Arts & Events
The Greatest Films of Mario Monicelli: From Lowbrow Farce to High Drama
Playing through April 19 at the Pacific Film Archive
The films of Mario Monicelli—a beloved Italian director whose work is little known in the US, despite his six Oscar nominations—are enjoying a welcomed renaissance thanks to a major digital restoration undertaken by the Italian film industry. Seven of Monicelli's classics currently are being screened at venues across the United States. Locally, UC Berkeley's Pacific Film Archive is screening a mix of Monicelli's comedies and dramas through April 19. The series opened on March 5 with The Passionate Thief, a 1960 caper comedy that proves Monicelli can be even wilder than Billy Wilder.
The Passionate Thief (Risate di gioia) takes off in all directions simultaneously, like fourth of July pinwheel that's flown off it's axis to go cart wheeling down the street. You may not know what to make of it, but you can't take your eyes off of it. Thief is a high-spirited jumble of misadventures involving an unlikely trio trying to make the best of a long New Year's night in the heart of Rome.
As Tortorella, an insecure, part-time actress, Anna Magnani dashes about like a manic Lucille Ball. Her best friend is the rubber-faced Toto, a fellow actor who can barely scrape together enough coins for a phone call. American actor Ben Gazzara portrays Lello, a suave, would-be, high-society jewel thief. Toto signs on as Lello's "bag man," standing by to stash the jewels that Lello lifts from the wealthy swells crowding the dance halls on New Year's night.
There are plots and plans galore as the mismatched trio tries to outfox the crowds of drunken revelers. Predictably, nothing goes as predicted. Adding to the chaos is the Roman practice of celebrating the New Year by throwing old possessions out of windows and sending them crashing onto the streets.
The revival features other Monicelli comedies including Big Deal on Madonna Street (with Marcello Mastroianni and Claudia Cardinale), For Love of Gold (a comic riff on the Crusades screening at 7 PM on March 29), and Dear Michael, a culture clash between a bourgeois family forced to deal with their son's hippy wife (6:30PM, April 19).
But there's more to Monicelli than comedies. We Want the Colonels is a daring political satire about a rightwing plot to restore Italy's dictatorship (8:40 April 3), The Organizer is a tale of the Italian trade-union movement (4:30 April 5),
As a bonus, the PFA is also screening According to Mario, an 83-minute documentary homage to the director (7:00 April 3).
But perhaps the high point of the series is the restoration of Monicelli's The Great War, an epic 135-minute anti-war tragicomedy.
The Great War (1959)
The Great War follows the adventures of two anti-heroes, Iacovacci Oreste (Alberto Sordi, as a timid schemer) and Giovanni Busacca (Vittorio Gassman as an iconoclastic complainer and student of the Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin). When they are reluctantly mustered into WWI, they form an unlikely bond. Neither is combat material. They spend most of their time trying to avoid the Italian Front. Giovanni preps for long training marches by stuffing his backpack with hay while Iacovacci scams his fellow soldiers for extra lira.
The Great War boasts an element that is unusual for a war film (but perfectly natural for an Italian war film): Monicelli's masterpiece is filled with non-stop dialog—a backdrop of playful banter, regional insults and constant complaining that supplies enough chatter to fill a dozen Hollywood war flicks.
There is no room for patriotic fever in this film. As one recruit grumbles: "For years people have been butchered by wars but never served properly."
Our two long-suffering clowns suffer every deprivation that war has to offer. Poor rations. Paperwork. Long periods of waiting. Crouching on cold ground in the rain. In the meantime, the two schemers aren't above passing the hat at a tribute to fallen soldiers (and pocketing the loot) but, in a related scene, they discover they aren't immune to the needs of a friend's impoverished widow.
The only relief from military service comes from the camaraderie of fellow soldiers, the occasional deliveries of mail (Monicelli shows illiterate soldiers forced to beg the company priest to read their letters from home.) When there is a rare break for the troops to enjoy a day in town, the joy of an impromptu dance is cut short by a resurgence of the Austrian troops.
Monicelli demonstrates incredible craft in restaging the battles, assembling thousands of soldiers and spreading them out over dozens of square miles. The horrific landscapes of death that follow the deadly charges into fields raked by merciless gunfire are rendered with apocalyptic detail. Bodies are strewn on the ground and sprawled over boulders and fences in strange, tortured poses. And Monicelli does not overlook the anguished cries of the wounded.
Nor does he neglect the mundane. One elaborate scene recreates the overnight construction of a pontoon bridge—by hand. There is an extended scene where Italian and Austrian troops battle over possession of a fat single hen—strutting just out-of-reach in No Man's Land. There is the questionable assassination of a solitary man caught peacefully brewing coffee over a fire. A sniper's bullet intercepts his first sip and his lifeless body tumbles headfirst into the campfire. In another brief scene, a young soldier risks—and loses—his life to deliver a completely inconsequential letter from one general to another.
At one point, Monicelli takes a break from the battlefield and stages a comic-counterpoint: a Battle of the Sexes, between Giovanni and Costantina, a local prostitute. Relying on his gift of Milanese sweet-talk, Giovanni successfully pursues an initially disinterested Costantina (Silvana Mangano). But it's their second encounter that provides an astonishing physical match-up.
It begins calmly enough, with Costantina alone, quietly lathering her hair. The scene explodes when Giovanni comes crashing through door and plunges headlong through two tables stocked with food and kitchen utensils. With her hair still covered in suds, Costantina first laughs and then assaults her visitor—at one point, she pulls the pin out of a hand-grenade to gain the advantage. The bloodless battle continues with Gassman and Mangano taking turns tossing one another over furniture, with Mangano raining blows with flailing fists and finally launching a fat gourd at Gassman with head-bashing effectiveness, leaving them both exhausted and covered with shampoo. (If you can't get to the screening of The Great War, you can watch this scene online at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pv0FXVdjLwM.)
