Copyright by Paola D’Amora 2017 The Dissertation Committee for Paola D’Amora Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Cinematic Representations of Italian Office Workers From the Death of the Travet to Fantozzi, 1952-1983 Committee: Paola Bonifazio, Supervisor Daniela Bini Carter Douglas Biow Karen Pinkus Cinematic Representations of Italian Office Workers From the Death of the Travet to Fantozzi, 1952-1983 by Paola D’Amora Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin August 2017 Dedication I would like to dedicate this dissertation to my father, Domenico, an impiegato; to my mother Margherita, to my brother, Luca, and to my fiancé Ioannis, whose invaluable support and love reached me whenever I needed it the most. Acknowledgements My deepest gratitude goes to Professor Paola Bonifazio, to whom I owe so much of what I have been able to accomplish in my academic career. Not only has Professor Bonifazio’s mentorship and guidance been fundamental in every step of my dissertation research and writing effort, her excellence as a scholar and extraordinary commitment to teaching have vastly inspired my intellectual growth during my graduate school career. Additionally, I want to thank Professor Daniela Bini, for I will always treasure her academic mentorship and warm, sincere support. My deepest thanks also go to Professors Douglas Biow and Karen Pinkus for having shared their expertise in their respective fields and for having helped me find new insights and directions for my future research; to Antonella Del Fattore Olson, to whom I am profoundly indebted for everything I have learned about teaching. Finally, I would like to acknowledge the patient support of my colleagues, in particular those among them who invested endless hours discussing some critical transitions of the present work. I will miss them dearly. v Cinematic Representations of Italian Office Workers From the Death of the Travet to Fantozzi, 1952-1983 Paola D’Amora, PhD The University of Texas at Austin, 2017 Supervisor: Paola Bonifazio In this dissertation, I study the Fantozzi phenomenon within the scope of its most popular filmic renditions and in relation to its previous and contemporary representations of white-collar workers in Italian cinema. Among my primary concerns is the investigation of the origins and establishment of the Fantozzi figure’s popularity and unconventional longevity through the films Fantozzi and Il secondo tragico Fantozzi by Luciano Salce (1975 and 1976), Fantozzi contro tutti and Fantozzi subisce ancora by Neri Parenti (1980 and 1983). The chronological terms of my dissertation coincide with the production years of two films: Alberto Lattuada’s 1952 Il cappotto, and Neri Parenti’s 1983 Fantozzi subisce ancora. The selected timeframe will allow me to investigate the evolution of discourses and practices on work from the years of post-WWII reconstruction, to the beginning of the post-industrial era. The initial chronological term is functional to the investigation of vi postwar rhetoric of work and productivity in the national effort to promote modernization and progress. My analysis will subsequently progress to include comedies Italian style and their protagonists’ 1970s evolutions—some featuring traditional actors such as Nino Manfredi and Alberto Sordi, some new, like Paolo Villaggio. The end term of the present dissertation will be 1983, the year of release of the fourth film in the Fantozzi series and the outset of what some Italian film critics have referred to as “cinema del riflusso.” While innovative in its insistence on the work of an impiegato qua impiegato, Fantozzi’s features and gags are profoundly indebted to previous, Italian and international representations of clerical workers. With the analyses proposed in this dissertation, I seek to construct a coherent narrative on cinematic representations of clerical workers by identifying and contextualizing common themes and clichés across the films. vii Table of Contents Introduction ............................................................................................................. 1 Chapter One .......................................................................................................... 16 Insubordinate Italian Impiegati: Misappropriations of Office Space ................... 16 A White-Collar’s Dream of Unemployment: Gianni Puccini’s L’impiegato20 Dino Risi’s Il profeta ................................................................................... 37 Horizontal and Vertical Power Structure in Fantozzi .................................. 45 Fantozzi’s Ascent to Power: The Vertical Distribution of the Workers in the Megaditta ............................................................................................ 50 Chapter Two .......................................................................................................... 59 Masculinities in the Office: The Inept and the Loser from Nino Manfredi to Fantozzi ...................................................................................................................... 59 Studies on Masculinity and Gender Performativity ..................................... 60 Nino Manfredi in “Una giornata decisiva” from Dino Risi’s I complessi ... 64 Nino Manfredi in “Ornella” from Vedo Nudo ............................................. 70 Il giocattolo by Giuliano Montaldo ............................................................. 75 Fantozzi and the Grotesque .......................................................................... 80 Chi lavora è perduto by Tinto Brass ............................................................ 94 Chapter Three ........................................................................................................ 98 Free Time and Busy Time: Fascist Legacy in White-Collar Films ...................... 98 The End of the Travet: Moral and Physical Betterment in Puccini’s L’impiegato ........................................................................................................... 102 Spare time: Top-Down Cultural Consumption in Fantozzi’s Films .......... 115 Chapter Four ....................................................................................................... 141 Beyond Comedy: (In)dispensable Office Workers ............................................. 141 Dispensable White-Collar Workers: Lattuada and Gogol ......................... 145 viii Little Average Bourgeoisie: Familism and The Uncivil Society in Monicelli’s Un borghese piccolo piccolo, Dino Risi’s Una vita difficile and Carlo Lizzani’s La vita agra ....................................................................... 158 Private Sector Office Workers: Il Posto by Ermanno Olmi ..................... 167 Conclusion .......................................................................................................... 177 Bibliography ....................................................................................................... 183 ix Introduction Ragionier Ugo Fantozzi is an impiegato, an average Italian office worker, and a fictional character created by Italian actor and comedian Paolo Villaggio. Originally featuring in 1968 television show, Quelli della domenica, and in 1969 È domenica, ma senza impegno, Fantozzi subsequently acquired transmediatic resonance through his literary1 and filmic adaptations.2 A ten-film series preserved Fantozzi’s relevance and fame until today, over forty years since its first movie theater appearance in 1975. A synonym of maladroitness and submissiveness, the adjective “fantozziano” is a universally known reference among the great majority of native Italian speakers, as well as a testament to the film series’ enduring popularity. For its reliance on standard Italian over dialect and regional varieties, Fantozzi was conceived and recognized as a national emblem of average Italianness, thus marking a significant turn away from traditional comicality, characterized by linguistic and moral localisms.3 Part of national popular culture and collective imagination, the film series gave birth to a distinctive and currently recognizable use of the Italian language whose best exemplifications are incorrect subjunctive verbs (“vadi,” “batti,”) and plural forms 1 Inspiration for Fantozzi’s films comes from Paolo Villaggio’s novels about the life and work of 2 Aldo Grasso, Storia della televisione italiana (Milano: Garzanti, 2000), 203. 3 Francesco Anzelmo, “Più di un decennio. Gli anni settanta e i libri,” in Gli anni delle cose, Media e società italiana negli anni settanta, ed. Fausto Colombo (Milano: Pubblicazioni dell’università Cattolica, 2000), 25. 1 (“i diti”), along with commonly quoted and understood phrases from the films.4 Fantozzi’s mediatic trajectory is representative of a transitional decade in the evolution of spectatorship practices and stardom formation. Facilitated in their ascent to popularity by the mass-scale diffusion of television, Fantozzi’s films offer a representation of nationally shared linguistic and societal practices, whose characters and tropes I wish to examine as a post-industrial development of comedy Italian style’s human types. In this dissertation, I study the Fantozzi phenomenon within the scope of its most popular filmic renditions and in relation to its previous and contemporary representations of