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

From : COMEDY ITALIAN STYLE

by Ernesto G. Laura

Similar is the case with Mariangela Melato and Giancarlo Giannini, who became popular in the movies thanks to the light comedies of Lina Wertmuller (in which they formed a pair) that are, however, impossible to confine exclusively to the comedy genre. Melato, born in Milan in 1945, has an intensely active background as a dramatic stage actress; Giannini, born in 1942, in La Spezia, in Liguria, but raised in Naples, was an outstanding Romeo in Franco Zeffirelli's 1964 production of ROMEO AND JULIET in Verona. Both first appeared in the movies in important roles, but not enough so for their artistic personalities to be immediately discerned.

A film by Ettore Scola represented the turning-point for Giancarlo Giannini, namely DRAMMA DELLA GELOSIA: TUTTI I PARTICOLARI IN CRONACA (DRAMA OF JEALOUSY: ALL DETAILS IN THE NEWS, 1970) based on the original idea of transferring a super-bourgeois love triangle to characters who are dirty and ragged outcasts, placing the emphasis on human sentiments. The disputed woman was Monica Vitti, Giannini's rival, Marcello Mastroianni. None of the three was a romantic "hero", the two men in particular seemed a little stupid, but it was precisely the disparity between the modest, indeed wretched reality and the lofty words of love uttered that gave rise to the humorousness of the film.

It was however the director Lina Wertmuller who turned Giannini into a reliable mainstay of Italian-style film comedy. MIMI METALLURGICO FERITO (METALLURGICAL MIMI, OFFENDED IN HIS HONOR: 1972) tells about another love triangle, but in a working-class environment, confirming the mimetic talents of Giannini who, starting off as a romantic matinee idol, comes up with flawless impersonations of proletarian figures, adapting himself to manners and dialects that are not his own, in this case Milanese. Mariangela Melato, in her interpretation of a certain kind of sentimental adn sharp-tongued Lombardy woman, strong-tempered, aggressive and caustic, seems to draw upon the heritage of one of the greatest actresses in the Milanese dialect theater, who in the '30s became a famous film comedy star: Dina Galli. Moving from Milan to Rome, Giannini and Melato were directed by Wertmuller in 1973 and in TRAVOLTI DA UN INSOLITO DESTINO NELL' AZZURO MARE D'AGOSTO (SWEPT AWAY BY AN UNCOMMON FATE IN THE BLUE SEA OF AUGUST) in 1974.

Giancarlo Giannini creates an extraordinary character in another Wertmuller film, PASQUALINO SETTEBELLEZZE (SEVEN BEAUTIES: 1975), where, shifting skillfully from the initial farce to tragedy, the story is told of a nondescript "guappo" (second-rate gangster in the local underworld) from Naples who ends up in a Nazi concentration camp. To introduce humor into such a serious subject was a risk which only a few people could pull off, as the director does through the use of a grotesque expressionistic style.

As to Melato, aside from completely dramatic films (DIMENTICARE VENEZIA, FORGET VENICE, by Brusati, GESU, JESUS, by Zeffirelli), mention may be made of her witty appearance as a hair-dresser in LA CLASSE OPERAIA VA IN PARADISO (THE WORKING CLASS GOES TO HEAVEN: 1971) by Elio Petri and in LA POLIZIOTTA (THE POLICEWOMAN), directed by Steno in 1974 on a script by Vincenzoni and Sergio Donati, where she was a woman policeman in a small town who dares to create trouble for the local powers that be, in agreement with a judge (Orazio Orlando).

At the beginning of the decade, 1980-1990, certain model which Italian-style comedy has lived on till now have run their course, like the so-called rosy neo-realism of the '50s. Several directors have passed away, others have changed their narrative style, sensitive to new tastes. The Comencini who in 1980 produced VOLTATI, EUGENIO (TURN AROUND, EUGENIO), a bitterish comedy about the break-down of relations between parents and childre, in which realistic accents are intermingled with symbolic imagery, time present and time past, even some surrealistic touches, is undoubtedly a far cry from the Comencini of 1952, who directed PANE, AMORE E FANTASIA (BREAD, LOVE AND FANTASY).

New directors, new script-writers, new actors have come to the fore; no limitations exist any more on the subjects to be handled. So comedy is in the process of revising and transforming its traditional image. In the new decade before us everything can be different, everything must be original.

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

From: COMEDY ITALIAN STYLE
by Ernesto G. Laura
Other actors, some of them international stars, have not been taken into detailed consideration here because their comedy appearances fall into a larger and more complex framework of motion picture activities. Such is the case with Marcello Mastroianni and Monica Vitti. Both have important dramatic interpretations to their credit: suffice it to remember Michelangelo Antonioni's LA NOTTE (NIGHT), in which they appeared together. As to Mastroianni, mention must be made of the Fellini films, from LA DOLCE VITA (THE SWEET LIFE) to LA CITTA DELLA DONNE (CITY OF WOMEN), as to Vitti those of Antonioni, from L'AVVENTURA (THE ADVENTURE) to IL MISTERIO DI OBERWALD (THE MYSTERY OF OBERWALD). Even so, the former's natural inclination to irony, the latter's to caricature, often made it possible to introduce moments of genuine humor into dramatic films.
In the 1950s, Marcello Mastroianni was often one of the young leads in the humorous-sentimental comedies that were in fashion. He then reappears in Ferreri's LA GRANDE ABBUFFATA (THE BIG FEED) and in many more recent comedies (among other things, he starred in the musical comedy, VALENTINO, where in the role of the famous silent film star he danced and sang).
Monica Vitti, instead, appeared more regularly in the film comedy genre. Indeed, several films were made especially to show off her particular whimsical personality. For example, the movie versions of several successful stage works: TI HO SPOSATO PER ALLEGRIA (I MARRIED YOU OUT OF MIRTH: 1967) by Luciano Salce, on the play by Natalia Ginzburg, with Giorgio Albertazzi and Maria Grazia Buccella, L'ANATRA ALL'ARANCIA (DUCK A L'ORANGE: 1975), it too by Salce, from the play by Home and Sauvajon, adapted to the screen by Bernardino Zapponi, with Ugo Tognazzi, John Richardson and Barbara Bouchet, AMORI MIEI (MY DARLINGS: 1978) by Steno, from the play by Jaja Fiastri, with Dorelli and Enrico Maria Salerno, NON TI CONOSCO PIU AMORE (DON'T KNOW YOU ANYMORE, DARLING: 1980) by Corbucci, from an old play by Aldo De Benedetti which had already been made into a film in 1936 at the time of the "white telephone" comedies. The film which revealed most completely the gifts of Monica Vitti, a modern actress who even so identifies herself with the character emotionally, from within, was LA RAGAZZA CON LA PISTOLA (THE GIRL WITH THE PISTOL), directed in 1968 by Mario Monicelli from a story by Sonego adapted to the screen by Sonego and Magni. She is a farm girl from a small Southern town with a very closed mentality, who is "dishonored" by a local boy and goes looking for him in America to kill him and "wash away the disgrace," imagining at every stage of the journey the different ways the execution will take place. Vitti is extraordinary in depicting the various stages in the evolution of the girl, who, as the journey proceeds and she gains new experience, gradually begins to feel less and less disposed to carry out the ritual murder, more a woman, more modern, more mature.

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

From: COMEDY ITALIAN STYLE

by Ernesto G. Laura

Dorelli would subsequently find a good director in Pasquale Festa Campanile, who directed him in DIMMI CHE FAI TUTTO PER ME (TELL ME IT'S ALL FOR ME: 1976), a whimsical criticism of conventions in which the actor appears with Pamela Villoresi, Grazia Maria Spia and Andrea Ferreaol (the script was by Castellano and Pipolo), in CARA SPOSA (DEAR BRIDE: 1977), written by Franco Verucci, and based on the idea of the platitude that the man from Milan is a hard worker whereas the Neapolitan is an "artist" but a slacker (here, in fact, Dorelli is a dreamy idler, while the excellent Agostina Belli is a Neapolitan girl with her feet on the ground, constantly at work), in COME PERDERE UNA MOGLIE...E TROVARE UN'AMANTE (HOW TO LOSE A WIFE...AND FIND A MISTRESS: 1978), written by Gianfranco Bucceri, Roberto Leoni and Luigi Malerba, which attempts to place the typical French "pochade" into an Italian framework.

Less persuasive, the adaptation of Piero Chiara's novel, IL CAPPOTTO DI ASTRAKAN (THE ASTRAKAN OVERCOAT: 1979) by Marco Vicario which impoverishes the original merits of the novel. Johnny Dorelli's gentle and expansive nature was nicely coupled with the sharp, polemical wit of Monica Vitti in AMORI MIEI (MY DARLINGS: 1978) by Steno, and in PER VIVERE MEGLIO DIVERTITEVI CON NOI (TO LIVE BETTER HAVE A GOOD TIME WITH US: 1978) by Flavio Mogherini.

7. Alberto Sordi Personification of the Average Italian part ten

From: COMEDY ITALIAN STYLE

by Ernesto G. Laura

As a director, Sordi then decided to bring his run-of-the-mill Italian "personage" into contact with great historical events in POLVERE DI STELLE (STAR DUST), written with Bernardino Zapponi and Ruggero Maccari on a story by the latter. The agonizing period, 1943/44, between the fall of Fascism, the armistice and the division of Italy in two, the Germans on one side, the Allies on the other, is recounted through the eyes of a second-rate vaudeville team, Mimmo and Dea (Sordi and Monica Vitti). The armistice takes them by surprise in a small Abruzzi town, at night they run into the car of the fleeing King on the road to Pescara, are embarked by the Fascists and carried to Venice, where Mussolini's republic has concentrated the world of show business, manage to escape and make their way to liberated Bari. Here, an audience craving entertainment after all the hardships endured cheers and applauds them, the only vaudeville company around (the important ones have remained in Rome or are in the North), and leads an impresario to organize a big musical revue all for them in the most important theater in town. After years of hunger and humiliation, success is theirs. But whell all of Italy is liberated and the true glories of the music hall return to Bari, nothing remains for Mimmo and Dea but to go back to the small-time suburban houses, to the dreary life of before. Perhaps a little too long, POLVERE DI STELLE (STAR DUST) is an amusing and at the same time touching description of an epoch, where the grotesque is always used with unfailing subtlety.

In any case, Sordi's best film as a director is FINCHE C'E GUERRA C'E SPERANZA (AS LONG AS THERE'S WAR THERE'S HOPE: 1974), written with Leo Benvenuti and Pietro De Bernardi, where, with a critical relentlessness that gradually shifts the film from the satirical tone of the beginning to the bitterly dramatic tone of the ending, he describes the cynical personality of an arms dealer, Pietro Chiocca, who moves from one African county to the other, exploiting the tensions and conflicts between recently independent states as a way of making money, selling arms indifferently to both sides. When his family, influenced by a newspaper campaign, turns against him, Pietro shoulders them with their responsibilities: they have accepted the prosperity, indeed the wealth that dirty work has made possible and which they are not about to give up.

To complete the picture of Sordi's contribution to comedy as civil satire, two films based on the sanitary system and on the figure of the doctor must be mentioned: IL MEDICO DELLA MUTUA (THE WELFARE MEDIC: 1968) by Luigi Zampa, based on the novel by Giuseppe D'Agata with a script by Amidei, Sordi and Zampa, draws the malicious portrait of a dishonest doctor, Dr. Terzilli, who cures his patients hastily and sometimes even only by phone in order to accumulate a large number of patients and hence higher fees from the welfare state. The following year, the same character returned in IL PROF. DOTT. GUIDO TERZILLI, PRIMARIO DELLA CLINICA VILLA CELESTE CONVENZIONATA CON LE MUTUE (DR. GUIDO TERZILLI, CHIEF PHYSICIAN OF THE VILLA CELESTE CLINIC, APPROVED BY THE PUBLICH HEALTH SERVICE), directed by Luciano Salce and also written by Amidei and Sordi (with the director). The satirical darts of the first film are slightly blunted, because they are predictable, in this second film, which follows the doctor in his increasingly more successful career, until he transforms his clinic into a rest-home for rich old ladies.

UN BORGHESE PICCOLO PICCOLO (A PETTY PETTY BOURGEOIS: 1977) by Mario Monicelli, from the novel by Vincenzo Cerami, does not, strictly speaking, pertain to the comedy genre, indeed in the whole second part it is a gloomy tragic film. It is worth mentioning, however, for the way both the director and the actor succeed, as is typical of comedy, in starting off on a light tone, with various decidedly comic situations (for example, a secret meeting of initiation into a Massonic lodge), and from there to proceed through ever more crucial turnings of the screw to the unrelenting brutality of the final images. In 1979, lastly, he confronted one of the theater classics of all times, Moliere, in the film version of IL MALATO IMMAGINARIO (LE MALADE IMMAGINAIRE/THE HYPOCHONDRIAC), directed by Tonino Cervi, with the action shifted to 18th century Rome, still the capital of the Papal States. Though the adaptation is questionable and certain references to modern-day terrorism seem strained, Sordi's performance is outstanding, pervaded even, as it is, by a certain Pirandello flavor, by virtue of which his Argante, beneath the appearance of a weak and cowardly man who locks himself into the house, frightened by everything, is a lucid critic of the ills of society.

5. The Episode Films part twelve

From: COMEDY ITALIAN STYLE

by Ernest 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

Another actor who took up directing was Vittorio Caprioli (born in 1921, with Franca Valeri and Alberto Bonucci, the guiding spirit of the "Teatro dei Gobbi", the first excellent example of Italian cabaret). La manina di Fatma (Fatma's Touch), written by Giuseppe Patroni Griffi, is a pungent grotesque, interpreted by Franca Valeri with a fine wickedness (it is the first of the two episodes of I CUORI INFRANTI [BROKEN HEARTS], 1963). ALTA INFEDELITA (HIGH INFIDELITY), made in 1964, was a series of variations on the theme of adultery, in which several reputable directors (Franco Rossi, Elio Petri, Luciano Salce and Mario Monicelli) retrieved with great skill the classical formulas of the old French "pochade" with unfaithful husbands, adulterous wives prone to hasty assignations in the afternoon, lovers hidden in cupboards. Nothing new, but Age, Scarpelli, Ettore Scola and Ruggero Maccari succeeded in putting out a satirical claw or two with respect to the hypocracy of bourgeois marriage, aided most of all by an outstanding group of Italian and foreign actors: Nino Manfredi in Scandalosa (Scandalous) by Rossi, Charles Aznavour and Clair Bloom in Peccato nel Pomeriggio (Sin In The Afternoon) by Petri, Monica Vitti, Jean-Pierre Cassel and Sergio Fantoni in La sospirosa (The Sob-Sister) by Salce, Ugo Tognazzi, Michele Mercier and Bernard Blier in Gente moderna (Modern Folks) by Monicelli.

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."