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UCLA UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Misery is the True Script for Comedy: A Study of Italian Film Comedy in the 1950s Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/52s6f970 Author White, Christopher Burton Publication Date 2014 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Misery is the True Script for Comedy: A Study of Italian Film Comedy in the 1950s A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Italian by Christopher Burton White 2014 © Copyright by Christopher Burton White 2014 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Misery is the True Script for Comedy: A Study of Italian Film Comedy in the 1950s by Christopher Burton White Doctor of Philosophy in Italian University of California, Los Angeles, 2014 Professor Thomas J. Harrison, Chair This dissertation fills a lacuna in the history of Italian cinema, formally analyzes a selection of significant film comedies from the 1950s, and challenges many of the assumptions that have been made about postWar Italian cinema. The conservative atmosphere of the fifties, the detrimental effects of censorship on Italian cinema, and the return of popular genres after the end of the widely-acclaimed neorealist period have led to assumptions about a limited engagement With contemporary Italian society in the motion pictures produced in Italy during the 1950s. While most critics and film historians vieW these years in Italian cinema as the disappointing aftermath of neorealism, a decade in Which conservative elements in Italian society pushed national cinema in the direction of facile optimism and escapism, this dissertation demonstrates that many comedies in fact engaged with Italian society, ii offering incisive critiques of contemporary Italy that pinpoint and satirize hypocrisy, inequality, and a host of other ills of the Italian republic in the 1950s. This study considers existing scholarship on Italian cinema and reevaluates films starring the popular Neapolitan actor Antonio De Curtis (Totò), Renato Castellani’s Due soldi di speranza (Two Cents Worth of Hope, 1952) and other examples of neorealismo rosa (rosy or pink neorealism), and the movies directed by Federico Fellini featuring Alberto Sordi, both in terms of aesthetics as well as subject matter. This dissertation asserts that the thematic and stylistic innovations of these comedies directly influence the commedia all’italiana, the bitter comedies produced during Italy’s economic boom, and the future Works of renoWned Italian auteurs in the 1960s. iii The dissertation of Christopher Burton White is approved. Massimo Ciavolella Claudio Fogu Thomas J. Harrison, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2014 iv Misery is the True Script for Comedy: A Study of Italian Film Comedy in the 1950s Table of Contents Introduction 1 I. Totò: Misery is the True Script for Comedy 10 i. Origins ii. Totò on Screen: Fermo con le mani (1937) iii. Comic Neorealism: Totò cerca casa (1949) iv. Guardie e ladri (1951) and the Failure of Postwar Reconstruction v. Italian Bureaucracy: Totò e i re di Roma (1952) vi. Film Comedy, Censorship, and Totò’s Contribution to the commedia all’italiana: Totò e Carolina (1956) II. The “Waste Products” of Neorealism 81 i. The Consensus on neorealismo rosa ii. Rereading Pink Neorealism: Due soldi di speranza (1952) iii. Pane, amore e fantasia (1953) and Poveri ma belli (1957) III. Early Fellini and Alberto Sordi 139 i. Fellini, Sordi and Italian Film Comedy ii. Lo sceicco bianco (1952): The High Cost of Conformity and the Birth of the Sordi Type iii. I vitelloni (1953): Existential Torpor in the Provinces iv. Il seduttore (1954): Alberto as Middle-Class vitellone Conclusion 189 Works Cited 194 v VITA/BIOgRAPHICAL SKETCH Christopher Burton White earned a Bachelor of Arts in English from Kenyon College and a Master of Arts in Italian from the Middlebury College School in Italy. He has taught various levels of Italian language and culture as a visiting instructor at Oberlin College, the University of Arizona and Ohio University. Christopher has presented papers on Italian cinema at a number of academic conferences on a Wide range of topics, including the films of Mario Monicelli, Federico Fellini and Pier Paolo Pasolini. He authored an article concerning postWar film censorship in the Journal of Italian Cinema and Media Studies and recently published a brief analysis of a scene from Souvenir d’Italie (It Happened in Rome, 1957) in World Film Locations: Florence. He has released translations of excerpts from Federico Fellini’s Fare un film (Making a Film, 1980), a collection of the Italian director’s writings, in the journals Inventory and Senses of Cinema, and he is currently preparing a full-length version of the translation and an introduction to the volume for publication With Contra Mundum Press. His research interests include Italian cinema of the 1950s, postWar Italian history and culture, representations of urban space on film, and the commedia all’italiana (Italian style comedy). vi Introduction Very little attention has been paid in critical film studies to the comedies that predate the commedia all’italiana, due in part to a scholarly bias against popular cinema and to the elevated status of neorealism and the works of canonized auteurs in the history of Italian film. Paolo Noto explains that the reputation acquired by the motion pictures produced in Italy in the 1950s has suffered because of their location in history: “gli anni Cinquanta appaiono come quel periodo che non è più neorealismo e non è ancora quel tipo di cinema d’autore che si affermerà nel decennio successivo” (2011: 11). The films of the 1950s are often thought of as a “corrupted” form of neorealism, and “il comico e la commedia sono gli obiettivi polemici principali della critica alla corruzione del neorealismo” (15). Despite a resurgence of interest in the commedia all’italiana in recent years, the comedies that have played a fundamental role in shaping its bitterly comic criticism of contemporary Italy have not been investigated satisfactorily. The conservative atmosphere of the 1950s, the detrimental effects of censorship on Italian cinema, and the return of popular genres after the end of neorealism have led to assumptions about a limited engagement With contemporary Italian society in the motion pictures produced in Italy during this period. Contrary to the belief that these factors resulted in a decade-long lull in significant social and political commentary, comic cinema in fact continued to explore issues that dramatic films often avoided after pressure from key figures in the Christian Democrat party and the Catholic Church put an end to a perceived threat from 1 neorealism. A number of filmmakers discovered that comedies Were less likely to be targeted by the increasingly vigilant censorship committees of the Ufficio centrale di cinematografia and that Italian audiences Were often more receptive to discussions of difficult topics if they Were treated humorously (D’Amico 1985: 17). It Was therefore “una necessità non soltanto dell’autore ma della platea” that led to “soluzioni umoristiche per poter digerire” the difficulties of the aftermath of World War II in Italian films of the late 1940s and early 1950s (Sonego 1985: 182). In his “Discorso sopra lo stato presente dei costumi degl’Italiani,” giacomo Leopardi argues that the Italian populace is uniquely “cynical,” and that as a consequence the relationship betWeen laughter and quotidian existence assumes a peculiar character in Italy: Gl’italiani ridono della vita: ne ridono assai di più, e con più persuasione intima di disprezzo e freddezza che non fa niun’altra nazione [ . ] Il popolaccio italiano è il più cinico dei popolacci. (Leopardi 1824) NoWhere is this tendency to “laugh about life” more clear than in postWar Italian cinema, as the trials and tribulations of the War and the difficulties of the reconstruction period are often represented comically, even in primarily dramatic neorealist films. Italian cynicism does not preclude a redemptive quality of laughter, for in the Operette morali Leopardi “explains the paradox that the more clearly humans see their oWn desolation, the more given they are to mirth. Laughing is thus a method of transcending pain, an anodyne to grief” (Harrison 505). In L’umorismo, Luigi Pirandello expounds on What he calls the “sentimento del contrario,” a quality 2 of humor that might also explain the unexpected pairings, the clashes betWeen comedy and tragedy common in Italian cinema (1992: 50; 124-31). “According to Pirandello, humor is the ideal instrument for expressing the paradoxical nature of reality and denouncing the absurdity and pain of the human condition” (Bassanese 1997: 7). Neapolitan actor Antonio De Curtis (Totò) expressed a similar sentiment When he stated that “la miseria è il copione della vera comicità,” and his films demonstrate hoW misery and hardship often paradoxically become opportunities for laughter in Italy (qtd. in Faldini and Fofi 1977: 123). Italian comedies approached topics such as poverty and the housing crisis in the wake of World War II, and soon turned their attention to issues such as gender inequality and the clash betWeen Italian provincialism and the rapid modernization of a large portion of the peninsula With the approach of the economic miracle. The Italian cynicism Leopardi identified is central to the films produced in Italy since 1945, as the disappointments of the hope for radical change after the War’s end led to increasing bitterness and frustration discernible in Italian comedies. Mordant humor became a means of identifying and coping With the difficulties of daily life and the ills of Italian society, and this form of comedy Was present throughout the 1950s and later flourished in the commedia all’italiana. The commedia all’italiana is typically restricted to the period between 1958 and 1980, With many of the most representative titles produced during the years coinciding With the economic boom, or 1958 to 1964 (giacovelli 2002: 93).