5. The Episode Films part fourteen

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 Ministery of Tourism and Entertainment

While episode films could have been at times a purely commerical operation, there is no doubt that they also interested directors who sought to express themeselves in a personal way. For example, Nanni Loy, in discussing his film MADE IN ITALY (1966) with the teachers and students of the Experimental Film Center (the state school for future film artists) , had this to say: "I made (...) MADE IN ITALY because (...) it seemed to offer me the chance to give expression in various and different directions, to 'show' a certain quantity of ideas, of stories and images that a one-story film, a self-contained film would have certainly not allowed". The film, conceived by Ettore Scola and Ruggero Maccari and with a script written by them with Loy, was meant to offer a sort of "guide" to Italy outside of and against the usual tourist format, catching the image of a changing society. In other words, a satirical film, as the titles of the individual "chapters" indicate; Usi e costumi (Habits and Usage); Il lavoro (Work); La donna (Women); Cittadini, stato e chiesa (Citizens, State and Church); La famiglia (The Family). It was interpreted by some of the biggest names in Italian movies, from Anna Magnani to Alberto Sordi, from Walter Chiari to Peppino De Filippo, from Nino Manfredi to Lea Massari, from Aldo Fabrizi to Virna Lisi.

Another director who resorted to episode films to carry forth certain rather critical ideas against social conventions was Tinto Brass. Milanese by birth but Venetian by family, Brass utilized the appearance of a UFO in IL DISCO VOLANTE (THE FLYING SAUCER: 1964) to interweave various anecdotes, all entrusted to Alberto Sordi, which as a whole form a satirically distorted image of the conformist mentality of a certain part of the Veneto region (the script-writer Sonego is also from the Veneto) as seen through the eyes of an "angry" and anarchiacally caustic director. The same iconoclastic imagination informs an episode of withering "black humor" directed by Brass and written by Sonego and Alberto Bevilacqua, L'uccellino (The Little Bird), for the film LA MIA SIGNORA (MY WIFE): a uxorcide planned and carried out by Sordi to the detriment of Silvana Mangano, with an elegant and smiling ease of conscience.

At the beginning of her career, Lina Wertmuller also used the episode film format to express her ideas in QUESTA VOLTA PARLIAMO DI UOMINI (THIS TIME LET'S TALK ABOUT MEN), written and directed by her in 1964 and starring Nino Manfredi, the vehilce of an amiable but explicit feminist approach to the role and function of women in a "male chauvinist" society.

5. The Episode Films 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

SIAMO DONNE (WE'RE WOMEN), made in 1953, represented the second experiment suggested by Zavattini. The idea was to bring to the screen the private, lesser known dimension of four famous movie stars, revealing their hidden natures. It began as a sort of "cinema-verite" on the screen tests of unknown actresses to find new faces for the movies and then wound up getting personal confessions out of Ingrid Bergman, Isa Miranda, Alida Valli and Anna Magnani. Here too the results were far different from the premises: the four episodes ended up as distinct, well-constructed stories, which had nothing of the spontaneous and indiscreet confessions of the original plan. Particularly worthy of note, with its pungent satire of wartime Rome, the episode in which Anna Magnani gets into a quarrel with a cab-driver that keeps getting more and more people involved. The director was Luchino Visconti.

In 1959, Fellini's LA DOLCE VITA (THE SWEET LIFE) was essentially an episode film with an evident inner unity. A couple of years later, the director answered the attacks launched by certain moralists against his film with the episode, Le tentazioni del dottor Antonio (The Temptations of Dr. Antonio), included in BOCCACCIO '70. Peppino De Filippo was the stern defender of morals who unleashes a campaign against an immense billboard advertisement showing a sexy Anita Ekberg in the same low-cut evening dress she wore in the famous Fontana di Trevi sequence of LA DOLCE VITA. At night, however, Anita comes down from the billboard, becomes flesh and blood and pursues her accuser who ends up in an insane asylum. Aside from the above-mentioned La riffa (The Raffle) by De Sica, the rest of the film consisted of Renzo e Luciana (Renzo and Luciana) by Mario Monicelli, written by Suso Cecchi D'Amico, the director and two first-rate writers like Giovanni Arpino and Italo Calvino, which criticized with apparent charm, but underlying harshness, the <> of industrial society which prevents a couple of newly-weds from living the intimacy of their marriage in peace, and Il lavoro (The Job), by Visconti, a rather "nasty" comedy of manners about a wife who, to get even with her husband who has been unfaithful to her with a prostitute, puts a fee on her own "services".

4. The Totò Phenomenon 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

To fully appreciate the actor's gifts, one must see him in films that were less ambitious in scope. In DESTINAZIONE PIOVAROLO (DESTINATION PIOVAROLO: 1955) by Domenico Paolella he is a station-master sent during Fascism to take charge of a completely insignificant little railroad station in a remote country town and whose mishaps with the authorities prevent him, even after the fall of the regime, from being promoted to a more important place. In UNA DI QUELLE (ONE OF THOSE: 1953), directed by Aldo Fabrizi, he is a provincial "hick" who comes to Rome with a friend on the lookout for easy conquests and runs into a poor widow who has decided to prostitute herself in order to feed her family. AVANTI C'E POSTO (COME ON, THERE'S ROOM), with its sentimentalities, returns, but Totò coupled, as was frequently to be the case, with Peppino De Filippo, draws a penetrating portrait of the middle-aged man in the mood for courtship. In I TRE LADRI (THE THREE THIEVES: 1954) by Lionello De Felice, from the celebrated early 20th century novel by Umberto Notari which had already inspired a film in Czarist Russia, he is a small-time thief who manages to expose the swindles of three businessmen who are bigger thieves than he. In LA BANDA DEGLI ONESTI (THE GANG OF HONEST MEN: 1956) by Camillo Mastrocinque, he is a poor devil who takes up counterfeiting to stave off starvation, creates counterfeit bills of imcomparable perfection but then, seized by the pangs of conscience, doesn't have the courage to put them into circulation. LA LEGGE E LEGGE (THE LAW IS LAW), directed in 1958 by the French director, Christian-Jaque, is a variation on the theme of GUARDIE E LADRI (COPS AND ROBBERS), set in the Alps on the Italo-French border, a series of ludicrous run-ins between a customs officer (the French comedian, Fernandel) and a smuggler (who is obviously Totò). IL COMANDANTE (THE COMMANDER), directed in 1963 by Paolo Heusch on a script by Rodolfo Sonego, describes the disillusionments of a retired officer who tries in vain to regain an influential position by throwing himself into the business world which he is not cut out for. Along with an extremely controlled Totò there is the elegant vivacity of one of the finest light comedy actresses in the Italian theater, Andreina Pagnani.

Towards the end of his life, Totò was engaged by a very particular film author like Pier Paolo Pasolini. The director of utterly tragic films like SALO E LE CENTO GIORNATE DI SODOMA (SALO AND THE HUNDRED DAYS OF SODOM), he never made any authentic comedies. Even so, a certain comic flavor is to be found, in the use of certain mechanisms if nothing else, in UCCELLACCI E UCCELLINI (BAD BIRDS AND LITTLE BIRDS: 1966), a modern fairy-tale entrusted to the genius of a Totò who is himself, down to the "traditional" clothes he wears, and at the same time a symbol of a certain human condition. For his performance, Totò received an Honorable Mention at the 1966 Cannes Festival. Pasolini would use him again in LA TERRA VISTA DALLA LUNA (THE EARTH SEEN FROM THE MOON), one of the episodes in the film, LE STREGHE (THE WITCHES: 1967), and with marvlous results, in CHE COSA SONO LE NUVOLE? (WHAT ARE CLOUDS?), an episode from CAPRICCIO ALL'ITALIANA (ITALIAN CAPRICE: 1968), where Totò, with his face painted green, is Iago in a scatterbrained performance of OTHELLO in a marionette theater.

With Totò and his exceptionaly creativity as a mime, Italian-style comedy possessed the ideal interpreter of that Italian, poor of pocket but rich in spirit, who is one of its recurring figures. Too bad it exploited him to little.