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

From: COMEDY ITALIAN STYLE

by Ernesto G. Laura

The sixth important new name in comedy films is Rome-born Enrico Montesano, formerly as well-known television comedian and showman. He stands out from the others in his fondness for the proletarian "oddball", always based on a meticulous observation of really existing human types, and for his allegiance to Rome, its quarters and hits dialect: by no accident he was perfectly equipped to replace Manfredi in the stage revival of the musical comedy, RUGANTINO. Montesano has been active in films since 1970, first in a long series of pictures - more farces than comedies - in which he was the partner of the late Alighero Noschese, the best-known Italian imitator and a popular television entertainer, all of them directed by Bruno Corbucci. The same couple reappeared in a film directed by Mario Camerini, IO NON VEDO, TU NON PARLI, EGLI NON SENTE (I NO SEE, YOU NO SPEAK, HE NO HEAR: 1971), a re-make of a previous film by the same director, CRIMEN, a delightful parody of mystery films. Subsequently, the actor turned his interests to modern comedies, like LE BRAGHE DEL PADRONE (HIS MASTER'S BREECHES: 1978) by Mogherini, from the novel by Terzoli and Vaime, or PANE, BURRO E MARMELLATA (BREAD, BUTTER AND JAM: 1977) by Giorgio Capitani, from a French play by Francis Dorin, adapted to the screen by numerous teams of scriptwriters, including Montesano himself, the director and Giuseppe Patroni Griffi. In the highly enjoyable first episode of QUA LA MANO (GIMME YOU HAND: 1980) by Pasquale Festa Campanile, he is a modest carriage driver in modern Rome, who has a mania for betting and who one day lets himself be persuaded to bet that he would appear with the Pope in St. Peter's Square to bless the faithful. So he starts lying in wait to approach the Pope and the two men become fast friends (the Pope is Philippe Leroy, whose foreign accent and modern style clearly allude to the present Pope). Along with modern comedies, however, Montesano has also appeared in several satirical films set in other historical periods, the best of which is IL LADRONE (THE THIEF: 1980) by Pasquale Festa Campanile, which follows the adventures of a thief in Palestine at the time of Christ.

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

From: COMEDY ITALIAN STYLE

by Ernesto G. Laura

At the outset, Celentano used the stage-name "Adriano il Molleggiato" (Adriano The Rolling Spring), and in fact the way he swayed around his long double jointed body as he sang was one of his immediately recognizable trademarks. From the "rolling spring" he passed to dancing and in DI CHE SEGNO SEI? (WHAT'S YOUR SIGN?: 1975) by Sergio Corbucci he portrayed with great spirit and genuine talent a young man from the outskirts who takes part in a dancing contest. In the second episode of QUA LA MANO (GIVE ME YOUR HAND), "Acqua santa e rock 'n' roll" (Holy Water and Rock 'n' Roll), directed by Pasquale Festa Campanile in 1980 and written by Ottavio Jemma and Enrico Oldolini on a story by the latter, he appears in several rip-roaring dance numbers as an energetic and naive priest from Romagna (certainly not forgetting Guareschi's Don Camillo) who has a "mania" for dancing and on Saturday night gets dressed up in civilian clothes and slips off to the discotheque of a neighboring town. As a director, the actor-singer beat all box-office records with YUPPI DU in 1975, a film he edited and also helped write. As in his songs, Celentano tries to sustain deep human values, in the present case those of love, but he does so with the innocence and sometimes the superficiality of the self-taught man. It's the story of a poor devil, Felice Della Pieta, who lives in a dreary damp hovel in Venice with his second wife, Adelaide (actress Claudia Mori, his real wife). It's a destitute but peaceful life, in which the deep bond of love helps the couple face all the hardships and deal with all the problems. But things become complicated when his first wife, Silvia (Charlotte Rampling), reappears; she had been given up for dead, and precisely for having drowned herself in the river, whereas actually she had simply run away from that hopeless life. Drawing upon various stylistic sources, with inklings of even Bunuel and Fellini, Celentano comes up with a "grotesque" full of humor and vitality with some visual ideas of extraordinary effect (Milan, the big city Felice has never seen and where he goes to find Adelaide, his only true love, is given an almost dreamlike quality, with crowds of people with their faces painted all white). The innocent yokel, ignorant of the "guile and cunning" of the world or of the value of money reappears, as a type, in the other film directed (and also written and produced) by Adriano Celetano in 1978, GEPPO IL FOLLE (GEPPO THE FOOL).

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.

11. Comedy Dresses Up part three

From: COMEDY ITALIAN STYLE

by Ernesto G. Laura

In the '60s, the transition from a light theater, with the shallow and evasive forms of the musical revue, to that form of theater, Anglo-Saxon in origin, known as musical comedy, led to excellent results in RUGANTINO, which opened at the Teatro Sistina in Rome in December, 1962, and after a triumphal Italian tour, appeared on Broadway in 1964, with Nino Manfredi in the title role. Rugantino was a young man in the Papal Rome of 1830, addicted to practical jokes and women and friend of the inn-keeper Mastro Titta, who was also the public executioner. In the end, accused of a murder he hasn't committed, he is beheaded. The chief merit of the comedy, aside from the tuneful music of Armando Trovajoli, lay in the exact reconstruction at once affectionate and satirical, of a popular Rome that no longer existed but was perfectly familiar both in its human and moral values and in the images handed down by old prints. The authors of the text and directors of the show were Piero Garinei and Sandro Giovannini, inventors of the Italian musical comedy, on the one hand, and Massimo Franciosa and Pasquale Festa Campanile, who were also film writers, on the other. Luigi Magni collaborated on the text.

It was the enormous success - unexpected, at least to that extent - of RUGATINO in the theater that gave rise to the Italian-style film comedy in costumes of the past, related to Rome in particular. In 1964, Franciosa and Festa Campanile, again with the collaboration of Luigi Magni, wrote (and then directed) LE VOIC BIANCHE (THE TREBLE VOICES), which ingeniously brought several of the basic ingredients of RUGATINO to the screen: once again the setting is in Papal Rome (but in the 18th century), the main character is a young man who devotes most of his time to chasing women and ends up on the scaffold. This time the story deals with the subject of "castrati", those poor but good-looking boys who in the 18th century were subjected to a delicate surgical operation after which, with the loss of their manhood, they could sing with "treble" (or falsetto) voices in concerts and in the foremost opera houses. The film lapsed into moments of heavy humor, into some vulgarity, but was interesting, even so, in the way it utilized the authentic exteriors of Rome (villas, gardens, archeological remains) to set the story in a non-fortuitous framework and to recreate the imagery of old prints. What was impossible in the theater became easy in the movies: the natural scenery (the film was shot almost entirely on location) lent a remarkable suggestiveness to even the more banal sequences.

It seems proper at this point to stress the decisive contribution a "lover of Rome" like Luigi Magni must have made to both RUGANTINO and the Franciosa and Festa Campanile film. It was only natural that he should have continued along this path on his own as a fully independent artist.

3. Poor, Young and Good-Looking 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

The formula was not invented, however, by the Risi film. In 1955, Mauro Bolognini (born in 1922), a director who later turned to dramatic films, often of literary origin, had in fact put his signature to an engaging film, GLI INNAMORATI (THE LOVER BIRDS), which presented the amiable portrait of the joes, johns and marys of the working-class neighborhood: Marisa the trouser-maker, in love with Nando, mechanic and matinee idol of the picture story magazines; Franco the soft-drink vendor and Otello the barber, rivals for the attentions of the pretty hair-dresser adultery. The action takes place in a small square, rather in the way of a stage-set, where the rituals of friendship, love and jealousy are acted out. The young actors including Cosetta Greco, Franco Interlenghi, Antonella Lualdi, Sergio Raimondi, Valeria Moriconi and the still virtually unknown Nino Manfredi. That the film paved the way for the POVERI MA BELLI cycle and shared the same spirit is indicated by the presence of the same script-writers, Franciosa and Festa Campanile.

Another story by Franciosa and Festa Campanile was used by Bolognini for his next film comedy, GIOVANI MARITI (YOUNG HUSBANDS), which shows a group of recently-married young boys at the first crucial moment of marriage when they are suspended between the determination to carry on and the nostalgia for the free irresponsibility of before. An intelligent comedy, accurate in its psychological description of the characters and tinged with an indelible streak of bitterness, it won for Franciosa, Festa Campanile, Bolognini, Enzo Currelli, Luciano Martino and Pier Paolo Pasolini the prize for the best script at the 1958 Cannes Festival.

Marisa Allasio, the actress launched by POVERI MA BELLI (POOR BUT GOOD-LOOKING), had a film all to herself in 1957, MARISA LA CIVETTA (MARISA THE FLIRT), directed by Bolognini and written, among others, by Pasolini. In CAMPING (CAMPGROUND: 1958), Franco Zeffirelli's first film, she was the over-enticing girl grappling with jealousies and scoldings from her brother and fiance, respectively Paolo Ferrari and Nino Manfredi, who also helped with the script.

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).