CMP — Elio Petri, Writings on Cinema & Life
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ELIO ELIO PETRI Italian writer/director Elio Petri ascia’s novels, Miller’s The American (1929–1982) is of the cinematic era of Clock, and Sartre’s Dirty Hands, as well Bertolucci, Bellocchio, and Pasolini, as in his use of Pop and Abstract Art and although he is recognized by film in The Tenth Victim, A Quiet Day in a book by scholars as one of the major figures the Country, and other films. of Italian cinema, his work remains Elio Petri Available for the first time in Eng- largely unknown and unavailable out- lish, is Writings on Cinema and Life Writings on Cinema side of Italy. Hardly a marginal figure, a collection of texts Petri originally Petri began as an assistant to Giuseppe edited by published mainly in French and Ital- De Santis and his future collaborators ian journals. Also included are several Jean A. Gili would include many of the most re- art reviews, as well as Petri’s essay on nowned film artists of the 20th century : Sartre’s Dirty Hands. Petri’s affinity for Marcello Mastroianni, Gian Maria subtle analysis is evident in his clear translated by Volonté, Dante Ferretti, Ennio Mor- & precise writing style, which utilizes ricone, Ugo Pirro, and Tonino Guerra. & Camilla Zamboni & concrete concepts and observations, Life Erika Marina Nadir Due to Petri’s belief that culture cinematographic references, and ideas is inextricable from political struggle, drawn from literature, philosophy, & he was a central figure in the fervent psychoanalysis. There is as well an debates of his time on both Italian cin- acute and scathing sense of humor that ema and culture that arose from the af- permeates many of the texts. termath of World War II to the 1980s. However, while generally characterized Petri was the recipient of the Palme as a political filmmaker, this view is lim- d’Or, an Academy Award, and the Edgar ited and reductive, for Petri’s films are Allan Poe Award as well as others, and polemical interrogations of social, reli- in 2005 he was the subject of the docu- gious, and political phenomena as well mentary Elio Petri: appunti su un autore. WRITINGS ON as acute analyses of moral, psychologi- This collection of Petri’s writings is an cal, and existential crises. His cinema is important contribution to the history CINEMA & LIFE also informed by a rich and profound of cinema and offers further insight into understanding of and engagement with the work, thought, and beliefs of one of literature, philosophy, and art, evident cinema’s most ambitious & innovative for instance in his adaptations of Sci- practitioners. Petri was so alive, and inside the cinema, inside the images, so inside the strength of a vision. He should not be forgotten. isbn 978-0-9836972-5-1 — Tonino Guerra www.contramundum.net ENCOMIUMS Elio Petri was a great artist, a great director, a very great man of the cinema. —Dante Ferretti Through a mixture of expressionism, Brecht, and the bizarre, Petri’s films brought together Marx and Gramsci, but also Freud and Reich. He dove into the world of dreams with Kafkian lunges and into the maze that divides being and schizophrenia. —Jean A. Gili Elio Petri, a lucid and honest intellectual, profoundly human, a courageous and genial director, a true friend. —Ennio Morricone The thing that struck me about I giorni contati, in fact, more than one thing. First: it places itself in a strange territory, actually still unexplored in Italy, halfway between realism and existentialism. Second: it risked looking for a cinema that was different from the cinema done in Italy up to that moment. I’m sure that I giorni contati influenced me somehow. It influenced me the same way that all the films I loved at that time did. I wanted them to influ- ence me, and I wanted to be influenced by Elio’s films. —Bernardo Bertolucci Elio Petri is the greatest Italian director of the past, the only Italian director who made ten films that were completely different from one another. —Franco Nero This book is essential for appreciating Elio Petri’s films, & to truly understand the importance of “Italian political cinema” in the context of the bloody and lac- erating contradictions of the political struggles in Italy during the 1970s. Inspir- ing the reader to understand and appreciate the man beyond his work, Petri’s text is written by a true author, a polemical and modern moralist who took a stand against the compromising and mediocre mechanisms of Italian culture. This is also a book about solitude and society’s incomprehension of an intel- lectual who strove to be different, along the lines of the worldview of Pier Paolo Pasolini. This text comprises all the eloquent writings of Elio Petri, driven by intelligence, by love, and by his sarcastic view of existence. These writings are, and always will be, a seminal reference for both scholars and cinephiles. —Alfredo Rossi WRITINGS ON CINEMA & LIFE Elio Petri Selected Other Works by Elio Petri Roma ore 11 L’assassino. With Tonino Guerra. Indagine su un cittadino al di sopra ogni sospetto. With Ugo Pirro. La proprietà non è più un furto. With Ugo Pirro. Scritti di cinema e di vita. Ed. by Jean A. Gili. Chi illumina la grande notte WRITINGS ON CINEMA & LIFE Elio Petri Edited by Jean A. Gili Translated by Camilla Zamboni & Erika MarinaN adir Writings on Cinema & Life —ıst Contra Mundum Press © 2013 Paola Petri Edition Translation of Scritti di cinema e 454 pp., 7 x 10 in. di vita © 2013 Camilla Zamboni & Erika Marina Nadir isbn 9780983697251 Introduction © 2013 Jean A. Gili I. Petri, Elio. First Contra Mundum Press II. Title. edition 2013. III. Gili, Jean A. This edition ofScritti di IV. Editor cinema e di vita is published by V. Introduction. arrangement with Paola Petri. VI. Zamboni, Camilla. Originally published in Italy in VII. Nadir, Erika Marina. 2007 by Bulzoni Editore. VIII. Translators. “Brief Encounter” is published courtesy of NUOVI ARGOMENTI. 2013930263 All Rights Reserved under International & Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review. Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data Petri, Elio, 1929–1982 [Scritti di cinema e di vita. English.] Writings on Cinema & Life / Elio Petri ; translated from the original Italian by Camilla Zamboni & Erika Marina Nadir; Edited by Jean A. Gili This book is dedicated to Tonino Guerra poet, screenwriter, artist 16 March 1920 – 21 March 2012 http ://toninoguerra.org Table of Contents Jean A. Gili, ELIO PETRI: ARTIST AND INTELLECTUAL 0 1. “CITTÀ APERTA” ( 1957–1958) 1.1 The Germ of Hatred and Hope: Letter to Pietro Germi 4 1.2 Henri Beyle Says Thanks 14 1.3 The Lesson ofCalle Mayor 22 1.4 Two-Hundred Thousand Lire (200,000L ire) 30 1.5 It’s Not a Stereotype 40 1.6 Italian Cinema: A Castrated Elephant 46 1.7 Death of a Writer: Notes for a Cheap Film 58 1.8 Elia Kazan: A “Boomerang” Conscience 66 1.9 “Straw” Intellectuals 86 2. THE DEBATE ABOUT ITALIAN CINEMA ( 1962–1982) 2.1 Questionaire: The Directors of the 1960s 98 2.2 Team Play and Individual Specialties 106 2.3 Crisis or Vitality? 112 2.4 Elio Petri Trusts Italian Cinema 120 2.5 For Whom Do We Write, for Whom Do We Shoot 124 2.6 You Reproach Us, but You Never Took Our Side 134 2.7 The Left is Indifferent to Our Cinema 144 3. “NUOVA CUCINA” ( 1980) 3.1 Apocalypse Now 154 3.2 Ogro: Bread and Omelettes, Hammer & Sickle 162 3.3 Don Giovanni or Boiled Meat à la Dionysos 168 3.4 Ex-hungry People Now Satiated in Terrazza 182 3.5 La città delle donne 192 3.6 Kramer vs. Kramer 204 IMAGES 214 4. COMMENTS ON HIS OWN FILMS ( 1976–1979) 4.1 Short Tracts onA ciascuno il suo and Todo Modo 248 Todo Modo 4.2 Interview with Jean A. Gili 260 4.3 Interview with Simon Mizrahi 276 Le mani sporche 4.4 The Plot of the Three Episodes 288 4.5 Short Notes, Preliminary Observations 296 5. ART CRITIQUE ( 1979–1982) 5.1 For Him, We Would Fight 326 5.2 The Report of the Onlooker 334 6. BRIEF ENCOUNTER Brief Encounter 346 FILMOGRAPHY 362 BIBLIOGRAPHY 396 INTRODUCTION 0 Elio Petri : Artist& Intellectual ii irst of all, I would like to explain the reason for this edition of Elio Petri’s writings — I want to pay homage to the memory of a man who was very important to me. Petri was the only director with whom I developed a profound — al- Fmost fraternal — friendship. He was like a big brother to me, a brother who had a lot to teach and pass down. Elio Petri (1929–1982) is known as a film director and as an artist, but his social and political engagement in the post- war years up to the beginning of the 1980s also makes him an intellectual. He was a man who reflected on his own work and on its relationship to the socio-political context of the time. In Elio Petri : appunti su un autore, a documentary on the director made in 2005, 1 Francesco Maselli defines Petri as a unique in- tellectual, “a man of culture and intelligence, passionate about the figurative arts,” a man ready to question the cultural policy of the Italian Communist Party (PCI).