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.

3. Poor, Young and Good-Looking part three

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 optimistic spirit and the discovery of the Southern provinces instead of Rome in DUE SOLDI DI SPERANZA (TWO CENTS OF HOPE) were directly responsible for an enormously successful film made in 1953, the first of a series PANE, AMORE E FANTASIA (BREAD, LOVE AND FANTASY) by Luigi Comencini (born in 1916), written by the director himself in collaboration, by no coincidence, with the Margadonna of the preceding film.

Comencini, a Lombard architect who had worked at the Milan Film Library, had written scripts for Lattuada and Soldati, signed several excellent documentaries and served as film critic on various newspapers, and magazines. A director since 1948 of dramatic films, he found in PANE, AMORE E FANTASIA (BREAD, LOVE AND FANTASY) the important opportunity for a turning point in his career.

In the film, two love stories between people of two different generations are interwoven. On the one hand, there is, in fact, a shapely young girl, proud and rebellious in character, precisely in keeping with the model launched by Carmela in DUE SOLDI DI SPERANZA (TWO CENTS OF HOPE): she is nick-named "la Bersagliera" (from the phrase, "alla bersagliera," which means headfirst, daringly, with dash) and was to launch the long, brilliant career of Gina Lollobrigida. In the careful balancing of the roles, the "Bersagliera's" suitor was a shy, awkward young man, a Veneto carabiniere (Roberto Risso). On the other hand, a middle-aged couple go through the bickerings of love. He is a carabiniere warrant officer with gray hair but an incorrigible woman-chaser, she the attractive midwife of the village. The role of Warrant Officer Carotenuto relaunched, as an actor, Vittorio De Sica, who had never completely given up acting but who in recent years had become one of the most distinguished neo-realistic directors. With PANE, AMORE E FANTASIA (BREAD, LOVE AND FANTASY), the so-called "rosy neo-realism" took root, that is a comedy of character where the Italian (and especially Southern Italian) landscape plays a decisive role in defining characters and situations, portraying in a deliberately optimistic light a certain rustic and provincial reality. The series continued in 1954 with PANE, AMORE E GELOSIA (BREAD, LOVE AND JEALOUSY) by the same director and with the same four actors, in 1955 with PANE, AMORE E... (BREAD, LOVE AND...), directed by Dino Risi and in which the "Bersagliera" of Gina Lollobrigida was replaced by the "Pizzaiola" (pizza-girl) impersonated by Sophia Loren and ended in 1959 with PANE, AMORE A ANDALUSIA (BREAD, LOVE AND ANDALUSIA), directed by the Spanish director, Xavier Seto, and made in Spain, in the vain attempt to preserve the original inspiration in such a different setting, both geographical and in the characters involved (this time De Sica's girl-friend was Carmen Sevilla).

Yul Brynner makes SOLOMON AND SHEBA

From: YUL

The Man Who Would Be King

A Memoir of Father and Son

by Rock Brynner

[After a career as one of the earliest directors at CBS-TV, Yul Brynner became a star on Broadway in THE KING AND I. This led to movie roles in THE TEN COMMANDEMENTS, THE KING AND I, ANASTASIA, THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV, THE BUCCANEER, THE JOURNEY and THE SOUND AND THE FURY. However, he found, that no matter how much money he made, he spent it and now he owed the IRS.]

In the fall [of 1958], I went back to boarding school and Mom went back to heavy drinking, and life continued smoothly until Tyrone Power died in the autumn. He had been in the middle of shooting a biblical epic in Spain, SOLOMON AND SHEBA, with Gina Lollobrigida, and now the insurance company was obliged to offer a huge salary to any actor who would replace him in a role that Yul, among others, had long since turned down. The difference was that now they were ready to pay him one million dollars. The way personal income tax was structured in the 1950s, his tax bill on that million would be nine hundred thousand dollars. But there was a solution. The government allowed a total exemption to citizens who resided abroad for a minimum of five years. Yul saw this as his chance to pay his debts: one million dollars tax free was all the money he'd ever need, then he would be free to give up stardom and return to directing at last.

Virginia [Gilmore, his wife and Rock's mother] would not hear of it. It was unpatriotic, or worse. It was dishonest and immoral and unredeemable. "All you want it to be a gypsy millionaire," she screamed, since the kid was away at school, "without a care or responsiblity in the world. Well, I'm sorry, Mr. B., but you have responsibilites, whether or not you care to notice. And if you can earn money ten times faster, you better believe me, I can spend it faster still!" Or words to that effect...

Before settling down as a millionaire, Yul first had to make SOLOMON AND SHEBA. Here, for the first time since the beginning of his stardom, was a piece of unmistakable crap, on an aesthetic par with Steve Reeves as Hercules. Just two years after THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, the zenith of the genre, came this nadir. Gina Lollobrigida, with a ruby in her navel, had all the sex appeal of a fist. George Sanders, in his fifties, appeared so feeble in battle that he turned to the camera as if soliciting comfort from the audience. And Yul, as the young Solomon with Tyrone Power's hairstyle (to match previously filmed sequences), spent most of his screen time trying to keep a straight face. Both Michael Chekhov [Yul's acting mentor] and Cecil B. DeMille had died, mercifully, before SOLOMON AND SHEBA was released.

The experience of renouncing the values and loyalties that had guided him for decades was not an easy one. But at least he was out of debt at last, and putting aside a nest egg that would allow him to become the director he always wanted to be, while feeling secure that he could guarantee his son, and even his grandchildren, a college education. But the extravagance of his daily life grew as fast as his earnings: whenever he had the wherewithal, Yul Brynner was one of the all-time great spenders. "I have no respect for money, Rock, " he always reminded me. "I piss on the stuff." I took careful note of this, as part of my moral education.