An Introduction to Roberto Rossellini (1906-1977)

Ingrid Bergman with Roberto Rossellini during the filming of Europa ’51. Rome, 1951 (AP Photo / Walter Attenni) from http://www.ilpost.it/2013/02/01/foto-darchivio-12/italy-rome-roberto-rossellini-and-ingrid-bergman/

The British Film Institute has just released a digital restored print of Roberto Rossellini’s important film Viaggio in Italia (Italy 1953). I’m preparing an introduction to the film and I realised that there is nothing on the blog directly about Rossellini, one of the most important directors in the history of global film. I’ve dug out some notes that I compiled for an earlier event in 2006 at the time of Rossellini’s centenary and I’ve updated them slightly.

Introduction: Rossellini and the ‘problem’ of Fascism and ‘neo-realism’

Any presentation of the work of Roberto Rossellini has to deal with a central issue in fi lm studies and more generally in cultural history. In most popular histories of the cinema, Rossellini is associated with the influential film movement known as ‘Italian neo-realism’. In particular, Rossellini’s film Roma città aperta (Rome, Open City), produced in 1945 has been hailed as the first ‘neo-realist’ film. That position was later challenged by scholars who made claims for Luchino Visconti’s Ossessione (Obsession) made in 1943. But by the 1970s and the development of film studies, scholars began to re-assess their ideas about Italian cinema and to recognise that the roots of neo-realism were to be found in the early 1930s cinema of Jean Renoir in France and in the Fascist Cinema of Italy in the late 1930s. But the re-appraisal of Italian Cinema faced two problems. On a pragmatic level, most of the Italian films of the later Fascist period are difficult to see (certainly in the UK and US). Secondly, what Hay (1987) refers to as the “almost sacred trinity” of neo-realist ‘auteurs’, Rossellini, Visconti and Vittorio de Sica, had all been involved in the Fascist industry and it was difficult for them personally and for their supporters to re-assess their relationships with the Fascist state of the 1930s. De Sica did cover this period in his 1970 film The Garden of the Finzi-Continis and Federico Fellini (a boy in the 1930s) famously gave his view of the period in Amarcord (1973). But Rossellini, who became part of the Fascist film industry in 1936 did not look back to the period. Indeed, one feature of the late 1940s discussion of neorealism’ was the rejection of Fascist cinema as ‘worthless’.

Fascist Italy and the cinema

Roberto Rossellini was the son of a successful architect in Rome and he was 19 when Benito Mussolini assumed full dictatorial powers over Italy in 1925. On 27 April 1937, Mussolini inaugurated the new film studios of Cinecittà in Rome and the establishment of Centro Sperimentale – an élite film school. Both these innovations survived the Second World War and became part of a successful postwar Italian Cinema. Rossellini stumbled into the industry when he needed to earn money – having spent his family’s money on a playboy lifestyle. He counted as friends at this time not only Mussolini’s son Vittorio, but also future leading figures in the Italian Communist party. Through his connections he was able to get work as a sound technician, an editor and eventually as a scriptwriter. The three films Rossellini made during the war, La Nave Bianca (about a hospital ship), Un pilota returna (a pilot escapes from a prison camp) and L’Uomo della croce (an army chaplain on the Russian front) are all ‘propaganda films’ presenting heroic images of individuals in wartime. To some extent, they sound like British propaganda films of the time. Guarner (1970: 11) suggests that:

“. . . if they are considered apart from their set purpose as films, they reveal a personality distinct from other Italian films of the time . . . they do show sufficient respect for reality, care for objective mise en scène and perceptiveness over detail to raise them above the other Fascist films of the period.”

Guarner was writing at the height of the ‘authorship’ phase of film studies and he possibly overemphasises the ‘personal’ approach of Rossellini. What is more likely is that Rossellini learned from other filmmakers who had also developed some ‘realist’ techniques.

Rossellini and ‘neo-realism’

The roots of neo-realism are now seen to be in the 1930s, but there is no doubt that, in 1945, Rossellini’s film Roma città aperta caused a sensation in cinemas not only in Italy but also in the US and the UK, where it arrived in 1947. Film Review in the UK, a popular film annual, greeted the film with the following tribute:

. . . one of the most completely damning , moving and altogether inspiring anti-Nazi films ever made . . . tremendously effective both as entertainment; by turns exciting, amusing and terrifying . . . varyingly photographed, technically inferior [Open City] was always beautifully acted. Direction was assured, witty and full of brilliance; inspired to the extent of giving those sudden, human, familiar little touches to a movie which makes it suddenly, breathlessly alive.

This is a very fair and perceptive review. Rossellini and his collaborators made the best of what equipment and filmstock they could fi nd in the ruins of Rome and mixed it with melodrama, comedy and action. The film has since become mythologised as ‘realist’, but it was the more considered Paisà (1946) and Germany Year Zero (1947) that more clearly fitted the developing neo-realist ideal. All three films include location shooting and use of non-actors in many roles, but they also required studio shooting and they made use of the highly emotional music provided by Rossellini’s younger brother, Renzo.The failure of Germany Year Zero, a very bleak and emotionally shattering film, saw the end of one kind of realist filmmaking for Rossellini – ironically before Rome, Open City had been fully distributed. Rossellini went on to be a great innovator, but also a good interviewee about his methodology. The following quote is a useful guide to Rossellini’s cinema and to neo-realism more generally:

The subject of the neo-realism film is the world; not story or narrative. It contains no preconceived thesis, because ideas are born in the fi lm from the subject. It has no affinity with the superfluous and the merely spectacular, which it refuses, but is attracted to the concrete. . . It refuses recipes and formulas. . . neo-realism poses problems for us and for itself in an attempt to make people think. (Roberto Rossellini in Retrospettive, April 1953, reprinted in Overby (1978))

This argues for cinematic realism as a progressive aesthetic opposed to ‘entertainment cinema’ and in favour of ‘education’. (Rossellini was taken up by Marxist critics in the 1970s, but he remained a Catholic humanist intellectual throughout his life). One of the central features of Rossellini’s camerawork in his ‘neo-realist trilogy’ is the combination of the ‘long shot’ and the ‘long take’. The long shot is the ideal framing device to show crowds and the movements of soldiers in battle. Its use in Hollywood tends to be restricted to establishing shots and genres like the western where ‘figures in a landscape’ are important. Usually, however, stories are told in mid-shot and medium close-up with attention paid to individual characters. Long shots are also difficult to organise on studio sets, where framing is often required to disguise the fact that a set is just a collection of ‘flat’ walls without a ceiling. Allied to the long shot is the use of deep-focus which allows the filmmaker to compose a shot in-depth with objects in the foreground and the background, both in sharp focus. Different actions can take place within the frame and the audience can select to look at the foreground or background. Deep-focus works well on location and like the long shot was common in silent cinema before bulky sound equipment began to restrict camerawork.

A long take is any shot lasting longer than about 20 seconds (the Hollywood average throughout the studio period is about 12 seconds). For the filmmaker, the long take poses problems because all the actions must be carefully worked out in advance. Long shots and staging in-depth help because they give greater possibilities of movement in the frame. Alternatively, moving the camera by panning or tracking allows greater freedom. The panning and tracking camera, shooting in long takes, is a feature of Rossellini’s films at various times, especially in the more action-orientated episodes of Paisà.

Rossellini’s fi lms tend to focus on stories about ‘ordinary people’ in situations which are in one sense ‘ordinary’ – except that in Italy in the late 1940s ‘ordinary life’ was often quite ‘extraordinary’. Here is a useful quote from another spokesman for neo-realism, scriptwriter Cesare Zavattini describing the starting point for a typical neo-realist film:

“A woman goes into a shop to buy a pair of shoes. The shoes cost 7,000 lire. The woman tries to bargain. The scene lasts perhaps two minutes, but I must make a two-hour film. What do I do? I analyse the fact in all its constituent elements, in its ‘before’, in its ‘after’, in its contemporaneity. The fact creates its own fiction . . .” (See Williams (ed) 1980: 29-30)

Zavattini can ask himself, “Why does the woman want the shoes?”, “What else will she not spend the money on if she does buy the shoes?”, “How important is the sale to the shopkeeper – does he know the woman?” etc. In Rossellini’s terms the narrative comes from ‘the world’, from the ‘reality’ of an everyday experience.

Rossellini and Bergman

In 1948, Rossellini received a telegram from Ingrid Bergman offering to work for him for next to nothing, so impressed was she with his neo-realist films. Rossellini didn’t know that Bergman was at the height of her popularity in Hollywood, but he saw the possibility of Hollywood money and invited her over to Italy. They started a passionate affair and she starred for him in Stromboli (Italy 1950). Stromboli saw Rossellini shifting his approach in two significant ways. The story involves a Lithuanian woman who in the aftermath of war finds herself in a displaced persons camp in Italy. Karin (Bergman) chooses marriage as her passport out of the camp and finds a Sicilian fi sherman on his way home from a prison camp in South Africa. With Hollywood money, Rossellini made the most of the landscape of the volcanic island of Stromboli. He also continued a policy of using several local people in acting roles, but this time placed amongst them one of the biggest fi lm stars in the world. Suddenly the film becomes almost a documentary on Bergman as a sophisticated woman attempting to act with an amateur cast – just as the character, Karin, finds herself stuck on a ‘primitive’ island from which she feels she must escape. The Hollywood studio, RKO cut the film by nearly 20 minutes and it flopped badly in an English language version in America. Now the film, at its original length is considered by many critics to be a masterpiece. Audiences are likely to dismiss the film or to be overwhelmed by it. Partly this is a function of the completely ‘open ending’ when it is not clear what Karin will do about ending or maintaining her marriage.

Eventually, Rossellini and Bergman were divorced from their previous partners and they married. Rossellini proved a jealous husband/director and would not allow Bergman to work for anyone else. In 1953 he cast her in a fi lm often cited as having a major influence on the French New Wave in the late 1950s, Viaggio in Italia. This film continued the idea of using the predicament of the actor as a feature of the narrative. Bergman plays the wife of an English ‘gentleman’ who inherits a house in Italy. The couple have a ‘difficult’ marriage and they think that a holiday to complement their trip to Naples to sell the house might improve their relationship. George Sanders plays the husband and he found working for Rossellini very difficult, not least because Rossellini and his scriptwriter constantly changed the script the night before a day’s shooting so that Sanders and Bergman were unaware of what might happen. In one famous scene, the couple are sent to the ruins of Pompeii where Rossellini knew that a startling archeological find was to be revealed. Their consternation became part of the plot. On this film Rossellini proved that, as long as you have a clear overall plan, you could make it up as you go along – something Jean-Luc Godard has never forgotten.

‘The cinema is dead’

Rossellini and Bergman split up in 1957 and in 1961, Rossellini declared cinema dead and launched into a television career. From now on he eschewed conventional narratives and sought to make ‘historical films’ with a strong educational purpose. There were clear links to his earlier films in that he concentrated on his characters as ‘people’ first and important historical figures second. He concentrated on detailed research into the clothes, furnishings and everyday rituals of the central characters who were played by non-actors, or at least non-stars. The details were accurate but the sets were not lavish and the camerawork was as simple as possible.

Rossellini wanted an unobtrusive camera that could record the action without unnecessary cuts or dramatic close-ups. To this end he invented a remote control zoom device that enabled him to easily change the focal length as the camera moved just enough to capture the whole scene and the movements of the characters in a restricted area. The most acclaimed of these films, made for French television, recorded The Rise to Power of Louis IV (France/Italy 1966). Others focused on Socrates, Blaise Pascal and Cosimo de Medici. In 1976 he produced a life of Jesus and when he died in 1977 he was said to be working on a film about Karl Marx.

Conclusion

These notes refer to only a selection of Rossellini’s film credits from a career spanning forty years. By necessity, they are limited to the films that have received public distribution in the UK. Apart from Rome Open City, Rossellini’s films have not been major box office successes – they have been more discussed by critics and other filmmakers than by popular audiences. Yet Rossellini’s films and his ideas about films have been very influential, both on filmmakers outside the US entertainment system attempting to apply neo-realist ideas and to modernist filmmakers like those of the French New Wave, as well as his early collaborators such as Federico Fellini and younger Italian directors such as the Taviani Brothers. Since his centenary in 2006 one or two more titles have become accessible with English subtitles in the US and as imports from Italy. I hope to watch some of these and write about them on the blog.

Roy Stafford, 20/5/06

References and further reading

Peter Bondanella (1993) The Films of Roberto Rossellini, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Jose Luis Guarner (1970) Roberto Rossellini, London: Studio Vista

James Hay (1987) Popular Film Culture in Fascist Italy, Bloomington, Indiana: University of Indiana Press

David Overby (ed) (1978) Springtime in Italy: a Reader on Neo-Realism, London: Talisman

Pierre Sorlin (1996) Italian National Cinema, London: Routledge

Christopher Williams (ed) (1980) Realism in the Cinema, London: Routledge Kegan Paul

Robin Wood (1980) ‘Roberto Rossellini’ in Richard Roud (ed) Cinema: A Critical Dictionary, London: Martin Secker & Warburg

The best starting place for a websearch on is via Senses of Cinema

BIFF 2013 #5: Me and You (Io e te, Italy 2012)

Olivia (Tea Falco) and Lorenzo (Jacopo Olmo Antinori)

Here’s a ‘good news’ story. The maker of wonderful films of the 1960s and 1970s returns after an absence of nearly a decade with a modest film that’s very good and one that you’ll want to recommend to people. In the 1980s and 1990s Bertolucci became known for epic films (most of which I confess didn’t go to see) made with Jeremy Thomas and smaller films that were sometimes controversial in their representations of teenage sexuality. Stealing Beauty (1996) comes to mind. At first Me and You looks like it is in line with many of the earlier films – a dysfunctional family and the possibility of ‘socially unacceptable’ sexual relationships. There was a moment when I thought that this was going to be a kind of re-run of La luna from 1979. But although there are shared plot elements, Me and You turns out to be something else.

Lorenzo is a 14 year-old boy living with his mother who has ‘escaped’ into his own company. Challenged by a psychiatrist he claims to be ‘normal’. When a school ski-ing trip is being planned, he decides to tell his mother that he wants to go, but secretly organises his own hideaway week in the basement of their apartment block. All goes well until his older half-sister arrives unexpectedly. I won’t spoil what then happens but you will create your own expectations of a drama played out in a confined space and mainly as a two-hander. Before the screening Festival Director Tom Vincent suggested that Jacopo Olmo Antinori who plays Lorenzo is a star of the future. He is certainly very good in this film, but an important element of his success – and that of the film overall – is that we as the audience contribute to the success of the performances by making our own evaluations and then see them challenged. Tea Falco as Olivia, the half-sister is also very good. This is a ‘slight’ film in some ways, as other festival critics have reported, but it works very well. It’s satisfying to see a great director back on form. The film has been acquired by Artificial Eye for UK distribution and it is scheduled to open next Friday, 19 April. Make a date, you’ll enjoy it.

The Battle of Algiers (La battaglia di Algeri, Italy-Algeria, 1966)

The face of imperialism.

The Battle of Algiers is an extraordinary film for a number of reasons, primarily the impartiality with which the events are portrayed and the style in which it is shot. It was made just after Algerian independence from France and focuses upon the battle for the capital city in 1957, which although a failure for the National Liberation Front (FLN) at the time, sowed the seeds for the eventual withdrawal of France.

Director Gillo Pontecorvo drew upon the Italian tradition of neo-realism by using non-actors, except for the vital role of Colonel Mathieu, and location shooting. The latter was possible as the film had the co-operation of the Algerian government. Despite the fact that the government’s involvement might suggest a propaganda, nation-building, purpose for the film, Pontecorvo, and screenwriter Franco Solanas, do not portray the French as monsters.

Indeed, the even-handedness of the way each side is presented is quite remarkable; both commit atrocities and deaths on both sides are shown to be equally tragic. For example, the bombing of the Casbah, by off duty French policemen, is followed by the equally cold-blooded bombing of, amongst other places, a milk bar full of young people. Whilst it is clear that the atrocity committed by the French was answered by Algerian revenge, Pontecorvo spends more time emphasising how innocent the French victims are through a series of eyeline matches from the woman planting the bomb. The aftermath uses the same music, Bach’s B minor Mass, which also accompanied images of the dead being dragged from the rubble in the Casbah.

Later, Algerian ‘freedom fighters’ rampage through town in an ambulance shooting anyone they can. This is in response to the torturing of Algerians as the paratroopers tried to track down the FLN’s leadership. Col. Mathieu is even allowed to justify the use of torture, though this is used to illustrate politicians’ hypocrisy. As he says, if you wish Algeria to remain French then it must be done. Mathieu is no cardboard villain but a compassionate, professional soldier, played with great charisma by Jean Martin (who’d lost a part because he signed a petition supporting Algerian independence). On two occasions, when French passers-by attack Algerians in hysterical revenge for killings, it is gendarmes who come to the rescue. It’s not obvious as to why the French banned the film for many years.

I should make clear that the film doesn’t condone torture; the scenes are quite horrific and the film’s viewpoint is obviously anti-colonialist. The French should not be there; there should be no reason for torture.

Unlike the neo-realists, the event portrayed is not insignificant but a decisive moment in Algeria’s fight for freedom. Also, the use of faux newsreel footage (the image was processed to look grainy) is a departure from neo-realist technique. It does, however, give the film immense immediacy. I have to keep reminding myself that the film is a recreation; Paul Greengrass achieves the same effect with Bloody Sunday (UK, 2002).

A final point to make, and something that has been reflected in the Arab Spring, is the vital role of women in the uprising. Three women plant the bombs that kill many and the final shot of the film is a woman, holding the national flag, who keeps coming forward despite being pushed back by French security forces.

The Battle of Algiers is one of the greatest films of the 20th century.

A picture beyond the photographer’s intention: a semiotic analysis of Blow-Up

This paper was submitted by Giuseppe Raudino (see contact details below)

Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up (UK 1966) is a deep reflection about reality and meaning. What is real? Why is that real? And what does it mean? These are the questions that the viewer is obliged to ask himself/herself throughout the film.

The opening scene establishes the interpretative challenge the audience is repeatedly asked to accept: a group of mime artistes – masked merrymakers – are acting strangely in London, riding an overcrowded Land Rover and suddenly spreading themselves in the city streets, among the traffic, with no apparent reason or goal. What are they actually doing? What are their visionary gestures trying to accomplish? They seem so unreal within such a familiar context . . .

The film tells the story of Thomas (David Hemmings), a photographer who encounters a series of people, most of the time in quite odd circumstances. As a photographer he is meticulous, especially when he has to arrange the set and give orders to his models. Nothing he wants to depict in his photographs is left to chance, there is no space for the random in his shots: the photographer’s will requires accurate composition of the images even if that entails grabbing and stretching a model’s leg or engaging in an ‘intimate’ photo session with Veruschka von Lehndorff, with whom Thomas is even ready to mock-up a sexual encounter to make her reveal her sensuality to the utmost.

This concept of a full control over the product (and the related message conveyed by it) comes to a crisis when Thomas, after having blown up a picture of a couple in a park, accidentally discovers that there is a man hidden in the background, beyond a hedge. Further enlargements will show that the man is holding a gun. This third person could have never been spotted in a normal-sized photo, where his presence would have remained just a meaningless stain, but now he is there, unexpected, vigorously included in the photograph despite the photographer’s intention.

The new presence in the picture suddenly changes the original meaning of the picture itself. This implies that an (unnoticed) element may affect the reality and the context it refers to. In Thomas’ case, the armed man adds a dark connotation to the entire scene, bringing the idea of mystery, murder and drama to what was simply a romantic rendezvous in a park.

Thomas (David Hemmings) and Jane (Vanessa Redgrave) in the park

Thomas is puzzled by what he found out and feels the need to investigate more. He is overwhelmed: probably, for the first time, the reality in his pictures is different from the reality he had in mind, that reality he wanted to construct.

The film is actually disseminated with elements in strong opposition to their contexts, and this clearly is a narrative means by which Antonioni invites the viewer to rethink the significance of something in relation of its environment and vice versa. Let’s consider, for instance, the episode of the propeller.

Thomas goes to an antiquarian shop, which is full of statues, boxes, paintings and a lot of rare objects. What does Thomas finally choose? A wooden propeller, which is a piece of something else (i.e. an element of an aeroplane). The propeller will be later placed in Thomas’ studio, totally out of its original context, far away from aerodromes, hangars and so on, but it will certainly bring a new meaning to its new environment.

The Yardbirds at the Ricky Tick gig

Another example of out-of-the-context elements occurs in the scene at the Ricky Tick, the famous club in which the Yardbirds are playing live. After having experienced some problems with the amplifier, the guitarist lets his inner aggressiveness come out and smashes his instrument, throwing some pieces to the public. As Thomas picks up the guitar neck, he realises that the crowd is ready to fight in order to obtain that precious relic. Then he runs away, chased by the Yardbirds’ fans, but when he gets rid of them and finds himself outside the club, he throws away the guitar neck. Some pedestrians have a glance at this strange object laying on the sidewalk but eventually do not show any interest for it. All at once, the so much contended memento of a great rock band loses its value as soon as it is placed out of its original context.

Something similar happens when Thomas pays a visit to his neighbour Bill, an abstract painter. The latter shows a canvas onto which there are painted some rectangular and trapezoidal objects. Out of that (apparent) confusion, Bill points out an area, saying that it is a leg. Considered in absolute terms, that shape is just a rectangle, but within the painting it clearly becomes a leg, and it would be as such even without the interpretative endorsement of the author, because the context and the opposition with the other elements would make it a leg anyway. The parallel between Bill’s painting and Thomas’ photograph is more than evident: a shape and a stain are meaningless until a closer look (or an enlargement) unveils a new truth, urging further interpretations.

Finally – yet the examples might be more numerous – there is another scene in which the interpretation of what is supposed to be real and true is questioned. At a certain point, Thomas again meets Veruschka. There is a party going on and Thomas is surprised to see her, since she had told him that by that time she should have been in Paris. Once asked, Veruschka claims under the effect of some drugs that she is  in Paris. Is the model’s imagination less real than her factual location? The psychedelic dimension and culture presented in the film seems to suggest a clear alternative way for reading the signs that surround every character and build up each situation. Towards the end of the film, Thomas is somehow aware of this. What is commonly called “reality” isn’t something objective; on the contrary, it’s something subject to vary due to any little element, even an overlooked element. Perhaps it is with these thoughts that Thomas abandons himself on a bed after having smoked marijuana.

The final scene is strongly connected to the opening and shows the brand new attitude of Thomas about reality, meaning and interpretation. The mime artistes encountered in the initial frames of the film are now playing (or pretending to play?) a tennis match, but with no rackets and no balls.

Thomas is an improvised spectator who observes the match outside the court. Unexpectedly, the players throw the invisible ball beyond the fence and then stare interrogative at Thomas. Great suspense. Thomas makes some steps, stoops, picks up the ball and with an ample movement returns it to the visionary players. Then he resumes following the match, turning his head right and left, like everybody in the audience of a “normal” tennis match would do.

Thomas has learned a lesson. Fetching the ball means that he is now conscious about the fact that the reality goes beyond any straightforward appearance and a supposedly meaningless situation may become meaningful thanks to some elements, even overlooked, even imagined or dreamed. And the mime artistes don’t dream of anything but a better world.

The final section of the film on YouTube (but you’ll have to watch it there):

______

Giuseppe Raudino is lecturer at the Hanze University Groningen (the Netherlands) where he teaches Media Theory and Media Skills. He graduated in Communication Sciences from the University of Siena with a dissertation in Semiotics about Umberto Eco. His homepage is http://raudino.webs.com/

Vallanzasca – Gli angeli del male (Angels of Evil, Italy/France/Romania 2010)

Kim Rossi Stuart as Renato Vallanzasca in one of the prison scenes

Angels of Evil is a stylish Italian entry into the crime biopic genre which has seen a recent resurgence with the success of the two Mesrine films starring Vincent Cassell. It’s also related to another recent biopic, the mammoth take on the international revolutionary criminal Carlos. But perhaps it is best considered alongside recent fictional crime sagas such as Animal Kingdom, Un prophète and Gomorra.

The central character in Angels of Evil is Renato Vallanzasca,  a Milanese street kid born in 1950 who gravitates towards bank robberies and eventually becomes Italy’s ‘most wanted’ partly because he becomes involved with the deaths of police officers. The film begins with one of his many prison terms and then reveals his story in flashback. What is noticeable is the extent to which Vallanzasca’s no doubt partly romanticised biography so closely resembles a typical crime genre narrative. For instance, his gang includes his blood brother from the streets, Enzo, a man who may have learning difficulties but who is certainly a highly dangerous companion, and his ‘little sister’ Antonella from the same background. Renato’s parents remain supportive throughout (it seems barely credible that in one of his breakouts from prison, Renato goes to his parents’ flat).

Generically, the film is very close to Mesrine and Renato is represented as almost a Robin Hood type figure, a generally honourable character who shows up the inadequacies of the police and prison service and appeals directly to the public. I was reminded at times of the idea of the Italian ‘outlaw’ figure and Eric Hobsbawm’s ideas about ‘social bandits’. I haven’t seen Francesco Rosi’s film about the Sicilian bandit Lucky Luciano but I wonder if there are any parallels. Vallanzasca is not a rural bandit of course. But his street origins in the early 1960s do mean that he is an ‘outsider’ and one of the narrative strands in the film deals with his attempts to oust the more established crime families in Milan. I’ve seen criticisms of the film complaining that given its time span (primarily the 1970s and 1980s) it doesn’t say enough about the changing nature of organised crime in Italy. I confess that I couldn’t keep track of all of the action in the film and the various groups from different crime organisations but I did note that Renato (like all ‘old-time’ criminals in genre films) bemoans the young thugs and their mindless violence, believing that he himself was ‘honorable’. I’ve just finished reading an Italian crime fiction novel about the Calabrian criminal families and I was intrigued to see that they get a mention here alongside the Sicilians.

I thought Angels of Evil was an enjoyable (if very bloody) genre film on a par with Mesrine but lacking the intensity of Un prophète or Gomorra. The central performance by Kim Rossi Stuart is its strongest element alongside the two young women played by Valeria Soleano and the Spanish actress Paz Vega (as Antonella). The multi-lingual German actor Moritz Bleibtreu plays one of the gang members. Rossi Stuart also starred in director Michele Placido’s earlier crime film Romanzo criminale (2005) – a very similar package about a criminal gang in Rome in the 1970s which I haven’t seen. Overall I have to agree with a reviewer who suggested that the film reveals a cast and crew who most enjoyed dressing up for the 1970s/80s scenes.

Angels of Evil is that now rare beast – a widescreen ‘popular’ European genre picture that struggles to get even a limited UK release, even though it was part-produced by Fox International Italy and Canal+. Once, such films, often dubbed, received a wide release in the UK. Ironically, Italian domestic production is on something of a roll at the moment scoring multiple hits at home. Angels of Evil opened at No4 in the Italian Top 20 in January 2011 (when 4 out of the Top 5 were Italian ‘domestic features’). When it dropped out of the Top 20 after four weeks the film had taken $3.76 million. It might do quite well when it opens in France in September.

BIFF 2011 #8: Le quattro volte (Four Times Italy/Germany/Switzerland 2010)

The old goatherd in Le quattro volte

Some films deny classification. Le quattro volte has a cast of characters and a narrative of sorts. It starts and ends with sounds and images presenting the charcoal burners of the mountains of Calabria in the far south of Italy. In between there are effectively four linked ‘stories’. These do not directly refer to the four seasons but instead to the four elements: human, animal, vegetable, mineral. There is virtually no dialogue or music in the film, but plenty of natural sounds – a soundscape in the truest sense to match the stunning landscape. This is a ‘fiction’ and there may be some ‘acting’ but the events depicted are ‘real’ and have been practised for centuries. The difference between this film and ‘poetic documentary’ seems marginal. In terms of thematic and ‘tone’ you could describe the film as being an essay on tradition, spirit, folklore etc. Its style places it in the frame for ‘slow cinema’ – a concept analogous to ‘slow food’ – it takes time to say something but what you get has intense flavours and is deeply satisfying.

Writer director Michelangelo Frammartino is a native of Calabria and in the fascinating Press Notes he explains that the philosophical underpinnings of the film derive from the work of Pythagoras (who taught in Calabria). Pythagoras introduced the idea of transmigration between human, animal, vegetable and mineral. In the image above the old goatherd in a mountain village takes an elixir made from the ashes produced in the local church – a form of pagan practise which he secretly follows thanks to the woman who tends the church. The goatherd is ‘watched over’ by his herd which in turn browses beneath the tree that provides the material for a village festival (another pagan event) and ultimately the basis for the charcoal and thus the ash. That’s more or less the cycle, but I’ve left out many of the interesting and on occasions emotionally charged events along the way.

Frammartino’s mise en scène and camerawork is adaptable according to the needs of his narrative. At one moment we have a close-up of the old man’s face as an ant crawls across it. At other times the camera is high above the village watching everything down below in VLS (very long shot). In a truly stunning sequence, all in VLS, we see an Easter procession come out of the village and progress down the road, encountering the goatherd’s dog on the way in an elaborate comic playlet that could have come from silent cinema or in more recent times from an Elia Suleiman film.

Le quattro volte is stunningly beautiful and a joy to experience, though I should warn those (like me) who are perhaps too sentimental that there is a very sad moment in the film. The film is scheduled to play at a few venues in the US in the next couple of months. In the UK it has been picked up by New Wave Films for release on May 27. I hope it turns out to be a ‘slow-burner’ – like the charcoal. It’s already one of my films of the year.

BIFF 2011 #5: Hollywood on the Tiber (Italy 2009)

Audrey Hepburn crosses a Rome street in Hollywood on the Tiber.

This documentary screening was a bit of a stinker, wasting some useful and interesting material. Produced by Cinecitta Studios, using only archive material, it purports to tell the story of the years from the late 1940s to the early 1970s in which Rome’s studio (alongside other Italian locations such as Venice) became the biggest international film centre attracting Hollywood ‘runaway’ productions as well as international and domestic Italian films.

The first section of the film briefly promises some kind of analysis but this is soon abandoned and replaced by a stream of film clips featuring well-known stars (and attendant paparazzi) at the airport on arrival, attending premieres and flying out again. This is diverting for a few minutes but then becomes tedious unless the audience can find some kind of game to play with the star-spotting. Even the attempted argument is rendered unintelligible by an over-excited commentary translated into subtitles that change far too quickly to keep pace. There are also several awful music tracks. I did read a review before the screening which warned of the film’s faults but I thought I’d chance it. I wish I hadn’t. However, if you are a star-spotter you may have fun.

LFF #2: What Money Can’t Buy . . .

It’s odd how sometimes randomly selected films sometimes reveal the same underlying theme. Today it was consumerism or, more precisely, the belief in money as the ultimate goal in securing happiness.

Little White Lies (Les petits mouchoirs, France 2010) was the highest profile film I went to see during the festival. After the major success of his thriller Tell No One, an adaptation of Harlen Coblen’s novel, big things were expected of Guillaume Canet’s follow-up. A packed audience in the biggest screen in the Vue West End waited patiently for the screening following late delivery of the print and as far as I could tell from their reaction, enjoyed the film. I overheard some claiming it as great entertainment. I have to differ. There are some beautifully delivered scenes but I found the overall effect unsettling.

The title, I think, is slightly off-beam. ‘Self-delusions’ or ‘Self-obsession’ might more accurately describe the group of Parisian bourgeoisie who take a holiday each year in the Cap Ferret region of South West France. Max (François Cluzet) is a wealthy restauranteur with a private beach house and a settled family. He pays for everything and acts like a feudal lord. Vincent (Benoît Magimel) is a younger osteopath with a young son. His wife Isla, like Max’s wife Véro, is long-suffering. There are three younger members of the group with on/off relationships and, most important, a popular younger member who spends the film in intensive care in hospital in Paris – and exists as a reminder of good times and a source of guilt for the vacationeers. Finally, there is the local man on the coast who acts as the ‘head man’ of the local community invaded by the Parisians.

Shot in CinemaScope, the film is always very watchable (though 139 minutes is stretching it). There are exciting and on one occasion shocking action scenes, broad comedy and moments of tragedy. The film is to my mind an unsettling mixture of a traditional French genre (the bourgeoisie en vacances) with the kind of satirical comedy that critiques the bourgeoisie in the plays of Alan Aykbourn or the films of Mike Leigh (both with their fans in France I think). Personally, I don’t find this funny after a while and I think Canet rather undermines the critique with the dramatic ending. But perhaps my biggest gripe is that the women are not given enough to do in the film and in particular Marion Cotillard, the biggest international name in the film, spends most of her time looking tousled, laughing and crying and smoking dope. This is mainly a film about spoilt, bratty men who don’t know the value of things and, in the case of the lead character, think that having money means that you must show off. It’ll probably be a big hit, but I didn’t like it. Here’s the French trailer (no subs yet) but it reminds me also that Guillaume Canet seems obsessed with American pop and rock music. I’d mistakenly thought that in Tell No One he was referring to US culture for a purpose, but presumably here it is associated with wealthy Parisians?

After Little White Lies it was a relief to turn to a working-class family in Italy. La nostra vita (Our Life, Italy 2010) may be the most successful film that I saw – at least in the sense that it is a melodrama and it made me cry and some scenes were almost unbearable. It seems rather hackneyed to see the film as ‘Loachian’ but it is certainly a scenario that might have been written by Jim Allen or Paul Laverty. However, it might have been even darker in their hands and would certainly have had a more traditional socialist perspective. That was not the aim of the film’s writer-director Daniele Luchetti, as he explained in the Q&A. Instead, he was aiming for something which in some way worked as a general metaphor for Italy’s ills, rather than a specific political critique.

Claudio and his family

The central character, Claudio (played by Emiliano Germano, who shared the Cannes Best Actor award in 2010 for his performance), is a foreman for an unscrupulous developer ‘throwing’ up new blocks of flats on the outskirts of Rome and using what in the UK would be called ‘lump’ labour, but which here comprises mainly immigrant workers without papers. After a terrible family tragedy, Claudio feels compelled to use his work to make some kind of personal statement. He puts his family’s welfare on the line (including his own small children) and attempts to set up as a sub-contractor, taking on a punishing schedule despite lacking the necessary experience to complete the job (which he has ‘won’ mainly by blackmailing his own boss). The narrative involves Claudio’s extended family as well as his neighbours and a number of migrant workers. It is the migrants who explain to Claudio that he only thinks about money – that he tries to solve all his problems with money and that this is the Italian disease. Family is more important than money is one possible moral of the story. The film also includes my favourite line of dialogue (OK, subtitle) for some time. When Claudio compliments his older sister on how good she looks now she is wearing high heels, she replies: “Yeah, heels are like relatives, they give you support but they hurt like hell!” I hope that the Cannes prize helps the film get wider distribution.

The third screening of my day was a documentary running for less than an hour so it was accompanied by a short (14 minute) film. Lezare (For Today) was made in Ethiopia with a narrative based on a folk tale. It is beautifully shot and absolutely heart-breaking. In a village (which could be anywhere in Africa), the day begins and a beggar boy smells fresh bread. He starts to beg for the money to buy himself something to eat, but today is tree-planting day and the schoolteacher offers him a small coin if he will help the villagers in planting tiny saplings. He duly does so, but after the planting, when he returns to the breadshop to buy a loaf, the coin is gone. He lost it planting the trees that the teacher told him will secure the village’s future. He races back to the planting area to look for his coin – you can probably guess what happens. I do hope that this short becomes available for use in schools and sustainability campaigns. It was made on HD by Zelalem Woldemariam who has an impressively designed website. There was some support from American organisations.

The documentary that followed was also devastating, chronicling the effects of the hyperinflation and economic collapse in Zimbabwe (where for a while money couldn’t buy you anything since it was being devalued by inflation even as you searched for something to spend it on). The film was made (at some risk) by an independent filmmaker, Saki Mafundikwa during 2008-9. It does end on an optimistic note with the opposition party sharing power after the elections, but what it has to report is shocking. The film’s title Shungu refers to the resilience of Zimbabwe’s people. They certainly need to be resilient since many are starving, reduced to eating the pulp of wild fruits in a country that once exported food and which boasted Africa’s best education provision.

Shungu is a conventional documentary, ‘authored’ only to the extent that the filmmaker explains what he is doing and why. Sometimes the simple method is the most effective and Mafundikwa has found a cross-section of Zimbabweans who tell their own story (alongside the filmmaker himself who presents the health problems of his own father). There is a large international TV market for documentaries of this length and I hope that this gets bought by BBC/Channel 4 and similar channels in Europe. Ideally the film would interview more people and cover more points of view, but we know so little about what life is like inside Zimbabwe and what is offered here is very welcome..