by Age and Scarpelli in collaboration with Suso Cecchi d'Amico and the English scenarist Jack Pulman, on a story by Luciano Vincenzoni of LA GRANDE GUERRA (THE GREAT WAR); the director was the Englishman Guy Hamilton, better-known later as the director of James Bond films. It is not easy to laugh about a lost war, and it is unquestionally a bitter laugh, but not a superficial one. In 1941 in Ethiopia, the film confronts two "enemies", the British major, Richardson, impeccably performed by David Niven, and the Italian captain, Blasi, who take each other prisoners, then establish a temporary alliance for want of provisions and ammunition in the middle of the savannah, and in the end go back to being "enemies" when the defeated Italians are definitely taken prisoner with, however, the honors of war. As in the previous film, Sordi plays an officer, who is forced to come round to an ambiguous reality in which the questions of for whom and against whom blur and overlap. He goes on doing his duty even though the negative outcome is inevitable.

The transition from war experiences to post-war experiences was not calm and easy for everyone. Rodolfo Sonego writes one of his best scripts for Sordi, tailoring to measure a character who moves precisely in this compilicated and contradictory span of time: the character of Silvio Magnozzi in UNA VITA DIFFICILE (A HARD LIFE), directed in 1961 by Dino Risi. Could this Magnozzi be the Innocenzi of TUTTI A CASA (EVERYBODY HOME)? Like him, on September 8th, he is a dispersed reserve officer without orders, until he ends up becoming a partisan in the North. After the war, he carries on his commitment as a journalist on a leftist paper until the left is excluded from the government in 1948. In the different political and civil atmosphere that follows, Magnozzi loses his job, tries to get a novel published, tries to write movie scripts, in other words, lives from pillar to post, even momentarily ending up in jail. Throwing to the dogs the ideals that had sustained him during the Resistance and after the war, he decides to make money as a "hanger-on" to an important businessman, until, however, his conscience gains the upper hand and he shoves his boss into the swimming-pool of his villa. Sordi shows extraordinary restraint in the role, playing down the comic situations without ever letting them become farcical, lending them a rather more grotesque flavor.

7. Alberto Sordi Personification of the Average Italian part four

From: COMEDY ITALIAN STYLE

by Ernesto G. Laura

Though the actor wonderfully succeeds in impersonating popular types, the precise definition of his real "type" is to be found in his middle-class portrayals. Already in 1955 in Comencini's BELLA DI ROMA (ROME BEAUTY), he was a tricky husband, a profligate to all appearances irreprehensible who parades his religious piety, an ambiguous figure endowed by Sordi with a highly subtle irony that corrodes it from within. Playing the charming swindler to the hilt, Sordi fits perfectly into one of the few examples of black humor in Italian-style comedy, Steno's PICCOLA POSTA (WANT-ADS: 1955), in the role of a phony count who runs a rest-home to which he entices little old ladies full of money to rob them or even, as in the case of Donna Virgina, to kill them off. In IL MORALISTA (THE MORALIST: 1959), directed by Giorgio Bianchi, he portrays, with ruthless sarcasm, a sort of professional moralist, the secretary of an international organization for public morals who turns out to be exactly the opposite: the organizer of a white-slave racket. Another perfect example of black humor is IL VEDOVO (THE WIDOWER), directed in 1959 by Dino Risi and written by Dino Verde, Sandro Continenza and Fabio Carpi, about a businessman on the verge of bunkruptcy who plans the perfect crime to get rid of his wife who has all the money. Between the malicious wife of Franca Valeri and the vile, shifty and hypocritical husband of Sordi, the film proceeds at a lively pace, keeping an eye on Anglo-Saxon models and aiming at an intelligent humor.

Alberto Sordi frequently appeared in comedies based on married couples, suffice it to remember IL SEDUTTORE (THE SEDUCER) which in 1954 Franco Rossi (Florentine, born in 1919) successfully derived from the play by Diego Fabbri and which recounts the love affairs of an office clerk, who is caught and forgiven by his wife. The Fabbri play, behind the facade of a French-style vaudeville, aspired to simbolic meanings on the human condition which were lost in the film where nothing but the "divertissement" remains, but in any case the film was well-concocted and acted. Of greater depth was the leading character in LO SCAPOLO (THE BACHELOR), directed in 1956 by Antonio Pietrangeli (1919-1968) with the accuracy of psychological and environmental description that was characteristic of his work. Sordi is a man around thirty, Paolo, who all of a sudden decides to get married and looks around to find the ideal woman. The humor of the film lies in the process of choosing a future wife as if he were out to buy a house or company shares. A quite successful attempt at assailing the conventions and hypocrisies of certain bourgeoise marriages is to be found in IL MARITO (THE HUSBAND), directed in 1958 by Nanni Loy and Gianni Puccini (1914-1968) and written by the directors with Sonego, Sordi, Maccari and Scola. It is the story of a building contractor oppressed by his wife and mother-in-law as well as his sister-in-law, who, on the verge of bankruptcy, turns to a rich widow to borrow money, creating pandemonioum in the family.

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.

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).

4. The Totò Phenomenon 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

Unfortunately, it was easier and more convenient to exploit Totò in low-budget slap-dash films, based entirely on his skills as an improviser and the sex-appeal of the starlet called in for the occasion. The actor himself contributed to this self-devaluation, by accepting all his life everything that was offered him, without stopping to choose, passing from the cheap "flicker" to the masterpiece. But this extraordinary "show animal" was too gifted to be ignored by directors endowed with personality and ideas. So, however numerous the farces, there were also comedies, with real character, well-studied situations, stories that were not mere pretexts.

Two filmmakers, Steno (Stefano Vanzina, 1915) and Mario Monicelli (1915), who had come from the humorous weeklies and while waiting to direct a film had worked together as scriptwriters, set their eyes on Totò with the idea of turning him into the new hero of civil and social satire.

Scriptwriters are the key to understanding the continuity of development of the Italian-style film comedy. Steno and Monicelli had written the script for the triptych directed by Borghesio with Macario about the common little man in the war and after. Steno by himself had already worked for Totò on the script for FIFA E ARENA (FUNK AND SAND) and TOTO AL GIRO D'ITALIA (TOTO AT THE TOUR OF ITALY).

TOTO CERCA CASA (TOTO HOUSE-HUNTING) of 1949 is their "Opus One" as directors and though the difficulty of finding a house offered humorous possibilities, it also entailed a certain openness to the social problems of Rome, like countless other Italian cities. TOTO E I RE DI ROMA (TOTO AND THE KING OF ROME: 1951) is already more complex. To focalize the daily misadventures of a small-time civil servant, Dino Risi and Ennio De Concini, the authors of the book (the script was written by the directors, Steno and Monicelli, themselves), took their inspiration from two short stories by Anton Chekhov, The Death Of The Civil Servant and Promotion Exams. The two directors offered the actor wonderful opportunities to show off his paradoxical humor, for example in the sequence where Totò arranges for and announces his own funeral. GUARDIE E LADRI (COPS AND ROBBERS: 1951), Steno and Monicelli's third film with the Neapolitan comedian, cuts much closer to the quick of the social fabric. The main character is a thief, not an Arsene Lupin of course, but a small-time chicken thief who has a family to support and finds no way to make ends meet except by stealing. He is pursued by a big, gruff cop whom the thief always manages to get away from. The script of the story by Piero Tellini was written by two perceptive and subtle writers, specialists in the criticism of social conventions, scathing critics of hypocrisy and outward conformity: Vitaliano Brancati and Ennio Flaiano. The skirmishes between the cop - Aldo Fabrizi - and robber - Totò - are rooted in an old tradition of the great comic cinema: think of the candid Charlie Chaplin being chased by the husky and belligerent Keystone Cops. Steno and Monicelli set this tradition into suburban working-class Rome and humanized both the cop and the robber, confined by circumstances to their seperate roles but actually holding a soft spot for each other that verges on friendship, so that in the end the robber, before letting himself be handcuffed, hands his family over to the cop for safe keeping. GUARDIE E LADRI (COPS AND ROBBERS) won the prize for the best script at the 1952 Cannes Festival. TOTO E CAROLINA (TOTO AND CAROLINA: 1953), directed by Mario Monicelli alone, also moves in the line of social paradox. This time the involuntary friendship grows up between a cop - Totò - and a prostitute in an unconventional story whose humor is tinged with simmering bitterness. The story was by the writer Ennio Flaiano, the script by Flaiano, Monicelli and Rodolfo Sonego. A few years later, in 1960, Monicelli would give Totò another important opportunity with RISATE DI GIOIA (LAUGHS OF JOY), written by Suso Cecchi D'Amico, Age, Furio Scarpelli and Monicelli on the basis of a short story by Alberto Moravia. Concentrated into the span of a few hours on New Year's Eve, it describes the disillusionments of a film-extra from Cinecitta, Anna Magnani, and an old sutor of her's, Totò, during a dance, where they are snubbed by high society. Two American actors, Ben Gazzara and Fred Clark, also took part in the film.

3. Poor, Young and Good-Looking part five

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

SOTTO IL SOLE DI ROMA (UNDER THE SUN OF ROME), as mentioned above, ushered in the subject of the very young, setting them into a specific framework, the popular suburban quarters of Rome. POVERI MA BELLI (POOR BUT GOOD-LOOKING) is a film dating from 1956 and already contains in its title the characteristics of the genre.

Written by Dino Risi (1916) together with two future directors, Massimo Franciosa (1924) and Pasquale Festa Campanile (1927, also a vivid writer), the film recounts, with vivacity and some irony, the little everyday events and the lovers' quarrels of a group of youngsters in the Rome of the '50s, helping to launch a whole bevy of new actors. There was the bully, or "bullo", liar and braggart, pursued by women (Maurizio Arena) and there was the usual girl with the big bust and the sexy curves (Marisa Allasio: it was she who inspired the term, which soon became common usage to describe this particular kind of woman in films, "maggiorata fisica," or "body over-size", something like the American "sweater girl"). Sharing their lot, another couple (Renato Salvatori, Lorella De Luca). Within the limits of a certain superficiality, the image of a lower-class suburban Rome seen through the eyes of the young, emerged with a certain flavor and color, stimulating in Italian audiences an interest in "homegrown" characters and situations, in no way imitative of the well-known models of Hollywood and Paris. It was inevitable that Risi, again with Franciosa and Festa Campanile and the same actors, should follow POVERI MA BELLI (POOR BUT GOOD-LOOKING) with BELLE MA POVERE (GOOD-LOOKING BUT POOR: 1957) and POVERI MILIONARI (POOR MILLIONAIRES: 1959).