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 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).

7. Alberto Sordi Personification of the Average Italian part three

From: COMEDY ITALIAN STYLE

by Ernesto G. Laura

It is, however, a short episode in the film UN GIORNO IN PRETURA (A DAY IN COURT: 1954), by Steno, which brought Sordi the wild-spread popularity he still enjoys. When he appears in an undershirt at the back of the courtroom where he is on trial for having swum naked in the river and says, as if presenting his calling card: "Indecent conduct, Mr. Judge, indecent conduct," a character is born and fills the screen: Nando Moriconi, the "Americano". He is a boy from the working-class suburbs, illiterate and maybe a little stupid, who has assimilated the "American way of life" from films and newspapers, speaks in a funny way that is meant to be Anglo-Saxon but immediately switches to Roman dialect and dreams of skyscrapers, gunmen, the Far West, gangsters, cops, everything that reaches him from American films. The story concerning him - he went swimming in the river and some urchins steal his clothes, so he is forced to go home naked - is little more than an anecdote, a filmed joke, but Nando Moriconi is a figure out of the ordinary who excites both laughter and tenderness in his gentle meglomaniac folly. The figure would return immediately after in UN AMERICANO A ROMA (AN AMERICAN IN ROME: 1954), again by Steno, in a film all for him and with a script in which Ettore Scola also had a hand. It's a sort of biography of Nando Moriconi, an unsuccessful vaudeville dancer with the state name (Americanized, of course) of Santee Baylor, from the time of the Nazi occupation to the post-war period, in a crescendo of disasters brought on by his mania for dressing up, among other things, as an American cop. Twenty years later, Nando Moriconi would be "fished out" again for an episode in the film DI CHE SEGNO SEI? (WHAT'S YOUR SIGN: 1975) by Sergio Corbucci, in which the one-time youngster, now a grown-up man but still a "big baby" in spirit, crowns his American dream with a uniform and a motorcycle like the ones used by American cops, hired as a private bodyguard to protect a rich tycoon frightened of terrorists.

Sordi, born in the famous Trastevere quarter of Rome, is ideally suited to playing the "Roman of Rome" in the spirit of popular humor, drawing upon his personal experiences to invent typical Roman "characters". In GUARDIA, GUARDIA SCELTA, BRIGADIERE E MARESCIALLO (PRIVATE, PRIVATE FIRST-CLASS, CORPORAL AND SERGEANT), directed in 1956 by Mauro Bolognini (and written by Maccari, Scola and Manzari on a story by Paolo Frasca) he incarnates, very realistically with only a few, essential comic touches, the part of a policeman who plays in the Police Department Band and studies French with the secret ambition of becoming an interpreter. In LADRO LUI, LADRA LEI (HE THIEF, SHE THIEF: 1954) by Luigi Zampa (written by Franciosa and Festa Campanile, Zampa and Sordi) he is Cencio, a small0time professional thief by age-old family tradition, who from childhood and with unshakable optimism alternates periods in jail and periods of freedom. In FORTUNELLA, directed in 1958 by Eduardo De Filippo, but on an idea by Fellini, he is a modest secondhand dealer who is actualloy a "fence" and who does not hesitate to send his mistress to jail in his place (those negative heroes begin to appear which Sordi took up from time to time with no fear of diminishing his popularity). He plays a similar role in NELLA CITTA L'INFERNO (HELL IN THE CITY: 1959) by Renato Castellani, where he is Adone, the boy-friend of a housemaid who ends up in jail for a robbery organized by him. COSTA AZZURRA (RIVIERA: 1959) by Vittorio Sala finds him in the role of a fruit-seller momentarily carried away by the mirage of becoming a movie star. IL VIGILE (THE POLICEMAN: 1960) by Luigi Zampa presents him as a jobless man of no great intelligence, Otello, who as the result of a recommendation becomes a policeman and learns at his own expense, having attacked the mayor of the city, that to get along in the world you have to wait upon the powerful. So he lets the mayor drive his fast car into a street where it is prohibited to go and now the mayor, how had insisted upon being let by, ends up in a ditch.

In LO SCOPONE SCIENTIFICO (THE CARD GAME), written by Rodolfo Sonego and directed by Luigi Comencini, he is "borgataro" (a man from the working-class suburbs) who every year, during the holiday and tourist season, is called by an eccentric old American millionairess who lends him a million to play cards ("scopone scientifico," a sort of cassino) against her, certain that in the end she will win it all back. This bitter and paradoxical story, ending on an unexpected note of black humor, derives much of its comic flavor from the contrast between two actors as different in style and tradition as Alberto Sordi and Bette Davis.

Duccio Tessari on Italian Western heroes

[In 1986, Lorenzo De Luca conducted an interview with director Duccio Tessari which was published in both Lorenzo's fanzine FAR HORIZONS and his book C'ERA UNA VOLTA IL WESTERN ITALIANO.]

LDL: In the '60s, the American Western was in a crisis. Had the audience grown tired of the upright hero?

Duccio Tessari: I should say so! Upright heroes are typically American heroes; originated from a Protestant culture. They are round, complete characters; doubtless. Our horoes, however, are always somewhat defeated heroes. From the beginning, doubtful and perplexed.

At first, America was a country where people from different groups lived - Englishmen, Irishmen, Greek, Italian and so on. Then these groups melted together inorder to face the adversities of the new frontier and to defend themselves from the Indians.

And then America could be said to be one people, and from them arose the image of the heroic American, upright and invincible. It is highly probable that during the '60s, the American hero was not very popular, but it is clear that such a crisis does not exist now - consider RAMBO. Today the heroic myth rises again.

Our Cowboys were rogues, fearful, shot people in the back, and had little in common with the heroic Cowboys - starting with Corbucci's violent ones, to my free and easy ones, and ending with the studied and serious characters of Sergio Leone.

Sergio Corbucci on CASTLE OF BLOOD

From: Cine Zine Zone #50

Interviewed by Carlo Piazza, May 1989

Translated into French by Pierre Charles and then translated into English by Arcides Gonzales

CP: Did you co-direct DANZA MACABRA, aka CASTLE OF BLOOD, as well as co-write it under the name Gordon Wilson Jr.?

Sergio Corbucci: Yes, that's right. It's very strange because I never included this film in my filmography although it is in fact my film. When I finished shooting IL MONACO DI MONZA with Toto, the producer and I thought that it would be interesting to use this castle with all its beautiful sets to make an Horror film. However, I was supposed to start soon the making of another film with Toto, and consequently I could not start something that I didn't have the time to finish, but the producer insisted so much that he convinced me: 'Do it, Sergio, start the shooting, don't worry about it, and if you have to leave before it's finished, we will do our best to finish it.'

When I was forced to leave, I had shot 50 to 60% of the film. In order to finish the work, I called Antonio Margheriti, a person who I knew was interested in this genre and who would guarantee the continuation of the film in the style I had given it.

[Interestingly, Margheriti remade this film six years later as NELLA STRETTA MORSA DEL RANGO, aka WEB OF THE SPIDER, with Tony Franciosa.]

Sergio Corbucci on Steve Reeves

From: Cine Zine Zone #50

Interview by Carlo Piazza, May 1989

Translated into French by Pierre Charles and then translated into English by Arcides Gonzales

CP: The film, THE SON OF SPARTACUS, with the character of Randus-Zorro, is another in the Western style.

Sergio Corbucci: I would say so. Yes, absolutely. As far as I am concerned, if I have to refer to someone, I refer to John Ford and not to Cecil B. DeMille. In Italy, at any rate, we have had directors who did sword and sandal films formally more correct than from a DeMillean point of view, but that goes back to the silent film. ROMULUS AND REMUS and THE SON OF SPARTACUS are two current, modern films, which seem to have been shot yesterday and not about 30 years ago.

CP: What can you tell us about Steve Reeves?

SC: A great guy. He always did everything I told him without a fuss. There are actors who seem to know it all. That makes me go mad. Not Reeves. I cannot complain about him.

During the shooting of ROMULUS AND REMUS, he showed me some resentment nonetheless because he thought I favored Scott over him. Of course, that wasn't true. I have never favored any actor over another. I have always treated everybody equally. Reeves had gotten this idea because he would often see me laughing and joking in the company of Scott. But Scott is the extrovert type; happy, who would cheer you up, and I preferred, frankly, to be with him than with Reeves, who was always taciturn and sullen.

CP: Do you think Leone thought about Reeves for the leading role in FISTFUL OF DOLLARS?

SC: I don't think so. Reeves does not know how to walk - perhaps because of his big thighs which impeded his movement. He wasn't right for a Western, and Leone knew it.

Sergio Corbucci on DUEL OF THE TITANS

From: Cine Zine Zone #50

Interview by Carlo Piazza, May 1989

Translated into French by Pierre Charles and then translated into English by Arcides Gonzales

Sergio Corbucci: Seeing it again, I wonder how I was able to do such a film, in the sense that today it wouldn't be possible to do it again. Not for financial reasons, as people think, but rather for technical reasons.

This film, received bad reviews at the time. Critics said that it resembled a Western; that the actors brandished the sword as if it were a gun.

CP: Yes, but at the time you stated, "I am shooting a Western."

SC: Well, true. Several sequences are really Western in style. The final scene, for example, when the Sabines appear high above like the Indians in a Western, is a Fordian reminiscence. The American Western was too important for our generation. We make them even when we don't want to.

As for ROMULUS AND REMUS, I have to say that I never had so many beautiful people at my disposal for a film: Reeves, Scott, Girotti, Sernas, Virna Lisi and Orenella Vanoni.

Gordon Scott on GOLIATH AND THE VAMPIRES

From: The Best Sergio 3

by William Connolly

Spaghetti Cinema #52, March 1993

A number of sources, including THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF HORROR MOVIES and FILM DIRECTORS A COMPLETE GUIDE - not to mention UNITALIA -, have listed Sergio Corbucci as a co-director of MACISTE CONTRO IL VAMPIRO (aka GOLIATH AND THE VAMPIRES). In CINE ZINE ZONE #50, editor Pierre Charles added a footnote to the part of Carlo Piazza's interview in which Corbucci described how he was persuaded by the producer of DANZA MACABRA (U.S. title: CASTLE OF BLOOD) to shoot at least 50% of that film before he had to begin a previously contracted production:

"Under the same conditions, Sergio Corbucci confirmed to us how he started the shooting of MACISTE CONTRE LE FANTOME, finished by Giacomo Gentilomo, who later directed MACISTE CONTRE LES HOMME DE PIERRE (HERCULES AGAINST THE MOONMEN), a lot less successful on many levels."

However, during a brief chat on January 11, 1993, star Gordon Scott discounted that story.

(Thank you to Walter Barnes for helping to put me in contact with Mr. Scott.)

WC: Do you remember which was the first film that you did in Italy? Most people seem to think that it was DUEL OF THE TITANS.

Gordon Scott: No, it wasn't. It was the one in Yugoslavia for Dino De Laurentiis. The MONSTER... What the hell name was it?

WC: Oh, GOLIATH AND THE VAMPIRES. One of the stories that's come up is that Sergio Corbucci directed some of it.

GS: No. When we shot it there, Corbucci came over from Italy - we shot it in Yugoslavia -, and Corbucci came over and he had the script for ROMULUS AND REMUS, which you know is DUEL OF THE TITANS. He gave me the script there, but he was never involved in THE VAMPIRES.

WC: How did you like working with him on ROMULUS AND REMUS?

GS: Oh, he was great. You know he had a great sense of humor, and he put everybody at ease. He was very easy to work with. Yeah, we both liked him.

WC: You both? You mean with Steve Reeves?

GS: Yeah, with Reeves.

WC: I don't know if you remember, but in GOLIATH AND THE VAMPIRES you have to fight with yourself.

GS: Yeah. I really had to move quick. (laughs) The guy that did that (with me) was a kid called Giovanni Cianfriglia.

WC: He was Steve Reeves double.

GS: Yeah, for a long time. He was good, too, you know? Not a bad actor, either. I think later on he did second unit work with a bunch of the people over there. He was very good.

WC: I remember he did Westerns under the name Ken Wood.

GS: Oh, did he? I didn't know that.

WC: Any particular memories about either of those films? Does anything come to mind?

GS: Yeah, the one thing that comes to mind is that it was a long time ago.

Sergio Corbucci on the revival of the Western

Sergio Corbucci: They often ask me to do a Western again, partly because at one time I made two films with Terence Hill, who is the third great Italian Western actor after Giuliano Gemma and Franco Nero. I don't think Westerns, be they Italian or American, can ever make a comeback. All the attempts in this direction in America have failed miserably. Every so often I think to myself: "Hmm, a Western, who knows?" But it's an idea that vanishes as quickly as it occurs to me, because I no longer know what I would make, or how I'd make it: dead serious, a spoof, what? For now, the youth - kids - those who've always been the commercial backbone for this type of film - have discovered science fiction, or Westerns with policemen; yes, those films with cops in the streets of New York where the skyscrapers have taken the placed of the Rocky Mountains. Today, if you walk into a toy store in any town in the world, you can no longer find a Cowboy hat or a Western pistol. Kids couldn't care less: they want space monsters. So, who'd go to see a Western anymore? Maybe only a nostalgic old man...

Sergio Corbucci on the end of the Italian Western

Sergio Corbucci: There was also the fact that the Italian Western, which had opened many doors overseas where the films sold like hotcakes, had gradually declined in quality with paler and pale imitations. My own DJANGO had had cousins, uncles and relatives aplenty. The overuse of his name crippled everything; there were who knows how many of them shot each week. And so the genre dies, partly due to Barboni's mocking shot at the heart, partly through over saturation. Pity, because this type of film could have been an excellent training ground for young directors, and might have continued as a moneymaking genre if done well. It is for these reasons that those of us present at its birth finally abandoned it. Since then, I've moved on to comedy, and I don't think I've done a single dramatic film since. Since then, I haven't killed off a single protagonist.

Directors like Antonioni, Rosi, Petri ought to be grateful to the Western. Having made their heaps of money (from us), the producers could then redistribute a bit of the cash to the more "serious" directors. At that time, producers knew that they could produce a couple of Westerns and make a killing overseas, something that wouldn't be easily done with, say, Italian comedies which didn't travel well, nor even the Italian political films, because their concerns were too peculiarly our own. The economic crisis of Italian cinema pretty much coincided with the decline of the Western, really because there was no longer this production structure which could bring work to huge numbers of people, and unloose a sea of money. Bud Spencer and Terence Hill, themselves, who are still at it, continue to do things that derive from the Westerns, even if they're playing policemen, and have become American citizens.

Sergio Corbucci on his last Western.

Sergio Corbucci: For CHE C'ENTRIAMO NOI CON LA RIVOLUZIONE? (aka WHAT AM I DOING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE REVOLUTION?), I returned somewhat to the theme of a film I'd done with Tota and DeSica, I DUE MARESCIALLE; the story of a rascal who is forced to impersonate an heroic man and becomes a hero in spite of himself. It was a very funny film. Gassman was in it, much like his character in LA GRANDE GUERRA, and there was Paolo Villagio, this new comic just getting started. With CHE C'ENTRIAMO NOI CON LA RIVOLUZIONE?, which would almost have been title CHE C'ENTRIAMO NOI col Western (or WHAT AM I DOING IN A WESTERN?) - I said farewell to the genre, which had been a magnificent adventure that had spanned almost a decade, with some rare returns to other sorts of films.

Pity that this adventure was a bit spoiled by Enzo Barboni, the only unworthy son of our enterprise, who with LO CHIAMAVANO TRINITA (aka THEY CALL ME TRINITY) dealt a death blow to the Italian Western, in the sense that he - my collaborator on twenty films and on almost all my Westerns - finding himself able to graduate to directing a little Western exploited everything we'd done together, even the films done with Toto - with the result of turning it all into a mocking comedy. He took Terence Hill, who was then developing as an imitation Franco Nero because of his resemblence to him, and paired him with that big lug Bud Spencer, turning them into a sort of Laurel & Hardy - a little strange, a bit rascally - and it had a big success. But he killed off the Western because after it had been made so ridiculous, no one could even again take a gunfighter blazing away seriously.