Mambo

Monday June 19th 2006 I was watching the Independent Film Channel today and came across a movie by Italian filmmaker Nanni Moretti called "Caro Diario" In the film Moretti reflects on his life in three tales: "On My Vespa", "Islands" and "Doctors". In the first, (On My Vespa) he narrates while riding along and says "I always wanted to be a dancer" He reflects on the importance of dance in not only film and stage, but in life in general. Later on, while waiting for a beverage in an Italian juice store, he notices a television playing and the movie "Mambo" was playing. He knows the song and begins to sing and dance along with the (unfourtanatly) little known Sylvana Mangano as she does a unique version of the Mambo. Afterwards, at the outside café table his friend asks him what he was doing in the shop and he relates that he was watching a "Strange scene, starring Sylvana Mangano and that it had effected him in a strange way. I went to IMDb and looked up Sylvana's name, only to find an amazing actress who was a big star in Italian film for a short time. She was married to Dino DeLaurentis and would have followed in the steps of Gina Lolobrigada and Sophia Loren had not she been married to DeLaurentis. Her most famous movie was "Riso Amaro" where she toiled ever so sexually in rice fields. She separated from DeLaurentis and lived out her life in Paris and Spain sewing tapestries. The scene was mesmerizing to me as well as Moretti and she was a beautiful and talented woman. Such is show BIz I guess!?! You can read the complete story of this unsung actress by entering "Mambo" in the search box on IMDb and clicking on the links. By the way, she never divorced Dino DeLaurentis and died in 1989.The movie "Mambo" originally had a completely different storyline, but was banned due to it's homosexual theme. Caro Diario is playing all this month on IFC channel.

The sound and the editing are rough to the point of being distracting, and the film starts slowly. Those are really the only minuses though. The writing is good, the directing is good for the most part. The actors are well directed at least, and the pacing is good.

There are three real draws to this film: Silvana Mangano's solid performance, a great supporting contribution by Shelley Winters, and a rather intense melodramatic screenplay. Rossen is not credited as a writer, but I find it hard to believe that he didn't have a significant hand in it. Many of the scenes are written in a style quite close to his.

Briefly the story runs as follows, a poor venetian in love with a dead end guy is taken under the wing of a Mambo dance producer (Shelley Winters). She briefly finds fame and then a problematic and complicated marriage with a count (the why of it you will have to find out for yourself). Her marriage is troubled by her relationship with her former lover Mario.

This film has been on my to-watch list ever since seeing a brief snippet of it in Nanni Moretti's "Caro Diario". For the most part I think it was referenced as a dancing film, but if you watch this you'll see there are some subtler ties to (which I can't mention without spoiling the film).

Silvana's closing lines: "Perhaps in my third world, the absorbing world of the Mambo, I could find forgetfulness of the past, and in time peace and happiness."

I just couldn't get through this film--and I usually have a huge tolerance for anything in movies. Heck, my wife would make fun of me because I would finish even the worst film most of the time. However, I just found "Mambo" so tedious and brain-aching I had to turn it off near the end. Perhaps there was some wonderful twist that made it all worth while--all I know is I couldn't stand to wait for it.

The story is about a bland lady who loves to dance. And, again and again, we are subjected to the same pulsating and INTENSE mambo beat on drums. LOUD, CONSTANT and the type of sound that might one to kill!! In fact, the whole thing came off as overly-intense--almost to the point of being funny. And, if it hadn't been so dull, I might have laughed. The adventures of the lady, her ne'er-do-well boyfriend and the horribly miscast Michael Rennie (as an Italian nobleman!!) just bored me to tears. Sorry...I see some others loved it, but I just thought it was a dull and pretentious mess. I can easily see why this one was allowed to slip into the public domain!

I saw this film in 1954 in Philadelphia. Was most elated to see the Katherine Dunham Company, the most famous dance company in the world at that time. Am curious as to why the U.S.A. (English) version is only 97 minutes and the Italian version is 110 minutes. What was cut from the film? I suspect it was Katherine Dunham's company performing with a mixed race company, still taboo at that time. Also not listed in the cast is Raimonda Orselli, a ballerina from the Rome Opera Ballet who joined the Katherine Dunham Company for this film. Regarding the title, it was definitely not about Mambo, which was the big dance craze in the U.S.A. at that time. Was probably titled "Mambo" to sell it. It was definitely a melodrama. Different, particularly in the casting, worthy of a study in the annals of film-making.

I've always loved watching Italian films and this one was fantastic! Unlike Riso amaro (1949) which starred Silvana Mangano and Vittorio Gassman, I really found Giovanna very relatable and loved her melancholic personality - she acts with so much believability and you can really sense her disenchantment and sadness in her face and her voice (or rather, the dubbed voice). Vittorio Gassman is fantastic as usual, playing the villain we all love to hate and I found myself so absorbed in the story that I felt like yelling at Giovanna for being so silly as to give up dancing for scum like him! Enrico and Toni are brilliant as supporting cast as well and Rossen manages paint Venice to be such a gloomy place that we really see Venice as Giovanna sees it - a place of dread that she wishes to escape from for a better life.