La grande bellezza (2013)

Ah, how to explain La grande bellezza (The Great Beauty)! How to convey its cleverness, its beauty, its insightfulness? Oh, how we liked this one. Loved even!

A spiritual sequel, even a spiritual remake, of that pillar of Italian cinema, La dolce vita, La grande bellezza follows Jep (Toni Servillo), an aging journalist and former novelist star who lives the high life in Rome. Sound familiar? The parallels with La dolce vita are numerous and blatant; the film is an homage and an update to that wonderful 1960s film of Italian decay. And if there's one thing Italy's good at, it's decay.

The film opens on a blistering party scene on a rooftop somewhere in Rome. People grind, thrust, guzzle designer beverages and tear off their designer clothes. Insert lots of orgiastic, Calvin Klein wind machine faces. They're also mostly in their 50s and 60s, and they're gaudy, outrageous, luxurious and crazy. Honestly, this scene lasts nearly 15 minutes, and it's solely for a - admittedly wonderful - slow intro to Jep. It is brilliant. Following that, we meander through Jep's life with him: we attend his lavish parties, his avant garde art events, we meet some old friends and make new ones.

And, over and over again, we're confronted with a sort of hedonistic nihilism that makes Rome feel like the end of the world (rather than the center of it, which is how it can sometimes also feel). Most of the scenes seem to take place in that nether hour just before dawn: the streets are empty, and the few people that you do see on the street feel surreal and alien. This is the universe Jep trafficks in, and - like Marcello before him - it's a superficially beautiful, "sweet life" that is slowly eroding Jep's spirit.

Indeed, like Marcello, Jep faces a few shocks of grief and horror, and sometimes his despair shows through the cracks. Because this beautiful life - these beautiful buildings, wealthy people, endless partying - are a vacuum, an abyss, and Jep is trying to crawl out of it to, as he states late in the film, "find the great beauty". Of course, he realizes - and we realize - that there's no great beauty, there's only snatches of transcendental moments, of peak experiences, and then some terrible moments, the "wretchedness of humanity", and then a lot of "blah blah blah". You have to embrace the "fiction" of life and just cling to each other - it's actually a bit more of an upbeat message than La dolce vita (whose message was basically, WOE UNTO US ALL and FISH MONSTER).

Don't ask us about the fish monster. We don't know what the fish monster was about.

It's important to put this film, though, into the context of modern day Italy and - more specifically - Rome. First off, Rome has been in a state of luxuriating decay since, well, forever. Two thousand years ago, the city was also bumping and grinding to phat beats while the moneyed classes stumbled to their vomitariums. Actually, sorry, vomitaria (neutral, nominative, plural). Heck, we just finished reading a Stoic tract by Seneca, and even he was complaining - 2,000 years ago! - about the heedless, desire-driven pointlessness of some of these people's party-all-night lifestyles. So it's kinda a tradition. Of course, at least Rome was the end-all, be-all city 2,000 years ago. The intervening period - le invasioni barbariche (the "barbarian invasions"), the Middle Ages, the Vatican state - between then and now had an even more severe case of decay. Honestly, nothing's more depressing than 18th century Rome. There was a looooong period of neglect and exploitation at the hands of the Church, and, you know, dismantling the Colosseum to build the other stuff.

And modern-day Rome! Ah, what to say of modern-day Rome. We lived there for two years, and both La dolce vita and this film very accurately capture a slice of Roman grandeur and Roman excess and Roman life. The high-end brands. The obsession with "la bella figura". The seductive, enchanting backdrop. The pointlessness. We don't know what it is, but there is something about the city which seems to turn off one part of your brain and activate another: it's hypnotic, drug-like. The two years we spent there still seem like a dream to us - remote and not part of our "real life". A vacation from real life. And we didn't even go to these parties!

And then there's the Problem of Italy. Post-war Italy has been a tumultuous ride of constantly crumbling governments, a political circus, and - yes - the slow sucking of the Italian soul. You could even say this has been reflected in the slow erosion of Italian cinema: from the earnest, powerful glories of post-war neorealism, to the scathing, flirting-with-the-abyss stabbing political satires and commedie all'italiana of the 1970s, to the increasingly vapid and just plain idiotic recent stuff. Quo vadis, bel paese?

Indeed, Italian nihilism is a very widespread thing. The country is seen as "bella e inutile" (beautiful and useless). Unemployment is high, most Italians flee to jobs abroad, the politics are a mess, and - honestly - today the PPCC was surprised to realize that Italy, and not India, is in the G7. How is Italy's GDP so high? HOW?! And then, of course, there's the problem of The Children. Namely, that there are none (the birth rate is 1.41 births per woman). (The film's treatment of children and younger adults is brilliantly eviscerating - from the intense, lunatic 20something, Andrea (Luca Marinelli), who looks like Jesus and insists on talking about Proust, to the screaming, pre-teen, wild-thing daughter of pretentious art parents, who insist on making the girl an art installation in and of herself. Seriously, these scenes made us realize that Children of Men could be about Italy; especially the scene with Danny Huston the art collector and his brain-dead son.)

So it's very common to consider Italy a big, beautiful, broken mess of a country, a place that's gorgeous but infuriatingly stuck. And this stuckness is economic, political, social, but also, well, moral or existential. And this existential decay is the perfect backdrop, of course, for a 65-year-old childless bachelor, drunkenly surveying his millionth roof party, saying, "I love our little dance trains. You know why? Because they go nowhere."

Anyway, because of this - ahem - campanilismo in the film's themes and setting, we're not sure if this will appeal to any and everyone. Maybe, though? Certainly to the international intelligentsia. And that's fine - the film is gorgeously shot, Sorrentino's direction is unique and evocative, and everything is lush. And (like La dolce vita!) it drags a bit in the latter half, as we watch Jep's spiritual decline (or spiritual waking up, if you like), and is probably about 30 min too long. But that's fine, fine, fine.

One additional aside: it blew the PPCC's mind to see Carlo Verdone in the role of Romano. Omg. OMG. This is OMG-worthy because Carlo Verdone was a huge star of populist Roman comedies from the 1980s and 1990s. We saw him on Ponte Sisto once! And he's a natural heir to the earnest, lovable-Roman-with-a-heart-o-gold stock character that was immortalized in the films of Alberto Sordi and (our fave!) Nino Manfredi. Indeed, Verdone even looked like an aging Manfredi, what with the tinted glasses and wounded air. His casting, his character's name, and his subplot were just great, fun meta. Romano is giving up on Roma, people!

Allonsanfàn (1974)

Allonsanfàn is a wry, strange look at the absurd tragedy of radical Italians. It technically takes place in the early 19th century, but it could be just as home in the 1860s, 1920s or 1970s. In fact, especially the 1970s - a decade in which domestic terrorism killed Aldo Moro and laid bombs in Bologna's train station. A decade where the idealism of 1968 had ripened into a hyper-violent, extreme nihilism (both on the Left and the Right), where killing became a currency of discourse. (Thanks, Paul Ginsborg, by the way, for teaching the PPCC about modern Italian history! Seriously, readership, A History of Contemporary Italy is wonderful.)

Anyway, in Allonsanfàn, we follow a disillusioned, weary and aging radical, Fulvio Imbrani (Marcello Mastroianni), as he repeatedly tries (and fails) to extricate himself form his former revolutionary life. This is often to grotesque or comedic results (such as when he makes a suicide pact with one fellow comrade, only to let the other guy go first), though - as is the usual style of 1970s commedie all'italiana - it's also very sad, beneath everything. The aristocratic Fulvio stumbles out of prison one day, feverish and exhausted, narrowly avoiding a grim fate at the hands of the state. His revolutionary comrades likewise almost behead him, thinking he had spilled all their secrets. When this is proved false, he is left to mend in the comfort of his big fancy bed in his big fancy mansion. And big fancy mansions - they are hard to say no to.

Indeed, Fulvio's ideals - which were already a little brittle - now crumble under the weight of this material comfort. Of course, this gnaws at him - aren't those big fancy chandeliers just symbols of oppression? And his poor nanny, still making his bed and doing back-breaking agricultural labor outside? Fulvio's strength of opinion, though, has been broken out of him. Or maybe he's just tired of being indignant and sure of everything, because he proceeds to embark in a misguided, frequently half-assed adventure to cut his old ties. We found ourselves snickering, sometimes with disgust, sometimes with glee, at Fulvio's silliness, selfishness and pitiable state - and we found ourselves constantly grafting this story onto the wider meaning of 1970s Italian politics, messy and unfortunate as they were. "How can we live in this world?" one earnest revolutionary laments. "When everyone seems asleep, and we're the only ones who seem to have woken up?" It's a sad, slightly delusional statement, and Fulvio's in the unfortunate position of recognizing the idealists' misguided attempts to (for example) free the Southern peasants, while not having the courage or ability (or good luck!) to get free of their grasp. He's made his bed, and now he's going to LIE IN IT, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD.

Allonsanfàn himself turns out to be a character, a young revolutionary (Stanko Molnar), who is the most dedicated, the grimmest, and, ultimately, the most delusional. A stand-in for the young, violent Red Brigades? Allonsanfàn is also, oddly, named after the first two words of La Marseillaise ("Wake up, children!") - indeed, the strains of revolutionary France are an important reference for the revolutionaries of this film. (In the way that the Paris Commune inspired the 1968 Italian idealists?)

Marcello Mastroianni is, as usual, wonderful in this, aging charmer that he is. Indeed, he channels that same world-weariness that we saw in Una giornata particolare, as well as the sense of a man trapped in an almost Kafka-esque surrealist nightmare, much like his role as the doomed bricklayer from Dramma della gelosia. The music by Ennio Morricone, particularly the theme of the revolution, was also incredibly catchy and wonderful: this scene, where an embittered Fulvio meditates on his former comrades, was just wonderful. "I've healed. I've changed." Brrr, lovely!

Pane e cioccolata (1974)

The popular Italian classic, Pane e cioccolata (Bread and Chocolate), is incredibly uneven. But it occasionally works as a weird, tragically farcical Odyssean tale of one Italian immigrant's misadventures in a cold, uncaring Switzerland.

Its gags are hit and miss, and its tone veers around a little wildly: in the opening ten minutes, we witness some social satire, some slapstick, and then a murdered child. It sounds strange, and, in the hands of a ballsy director like Lina Wertmuller, it might have worked as a sort of chaotic, provocative, politicized film. But director Franco Brusati is much tamer in comparison, and his aesthetics just feel sort of muddled and indistinct. Mostly, it just felt like a slightly maudlin proclamation for the inherent tragedy of immigrant lives. Yes, it's sad. But… huh? How are we supposed to feel about a ribald-turned-depressed drag show?


The immigrant.

Nino (Nino Manfredi) is a southern Italian immigrant making his way as a waiter in a posh Swiss restaurant. At night, he yearns for his family back in Italy - but his pride won't let him return, and his wallet won't let him bring them up to be Swissified (his ultimate wish).

The Swiss setting, meanwhile, is cold, uncaring, and fundamentally hypocritical: the lawns may be perfect, the etiquette air-tight, but there are dead kids in the bushes and stolen fish in the toilet bowl. Even the immigrant success stories - such as the ruthless millionaire who briefly employs Nino - end in embezzlement and suicide.

After getting fired from the restaurant, Nino faces trial after trial - and his problems just get more and more surreal. In a way, the film improves with this surreality, because that's when it makes its point most brazenly: for example, at one point, Nino ends up huddled in a chicken coop with a family of half-crazed, stunted, ignorant Italian immigrants. This madhouse increasingly appalls Nino until, exasperated, he says, "Look at us. You're Italian. I'm Italian. Does that mean we have anything in common?" The family shushes him and runs to the chicken wire window. "Look!" He joins them, and, all crouched and huddled together, the Italians watch through the chicken wire as a troup of young, naked, Aryan supermodels frolic through an Abercrombie & Fitch ad. The way this scene is directed - with lingering, objectifying shots of perfect blond hair glittering in the sunlight, and soft pink flesh - is just wonderful. It's scathing, hilarious, surreal and awful - very Lina Wertmuller! The next sequence, which opens with Nino having dyed his hair blond, is just as painful and wonderful. Indeed, the last twenty minutes of this film are uncharacteristically pitch perfect: it makes its point and hammers it home. Too bad the rest of the film wasn't like that!


Frolicking Aryans...


"Look how beautiful they are."

Our previously reviewed Café Express is indeed a spiritual sequel to this, covering much the same territory of Italian pessimism and decrepitude, embodied in the aging, tired Nino Manfredi and his sorrowful smiles. We don't know if we'd necessarily recommend these films, though, neither for their social point (which was better made by, for example, Wertmuller's Mimi metallurgico ferito nell'onore) nor for Nino Manfrediness (which is better enjoyed in C'eravamo tanto amati).

People singing in Nanni Moretti films

As a commenter on this vid said, "I love people who sing out of key. It's expressionist."


Palombella Rossa (1989)
Silvio Orlando and some swimmers singing Bruce Springsteen's I'm On Fire.



Palombella Rossa (1989)
Nanni Moretti and the crowd singing Franco Battiato's E ti vengo a cercare.



La messa è finita (1985)
Nanni Moretti singing Bruno Lauzi's Ritornerai.



La stanza del figlio (The Son's Room, 2001)
Nanni Moretti, Giuseppe Sanfelice, Laura Morante and Jasmine Trinca singing Caterina Caselli's Insieme a te non ci sto più.



Caro Diario (1993)
Nanni Moretti dancing to Silvana Mangano's Anna.

Has anyone seen Habemus Papam yet? And, if so, is there any singing? The PPCC hopes so.

Café Express (1980)

Like a number of commedie all'italiana, Café Express is a tragedy dressed up as a comedy. Also, like other picaresque Neopolitan Odysseys (e.g. Mi manda Picone), dissembling, poverty and surreality factor heavily.

Michele Abagnano (Nino Manfredi) is an illegal coffee vendor riding the night train between Naples and Rome. With his broken shoe and wooden arm, he cuts a sorry figure. Though, since he's played by the charming Manfredi, he's also wonderfully lovable, always ready with a joke and sympathetic ear. The film ambles along, dropping in with Michele as he visits the various characters in the various cars. In this way, and the fact that it takes place overnight, the film resembles an episodic, nocturnal, ensemble piece like Jagte Raho or After Hours: that is, it mixes the strange with the immoral with the funny, all steamed up with some schmaltzy philosophizing on the nature of man.



With each car, Michele's story changes: in one, his wooden arm is a war wound, in another, an injury received as he saved children from a burning home. Even if he's a warm and gregarious presence, he's also evasive and, thus, mysterious. The only thing we know for sure is that he has a 14-year-old son, Cazzillo (a very cute Giovanni Piscopo), with a congenital heart defect - we know this for sure because we actually meet Cazzillo, as rascally as his father, when Michele finds him shaving in the train's bathroom. (Okay, that whole scene was adorable.)



Things take a very sour turn after Michele pisses off a small gang of thieves, and the film swings from a sentimental Italianate tragicomedy to an enraged screed against an unjust society. As well as a plea for magic(al) realism as a weapon against (Anglo-Saxon? oligarchic?) hegemonic notions of "reality"? Maybe. As Obi-Wan Kenobi would say, "So what I said was true. From a certain point of view." Similarly, Michele - and, to his horror, his son, Cazzillo - live by this creed of a malleable reality. It certainly feeds the stereotype of Neopolitans as knavish story-spinners, and it certainly makes for great surrealist cinema. What is the truth? We'll never know for sure. And, even if we did, would it change the tragedy (or funniness) of the situation?

Props to the final shot, with the self-posessed, urchiny Cazzillo making his way through a 1970s Rome, a little hawk in search of prey. That was fabulous. And props, as always, to lovely Nino Manfredi, our favorite interpreter of Romanness (even though, in this film, he's Neopolitan - and whoa! that accent!).


(Though Italian speakers can watch the movie here.)

In nome del papa re (1977)

In nome del papa re (In the name of the Pope-king, though it could also be In the name of the father-king) is a fraught, strange, charming film. It's also a breath of fresh air in its portrayal of the clergy - long stereotyped as corrupt pedophiles or one-dimensional bigots. Quite the contrary, In nome del papa re's worn, frazzled anti-hero, Monsignor Colombo (a wonderful, as always, Nino Manfredi), seems more like an ancestor to the partisan-priests of WW2 neorealism than anything else. His tangled, unfortunate position - as reluctant collaborator to a reactionary Papacy, as reluctant father to an arrested revolutionary - is wonderfully charged, tragic and bizarre. His mannerisms also - cigar-chewing, Roman-slanging - recall the tinted glasses, smoldering cigarette and whiskey tumblers of the old SNL character, Father Guido Sarducci. In other words, the PPCC loves him and would totally go all Catholic for him. "What do you want from me?" Colombo demands, impatient. "A benediction? Want me to give you a benediction? You'll have to make it last!"


In the name of the Father (and father)...


...and son...


...and the Holy Spirit (of revolutionary Italia!).

But enough of priests, let's get to the plot. The year is 1867, and Rome is in full-on Risorgimento-style turmoil. (For those that don't know, Italy was created in 1861. The period of unification is called the Risorgimento, and featured a lot of bloody conquering of the various kingdoms and principalities - principal among them, of course, being the Papacy and its repressive reign over Rome.) Bombs are falling, Italian revolutionaries are hiding in the houses of the sympathetic bourgeois or getting their heads chopped off, and Monsignor Colombo (Nino Manfredi) is drafting his resignation letter as a Papal judge. "I just want to be a priest," he laments. "Which is hard enough, as it is." In other words, the good monsignor's lost faith in the Papacy's legitimacy as a secular authority. He's basically a closet Garibaldista, even though he won't admit it to himself. (Garibaldi being the general who led the armies which unified Italy.)

Meanwhile, across town, three revolutionary youths - among them the stormy, arrogant Cesarino (Danilo Mattei) - have learned that they're to be arrested and beheaded by the Papacy, following a terrorist bomb they (or someone) left under a barracks (killing dozens of Vatican soldiers). Cesarino's mother, the well-to-do gentlelady, the Countess Flaminia (Carmen Scarpitta), despairs - and flies immediately to Monsignor Colombo's house. And there she lays the bomb (no pun intended) of the Bestest Plot Device Ever on him: "Now you have two reasons to save him. One, because he's my son. And, two, because he's also yours."

Ah, yes. Yes, back in those heady, halcyon days of 1849, amid musket fire and the clash of armies, when the Vatican's foundations first shook under Garibaldi's assault, as she tended the wounded and he administered last rites to the dying, and they were so tired, and all they needed was a warm bed, and so on and so forth. Okay, we actually found that whole idea very romantic. But then, disrobing priests while battles rage around us in Garibaldi-era Rome - mm mmm!


One of the most badass scenes: the mother of one of the other condemned revolutionaries confronts Colombo. "You saved your son. You didn't save mine." When he tries to give her the Holy Communion, she leans back, "No. Not from you." BAM! Go, lady!

Anyway. Monsignor Colombo is clearly in a bind now, and the schmaltzy music which forever hounds his brooding bluntly announces the heartbreaking choices he must make. HEARTBREAKING, in case that's not clear. VIOLINS MUST BE PLAYED. How will he get Cesarino out of the clink? When guillotines fall with such ease, and "there are spies everywhere", and Cesarino announces that there are two things he hates in this world: "Absent fathers, and priests!" What's a guy to do?

The film is most effective when it's not REALLY ALL CAPS BLUNT - and certain schmaltzy moments could have been lessened if only the music track had been changed. But we can't complain. We even loved the soap opery final plot twist, if only because the lovely Nino Manfredi underscored everything so well with his restrained, effective performance. Manfredi's schtick - as he did so well in C'eravamo tanto amati - is the easy-going, sarcastic, vulnerable Roman with a heart o' gold. He lays that down as his main melody, and basically improvises around it - in this performance, peppering Said Roman with telling moments of weariness, worry and grief. Never is he explicit in these things, everything is turned into a joke. It's like his protective exoskeleton. And, of course, that makes it all the more touching. An example: one of the most poignant scenes is when his servant, a grizzled, Obelix-ish Serafino (Carlo Bagno), comes downstairs at dawn to find him sleeping, collar askew, at his desk. As Colombo grumbles himself awake, clearly exhausted, he laments the night before: freeing Cesarino, but not the other two revolutionaries, and thus doing a pretty half-assed good deed. As he hunkers down to eat his breakfast, he sees bite marks in it. "Did you eat this?" Serafino is aghast: "You think I'm giving you my leftovers? It must be the rats in the kitchen, they must have got to the pantry by now and given it a nibble." And Manfredi just looks at him, looks at the biscuit, eats, and then sighs, "They're God's creatures." Ha! Okay, maybe you had to be there.


Ah, 1860s Rome! Is that Trastevere that my eye detects?


Don't legitimize a false authority!

What's interesting about this film - a tame example of a 1970s Italian film, despite all the sexytimes on and off screen, with and without priests - is how, yet again, political engagement is portrayed as complicated, messy and doomed. We saw this in Lina Wertmuller's incredible Love and Anarchy, a film which explored a would-be assassin of Mussolini in the days before the deed. Both films, which follow the "good" guys (pro-Unification priests, anti-Fascist anarchists), essentially end badly. It's very sad. And both films offer an apologetic coda, promising the good things that actually did occur to those movements post-movie timeline: i.e. the eventual unification of Italy and demise of Papal power; the eventual liberation of Italy by the Americans in 1945, and the death of Fascism. Which makes us wonder. Why are these films, both about real periods and real movements that "won", so pessimistic? Is it just commentary on extreme political activism per se? The inevitable fall of the zealous anarchist/partisan/Garibaldista? Hm.

Una vita difficile (1961)

Una vita difficile (A difficult life) is the frustrating, Odyssean tale of Silvio Magnozzi (Alberto Sordi) as he navigates the post-war Italian landscape, trying to balance his partisan ideals against the harsh pragmatism that the poverty-stricken surroundings engender.

Essentially covering the same ground as C'eravamo tanto amati (which we much preferred), Una vita difficile starts with the same nostalgic romance of partisan fighting in WW2. Silvio, suffering from bronchitis as he treks through the Lake Como countryside, narrowly escapes being shot by a Nazi when Elena (Lea Massari), a local girl, kills the Nazi with her iron (whoa). Thus follows their brief three-month affair, after which Silvio flees to join his partisan band and, once the war ends, moves back down to Rome to pick up his pre-war journalism job for a left-wing daily.

A work trip up north reunites Silvio and Elena, who decide to get married. They return to Rome, where they live in borderline starvation. A son is born. Silvio is offered a position which contrasts with his left-wing morals; he refuses. Eventually, his unrestrained idealism lands him in jail, and Elena takes their son back up north.

This basic tension - Silvio's ideals versus cynical reality (often embodied by Elena); the poor, proletarian South of Silvio versus the bourgeois, industrialized North of Elena - is played out throughout the film in a variety of ways.

And all of this stuff was covered in the later, better C'eravamo tanto amati. Certain scenes - the happy crowds following Rome's liberation, the working-class trattorie with the wandering trumpet player - are even identical. Yet while Una vita difficile seems as well-remembered as C'eravamo tanto amati, we prefer the latter. It approaches the same subject with greater grace and more equanimity. Silvio's inability to let go of his idealism (and his indignant righteousness), to the point of driving away his family, is akin to Professor Palumbo's extremes - except Palumbo is articulate, off-kilter, hilarious and a sympathetic caricature. Silvio, instead, alienated us: he seemed an unlikable combination of entitlement and self-pity.

Of course, despite the identical setting, it's a harsher version of the same world that these characters live in, compared to C'eravamo tanto amati. Compare the trattoria scenes: in C'eravamo, the characters struggle by with half-portions, in Vita, they can't even pay for anything and are kicked to the curb. The requisite sell-out scenes, when Silvio succumbs to becoming a vile commendatore's underling, are full of humiliation and corruption. This extreme view just cements Silvio's righteousness, but it doesn't tackle the real issue: what if selling out does lead to a better life? The character of Gianni from C'eravamo also sells out, but his trials and tribulations are largely existential: materially, he is comfortable and happy.

Another reason we didn't particularly enjoy this film is that here, the treatment of women is just terrible. Elena, for however objectively rational and selfless she is (when Silvio implodes, she finds a way to provide a comfortable life for their son), is presented as unimaginative and frosty because she doesn't "get" the cause. Silvio abuses her regularly and, when she leaves him, she is presented as having "abandoned" him.

One of the reasons we love Lina Wertmuller's films so much is that she takes these stereotypes of Italian sexual mores - the frosty northern girl, the lusty southern man - and completely subverts them, most often via Giancarlo Giannini playing an extreme version of southern machismo. Consider, for example, Swept Away, where another left-wing, poverty-stricken southerner humiliates and dominates a bourgeois Milanese ice queen. In Swept Away, that relationship is presented as fundamentally ridiculous: compelling in its absurdity, ultimately false. Una vita difficile, maybe because it was made almost fifteen years earlier, is still earnestly enamored with Silvio's status as a man, from Rome, who is poor.

This is not to say this film isn't good. It's considered a classic, and it is indeed very well-made. The scene when the starving Silvio and Elena are invited into a royal lady's house for dinner while the republic/monarchy referendum results are announced was surreal and powerful, akin to the "lifestyles of the strange and wealthy" scenes from La dolce vita or Signore & signori. It's not a bad film, from a technical point of view. We just don't agree with its underlying philosophy. As the other northern beauty says to the other left-wing Roman in C'eravamo, "You're the first likable Roman that I meet."

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That being Nino Manfredi, who is indeed very likable and who we'll take over Alberto Sordi any day.

Ricordati di me (2003)

With the allegretto pacing, semi-satirical tone and superficial beauty that is characteristic of all of director Gabriele Muccino's films, Ricordati di me (Don't forget about me, though the US title was Remember Me, My Love) explores and generally eviscerates the modern Roman yuppie.

The family of characters in Ricordati di me run the gamut between limp lettuces and egotistical jerks. Must be hereditary! Parents Carlo (Fabrizio Bentivoglio) and Giulia (Laura Morante) are suffering from the usual cinematic marital ennui. Their teenage children, the insecure Paolo (Silvio Muccino, the director's younger brother) and the predatory Valentina (Nicoletta Romanoff), are in the same predicament, restless and unsatisfied. All four seek external validation and gratification. All four repeatedly seek confirmation that they are still attractive in the eyes of "those outside".

Indeed, solipsism and selfishness run deep in this family. And each cultivates a private ego project: Paolo via an affair with an old flame (Monica Bellucci), Giulia by dusting off her amateur acting career, Paolo via an old crush on the shrewd Ilaria (Giulia Michelini), and - most troublingly - Valentina by becoming one of those awful TV starlets on Italian variety shows (if you're not familiar with these girls, BE GRATEFUL).

As in Muccino's other work, this film is fundamentally a satire of these people, even if it flirts with sympathy for them. But these are the most unlikable of Muccino characters - worse than the philandering 20somethings in L'ultimo bacio or the superficial rebels with adopted causes in Come te nessuno mai - mostly because these are yuppier, superficialer and pettier than all those other people. They're also living in an apathetic, post-political vacuum - something the film hints at by indicating, ever so briefly, at the Fascist heritage of the yuppies' neighborhood and the right-wing whitewashing of the Italian political landscape. These aren't the politicized, concerned citizens of C'eravamo tanto amati or Love and Anarchy; instead, they are as complacent as they are self-centered.

There's better versions of all these things: Signore e signori was a more cutting and more satisfying portrayal of bourgeois moral corruption; Revolutionary Road a better portrayal of a dissolving marriage; and Come te nessuno mai a more fun Muccino film. Plus, this film suffered from vague misogyny in portraying the women as either spineless lumps or sluts: then again, we couldn't tell if the cynicism of Valentina's Becky Sharp storyline or the eventual triumph of limp dishrag/sobbing mother into self-assured theater artiste were subverting the misogyny or condoning it.

The performances were notable, if only because they were all pretty likable or impressive, despite the horribleness of their characters and the meh-ness of the plot. Nicoletta Romanoff was phenomenal as the femmbot from the abyss, Silvio Muccino was his usual laconic slacker, Laura Morante was a pack of nervous energy (in great contrast to her usual roles), and Fabrizio Bentivoglio is our great discovery as the man born to play Lorenzo il Magnifico! Someone get that man a doublet!

Profumo di donna (1974)

Profumo di donna (Scent of a woman) is a darker, crueler version of the later Americanized adaptation starring Al "HOOAH!" Pacino.

This version - the original - stars Vittorio Gassman as the blind Captain Fausto, a lecherous old goat who travels down the length of the Italian boot, drinking from his flask, heckling his minion - the resentful, boyish Giovanni (Alessandro Momo) - and sniffing the air in search of a "tall blonde with a big ass". While Giovanni huffs and sighs, Captain Fausto wields his cane like a weapon - slashing the air for obstacles or, well, passersby. As Giovanni creeps under Fausto's nose and discovers a pistol and the photo of a girl (Agostina Belli) in the latter's suitcase, their journey down to Naples begins to take on a new, ominous meaning.

While that strange combination of tenderness and raunchiness - "You think I miss seeing the Sistine Chapel?" Fausto shouts. "A big ass! That's what I miss!" - is still present in the Italian version, as is its slightly maudlin conclusion, this version also boasts a much thornier, less likable blind captain and a much frostier relationship between him and Giovanni. The relatively prudish American version - with Al Pacino as the Captain Fausto (now "Frank") and Chris O'Donnell as the Giovanni (now "Charlie") - emphasized the captain's disability as a strange sort of wild wisdom. Through Al Pacino's "HOOAH!"-ing, his classy tango dancing (just to compare, the same scene in the Italian version had Fausto tongue kissing Giovanni's girlfriend and calling her a "whore") and his general vitality, the anemic preppie Chris O'Donnell learns via the rascally blind man to live life to the fullest. Blah blah.

Fausto's quality of societal jester - i.e. his disability places him outside of society's "norm" bounds, and so he is free to break rules and thereby comment on them - is much harsher. And indeed, his hypersexuality, heavy drinking and unvarnished cruelty (think House) seem more like the desperate acts of a very angry man rather than the gentle insights into "really seeing" the world around you. That's not to say the Italian Fausto is any less a Trungpa Rinpoche-style holy fool than the American Frank. Indeed, there's a stunning scene when Fausto asks his priest cousin to bless him - his cousin then admits that he actually envies Fausto his blindness, since that "constant suffering" affords him special status in the eyes of God. He likens him to "the stupid, the ill, the innocent children".

Kind of patronizing, we thought. And kind of interesting, since the entire movie builds up this holy (tom) foolery and then offers that foolery's pearl of wisdom: that life is essentially meaningless suffering, whether you can see or not. Rather than rebelling against that suffering, once Fausto resigns himself to his complete vulnerability (emphasized ghoulishly via a clumsy, exaggerated fall) does he seem to get peace. He stops resisting. (And remember that Faust is the guy who, for ambition and knowledge and worldly stuff, exchanged any chance of everlasting peace with the devil. So this sentimental finale basically unFausts Faust.) Frank's message (apart from "HOOAH!"; did we mention we love that phrase? HOOAH!) seems to be much less existential nothingness and much more "Carpe diem!". Much less Italian, much more American.

Vittorio Gassman disappeared into this role; we could barely recognize him going all Dionysian and such when we knew him so well as a fallen bourgeois. Alessandro Momo and Agostina Belli didn't really register, both were too generically young and pretty. The priest cousin - whoever that actor was - did a great job, but he also had a great scene. Director Dino Risi used light interestingly; often blinding us or filming things in deep shade or at twilight. Great commentary on Italian regionalism, as always (the first scene in Rome has a moped driver scoot by screaming the stereotypical local slang, "Aoh! Ma va' a mori' ammazzato!" ("Go die in a homicide!")).

I girasoli (1970)

I girasoli (Sunflowers) is one of those epic WW2 love stories that spans decades and several countries. While hinting at stories like Doctor Zhivago, what with the sense of massive European history pulling and pushing lovers together and apart, it's not quite as good - but it is pretty decent. Its triple pedigree - De Sica, Mastroianni, Loren - makes sure that, while not great, it's good.

Early in the war, Neopolitan Giovanna (Sofia Loren) and not-Neopolitan Antonio (Marcello Mastroianni) are lovers on the beach. They decide to get married, since that'll give Antonio - who's convinced he'll soon be sent to the African front - twelve days of delay. "Who knows," Giovanna says brightly. "Maybe the war will be over by then!" Once the twelve days are up, however, the war is far from over (indeed, one of Giovanna and Antonio's honeymoon frolics is interrupted by a bridge-bombing on day 10) - and so they try to make Antonio seem insane. When that doesn't work, they resign themselves to the inevitable: Antonio is sent to the Russian front.

Years pass, the Italian soldiers return, but still no word from Antonio. Yet more years pass - Stalin dies (!), so it's 1953 (!), so (pencil scribbling) that makes it about ten years apart - and Antonio's mother gives him up for dead. But Giovanna, convinced he's still alive, decides to travel to Russia herself, armed only with her steely determination and an ancient wartime photograph of him. What she finds there (which you can probably Google, but we'll endeavor to be at least a little spoiler-free) is sad.

The film is soaked in shared history between Italy and Russia, and the rest of Europe, as both sides pick up the pieces after the war. De Sica emphasizes this common humanity and common heritage by using visual parallels repeatedly throughout the film: the train that Antonio leaves on, the train that brings news of the front, the train that backgrounds their post-war reunion. Antonio's limp, Giovanna's colleague's limp. The near frost-bitten Antonio collapsing in the Russian snow, becoming just one more fallen comrade as the army moves ahead. And, of course, the sunflowers of Russia ("Each sunflower represents someone who died here - an Italian soldier, a Russian soldier, a German soldier, civilians, men, women, children," a character helpfully explains) and the yellow mimosas of southern Italy. Or whatever those flowers are.

Anyway, the point is that this story is supposed to be a drop in a rainstorm: in Giovanna and Antonio's tender heartbreak, we're supposed to see all the thousands of other Giovannas and Antonios that were ripped apart by the war.

Generally, it works. Okay, yes, we cried. But it's not quite as magnificent as it aspires to be. The cinematography is glorious and large - many of the scenes are impressively enormous, capturing rolling fields, thousands of graves, the pristine blue sky. But we were also constantly distracted by De Sica's overenthusiastic use of the dolly. Had he just bought a new one or something? The jumpy zooming and ambitiously long takes (watch for one where a family moves all their furniture in a pick-up truck, and the camera manages to get all the way around the truck while, presumably, both truck and camera car are in motion). A story of this scale also warrants a richness of characterization which is lacking. While Sofia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni are everybody's favorites, and we certainly like them too, we felt that Giovanna and Antonio weren't clearly-enough defined, apart from their love story narrative. The mother-in-law was the barest sketch of a character.

So, all in all, a decently moving large-scale wartime story. Not mind-blowing, but not terrible. Kinda tearjerking. Like, tearnudging.

Love and Anarchy (1973)

Good God. Careful with Film d'amore e d'anarchia, ovvero stamattina alle 10 in via dei Fiori nella nota casa di tolleranza... (A film about love and anarchy, that is, this morning at 10 o'clock in Fiori Street, in the well-known whorehouse...; but more often, Love and Anarchy) - it's intense as hell.

It's also very good, and probably Lina Wertmüller's most gripping, gut-wrenching film. Stripping away all the bizarre humor that lightened and spiced up her later hits, Film d'amore e d'anarchia is a straight, sober look at one of Italy's most terrible periods: the rise of Fascism in the 1920s. We follow a few days in the life of the freckle-faced, wide-eyed country boy, Tonino (Giancarlo Giannini), who has come to the big city with plans to assassinate Mussolini. He's taken in by an anarchist prostitute, Salomè (Mariangela Melato). The whorehouse is a bawdy circus, full of sex jokes and impromptu guitar singing. Tonino, visibly out of his depth, is taken in by the prostitutes, who protect him and bicker over him and mock him. Eventually, he falls in love with the equally young Tripolina (Lina Polito).

But, even amidst this atmosphere of fun and frolic, the clock is ticking. The long shadow of Fascism looms, and things become increasingly edgy as the date of the assassination approaches. This slow crescendo of tension builds and builds, creating a sense of terrible foreboding.

A number of films have shown the quotidian nightmare of Fascist Italy: Una giornata particolare explored the day Mussolini and Hitler met in Rome, as seen via two "outsiders", played by Marcello Mastroianni and Sofia Loren, stranded in a deserted suburban apartment building. Roma città aperta and General della Rovere explored wartime, occupied Italy. Film d'amore e d'anarchia fits neatly into this subgenre, in that - like Una giornata particolare, we experience the city under Fascist rule: and it's alien, ugly, oppressive. We see extensive shots of Mussolini's planned communities, such as EUR, with their enormous, repressive architecture. The streets are all empty. Everyone seems unfriendly and on edge.

Also, like Roma città aperta and General della Rovere, Fascist power seems unconquerable, terrifying. The feeling of initial resistance followed by deep fear ("I'm shitting myself," Tonino repeatedly quails. "You can't imagine how scared I am.") followed by absolute desperation is perfectly captured in these films. Indeed, we spent much of the film anxious and upset, almost unable to watch it to the (inevitable) sorry conclusion. This isn't the post-war world of C'eravamo tanto amati, where the partisan fight - having been won - is suddenly seen as nostalgic and noble. Instead, this is narrow, terrifying insecurity. Indeed, that feeling of pervasive terror lingers - we still feel it now, having just finished the film, and we're reminded of another Antonio, the relatively luckier resistance fighter played by Nino Manfredi in C'eravamo tanto amati, who has a great few lines about it:

Listen, Luciana: when you've risked your life with someone, you remained attached to them. It's as if time doesn't pass, and that person could still save you. As if we're not out of danger yet.

Highly recommended. Follow with the lightest chaser you can find - something like this or maybe this or maybe just a glass of water and a nap.

Dramma della gelosia (1970)

First thing's first: we loved Dramma della gelosia (tutti i particolari in cronaca) (Jealousy drama (with all the details), though its international title was The Pizza Triangle). It was everything we loved about Ettore Scola's other masterpiece, C'eravamo tanto amati, coupled with the zany, sexualized, politicized, over-the-top commedia all'italiana story akin to our favorite Lina Wertmuller movies. In other words, the perfect 1970s Italian film.

The story begins with the fidgety, disheveled Oreste (an amazing Marcello Mastroianni) being asked by the police and lawyers how it exactly happened. Aided by a sad-looking Nello (Giancarlo Giannini), Oreste, Nello and an older man reenact the accidental murder of Adelaide (Monica Vitti) - Oreste and Nello's former lover. There's a bittersweet pageantry to watching everything slow down and seeing the absurdity of this very human drama unfold.

The rest of the film makes us retrace the steps - via Rashomon-like courthouse interjections - of when Adelaide the florist and Oreste the bricklayer met, fell in love, and then met Nello the pizza chef, and fell in love with him too. This love triangle, and the three's extremes of ultimatums, aborted polyamory, attempted suicides and - yes - lots of jealousy and hurt feelings, make up the rest of this strange, touching film. In the vein of Ettore Scola's other PPCCed film, there is a heavy air of surreality (lots of fourth-wall breaking) coupled with compassionate humanism. It all seems so silly and forgivable in hindsight. Also, as per C'eravamo tanto amati and Lina Wertmuller's films, the Italian Left is a prominent supporting character, and the downtrodden, working class Oreste and Nello even meet after getting beat up by the police at a march. Like the bourgeois "padrone" in C'eravamo…, the rich Roman is again portrayed as fat, dull-eyed and very ignorant (played here by the hulking Hércules Cortés).

What was interesting about this film - and called to mind Giancarlo Giannini's later golden years in skeezy picaresque tales like Pasqualino Settebellezze and Mi manda Picone - was its high levels of "zozzeria" - that is, scumminess. The setting is Rome, but the city looks disgusting, and the characters frequent dumps, housing projects and ugly highways. Oreste is hounded by an enormous fly, and his entrances are signaled by loud buzzing. He twitches, his hair is greasy and his clothes are mismatched. In one of the most hilarious scenes, Adelaide attempts to list his pros and cons; when she gets to the cons, she admits, "And you're not very hygienic. Remember that one night? You even made a sound." Oreste and Adelaide meet when he falls asleep on a pile of paper and debris. They frolic on a polluted beach, have a picnic at the dump.

The script successfully juggles tenderness with a sharp wit; we found ourselves laughing often, even if it was so sad. And some of the lines were great! Example: when Adelaide first spots Oreste snoozing on a trash heap at a Communist fair (they have those, I guess?), she hops off the swings and goes to wake him with a kiss. They're both a little drunk and unsteady, and when he wakes, he looks at her, thinks for a bit, and says, "You lost a bet." What a first line! Or a wonderful scene when Adelaide seeks the aid of a therapist: "So what's the diagnosis? I'm traumatized, I've had a shock? It's a neurological disorder? Or am I a whore?" The therapist cuts in quickly: "Let's not get into scientific jargon!"

The most impressive of the cast was Marcello Mastroianni, who was playing heavily against type. We wouldn't have believed that Mastroianni would have been able to shed his dashing, Everyman persona to become someone as decrepit and bizarre (and Roman) as Oreste. The details of his performance - the tic around his eyes; his stubbed, broken fingernails; the general air of decay and hobo-ness - was amazing. In fact, we were so amazed that we had to check if he won anything for this; and he did! Best Actor at Cannes!

Giancarlo Giannini, our other favorite, was also playing heavily against type. Whereas he usually occupied the role of the wild-eyed, unhinged and in love laborer (see Wertmuller's Mimi metallurgico ferrito nell'onore), here he was young, upbeat and oddly tween heartthrob-esque. He was also playing a Tuscan, and the accent was awesome.

Monica Vitti's best moments were definitely the swings between carefree, joyous hedonism and the wracks of self-doubt. In fact, the latter almost seemed satirical of typical soap opera femininity (as was much of this film's treatment of sexual mores and gender norms in general). Yet, as with the writing and everything else, even when things bordered on satirical, they never lacked sympathy.

Highly recommended.

La cagna (1972)

Ugh. What a piece of misogynistic pap.

Other reviews of La cagna (literally, The Bitch, though the international title is Liza) have mentioned it being "highly symbolic" - but surely the director, Marco Ferreri, could have made these same symbolic points using a less rubbish story.

Liza (Catherine Deneuve) and Giorgio (Marcello Mastroianni) are directionless misfits, fleeing from society in an ad hoc, haphazard way. They both end up on a tiny, remote island in the Mediterranean - Liza having swam away from her friend's yacht, Giorgio having established himself as a hermit there with his dog, Melampo. Shortly after Liza's arrival, they "fall in love" - or something, at least. Giorgio then drives Liza back to civilization in his motorboat. Liza then promptly returns, kills Melampo, and takes the dog's place.

There are obvious, striking similarities between this and Lina Wertmuller's far superior Swept Away - the remote island setting, the sadomasochistic love affair, even the actors' looks. But what Wertmuller achieves is a subversion and criticism of La Cagna's central conceit: bourgeois ennui, and how men and women react to it by retreating into primal roles of dominance and submission. Heck, even the uneven Adam Resurrected, which featured a similar nurse/patient, dog/master-roleplaying love affair, was more subtle than this. Both Wertmuller and, to an extent, Adam Resurrected satirized this patriarchal fantasy of "natural"/"savage"/"in the wild" gender roles - La cagna instead embraces them, presenting them as the real thing, as enviable, even.

La cagna also unfortunately relies on lobby room jazz muzak coupled with moody shots of Mastroianni and Deneuve to denote profound philosophical depths. But honestly, Ferreri's not fooling anyone: the characters are paper-thin, the attempts at backstory sloppy and unconvincing ("Ludwig is wrong! No, Ludwig is wrong!" Liza insists - sparing us who Ludwig is or what he's wrong about; the blunt flashback to Melampo as Giorgio crouches over another dead dog - how much more obvious do you need to be? WE GET IT). There's no sense of how much time is passing, no investment in the relationship, and no build and release of dramatic tension. Instead, we trudge along with inane dialogue and, at its worst, tediously stupid gender politics. And those sunglasses! Self-described "Robinson Crusoe" Giorgio springs for Yves Saint Laurent sneakers, but not sunglasses? Oh, come on.

No, we're sorry, but we really don't care about Giorgio's deep guilt over his abandoned, unstable family at home and their bourgeois restrictions on his creativity. Melampo - Pinocchio's dog - may indicate that Giorgio is Pinocchio, but Peter Pan might be more appropriate.

La messa è finita (1985)

La messa è finita (Mass is finished) is an early Nanni Moretti film that exhibits many of Moretti's trademark moves: domestic bliss and domestic hell (both filmed enticingly), a counsellor distracted by his own anxieties, long shots of Moretti from behind as he wanders through his comfortable apartment and an easy-going, bourgeois sensibility.

Moretti's thinly veiled alter-ego is, in this case, Giulio, a young priest. We follow Giulio as he moves to a new parish, closer to his parents in Rome, and mingles with the community. People come to him with all sorts of problems - generally, heartbreak - and, as things strike closer and closer to home, it begins to weigh on Giulio. He lashes out, an angry young man, and (as usual, in Moretti films) gets no closer to the elusive truth. We suffer - all his movies seem to say - but it can still be beautiful. "My life is beautiful," Giulio declares, even as he cries about all his problems.

La messa è finita is guided by thin threads of plot, but it's not as completely impressionistic as Moretti's later (and stronger) film, Caro Diario. Nonetheless, it's filled with the same abrupt cuts and vignette-style scenes as his other later (and much stronger, if not best) film, The Son's Room. Its meandering, circling style may bore or alienate some viewers, but we love it - in fact, it fills us with a deep, soothing contentment, similar to a Morandi painting; the beautiful in the mundane.

The film's conclusion doesn't leave as much of an impact - Moretti achieves that feeling of fraying, tender relationships with much greater clarity in The Son's Room - but it's always nice to spend a couple hours walking behind him. Recommended.

Caos Calmo (2008)

Caos Calmo (Quiet Chaos), the weirdly derivative film starring Nanni Moretti as yet another grieving parent, is bad, people. Just bad.

It's also weird. Weird because it is so derivative - essentially a lesser, paler, crappier copy of the far, far superior The Son's Room, a film directed and starring Nanni Moretti, and the film for which he won the Palme D'Or back in 2001. In Caos Calmo, Moretti returns, seven years later, with much the same parlor tricks: a sudden death of a loved one leading to warmly nihilistic despair, meandering through the comfortable Italian bourgeoise, Silvio Orlando wringing his hands in anxiety, some unexpected pop tunes, and some sex (not with Silvio Orlando).

All these things came together to form a cohesive, bright, beautiful thing in The Son's Room, a film which left us in a sheen of brilliance for years and years. Yes, it was that good. It makes you love humanity, for the love of… humanity. And it makes grief something dignified and heroic, something tragic and pure. It made us cry so, so much.

Caos Calmo, instead, nearly bored us to tears. After Pietro's (Nanni Moretti) wife dies unexpectedly, Pietro - a top man in some sort of fancy film distribution company - spends his days sitting on the bench outside of his young daughter's school. There, he makes flimsy connections with the local characters. Let the healing begin?

Nanni Moretti's father figure here seemed selfish, vapid and whiny - quite a feat considering how naturally charismatic Moretti normally is for us. But his ordeal is nebulous and ill-defined: a loved one has died, but he doesn't feel bad? He didn't love her and he feels guilty? She was crazy? No wait, his sister-in-law was crazy? …What?

It's all a big, unfocused mess, without a single redeeming feature. Like The Son's Room, it clocks in at under 90 minutes, but - unlike The Son's Room - these 90 minutes feel like a plod. If you're looking for charming, humanistic, recent-ish Italian films, steer clear of this one, skippers, and point your vessels to other, better fare such as The Son's Room (DID YOU GET THAT? THE SON'S ROOM, RIGHT HERE), Caro Diario or The Best of Youth.

Il generale della Rovere (1959)

When the Nazi prison commander is telling you you're the scum of the Earth, and everyone's agreeing with him, you've got to wonder just how scummy you really are.

And Emmanuele Bardone (Vittorio de Sica) is pretty scummy. I mean, even the Nazis think he's a spineless dick. Because what's worse - and possibly more dangerous - than explicit malice? Deception. Bardone is a con artist; he exploits the vulnerable. He tells the weeping mothers who come into the Nazi administrative office in Rome that, if they just shell out fifty or a hundred thousand lira (to him), they can get news of their imprisoned sons. While some of the money lines the pockets of corrupt German officials, most of it is just gambled away by Bardone himself.

What's even worse about this already unsavory mess is that Bardone really, sincerely, authentically believes he's a good guy. He doesn't see it as springboarding from one evil (Nazism) to another (his own selfishness) - he sees himself as a guy just trying to get by, as a man who is far too kind to tell the sobbing, weeping families the sordid, unhappy truths of their loved ones: that they're in prison, in a concentration camp, dead.

This painfully self-deluded confession Bardone sweats out in one of Il generale della Rovere's (General Della Rovere) early scenes, when he's outed as a con artist by the crafty Colonel Mueller (Hannes Messemer). Mueller, who is also pretty evil but at least abides by some internal code of honor, decides to use Bardone as a mole. Before being sent to a prison in northern Italy, a sort of way station for Italian political prisoners meant for the concentration camp, Bardone is equipped with a new name - General della Rovere - and a new identity: he is now a legendary resistance fighter. Mueller hopes that Bardone will be able to extract some juicy info from the other, nobly suffering political prisoners, who instinctively trust "General della Rovere" and seek to protect their hero. Bardone is happy to get the perks of being everyone's favorite partisan leader and eager to get out this jail ASAP.

But this is a mess. A frightening, hairy, ugly mess - and Bardone is right in the middle of it. This film - which is not as tight as Roberto Rossellini's masterpiece, Roma, città aperta, but is as gut-wrenching (if not more so!) - is a doozy. If this was 1970s Italian cinema, Bardone would have been played by Giancarlo Giannini and this would have been directed Lina Wertmuller - the whole thing would have been a pitch black comedy in the style of Pasqualino Settebellezze. Indeed, Bardone shares much of Pasqualino's (and other seedy Giancarlo Giannini characters') most notable characteristics: cowardice, vanity, a tendency to stand in bureaucratic lobbies and promise salvation.

But Rossellini - and de Sica - are much more earnest and much less cynical than Wertmuller - who, in cinematic terms, is their descendant. After all, Rossellini and de Sica come from the generation that lived the war. Roma, città aperta was made just months after Rome, actually, was opened up to the world - thanks to the Allied forces liberating it from Nazi occupation. We think that Rossellini and de Sica and the audience of that era just wouldn't have been ready for the shocking, provocative, mind-blowing razor wire satire that Wertmuller would provide their children and grandchildren. The wartime generation needed to believe that Bardone - even scummy, vulnerable, stupid Bardone - would have had an eleventh hour conversion and grow a spine. They needed to see the heroism and nobility of the other prisoners. (Compare these prisoners to Pasqualino's cohort - at least these guys have a code!)

This is not a perfect movie. Roma, città aperta and Pasqualino Settebellezze are, from a technical and artistic standpoint, better films - they're sharper, cleaner, smoother. In this film, we still see the rough edges: Vittoro de Sica's so-so moments of acting, the awkward side swipes, the clunky music. But the story is strong, and it propels the viewer forward, and it makes you care in a deep, intestinal way. Make no mistake: Bardone is an anti-hero, but you care about him - big time. He's conned himself into an impossible corner, and he's miserable, complex, ambiguous and deeply flawed, deeply human. You can't help but feel awful, riding the lows with him. Vittorio de Sica - who, tangentially, was a marvel to see, if only because of how much his son resembles him! - was, in many instances, really beautiful. Not just looks-wise (though he also was that; gosh, that shock of white hair… those eyes!), but also for sheer intensity: the sweat when he's under pressure, the despair when Mueller drags his face through the figurative shit and he has to come to terms with the reality and the horror of Nazi-occupied Italy. Overall, it was a real tour de force. Highly recommended.

I cento passi (2000)

The electrifying I cento passi (The hundred steps) tells the true story of Giuseppe "Peppino" Impastato, a Sicilian anti-mafia activist who was killed at the age of 30. Told with passion and clear-eyed convinction, it is an important and beautiful film - hopefully it can act as an antidote to the Hollywood portrayals of Italian criminal organizations which still recklessly glamorize it. As Gomorrah emphasized: the Cosa Nostra, Camorra, 'Ndrangheta, et al., are leeches on the socio-economic growth of southern Italy, and they reign by terror and violence.

The story begins when Peppino (Lorenzo Randazzo) is a young kid, beloved by his family and their friends. At a sunny lunch following a cousin's wedding, Peppino recites a poem, impressing the adults, and is then whisked around the courtyard by his favorite uncle (Pippo Montalbano). Young Peppino has only a vague sense that his family is involved in the mafia, though he's not sure what this means. One day, while he and his uncle are out, they hear a left-wing activist, Andrea Tidona (Stefano Venuti), publicly denouncing the mafia. Shortly thereafter, Peppino's uncle is murdered by - as Tidona explains - "those who want to take his place". Peppino, confused and deeply disturbed, is taken under Tidona's tutelage and begins his re-education.


Brothers Giovanni (Paolo Briguglia) and Peppino (Luigi Lo Cascio) in the famous scene which gives the film its title.


The personal becomes political and back again.

We fast forward fifteen years, and Peppino (Luigi Lo Cascio) is now a young political activist in his small town's Communist Party branch. More and more, he sets his sights on the local mafia leaders, publishing manifestos and organizing demonstrations - even as the older Tidona warns him against stirring the hornet's nest (which Peppino ends up comically calling "Mafiopolis"). The film does a great job in capturing the perfect storm which propels Peppino into his now-legendary position as icon: youthful rebellion, especially against his father (a low-level mafia man), is fueled by 1960s leftist idealism (student protests everywhere!) and channelled into that most righteous of Sicilian political causes: anti-mafia work. Peppino is like any other angry young man, and it's the tragedy (or glory?) of his circumstances (as well as his wild courage) which lead him to eventual immortality. Using a local ham radio station, he gains notoriety and becomes a hero for the small town Sicilian fighting against the Goliath.

Meanwhile, he experiences various pressures - most notably from his father, Luigi (Luigi Maria Burruano), who becomes desperate, even violent, in his attempts to shut Peppino up. Once again, we have that feeling of seeing the personal through a prism of the political: Luigi is much like any other father who feels himself rebelled against, shut out and alienated by his son. His despair is so painful and so authentically private: no one, especially Peppino himself, can see quite how much his father suffers. There's a telling scene early in the film when Peppino is imprisoned with other demonstrators and is there heckled for being a wimpy "son of the mafia" - just in that moment, Luigi comes barrelling in with the policeman to get Peppino released. The son's humiliation before his peers, and his resentment towards his father (who was helping him!), is terribly palpable. This comes into play towards the end again when, following Luigi's death, Peppino is warned that the only thing keeping him from the mafia's hit list was his father. It's a universal tragedy - filial resentment and rebellion, parental sacrifice and self-pity - played out in the most volatile of settings.


Peppino at Radio Aut.


In town.

This schism between the older and younger generations, between the mafia and the anti-mafia, is interestingly textured with the visual of flying. Director Marco Tullio Giordana (who went on to make one of our favorite films, La meglio gioventù) peppers the film with symbols of flight: from the "national anthem of Mafiopolis" and Peppino's childhood favorite (Volaaaare, whoa whoa! Cantaaaaare, whoa oh oh oh!), to a number of scenes where characters look longingly at the nearby airport. Everyone, it seems, wants to escape things - poverty, Gaetano Badalamenti (Tony Sperandeo) and his goons, this "provincialism" (as one northern Italian hippie says) - but everyone is grounded, strangled even, by their circumstances.

Luigi Lo Cascio came crashing onto the Italian movie scene with this role, which he got straight out of Silvio d'Amico Accademia Nazionale d'Arte Drammatica and ended up winning the Donatello for. His wiry energy feels like a coiled spring - every so often, he explodes, and there are moments when you think of him as an otherworldly archetype for Angry Youth. Luigi Maria Burruano and Lucia Sardo are beautiful as Peppino's long-suffering parents - how they deal with the pressure is very different, and equally heart-breaking. Familiar faces - Stefano Venuti, Claudio Gioè, Ninni Bruschetta - were great to see, though their parts were relatively small, and Paolo Briguglia, as Peppino's younger brother, Giovanni, projected great sympathy.

It's interesting to compare this film, which is very serious and earnest, to anti-mafia films like the Neopolitan Mi Manda Picone, which makes its attack using satire and surrealism.


The real Peppino Impastato.

The real life ending: after 24 years, in 2002, the Italian government convincted Gaetano Badalamenti to life imprisonment for the murder of Peppino Impastato.

Il dolce e l'amaro (2007)

Il dolce e l'amaro (The Sweet and the Bitter) is a quick, neat little package of a film, covering a well-worn topic - the Sicilian mafia - with a light, easy touch over well-worn plot tropes - betrayal, redemption, brooding killers and sad-eyed girls next door. It's nothing particularly enlightening, but it does have a freshness of presentation - earnest acting, fun cinematography and charming music - which makes it well worth 90 minutes of your time.

If you ever went beyond the Godfather or any other American films which still glorify and glamorize the mafia, Il dolce e l'amaro will be pretty old hat. Its main theme is the exploitation of the "working" mafioso, and what it means to be in the dregs of the mob. The story follows one underling, Saro Scordia (the wonderful Sicilian actor, Luigi Lo Cascio), from his beginnings as a hired goon to his painful, desperate ascent into a "uomo d'onore" (man of honor, or, protected member of a mafia clan) to his inevitable, tumultuous fall. But expect no Scarface-style roller coaster ride over Himalayan peaks of luxury and hellish AK-47 climaxes. Il dolce e l'amaro treats its subject with a steady realism, and so Saro's spends his good days living in a comfortable, clean Palermo apartment, and his bad days wandering dead-eyed through the flat, north Italian post-industrial landscape. While there are the usual genre staples of violence, drug use and sexuality, they are relatively rare and low-key. The one up-close killing we witness is also done in a highly deglamorized way, concentrating mostly on Saro's panicking horror than any blood, guts and Hollywood badassery.


Fabrizio Gifuni, Luigi Lo Cascio and Donatella Finocchiaro. Gifuni and Lo Cascio were both in the transcendentally glorious La meglio gioventù.

The film also has a nice, vague taste of something Giancarlo Giannini would have made in the 1980s - we're thinking, in particular, of Ternosecco or Mi Manda Picone. That is, this film could easily be grouped into that genre of gritty, slightly surreal southern Italian films which explore the two main issues of the region: poverty and organized crime. Il dolce e l'amaro features one sequence (Saro's brief dip into prison life) which hits many of the same notes and delivers the same punchline as the similar sequence in Giannini's Ternosecco. Indeed, Luigi Lo Cascio has much the same twitchy, wiry energy as Giannini, that same quality of slightly comical viciousness, and that same vibe of being low on the pecking order. Both Giannini and Lo Cascio are pretty adept at playing characters that you both pity and fear. And we at the PPCC just gosh darned love both of them.


Surrounded by the mob.

In fact, this slightly-scary, slightly-pitiful viciousness is wonderfully exploited in this film's recurring use of compositions wherein Saro is put in a physically submissive position: his brief, weird one-night stand with the be-wigged lady, or the scene where his friend, the slimy don's son, Mimmo (Gaetano Bruno), pulls him on the dancefloor for a slowdance. Again and again, we are visibly shown how Saro is an underdog, kept constantly under the heel of his bosses. In a highly interesting turn, then, all the moments where Saro is physically the dominant one - for example, when he abuses his girl-next-door love, Ada (Donatella Finocchiaro), or when he kills a rival mafioso - are the moments when he is at his worst. The film clearly shows that all of Saro's attempts to get out from "underneath", to rise above his oppressors and dominate his fate, are misguided and ultimately flawed. In one poignant moment, Ada asks him (by leaning over him in a physically dominant way), "Is this the life that you wanted?", and he can only cry.

But Saro is clearly the Sicilian Everyman - and he personifies the ambitions young men may develop in a region which still suffers under the weight of poverty and lack of opportunities, where the mafia is the only "way out" from under all these heels. But the irony of trying to use the mafia to get free is probably best captured (yet more ironically, given what we said earlier in this review!) in Al Pacino's despairing lines from The Godfather: Part III: "Every time I try to get out, they pull me back in!" Well said, Al. And well played, Luigi.

Signore & signori (1966)

(300th post! Arbitrary yay!)



If the north of Italy has a La dolce vita, it is Signore & signori (Ladies & gentlemen). Just as La dolce vita exposed the debauched, immoral (night)life of the Roman bourgeois, Signore & signori does the same for northern Italy - and it uses the same style of vicious satire. A key difference is that, unlike La dolce vita's underlying melancholy, Signore & signori believes the proper response to the outrageous hypocrisy on display is laughter. And indeed, it is very, very funny. Another key difference is that northern Italy has historically been more "bourgeois" than southern Italy - that is, it has been historically richer and more empowered (e.g. Renaissance Venice or the Duchy of Savoy, to the Kingdom of Naples) - so this film could just as easily be set in the 1960s as the 1560s.

Signore & signori is funny in a scathing, dark way. No character is better than any other character, and all of them are pretty awful: selfish, mean-spirited, hedonistic. The film is divided into three distinct sections, each focusing on a particular problem among the bourgeois of a northern Italian city (most likely Treviso). The first story focuses on the loud, over-the-top Dr. Castellan (Gigi Ballista) and his blonde, airhead wife, Noemi (Beba Loncar). On an evening before a major party, one of Castellan's friends, the nervous-looking Gasparini (Alberto Lionello), comes to Castellan in confidentiality with a medical problem: he is impotent. Yet at the party, Castellan repeatedly sets Gasparini up for group mocking, as well as spreading the rumor to everyone (eventually reaching Gasparini's wife, the fearsome moral police lady Ippolita (Olga Villi)). But Castellan is the one being duped when, upon returning home, he finds Gasparini and Noemi together!


(You'll notice that exclamation points, adultery and mean-spirited mockery are themes of this film.) One of the various adulteries.


Like La dolce vita, the Church is shown to be just as morally bankrupt as everyone else!

The second story follows the tall, oafish Osvaldo Bisigato (Gastone Moschin). Bisigato's shrewish, nagging wife complains to him all day, so he typically wears earplugs. His children ignore him, his job in the bank is boring. His only respite from this wearying existence is the cute girl, Milena (Virni Lisi), who works at the coffee shop downstairs. Under the eyes of the gossiping Treviso elite, Bisigato visits Milena every day, eventually beginning a relationship with her. Eventually it all comes crashing down: he leaves his wife and children, provoking the wrath of the Catholic morality police, led by Ippolita; his "friends" begin to send anonymous letters to him insinuating at Milena's moral weaknesses; and everyone in town basically conspires to juice the situation for all it's worth, teasing both Bisigato and his family in their weakest points.


Aldo Puglisi, who plays the only non-Venetian character and only honorable character, the Neopolitan police officer, Mancuso. Question to the PPCC: is Aldo Puglisi the Doppelgänger/lookalike of Ranvir Shorey, or is it just us?!

The third story, by far the most disturbing, follows a gorgeous, young country girl, Alda (Patrizia Valturri), as she comes to town to buy some goods. One by one, the town's bored, womanizing men - from the shoe shop salesman to the pharmacist to Gasparini and Dr. Castellan as well - seduce (rape?) her in exchange for pretty shoes, some headache medicine, and so forth. Prostitution? Rape? The insinuations are not very pretty - and things get even worse, when Alda's enraged, drunken father comes to town, accusing the men of statutory rape: Alda is only 15 years old! The guilty group, meanwhile, panics and - with the help of Ippolita, and therefore the approval of the Catholic morality police - they bribe Alda and her father in order to "save the face of the good town citizens".


The guilty group.

Each outrageous twist in this already over-the-top film is punctuated by loud, silly, 1960s dance music: emphasizing the harshly satirical take on the moral bankruptcy of the Northern provincial elite. It is sometimes very funny (Bisigato's tale in particular), sometimes cringe-worthy (Gasparini's), and sometimes disgusting (the statutory rape case). It is also very broad and very obvious: with slapstick, sight gags and caricatures instead of characters.

That's actually okay. Despite the seediness of the content, and the broad brushstrokes in which it's presented, we really enjoyed this film. It tickled us pink to see the Veneto region - so often ignored by Italian cinema, which is dominated by artists from Rome, Naples and Palermo, stories about the Mafia or Cinecittà, and a particular emphasis on the Southern experience. Signore & signori's characters speak in the thick Venetian dialect, hover around the familiar architecture of the region. The regional setting is important since, as we never tire of saying, Italian culture is dominated by regionalism: there are distinct stereotypes concerning what a Neopolitan looks, sounds and thinks like, as compared to a Roman, Milanese or whatever. It was therefore interesting to read that director Pietro Germi had actually considered casting this film with well-known southerners Marcello Mastroianni and Nino Manfredi (especially baffling since we think Nino Manfredi epitomizes "Roman irony"). The film's regionalism is also fascinating since it shows the relative wealth and moral bankruptcy of the Veneto, as compared to the intense poverty still experienced in Campania, Calabria or Sicily at that time (the 1960s).


The wonderfully handsome Giulio Questi, as the lecherous pharmacist. Giulio Questi went on to win acclaim as a director of ultra-violent spaghetti westerns such as Django, Kill! He also played one of the aristocratic princes in La dolce vita.

The performances and presentation are all fun and frothy and self-consciously horrible. No one plays for any sympathy - these characters are not supposed to be liked. The cinematography, with its lazy, drooping shots of Treviso's Piazze dei Signori (Gentlemen's Square, where much of the action takes place of course!), its spinning cuts and sight gags, also seems "in" on the joke.

Brutal and shamelessly one-dimensional, we definitely recommend this film as yet another examination of Italian regional sociopolitics in the postwar era - after Ladri di biciclette, La dolce vita, Io la conoscevo bene and C'eravamo tanto amati. Will we ever get tired of this genre? Not when the movies about it are so good!