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

From: COMEDY ITALIAN STYLE

by Ernesto G. Laura

More and less the same age as Sordi (1920) and Manfredi (1921), Ugo Tognazzi, born in Lombardy in 1922, is the third popular name around which the Italian-style comedy developed over the last twenty years. Unlike the others, however, he didn't serve his apprenticeship in the movies: in 1950, when he appeared in his first film (I CADETTI DI GUASCOGNA - THE CADETS OF GASCONY - directed by Mario Mattoli) it was already in a starring role. And yet it took some ten years of successful but mediocre films for him to escape the routine of superficial farces and be given more substantial roles in comedies of manners.

Like Sordi, Tognazzi had worked hard for many years in variety shows, rising from the small-time vaudeville theaters on the outskirts of town to the big musical revues. In 1950, he was still not a popular star like Macario, for whom he was a stand-in, or Toto, even so his revues were among the most modern in their texts (written first by Gelich and then by Scarnicci adn Tarabusi) and in their "formula": he was the first to introduce, instead of the traditional humor, the "nonsense comedy" that became known in Italy especially after the success of Potter's HELLZAPOPPIN; he was the first to mix together big spectacular numbers with more intimate and restrained cabaret acts.

When Italian motion pictures found it convenient to make series of films for every successful variety show comedian, Tognazzi also got his space on the screen; it was at that time, however, that Toto reigned supreme in films of that kind. In 1954, the newly born Italian television gave him the possibility of enormously enlarging his circle of fans with a Saturday night show, UN DUE TRE (ONE TWO THREE), that for several years was at the top of the popularity polls. Working with Raimondo Vianello, his "stooge" but not exactly a partner in the theater, he formed an extraordinary comedy team. Next to Vianelli, tall and thin with washed-out hair, physically and psychologically immersed in a British kind of humor played absolutely deadpan, Tognazzi stood out both because of his extraverted dash and the cunningness of a certain crafty guile.

In the days of the great popularity of stage revues, Tognazzi was primarily an eminent representative of that genre of entertainment and secondly a familiar television face; the movies were a sideline, nothing particularly important, in which he alternated leading roles in second-rate films and brief appearances as "guest star" in some even important films. The latter was the case with CHE GIOIA VIVERE! (WHAT A JOY TO BE ALIVE!), directed in Italy in 1961 by French director Rene Clement and starring another Frenchman, Alain Delon, an affectionate and light-hearted portrayal of 1921 Rome through an endearing family of anarchists. Tognazzi for the first time called attention to himself in a secondary but amusingly sketched role: a Bulgarian terrorist who has come to Rome to carry out an assassination.

7. Alberto Sordi Personification of the Average Italian part one

From: COMEDY ITALIAN STYLE

by Ernesto G. Laura

Alberto Sordi was born in 1920, started working in films in small parts as early as 1937, yet it wasn't until 1951 that someone gave him the lead in a film (MAMMA MIA, CHE IMPRESSIONE! - DEAR ME, WHAT A FRIGHT!), though it didn't open many doors for him until a year later when a director making his first film, Federico Fellini, had to fight with the producer to get Sordi for LO SCEICCO BIANCO (THE WHITE SHEIK). Unfortunately, Fellini's "opus one" was a complete flop, but when he made I VITELLONI (THE YOUNG STEERS) he insisted upon having Sordi for one of the leading roles. Success at last, both for the director and the actor, who managed to stand out in a film on a par with lots of able young actors (Franco Interlenghi, Leopoldo Tireste, Franco Fabrizi). A little later, an episode in the film UN GIORNO IN PRETURA (A DAY IN COURT) sketched out the specific contours of his personage, bringing him an enormous popularity.

Yet if one looks at the twenty or so films he made before then, the talent of the actor was already fully apparent; suffice it to remember the go-getting clerk in LE MISERIE DEL SIGNOR TRAVET (THE MISFORTUNES OF SIGNOR TRAVET: 1946) by Mario Soldati or the sinister individual in SOTTO IL SOLE DI ROMA (UNDER THE SUN OF ROME: 1948).

Why then did an expert actor have to wait some fifteen years in order to "make it"? The reason probably lies in the fact that he had not yet discovered his "personage" and his performances, however excellent, did not bring into focus a recognizable moral and psychological individuality, an "identity". He started his career, for example, under the wing of Oliver Hardy, when in 1937 he won the contest organized by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer for the voice best suited to dubbing in Italian the voice of the partner of Stan Laurel. Laurel and Hardy were - and still are, thanks to television - highly popular in Italy. Sordi was able to gain access to the vaudeville stage precisely because he was presented as "the Italian voice of Oliver Hardy", whom he then went on to imitate. Breaking away from that model, he did a little of everything in the theater, capable, well-liked, but never really a celebrity. Since he was young and good-looking, during the war he accidentally co-starred in a heroic air-force film, I TRE AQUILOTTI (THE THREE YOUNG EAGLES: 1942) by Mario Mattoli, on a story by Vittorio Mussolini, the "Duce's" son. It was a completely "serious" role, which shows that producers had not recognized the actor's real talents.

These talents gradually came to the fore, thanks to the radio. In his search for an "identity", he even went so far as to try success as a radio singer. But it was most of all with certain characters ("Signore Dice", "Count Claro", "Mario Pio", "the parish buddies") that the artistic individuality of Alberto Sordi irresistibly began to take shape: on the one hand, the big grown-up baby, on the other the saucy, aggressive wise guy. It would be the sum total of these two characters, which were poles apart, that would go to form the unique "personage" Sordi brought to the screen: a cocky young man, meddlesome, aggressive, who suddenly reveals unexpected reserves of immaturity, certain childish characteristics which offer a fertile terrain for his comic streak.

4. The Totò Phenomenon part four

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

A failure, unfortunately, was Totò's encounter with one of the masters of Italian cinema in one of his rare sorties into the field of comedy, a genre that was not congenial to him: DOV'E LA LIBERTA? (WHERE'S FREEDOM?). Written by Rossellini with Antonio Pietrangeli, this paradoxical story tells of a man who, set free after years in jail, escapes in the opposite sense, demanding, that is, to be put back in prison because the modern-day world has been an utter disappointment. The film lacked pace and the contribution of the actor, however excellent, fails to compensate for the inconsistencies and discrepancies of the plot.

UN TURCO NAPOLETANO (A NEAPOLITAN TURK: 1953), MISERIA E NOBILITA (POVERTY AND NOBILITY: 1954) and IL MEDICO DEI PAZZI (THE DOCTOR OF THE MAD: 1954) represented three mediocre attempts by Mario Mattoli to recreate on the screen the charm of Naples between the 19th and 20th century on the basis of three famous plays by Scarpetta which were part of the classical repertoire of the Neapolitan theater. But Totò seemed somewhat cramped by the restrictions of the roles not created for him.

4. The Totò Phenomenon 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 success of the Italian-style film comedy would come to depend upon the presence of well-known and popular actors. In the beginning this was not the case: as has been seen, neither DUE SOLDI DI SPERANZA (TWO CENTS OF HOPE) nor POVERI MA BELLI (POOR, BUT GOOD-LOOKING) subscribed to the star system. After the short-lived "case" of Macario, who soon returned to the ranks of the comic film and then moved down to supporting roles, the first name around which could be built, in the early '50s, a long series of film comedies was that of Totò.

Totò (Antonio De Curtis, 1898-1967) was not a new name, either on stage or in movies. He had started in the shoddy vaudeville theaters of Naples and slowly graduated from the music hall to the big stage revues, where he had already become popular in the '30s, with Anna Magnani as his partner. His body was extraordinarily double-jointed and he possessed a highly mobile face with round eyes and a crooked chin. He would appear on stage in a morning coat and a bowler hat, with the trousers slightly too short, and in contrast to this all-told "dignified" appearance he would go through movements that grew more and more mechanical and jerky and turned him into a sort of marionette. In the days when comics made people laugh with the quality of their jokes and wise cracks, Totò was first of all a mime and performed with his body in constant, free improvisation.

These mimetic characteristics made him particularly suited to the movies, for which he made a number of fly-by-night films beginning in 1937. However, the number one star among comedians was Macario and until that star began to decline, Totò remained in the shadows of a moderate success, a restricted popularity. His fame exploded in 1948 with FIFA E ARENA (FUNK AND SAND), a farce directed by Mario Mattoli on the old theme of bull fights and toreadors. It is clear that farce, slapstick comedy lies outside our present subject, but TOTO AL GIRO D'ITALIA (TOTO AT THE TOUR OF ITALY), also from 1948, moves beyond the farce and is a real comedy and very well constructed. Along with soccer, bicycle riding was the most popular spot in Italy at that time. During the "Giro d'Italia," the big race that circled all of Italy in succeeding laps, newspapers came out in special evening editions to report the order of arrival of each lap. The rivalry between the two champions, Gino Bartali and Fausto Coppi, sent crowds of fans into delirium. Mattoli got the idea of taking several documentary sequences of the real Giro d'Italia, with the participation of the most famous racers, and grafting onto it an imaginary story, cast in a surreal style of humor, a humor of the absurd. Totò was, in fact, a "gregario," that is one of those cyclists who ride along in the team to give the champions a hand, but who never win a race and almost never even a lap. Latter-day Faust, he makes a pact with the devil and starts winning one race after the other. A charming comedy, wonderfully quick in pace, with a pleasantly bourgeois devil (Veneto actor Carlo Micheluzzi), it revealed just how talented Totò could be if confronted with roles that were diversified and richly articulated.

2. The Forties: The Season Of Neo-Realism part six

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

It was not surprising, therefore, that producers thought of counteracting the influx of Hollywood film revues with Italian film revues linked, to be sure, to the popularity of a given comedian but most of all entrusted to the richness of the cast, the number of chorus girls, the quality of the scenery and choreography. After DOVE STA ZAZA? [WHERE'S ZAZA?: 1948] of Giorgio C. Simonelli, with Nino Taranto, and I POMPIERI DI VIGGIU [THE VIGGIU FIRE-BRIGADE: 1949] of Mario Mattoli, with Toto, the most ambitious attempt was represented by BOTTA E RISPOSTA [QUESTION AND ANSWER], directed in 1950 by highly respected writer and director Mario Soldati, and starring the Italian comics Taranto and Renato Rascel, the Frenchman Fernandel and the American Louis Armstrong, with the sophisticated choreography of Katherine Dunham. The film-revue genre failed, however, to get off the ground and almost immediately died out.

The popularity of the comedians remained so producers got the idea of making low-budget films to order for them, shot in haste and dumped onto the market. Every comedian who met with the slightest success in the music-hall was given his films: the above-mentioned Taranto and Rascel, Carlo Dapporto, Macario, Walter Chiari, Toto.

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

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

Among the various regional and dialectal theatrical traditions, little space was occupied by the Roman dialect theater, despite the presence of an extraordinary actor like Ettore Petrolini. Roman dialect flourished, not so much in the "respectable" theaters, as on the shoddy stages of secondrate vaudeville houses, which were mostly located in the poorer parts of town with a decidedly working-class audience. One of the lesser celebrities of those theaters was Aldo Fabrizi (born in 1906), comedian, poet, entertainer of enormous appeal with his round face, his plump body and a deliberately unconventional way of speaking, that is with the words almost "eaten" to give the impression of words being made up on the spot rather than memorized beforehand. A former silent movie star who had taken up directing with some success, Mario Bonnard (1889-1965) put Fabrizi, then unknown in movies, into the leading role of AVANTI C'E POSTO... [COME ON, THERE'S ROME...: 1942]. On stage, the actor had created, with a fine sense of parody, a number of typical Roman characters, including a streetcar conductor. It was this figure which was placed at the center of a story that recaptures the humorous, sentimental flavor of Camerini's comedies in telling of the bashful courtship a middle-aged streetcar conductor pays to a pretty young house maid who is out of a job, until he realizes that the girl is in love with a young colleague of his. The story, written by Zavattini, Fabrizi and Piero Tellini, is weak, but it is the way it is told that matters. Between romantic scenes and scintillating gags, a quite accurate picture of wartime Rome emerges and the film ends sadly with the young husband-to-be leaving for the front of an already lost war. Federico Fellini also lent a hand to the script and certain gags are typically his. Immediately after, Mario Bonnard, director; Fellini, Fabrizi, Tellini, scriptwriters; Marino Girolami, scenarist, came up with CAMPO DE' FIORI (1943), where Aldo Fabrizi plays the part of a fishmonger who has a stormy love affair with a woman who sells fruit and vegetables in the popular open-air market of Campo de' Fiori, one of the most picturesque squares in Rome. The woman was Anna Magnani, till then known as a variety show star with Toto and in films in the type-cast role of a coarse woman of dubious reputation. CAMPO DE' FIORI completely overhauled the image of Anna Magnani, turning her into a positive figure: a simple woman of the people, all heart and instinct, brusque and aggressive in manner. A love affair between two actors no longer very young (Fabrizi was thirty-seven, Magnani thirty-five) in lower-class roles was something new and the film took great delight in the lively imagery of the true-to-life streets and squares of Rome. The third and last film of the series was, again in 1943, L'ULTIMA CARROZZELLA [THE LAST CARRIAGE], directed by Mario Mattoli and written by Fabrizi and Fellini, the story of a Roman carriage driver, galled by the competition of taxis, who forbids his daughter to marry a taxi driver. This then completes the triptych which brought to the screen a bittersweet image of "popular" Rome, of simple people who live modestly off their earnings in a city caught in the transition between an old world that would be swept away by the war, and a new world that could yet barely be glimpsed. Meanwhile, as the historic tragedy of Italy ran its course, comedy pointed in the direction of human solidarity and understanding with a certain hope for the future.