III. La a che a dell h
C I ampi i (1957) a ce l h i alia 1. Il ge e e i a ife a i a i a f a c i a e ic cibile i c i cide a c a fa e di a f a i e dell a a a d i i e i d iale e di affe a i e di a de a i d ia c l ale2. Nella ec da e degli a i ci a a, e e l I alia a fa ic a e e a d a c i e la ic i e -bellica, il ci e a a i ale ce ca di i a e i ge e i la i e ddi fa e i de ide i di e i l gie di e a i, i ad ci -c l ale, ec ic e i b lic i a ida e l i e3. I e c e l h da a a e a be e ielab a l i i i e e e, la e i ei ge e i a c i del ci e a i alia , dall al a ha c e ife i e i e e ca ile e d i a a i ale4. N a e il i a del fil di F eda e Ba a, a il 1958 e il 1959 i I alia ci c la l d i e e i, a c i fil i i che ce ca di f a e la i a a e il cce i e a i ale (I alia i cl a) aggi dagli h della Ha e , i a ic la e da D ac la (Ho o of D ac la, Te e ce Fi he , 1958). I I alia il D ac la i e e a da Ch i he Lee di e ic a, a e il fil ice a i i iale a e e c a i alla ie i e i bblic c e e d il fil ce e, fa i e e e e ci, i g a i e i e i a i , i a a i di ie (c agli) ai i i di edici a i5. Le ecce i i i alia e d e. La i a la a dia Tempi d i pe i ampi i (S e , 1959) c Re a Ra cel che i c e i e di a i i e e a da Lee. C il fil di S e il ci e a i alia ce ca di fil a e e ielab a e il cce e l i g e ell i agi a i la e della fig a del a i , a fe e d il i dic ell a la a c a edi e a ea ag i a del fil e i ic -bal ea e e i e e d l el ci c i i e ediale c la a a ca e a D ac la cha cha cha . La ec da il fa a-h Cal iki, il mo o immo ale (F eda, 1959). Fi a fficial e e da F eda c l e d i di R be Ha , i eal fil di Ba a, acc edi a , al a a e ce . Il fil debi e della ci-fi ci e a g afica a i ci a a ed eali a lla cia di Blob Fl ido mo ale (The Blob, I i Yea h, 1958) e i a e a ici a da La mo e iene dallo pa io (Pa l He ch, 1958)6. Occ e a e de e il 1960 e ede e i g di h di d i e a i ale. Nell di e e c elle ale: L aman e del ampi o (Re a P l elli), La ma che a del demonio (Ma i Ba a), Seddok, l e ede di Sa ana (A Gi li Maja ), Il m lino delle donne di pie a (Gi gi Fe i), L l ima p eda del ampi o (Pie Reg li). T a ia, a diffe e a di Le fa iche di E cole (Pie F a ci ci, 1958), ca i i e dell ic - i l gic , al ge e e la e e a a i ale del e i d , e dei ci e fil eali a i el 1960 i c e cce ale da i e ca e a d i e i e ie 7. Il 1961 eg e i cal d i , i a e c e a dalla d i e di e e ie, c i i i di e l e i l gia fa a ifica, c l ic - i l gic , fil e di a del ci e a i alia di f di ed e po -o ien ed del e i d , a fa e da lab a i dell e i a dell accele a i e e a i le a e a b ali e e i e lici e i e e dal e e all i alia a8. Il 1962 cc a da fil i i e eg a da ca la dell h g ic ale L o ibile eg e o del D . Hichcock di F eda. Sa il 1963 l a ca di e e il c ic e di fil d i, a i ali icca Dan a macab a e La e gine di No imbe ga di A i Ma ghe i i; Lo pe o di F eda; La f a e il co po e I e ol i della pa a di Ba a. Me e a il 1964 e il 1966 e a e ca di e i fil di ilie , a i ali I l nghi capelli della mo e (Ma ghe i i, 1964), La c ip a e l inc bo (Ca ill Ma ci e, 1965), 5 ombe pe n medi m (Ma i P ill , 1965), Aman i d ol e omba (Ma i Caia , 1965), Ope a ione pa a (Ba a, 1966), Un angelo pe Sa ana (Ma ci e, 1966) a a e e ide e la c i i del dell e la id i e della d a da i e ca i i e a i ali. I i li ci a i i i a e e a i i del e i d 1957-66, che c i cide i la ga a e c il g ic all i alia a , c ela i a e e ge e di ellic le 9 f a da a e i a di i li10. I e ficie, il fil e 11 g ic i i a la c e a d i e h a gl -a e ica a (Ha e , A e ica I e a i al Pic e ), a d le ca a e i iche del a g ic ce e c : a bie a i i iche, a chi e e e l ghi labi i ici, a a ale, e aggi e e i a i, i ecci acchi i, e i e a i e delle ec iche di e e. Nel f d , il g ic acc glie e i e di c i i al e e, alla e ali e all ide i di ge e e e de ial e e e l i dal di c bblic e dal ci e a i alia i: aff a d il e e, il g ic aff a l i c fe a 12. Il g ic e ca l e della di g ega i e ciale e lica a i ic c chi ; e i di c i e i f da e i del i e e c e, del e e, della fa iglia, della e ali , e e i i a la i i e i e i le a [ ] lleci a d l ecce e la a g e i e e a d e al c e l effe a a e ll i di id e lle f da e a della c i 13. Le a bie a i i i a da a a c di i e a e ale, e a a il i del a a e la f ga dal e e e, aff a a da li g aggi fi ica e a ic . I l ghi (ca elli, li i, cale i e, c id i, e a ei e c i e, e lc i e be) adi c e i e cla f bic , di c i i e. L o ibile eg e o del D . Hichcock, Dan a macab a e Ope a ione pa a a eg ala i i a ic la e c e e e e la i a e e a i i della c i e ba cca e a a fica dell a i el ci e a g ic . Il fil di F eda ka e iel [ ] a i chi c le a e e ei e a 14. Dan a macab a dedal a a i , ce g afic e ill i i ic a il a a e il e e e, a eal , all ci a i e e i c b , eggia di e i al a e e i i a i e eali (l albe degli i icca i, la e a aglia a del e e e, il i e e a i a e el a c fag ). A a l a, il fil di Ba a c i ce e l e e ica delle i e acc ll ae a e del gge de di l i i fig a i e e ba i a le i e abili del g ic i alia (il c l ce del a della ba a i ca l g ell i ci i , l a i alla l ca da, la cala a i ale, l a a i i e della ba bi a e il la e della alla ei c id i, il ag i a che i c e e e ). Il g ic i alia a a e i e al accheggi e ale e alla c a i a i e di i l a, i a di g i a eggia e e e e iale e le f i 15. Ol e al g ic a gl a e, le i fl e e ci e a g afiche a i abili l e lici: l e e i i ede c , l h a e ica degli a i e a e a a a, l h fa a- edicale degli a i ci a a e l h e fa a ic e e (C c ea , D e e , F a j , P ell). Il m lino delle donne di pie a e e lifica be e c e il ge e e ia e a e e i i a i dei delli Ha e a i i e i ca i a i a ia e e i e e ale. Il fil da la ifaci e di M e of he Wa M e m (Michael C i , 1933) e Ho e of Wa (A d De T h, 1953) e dall al i e de Gli occhi en a ol o e I ampi i, a e e d dal di i a fig a i e da ell degli e lici i ichia i i e e ali [ ] i e lega e c al e e e ie e e ee ali Vamp (Ca l T. D e e , 1932) e il ci e a di P ell e P e b ge 16. Nel c e l h i alia ce ca legi i a i e ella a e i le e a ia. I i a di ad a i i i c ci i della le e a a fa a ica a l e fi i i i ga e li, a che e i alc i ca i (Ba a, F eda, Ma ghe i i) e cl d a ela i e deci a e e i de a a c la adi i e le e a ia17. Il g ic all i alia a e e a al e ca a e i iche igi ali, i a i delle c a i e a iche e fig a i e: la e ale a del a i i , il d i , il l fig a , la di e i e edicale dell cie ia a , il i dei i e del a a 18. Si c addi i g e e le a g e i i delle e della a e e a i e e e gli ecce i ili ici: le i e c d c al g e i e a e dei li i i della ale e del i ibile (e i , e e i i e ali, i le e e i c ali); i ec di i ad c i a fe e e e e e i iche e all ci a ie, e i e a i i c a iche e l i i iche, cchi ed effe i eciali deci a e e go e, l i a c ea e effe -ch c ll e a e. P eg e d lla chia e dell igi ali , il fa a ic a a ale el g ic a e b a i de e, i che a e i diab liche, a c fli i ali e i ecci deci a e e i e e i. I La ma che a del demonio il fa a ic a a ale e lici a chia a e e a a e la eg e ia, il a i i e la e e i e dei i, e e l e di fficiale di Ba a alla egia a a e c ce a l e a del ecca , della i i e e della e de a. Il fil e ha i fa i e a i debi i ei c f i della adi i e del el d a a 19, ge e e che a a e el g ic a e ie di e i i i iche, e iche e b e: c e ell e e a i ce a la c l a della d a, l h , a e d c e fig a ce ale la a i a, e af a e c e a della d a fa ale , della i a, a a della c l a dell ei c f i di di e che i f da lla fa iglia e la c da a i fe e di c ale20. Il g ic i alia i ca a e i a c e la ce ali della fig a fe i ile c e ele e e ba e 21 e i c ce a ell e l a i e del c fe i ile e ella icca a a e i e alla e ali e alle a afilie 22. La a e e e ca ica e ale li ea a dai ge i i, a i i e da al e a ife a i i cali ic d cibili al e e i del iace e e ale che a eg ali ell h i gle e. a e a che il e aggi fe i ile il l g ge e ic che c ie e e le l i i ega i e 23. I d e i ci ali a che i i del fil e, la d che a d G a d (Gia a Ma ia Ca ale) e I ampi i e la ega A a (Ba ba a S eele) i La ma che a del demonio d e di e e, e a i e e a i la ici, c a ic e e ella d i e del e i d . Il e a del d i a cia alla d a ( e e e i e a bi i fil ) e lici a e i e a bi ale e a cia all i agi e fe i ile, fa di ed i e e e e, de ide i e ib e , a i icca e i ad a i ela i e alla e e a e al l della d a ella c l a e ella adi i e i alia e 24. D al a a e, l a che i e la i i e i gi a della fe i ili e e a e a big a a ia la c l a ccide ale de a ed alla ba e del -fe i ile che a a e a il ci e a dell e e che gi ca a e i a a il ci e a i alia delle di e25. Il fil e g ic e i e a a l a i di i . Ba ba a S eele i La ma che a del demonio eg a l i g e e e e ei g i i alia i di fa a a e ic 26 che a a e e l h i alia a il 1960 e il 1966. La a fil g afia e c e le a e, gli a i (Ba a, F eda, Ma ghe i i) e le e l i i f da e ali27. I La ma che a del demonio i e e a la ega A a e il d i , la a Ka ja. U d lice l (la e dica ice a e l i ce e e gi e) che i e de a che i Aman i d ol e omba (M iel/Je ) e i Un angelo pe Sa ana (Ha ie /Beli da). I L o ibile eg e o del D . Hichcock i i a delle e e i i del a i e e e L e ca efice del i c i ge28. Ne I l nghi capelli della mo e Ma /Hele , fig a e dica ice che c d al g il gi a e K . I Dan a macab a i ca a l abba d alla a i e f e a a dell e ( i i l a d a ) e l a e a all a e affic , c i ade i ce a ie i Un angelo pe Sa ana all i eg a della e a di c cie a del i c e della libe a i e del fe i ile ( ia l i belle i degli i i ). L affe a i e della S eele e ide a della a f a i e adicale dei c i ciali e dei a i a ge e i che cca g e i a e e g a a e del ci e a, della a ale e a a e dei f e i del e i d 29. A a e il l ag e ic e feli il g ic a a e a il ci e a d a e (8 , Fede ic Felli i, 1963) e la c edia all i alia a. I L a ma a B ancaleone (Ma i M icelli, 1966) la e e a dell i c i i a Te d a (S eele) e B a cale e (Ga a ) gi ca a gli ile i del g ic e c l i a ella f iga i e di B a cale e da a e di Te d a, ibal a d ideal e e la ela i e ad a chi ica a Ne e ka e K i La f a e il co po. I a i a i e i e d c al e cia e e il fil e i e e a i l i a a ali i c e calc i ega i del e l , c fig e a chili deb li e fig e fe i ili f i30. All i e della i a ia i l i e c l ale degli a i e a a, il g ic e b a a e e a i i e di e g a dia: a a che di ie e ibile a lia e i li i i della i ibili , il ge e e a a da a i a i e ella ale la c fli ali lega a all i agi e del fe i ile affida a alla c a i i e di d e i delli la e gi e [ ] e la d a a i a [ ] a al a fa e i c i a i g i e aggi fe i ile a e e a c e i i a e e c 31. La c a i e ega i a del fe i e i b lica e e ie a ell i agi a i c lle i a e a e ia a a dell i fl e a, del e e e della e e di e de a della d a 32. Il i e del fe i ile de e i a il c e i e e l e e ci i di adi i e e ( i eda ad e e i La f a e il co po, La e gine di No imbe ga, Aman i d ol e omba), fi a e lici a e il e e ed i della ec filia che e ea il ge e e33. Il c bi a e, el d a a ed e i elegge il c a l g di a a i e e iale ed e i a e di e ibi i e del a g e i , dell ecce i , alifica d l h i alia c e bod gen e fi dalla a i a f la i e34. L h del e i d c c addi i da ga i a i e e ale i ce a a ll a a i e 35. La e e a i i iale de La ma che a del demonio a c a a l a e e la e, ff e d al bblic c il a chi a f c e l i chi da e della a che a a d ia a a i e, d i e di g di e a e e i i 36. Il ge e e ice ca la lleci a i e e a e il c i lgi e e i dell e a e fi dai a a e i: l a a i e e e ci a a da ei fil i i ia a gi dai fla i i idia i, e deli a i ed ecce i i, a e e i c edibil e e i i a i c le l f a i a effe , e i eg i e ella i i e degli acca i a i a ife i [ ] da fa ci i agi a e chi ali i e a g e i ibi i 37. La l gica delle a a i i a a a a e la al i a i e degli a e i alifica i il ge e e: i , e ali e ec l gia . U l i a e l gi ca il a e e a igia ale di cca i e ec ici degli effe i eciali38. La ela i e a e e ica, c ali e ec l gia c ce ali a a i d e e la e fi da Il m lino delle donne di ie a, i c i de e d a e i e alla ge ali cli ica ed e e ica di fe e di belle a i che ie ifica, a che a ed e ibi ce i c i delle gi a i d e da l i cci e. Il ca ill c le fig e fe i ili della S ia (le i e a a ife a i Gi a a d A c e Cle a a, la a a e la ecca ice) i c i cela i i c i delle i i e e lici a li ell e aci e a g afic (l h c e e ie di effe i eciali i ce a i l c ) e egi e adi c i (gli effe i del acab e ac l i e aggi all d alle ibili ea i i del bblic del ge e e h )39. Gli h ck i i i ( l i e c i de a i, e, a f a i i a i a), che a e e a la i ci ale al a del ge e e, a i i i e e a i c e aff edda e delle l i i e iche: la ca a i ale a che c e ichia all di e, l h ck i i fa da b . La di i a i e della belle a a e f e e ac la i e cla e [ ]. E a bi e il c a a del e che a a della e e i che a a c l i e il l : f egia , e f a , fig a , c a 40. Il i ic e e del l fig a 41 a che da c glie e c e a acc i b lic all ide i e i di c e eifica i e, id i e a dell del gge . L h i alia del boom e i e c a i i e a a ica del e e, a efig a i e c e el ca de Il m lino delle donne di pie a dell e e i a i e della i le a e del bod ho o cce i 42. Il c gge del d i i edic , ga i f agile e i decadi e , i l a e la ia a i e a e ige e a i e. Il i e della ila i e e a i e del c e e a a ie dai c idde i g ici i alia i . Il c fe i e i i a e la c ea i i adica dei mad doc o a ici a da la l h - 68 e dall al e i la ie e i e di a a a a ic . L h i alia i fa i i e eabile agli i della S ia43. Fil c e I ampi i, Seddok, L can h op , La e gine di No imbe ga, L o ibile eg e o del D . Hichcock, 5 ombe pe n medi m e i a i l gia ciale che de i a dai ca i di e i i , dai a a i e da Hi hi a 44. A a e il fil del g ic , il a a che i a d ce e i alleg ici , e a c lli i e ci cca e a fil , e a e e ia i c i i egi i dell a i c e e del e ic i i eccia a l 45. Si e i ad e e i a La e gine di No imbe ga e i a ic la e all e a i e chi gica di ca ifica i e del l c d a dai edici a i i e ie ca a el fla hback i bia c e e , e a fil i e c e Seddok i c i fa bella a alb di f g afie edicali che i a da di e a e e alla agedia di Hi hi a e all e c e e a d a e f a di e i ( ic di di Hi hi a )46. L e del e i d ae i di igi e a dagli a che i i del g ic e da l i i f de a dall i c fe a c e a e e dai a i del a a ece e (il a i , Hi hi a). Il d di d i e di e i fil i i i a al package- ni em a i e e47, ili a d a f la a ge , l i ieg di c ag ie i di e de i a e ei e i che i fa ca ic della d i e e ec i a, c di a d a l gli di, l i d ec l gic , il ca a i ic i e a i ale e l a igia a eciali a l cale. Tale i e a c i ga e i d i i ela i a e e a idi, a a i e e ili, b dge c e i e delle e e iche f i c ll , e ia e a e e i i a i e dei delli di a e a, a i e i di a i cela a i a i , icicl e c a a igia ale dei de agli. I che a le, gli h i alia i i c ll ca i eg e d i a ba c (da e di ce ili i a a i di d ece ili i di li e) a ag abile ai b mo ie a i e i48. Il ge e e a ca di a ecifica li ica d i a 49 ed c a da a ba a eddi i i i e a dei fil d a e i gli a i e a a e dal a ca ei e i e degli i i i della e di a all e e . N ci i fa i ca e i alia e eciali a e ella d i e di h che e a i c i i : alc e cie di icc le di e i i e d i c i l i i d cca i ale ( i e i a D a i e Ca e ie i), i e , a e la e degli a i e a a, be a c ag ie c ea e a i a e e e il i g l fil , e e c ai e ch ai le i ci ali ca e. L ica ecce i e c i i a dalla Gala ea, a ca la cie c i i e e i i e a i ali, ca ace di a e a e ella ia fil g afia, a fi a ia e e d i e di e a, Cal iki, Il m lino delle donne di pie a, La ma che a del demonio, La aga a che ape a oppo, I e ol i della pa a, Roma con o Roma, c Ba a (al e fi al 1963 di I e ol i della pa a) a fa e da ho e di ec o a egie (ci e delle e e del e i d , Gli in a o i, 1961, i cl ) e fil al a i c cl i50. P e e d ci delle e ali igi ali che eg a il ge e e, i di e che ci ia egi i eciali a i. T a il 1960 e il 1966 Ba a gi a a h lla d i a di fil di e i el e i d , Ma ghe i i e e F eda d e lla i dici a di i li fi a i da cia c el ede i i e all di e . Le li ee di c i i e ai a i abili ell i d ec ic -a igia ale, ei l i dei ag i i (Ba ba a S eele) e a c i a egli ce eggia i (E e Ga aldi)51. L h i a ie e c ai a gi i e all e e f ie ce dal i a i e agi a baci del d di d i e dei ge e i la i a a i ali del e i d . L h i alia i fa i ci e a da e a i e che i ega le ie igi i, di i la la a e ie a, e eg e a egie di a che a e 52 che i ad c i a i di a i a ie i a fia c degli i alia i che ce ca di a che a e la ia a i ali ; ella cel a di a bie a i i e iche; ell ad i e dell i gle e ei i li e di e d i i; e ella cel a di i ecci che e e i c gi l di ide i a i ali . F eda, che fi c il e I ampi i, a ib a e a cel a l i cce del fil , ed ebbe d di e i ia e e i e dica e l igi e della a ica di ili di e d i i: c i i e e e: l fi ai c e i alia . I ece, gli i alia i, dai l c a i ali, acce a l le fe cci e. I eg i h i i e e e e, e i gli al i i ha i i a 53. L bie i di i i a e ge e e a ie e di i d e le e a bie a i i ca a e i iche , ch di ddi fa e le a e a i e del bblic i e a do e a a ic la e ia a bie a a 54. I ampi i a bie a a Pa igi, Cal iki i Me ic , Seddok i F a cia, Il li delle d e di ie a ell Ola da di i i i N ece , La ma che a del demonio ella M lda ia del XIX ec l , L o ibile eg e o del D . Hichcock ell I ghil e a di fi e O ce , Lo pe o ella Sc ia del 1910; I l nghi capelli della mo e ell E a del XV ec l . L h aggi ge i e ca i e e i a a e le c a eci a i i (i al -a e ica e), le c d i i (e ee), la e di a all e e . U e e i di c a eci a i e Cal iki, d dalla Gala ea e da a cie di c d e di a ggi (la Cli a Pic e di L A gele ) della be i a Allied A i , che e di ib i l edi i e a e ica a el 1960. Il m lino delle donne di pie a a c d i e (i al -f a ce e) ge a a a fi e 1959 e gi a a a ca all del ge ai febb ai 1960 a I alia e Ola da, fil c i il egi e c d i c cede b dge ele a e il eg e 55. La ma che a del demonio i ece a d i e i alia a al ce e ce e e a e e c ce i a e i e ca i e e i, a e ica i i i a ba a ( egli S a i U i i ie e ac i a dalla A e ica I e a i al Pic e ). Il b dge a ia e il fil i al (144 ili i di li e) i e a ell di e e i ila i56. La e i e a e ica a, i i la a Black S nda (1961), a il aggi e cce della agi e e la ca a a e ica a. I ge e ale, dei ci ca 25 fil h d i i I alia a il 1960 e il 1965, a deci a i l a a e e e d a i c a eci a i e c c ag ie e ee a e ica e e i e i fil a ebbe a , ell a c al a i di ai d a i, di ib i e i e ca i a gl a e ica i 57. La a a i ali i cide i f di ll ide i del fil del e e i alia . L h a i ale i ela i abili del e , a l e lici e l ali di e i i la c i ca a da ice ca e i i e a f da i ll i a a di ib i a e ag a ica che ella d i a e e ale. La d i e e ec i a c a la - i c i a i e del e il d iaggi , di ad gi a d i li g a, f e d e i i d ia e a ici da ada a e ai e ca i di de i a i e. Le e i i di ib i e all e e e e e a a ia i ig ifica i e, c e el ca delle edi i i a e ica e de I ampi i e de La ma che a del demonio. S l f e i e l i cce di bblic e ide e. I ampi i i ca a c l e ca a i ale (ci ca 125 ili i) e c gli al i fil . Agli i alia i, l h e b a iace e. Il fil e e a e e a e ife ic , c lice a di ib i e fa a i ci al e e di i di e de i egi ali e di ca e i i. La diff i e del fil del e e i l e fil a a e li i a a da alc i ca a e i che a ad al e e elli che alifica il ge e e, c icch la l g a a i e li i a a ai gi i fe iali, e il di ie ai i i [ ] egi dica la ibili di f i e del ci c i di f di c i i dalle ale a cchiali 58. A fia c della ca i a di ib i e ( ci e ag a e i cl e), dei di ie i e dei li i i ella g a a i e, a i l e e c della ca a c ide a i e della a a, della c c e a a ie a e della c e e a di al ge e e la e ale il e l 59. E e, a e l ca cce al b eghi , la S eele a di a e l i agi a i ific ci c la ell i d ia c l ale. L h i ib ida c al i ge e i e fil i ( e l , fa a cie a, h ille ), de i a i a dia el c ic Tempi d i pe i ampi i, P co i imo (S e , 1961), Che fine ha fa o To o Bab ? (O a i Ale i, 1964)60, e a da i f a i edi a a elle c edie, f a di ci a i e le e ale e gge i a (La ma che a del demonio i I mo o i a i, Ma ci e, 1962) di i a i e di ca e e cia e i ic dei a i a i e i (L a ma a B ancaleone). A che la a ge e a i e di c i ici e ci efili i ci e a i e i e a i i el g ic . Nel 1960, egli e i e i i c i elle ale i alia e a da la i a da a di g ici i alia i, a e i ia a di a i ali e ci c la i e dell i agi a i h , gi a i i C ad Fa i a de e i e i a i a T i , de i a alche a d a idea e e di ige e le i i i a i i de e del i di D ac la c Hanno cambia o faccia (1971) e del i del G le c Baba Yaga (1973) eali a Il figlio di D ac la, c e aggi i 8 i i a a I ampi i e al D ac la di Fi he , c i c g a de a e i e e c a g a ie alla ci efilia e alla a i e e il fa a ic dell a e61. I i li di e a c e di della adi i e fa a ica e i a ic la e a i ica al ci e a. Fa i a li eali a a d c e f d f g a i e f di ce a ci a i da Lacl el Le Fan a i e a cin ma62, e lici a d c dei delli di ife i e (M a , B i g, E ei ) e ial e e c i a i e a ge e a i e di a a i a i, e i c i e e el eg a da a a ca a i ia, dal gi c legge dell a a iale e dalla e i ia i i a i a el ic ea e ad i e eg e i a a i i della adi i e h e el d a a ica. Dalla fi e degli a i ci a a, la g e i a diff i e di a a i e e ic g afie del e e c i lge el l c le il i e a ediale e la c l a la e. Nel 1959 Fel i elli i a g a la c lla a Il B i id e l A e a (i c i bblica i alc i dei gge i del ci e a g ic i alia )63, el 1960 Ei a di bblica le S o ie di fan a mi c a e da F e e L ce i i e el 1962 M dad i d alle a e la acc l a di acc i di Ma i S lda i S o ie di pe i64. Ma a a gli edi i i la i, d a al , lla cia del cce di D ac la, a i e a e eg e ba che a aggi e f a e diff i e. Si e i alla e ie I accon i di D ac la della ERP e alla c lla a KKK I Cla ici dell e delle edi i i EPI bblica e e a be a a i e dal 195965. I a ic la e la ec da c lla a, che ei i i e i bblica acc i de i da fil ci c la i elle ale, ha a chia a di ce de a ci e a g afica, i de e i fa i all i i ia i a edi iale di Ma c Vica i , a e, a i di R a a P de e gi d e c l A la ica Ci e a g afica. Vica i d ce La e gine di No imbe ga di Ma ghe i i a a i e da a dall i i l ci ella c lla a KKK . Il fil a a a l a a i ci e a . Dal 1961 i fa i Mal a F a i del b i id bblica ada a e i dei fil g ici i alia i66. E il e f e i ic Il boia ca la o (Ma i P ill , 1965) acc a di edi e di a i h alle e e c e i i f g afic e le ie c e i e, a bie a i ca ell i fe a da adic e aggi icalca dai f e i e f -f e i e i del e i d . N a e l ie a e a a i ale del ge e e e la ci c la i e del i agi a i l l a i ale, all a a e a i i di cce a che l e ca i e , il delica a a i a aggi della c d i e e ea e dei a idi i i i della e di a f fe a ia all e e e il edi c e e i c e ciale i a ia [ ] c aggia a [ ] a f la di e di a c e ella a a a da La ma che a del demonio e da Il m lino delle donne di pie a 67. La ice ca di f le e i chi e e c e e b a aggi ge e i i l a el 1962 c L o ibile eg e o del D . Hichcock, che gi ca lla c a i e degli a i ce g afici, dei e i ec ici, degli effe i, dei e i di la a i e; i e ca d c a c a al iba e al i a i . Ma ghe i i la a a e gi La e gine di No imbe ga e I l nghi capelli della mo e, e e Dan a macab a icicla il e de Il monaco di Mon a (Se gi C b cci, 1963). Si de e e e e c a che della c i i del i e a d i e fi a ia i del ci e a i alia ; i c i degli abili e i i fa e l i ibi i i, chi h a c e a i a ca a f ga dagli di, a ge d i e R a, La i e di i (L l imo omo della Te a, Sid e Salk , Ubald Rag a, 1964; 5 ombe pe il medi m, Il boia ca la o, Ope a ione pa a)68. I e ol i della pa a e ble a ic . Reali a i c d i e c la F a cia, c i i a dalla A e ica I e a i al Pic e che lla c a del ecede e cce a e ica di La ma che a del demonio (Black S da ) l i i la Black Sabba h e ie e di ib i i I alia a a e la Wa e B che a e a e acc d di di ib i e c la ca a di d i e del fil , la Gala ea. N a e e ad d i ed ec ic a a e e e e l i ghie , il fil i ili a a e dei e di fil ecede i fi a i dall e Ba a. La f la a e i di (Il elefono, I W dalak, La goccia d ac a) debi ice dei Raccon i del e o e (Tale of Te o , R ge C a , 1962) della e a AIP ie e i c icia a da B i Ka l ff, a a e ei a i di e e e ag i a dell e i di ce ale. La e e a di Ka l ff c e a a e-i b i e che i e ella di e a e e il bblic i ala, gi ca d ll i ia e la de i a i e c e ciale, de cia la l di e la i e dell h ele i i a i e e c e 69. U a a e e a i e a ai i che la e, a eggia e di e i , c a e le del gi c e cicl edic i gaggia c il bblic . L e il g del fil ce i iale di c ged b le c e de i ifica i affida all ic a Ka l ff. U di ela e dei ecca i i del ge e e e della a a a igia ale e a ba i i c dei cchi ili a i 70, che acchi de i d e e la e l e e a del d di d i e del ci e a del e i d . Ka l ff a ca all , a c a ei a i del e aggi di G ka, i e e a e I W dalak. Ka l ff a e a la ca alca a e, a e d il l dell i b i e, g a da i ca e a e i i lge agli e a i: Ecc fa . N i a e che d e a a da e a fi i e c ? [ ] Sia a i a i alla fi e delle e ie e c e a la cia i . U l i a ba a che i i a il bblic a g a e e la ca e a i i i a, ela d la fi i e del e : il ca all di leg i a i a da acchi i a, e e degli a e i i c i d agi a d delle f a che e i la e il i e ela i degli albe i, l f d a ca a e a, a i a da fa ci di l ce ie a i a a e a a a a caic che ci i a a a a di i fa ia e-ci e a g afica. La e ica del acc del e e a gl a e la cia il ca al chiacchie icci i di i della a ala a degli abili e i a i. R be Nic l i i abbi a e a icale i ic , beffa d e g e c : la da a acab a dell h i alia del e i d . L ibile eg e dell h i alia ela , la a che a dell h l a.
1 L affe a i e a a e c e da c di i ella le e a a, i eda a e i il ca i l N abbia alc a i a ia e gli i e l a ali i i c e a dedica a al fil c di e da F eda e Ma i Ba a. 2 Si eda A. Fa a i - U. De Be i, Le in en ioni: dalla ecnica allo ile, i Sc la a i ale di ci e a, S o ia del cinema i aliano. 1960-1964, a c a di G. De Vi ce i, X, Ma ili -Edi i i di Bia c & Ne , Ve e ia-R a 2002; Ma li - Pe ca e (a c a di), L a e del i pa mio ci . 3 G. Ma li, Da E cole a Fan o i. Cinema popola e e ocie i aliana dal boom economico alla neo ele i ione (1958-1976), Ca cci, R a 2012. 4 L i d ia ci e a g afica del e i d alla ice ca di delli e a iche ada i ai bblici la i i e a i ali. All i e del i ac l ec ic i alia il c a ci e a g afic ede eali a i, al a i di al i e i e eg e i, l i c e e delle e a i i e la ddi i i e a d i e a i e e ca i e e d i e po -o ien ed. 5 Si eda il gi di i della C i i e i da a 7 e b e 1958, i i a i da a 19 e b e 1958, c c e i a ella Ba ca da i della Re i i e ci e a g afica, i i e e i Be i e le A i i c l ali Ci e eca di B l g a, .i alia aglia.i . 6 Di Cal iki, i eda a che l a ali i i Pe a, Ma io Ba a ci ., che l a a, e il fil el fil , c e a e ig a di Cannibal Holoca (R gge De da , 1980). 7 F. Di Chia a, I e ol i della pa a. Il cinema ho o i aliano (1957-1965), U ife P e , Fe a a 2009, . 117. 8 E cole al cen o della e a (Ba a, 1961); Maci e all Infe no (F eda, 1961); Maci e con o il ampi o (Giac Ge il e Se gi C b cci, 1961); Maci e con o i mo i (G id Mala e a, 1962); E cole con o Moloch (Fe i, 1963); U nella e a di f oco (Gi gi Si elli, 1963); U il e o e dei Ki ghi i (A i Ma ghe i i, 1963); Roma con o Roma (Gi e e Va i, 1964). Il e l i a d al a a e adi i, i le e, b ali e c del e lici e, a c a i a di c i i i c e baci del legge da i e del a a ale, i alla e a l gia dell cc l , della i l gia e all image ie del fa a ic . Si eda Fl e F ca , Le P pl m: labo a oi e de l ho e , a c a di F. Laf d, Ca chema i alien , II, Le Cin ma ho ifi e, L Ha a a , Pa igi 2011, . 13-25. 9 R. C i, Fan a mi d amo e. Il go ico i aliano a cinema, le e a a e , Li da , T i 2011, . 33. C e c i e S. Della Ca a, L ho o , i S o ia del cinema i aliano. 1960-1964 ci ., . 319, i a di icc l a ig ifica i b che eg l i i i di a e i e fi a el e i e i e e el ci e a e ella c l a i alia i . Si eda a che G. F fi, Te e en I alie, i Midi-Mi i Fa a i e , 1963, 7, . 80-3, e L. C delli - G. Li i (a c a di), Fan I alia, Ca al g del XIV Fe i al i e a i ale del Ci e a di Fa a cie a, T ie e 1976. 10 Se e dia i c ide a i e i i fil ic d cibili e e e l al all h , il ale ale a a ci a i a; i cl de d e e i i che e la i a e del dal g ic e dal d la e ( e e e i Il demonio, B ell R di, 1963), ib ida i i (c il e l , c la fa a cie a, c il h ille ), a die fil di a i ali i alia a, e e a i gli effe i di d i e e e a. Ad e e i la c d i e f a c i alia a Il ang e e la o a (E mo i de plai i , R ge Vadi , 1960), a da Ca milla di Le Fa . Ma i eda a che Gli occhi en a ol o (Le Ye an i age, Ge ge F a j , 1960) al a c d i e f a c -i alia a. 11 U ili ia i il e i e e c ce di fil e , a ich di ge e e, ale a di e l f a e i e ie di i delli di cce , a c i i a i. 12 D. P e , S o ia della le e a a e del e o e. Il go ico dal Se ecen o ad oggi, Edi i Ri i i, R a 2006, . 22. 13 C i, Fan a mi d amo e ci ., . 117. 14 Della Ca a, L ho o , i S o ia del cinema i aliano 1960-1964 ci ., . 325. 15 Pe a, T a il Boom e il Ma che e De Sade: fon i e con e o del go ico i aliano (1957-1966) ci ., . 39. 16 Di Chia a, I e ol i della pa a. Il cinema ho o i aliano (1957-1965) ci ., . 117. 17 Si eda C i, Fan a mi d amo e ci ., i a ic la e . 49-54. Si eda a che Pe a, T a il Boom e il Ma che e De Sade: fon i e con e o del go ico i aliano (1957-1966) ci ., . 39: U a ice ca lle f i lib e che e ide ia e i l gie: 1) Fil che dichia a a f e le e a ia effe i a e e a a [ ] 2) Fil che dichia a f i i a e i e a e e fa lle [ ] 3) Fil che cela le ie f i . 18 Pe a e a ed e a i a a a ia del ge e e, i eda Pe a, Doppi di noi e i ci . 19 Ibid., . 34. 20 M a, Viaggio al cen o dell o o e i aliano ci ., . 28-9. I ela i e alla i e a del el d a a, e e di M a i eda a che Il cinema fan a ico i aliano. Un fenomeno p od i o ma ginale ci ., i a ic la e . 195. Si eda i ece l el d a a E. M eale, Co piange ano. Il cinema mel nell I alia degli anni cin an a, D elli, R a 2011; L. Ca d e, Il melod amma, Il Ca , Mila 2012. 21 C i, Fan a mi d amo e ci ., . 34-5. 22 Ibid., . 7. I e ficie, i eda ad e e i le ce e di d a iale i L l ima p eda del ampi o, I l nghi capelli della mo e, Un angelo pe Sa ana e l e lici a a i a i e dei i li a e ica i al ci c i della e -e l i a i : L can h op (We e olf in a Gi l Do mi o , Pa l He ch, 1961), L aman e del ampi o (The Vampi e and he Balle ina), L l ima p eda del ampi o (The Pla gi l and he Vampi e). La di e i e fe i ile c i a a a e il d della da, della a a ill a a e dei c c i di belle a, el d e e ic -e e i che ha eg a la c l a la e e l i agi a i e ic i alia fi dal d g e a i ca a a e Gia a Ma ia Ca ale fi da I ampi i ed e l de el ci e a del boom, h i cl . Si eda a che le e e e di ball e i i a di e lici i la e ali alla d a c e balle i a della e e i egli h del e i d . 23 Della Ca a, L ho o , in S o ia del cinema i aliano 1960-1964 ci ., . 320. 24 C i, Fan a mi d amo e ci ., . 118. 25 B. Dijk a, Idol of Pe e i . Fan a ie of Feminine E il in Fin-de- i cle C l e, O f d U i e i P e , O f d 1986. S l -fe i ile , i eda B. C eed, The Mon o - Feminine, R ledge, Ne Y k 1993. 26 C i, Fan a mi d amo e ci ., . 119. 27 La ma che a del demonio, L o ibile eg e o del D . Hichcock, Lo pe o, Dan a macab a, I l nghi capelli della mo e, 5 ombe pe n medi m, Aman i d ol e omba, Un angelo pe Sa ana. 28 I eal , c e a a , a che el ca della i i a il e aggi i e e a dalla S eele (C hia) l i e ca il e a a i a e e i i aglia il l di e a e che i a e a ei e i i dell i dagi e. La d a c a e e la f i e di gge c ic , i i di i di a Fi al Gi l e b i ale. Si eda Deb ah T chi, Vi ima o ca nefice? La app e en a ione della donna nel go ico i aliano, i Gene e e gene i. Fig e femminili nell immagina io cinema og afico e c l ale i aliano, a c a di M. Fa chi e L. Ca d e, i C ica i i S ciali , a. XXIX, 2007, 2, . 257. 29 Nella i a e degli a i e a a a e de a e dell h c e a a a a ea i e ediale: i eda ad e e i le c e i e della c lla a di a i h KKK I cla ici dell e i a g a a el 1959, ill a i i c i e ll acc a e a e e e , c bi che c il a a e del e de e g e i li a e e l e ic ; i eda a che le c e i e di Malia F a i del b i id (dal 1961) e dei f e i e i (dal 1962). Il ca bia e ei c i lega a i agi a i ific i e c a che l g a bblici ica la e di ca a e e e ic che a ia a a i i i dece i i i ia a e a de i l fi i e degli a i e a a, i a ic la e g a ie all a i e l i a di Re Ba bie i, a d a a i a f e i -h e e i i i. Si eda ad e e i le e ie delle a i e: Jac la (1969- 82), L cife a (1971-80), Zo a la ampi a (1972-85), S kia (1977-86). 30 C i, Fan a mi d amo e ci ., . 121. 31 Di Chia a, I e ol i della pa a. Il cinema ho o i aliano (1957-1965) ci ., . 211. 32 J. Ha ki , C ing Edge. A -Ho o and he Ho ific A an -Ga de, U i e i f Mi e a P e , Mi ea li (M ) 2000, . 77-8. Si eda a che D. J. Skal, The Mon e Sho . S o ia e c l a dell ho o , Baldi i & Ca ldi, Mila 1998, . 187: L e a i e a i egli e ale di a d a e e a e e eda i , e C i, Fan a mi d amo e ci ., i a ic la e . 118-30. 33 Si eda Di Chia a, I e ol i della pa a. Il cinema ho o i aliano (1957-1965) ci ., . 75: L e ibi i e del l de a [ ] e del c ca ifica , che a cia alla ec filia il e e ed i . La ec filia e al e a ea alla le e a a e a ce e ca i alia a, i eda ad e e i il a di Ma ia i La ma che a di ce a (1879). 34 Pe la i e di b d ge e , i eda L. Willia , Film Bodie . Gende , Gen e, and E ce , i Fil Q a e l , LXIV, 1991, 4. 35 F. Pi a i , L o ibile eg e o dell ho o i aliano, i L a e del i pa mio ci ., . 34. S lla f i e delle a a i i el ci e a del e i d , i eda a che Di Chia a, I e ol i della pa a. Il cinema ho o i aliano (1957-1965) ci ., i a ic la e . 88-91. 36 Ibid., . 90. 37 S. Pi elli, R. M cchi, A. B chi i, Bi a e Sinema! Wilde , Se ie , Wei de , Slea ie Film . Ho o all i aliana 1957-1979, Gli e i g I age -Ne bi i, Fi e e 1996, . 9. Pe l a ali i della ca ell i ica bblici a ia di alc i fil del e i d , i eda Di Chia a, I e ol i della pa a. Il cinema ho o i aliano (1957-1965) ci ., . 223-48. 38 S lla ela i e a ec l gia, ce i d i i e h i alia , i eda Pi a i , L o ibile eg e o dell ho o i aliano ci . L a c e ce el ci e a cce i , giall e go e i e a, i eda ad e e i i c ib i di Ca l Ra baldi e Gia e De R i. 39 Di Chia a, I e ol i della pa a. Il cinema ho o i aliano (1957-1965) ci ., . 99. 40 C i, Sche mi d amo e ci ., . 124. 41 Pe a, Doppi di noi e i ci ., . 26: Se c i agi e che ia e i ca a e i igi ali dell h i alia degli a i Se a a ella del l fig a . 42 Cf . il ca i l Il a g e e la c del . Si eda a che A. B f , S p i ing O igin . Flo en ine 18 h-Cen Wa Ana omical Model a In pi a ion fo I alian Ho o , i Ki e e , II, 2003, 9. 43 Si eda A. L e ei , Shocking Rep e en a ion. Hi o ical T a ma, Na ional Cinema and he Mode n Ho o Film, C l bia U i e i P e , Ne Y k 2005. 44 Ha ki , C ing Edge. A -Ho o and he Ho ific A an -Ga de ci ., . 74. 45 L e ei , Shocking Rep e en a ion. Hi o ical T a ma, Na ional Cinema and he Mode n Ho o Film ci ., . 2. 46 Il i l i e a i ale i diff del fil di Maja A om Age Vampi e. 47 D. B d ell, J. S aige , K. Th , The Cla ical Holl ood Cinema: Film S le and Mode of P od c ion o 1960, C l bia U i e i P e , Ne Y k 1985. 48 A i l di e e i , i e i a La ma che a del demonio c ce i e c a a ge i a ec d ele e di do ble fea e. 49 Pi a i , L o ibile eg e o dell ho o i aliano ci ., . 35. 50 Si eda S. Ve i i, Gala ea pa (1952-1965). S o ia di na ca a di p od ione cinema og afica, AIRSC, R a 2002. 51 Fi a le ce eggia e di L aman e del ampi o, L can h op , L o ibile eg e o del D . Hichcock, La e gine di No imbe ga, La f a e il co po, I l nghi capelli della mo e, Il mo o dell ope a (P l elli, 1964), La c ip a e l inc bo, Libido (Ga aldi, 1965), La lama nel co po (Eli Sca da aglia, 1966). 52 Pi a i , L o ibile eg e o dell ho o i aliano ci ., . 34. Si eda a che C i, Fan a mi d amo e ci ., . 37 gg., l a e, a a i e dall e e ie a di F eda, i a ede el a che a e il eg di a c fi a c l ale del ci e a di ge e e i alia a c f c i delli e le e i e a i ali. 53 I e i a di S efa Della Ca a, i Ricca do F eda, a c a di E. Ma i i e S. Della Ca a, Be ga Fil Mee i g, Be ga 1993, . 60. 54 Ba chie a - Di Chia a, A Po ca d f om he G indho e E o ic Land cape and I alian Holida in L cio F lci Zombie and Se gio Ma ino To o ci ., . 105. 55 Ci ca 180 ili i, il d i di Cal iki e di ci ca a e i e a ell de La ma che a del demonio e de I ampi i. I da i i ia i di fi a ia e ica a i ella aggi a e dei ca i dai fa cic li c e a i e l A chi i ce ale dell S a . 56 S lla ic i e delle ice de d i e del fil , i eda Ve i i, Gala ea pa (1952- 1965). S o ia di na ca a di p od ione cinema og afica ci ., e Pe a, Ma io Ba a ci . 57 Di Chia a, I e ol i della pa a. Il cinema ho o i aliano (1957-1965) ci ., . 42. 58 Della Ca a, Ricca do F eda ci ., . 323. 59 Sa l ic - i l gic a ff i e a i a al de ide i di ca bia e che fa da f d all a e del b ec ic (Ma li, Da E cole a Fan o i ci .) a i a d a il 1957 e i i i a i e a a bblici di f di a a i ali, dalle ale di ec da e e a i i e i alia e ai ci c i i i di e de i a i e i, dai e ca i edi ie ali a elli a ia ici, f i e a a i eg i dal fil e e e . 60 Della Ca a, Ricca do F eda ci ., . 329-30. 61 C ad Fa i a, a e e il f e (Diabolik, Zakimo , Selene), il ci e a (fil di fi i e, d c e a i i d iali), e la ele i i e (ca elli i a ic la e), e l g e bblici a i e A a d Te a, a ie e, a delle fig e i lied iche e i a i e del e i d . A ca all a gli a i ci a a e e a a, a i f da i e c llab a i dell e e ie a della i i a Ce fil e del Ce i e i a i ci e a g afic di T i (di c i a a che e ide e) c Gia i R d li e a e di g afie dedica e a I g a Be g a ( Q ade i di d c e a i e ci e a g afica , I i del ci e a- Ce fil , 1959, 4) e F a k Ca a ( Q ade i di d c e a i e ci e a g afica , I i del ci e a- Ce fil , 1960, 8). 62 Michel Lacl , Le Fan a i e a cin ma, di i Pa e , Pa igi 1958. Da Lacl Fa i a ci a i di e di a a i i e: No fe a (F ied ich Wilhel M a , 1921), The Ma k of he Vampi e (T d B i g, 1935), Ho e of D ac la (E ic C. Ke , 1945), The P e ie M de Mi e (R be Fl e , 1936), D ac la (B i g, 1931), The Tell-Tale Hea (Cha le Klei , 1928), La Ch e de la mai on U he (Jea E ei , 1928). La c i i e di a adi i e i di e a i i e e e Fa i a c Baba Yaga i c i ci a e e a e e e e da De Golem, ie e in die Wel kam (Ca l B e e, Pa l Wege e , 1920). 63 Si eg ala i a ic la e O. V l a - V. Ri a (a c a di), I ampi i a noi, c lla a Il b i id e l a e a , Fel i elli, Mila 1960, 2 (37 ie di a i i c a e e a i e di R ge Vadi , a c i il acc alla ba e dell e di di Ba a: Il Vij di Nik laj G g l ) e al e i i i d e l i a l gici bblici a i c la f la Alf ed Hi chc ck e e a (che i e de a l i a e ie ele i i a a e ica a): 25 accon i del e o e, c lla a Il b i id e l a e a , Fel i elli, Mila 1959, 1; I e o i che p efe i co, c lla a Il b i id e l a e a , Fel i elli, Mila , 1960, 4. P cho (c il i l P co e di ie ai i i di a i 16) e il i di ce a e la ie i e i bblic ell b e del 1960, i c c i a a c l ci a della ec da a l gia ci a a. 64 C. F e - F. L ce i i (a c a di), S o ie di fan a mi. Raccon i del op anna ale, Ei a di, T i 1960, al c i i e i eg ala la e e a di La bella ade ca ice (The Beckoning Fai One) di Oli e O i ( e d i di Ge ge Oli ie ), alla ba e della ce eggia a di Un an illo po o di campagna (Eli Pe i, 1968); M. S lda i, S o ie di pe i, M dad i, Mila 1962. 65 Si eda L. C i, Inc bi l Te e e. La o ia dei KKK. I cla ici dell o o e, P f d R , R a 2013; S. Bi li - L. C i, La o ia dei Raccon i di D ac la, P ofondo Ro o, R a 2013. Si eda a che C i, Fan a mi d amo e ci ., i a ic la e . 57-62. S lla ela i e a a ife i e c e i e, i eda Di Chia a, I e ol i della pa a. Il cinema ho o i aliano (1957-1965) ci ., . 249-57. 66 T a i fil ada a i: L l ima p eda del ampi o, Il mo o dell ope a, L aman e del ampi o, Me emp co (A i B ccacci, 1963), La c ip a e l inc bo, Il boia ca la o, La e gine di No imbe ga, 5 ombe pe n medi m, Il mo o di Vene ia (Di Ta ella, 1965), Aman i d ol e omba. 67 Di Chia a, I e ol i della pa a. Il cinema ho o i aliano (1957-1965) ci ., . 42. 68 Il 1964 l a di e l i e del e e all i alia a e di di l i e del e l e del i h i alia , d e fil i a i all b a degli abili e i a i e della a d e a eciali a a. Il fil e g ic dei i i a i e a a c a e i i c c i a a dell li a e e l e ic e il giall ed a che cla a , i e i i di effe a e a, dall e e e . 69 Sig e e ig i, i B i Ka l ff , e che ia e e i al ci e a da li [ ] gli i i i, i a i i e e i e. F e a c e ed acca a i. Eh, gi , e ch a a che al ci e a . Si eda la e ie ele i i a Th ille c d a da Ka l ff lla Nbc e d e agi i a il 1960 e il 1962. 70 Della Ca a, Ricca do F eda ci ., . 326-7. La Dolce Morte
Vernacular Cinema and the Italian Giallo Film
Mikel J. Koven
T H E S C A R E C R O W P R E S S , I N C . Lanham, Maryland • Toronto • Oxford 2 0 0 6 C H A P T E R O N E
What Is Giallo?
Several years ago, I produced a lengthy article on the relationship between contemporary urban legends and the slasher films largely produced in Canada and the United States in the later 1970s and early 1980s. As part of that piece, I characterized three different types of the slasher film: those slashers that are based on urban legends, which I called "terror tales"; "psycho-character studies," those films that attempt to understand the serial killer from the psycho-sociological perspective, using the killer himself (they are usually male) from the inside; and finally what I called "Scooby-Doo movies"—which I characterized thus:
named after the children's animated television series which deals with a gang of teenagers solving what appear to the adult, outside world as supernatural mysteries, but are ultimately revealed to be non-supernatural in nature, and are usually the result of some adult who uses the supernatural legend to distract other people from discovering his/her own illegal operation. In the "Scooby- Doo" slasher films, however, the killer is revealed to be human and using some kind of killer-legend to distract from their own motives. These slasher films are, in reality, gory murder mysteries, where the "game" for the audience is to attempt a hypothesis as to whom the killer may be out of a set group of people. ( 2 0 0 3 a : np)
O n e of the readers for this article queried the relationship between what I was calling the "Scooby-Doo" movies and the Italian giallo, and in the final published version of the paper I made a vague and noncommittal
1 2 Chapter One
connection between the two in a footnote. But almost immediately after submitting that final edit of the paper, I continued thinking about the re- lationship between the giallo and the slasher movie and realized my term "Scooby-Doo" movie was inaccurate: this particular form of slasher was ac- tually (North) American gialli. My intention at the time was to continue my research into the slasher film, and in preparing that research I wanted to firm up the connection be- tween the slasher and the giallo. To do this, I sought out an article or two that defined the giallo, as genre, and gave some reference to the defining charac- teristics of these films. T h e giallo at this stage in my research was highly pe- ripheral to my study. Unfortunately, no such articles or pieces of research could be found. Disappointed and discouraged, I decided that I would have to write those articles myself; but as I dug deeper and deeper into this genre of Italian vernacular filmmaking, I identified increasingly significant issues that had not been discussed within film studies—that were not only essential to a discussion of the giallo, but to a larger form of cinema language that of- ten falls below the radar of most "serious" film watchers. This was back in 2002, and for the next three years I found myself exploring the labyrinthine world of the Italian vernacular cinema of the 1970s. These are the results of that exploration. First, before discussing the giallo film as vernacular cinema, some defini- tion of the genre itself is required. T h e word giallo simply means "yellow" and is the metonymic term given to a series of mystery novels that the Milanese publisher Mondadori began producing in the late 1920s. These paperback novels, often translations of English-language novels by writers like Arthur Conan Doyle, Ngaio Marsh, Agatha Christie, and Edgar Wallace, were pre- sented with vibrant yellow covers. A few years earlier, Mondadori had achieved success with a series of romance novels published with bright blue covers, and so their "giallo" series was an extension of this color-coding of popular literature. T h e "giallo" series is still going strong, with Mondadori continuing to publish gialli paperbacks with vibrant yellow covers. Very quickly other Italian publishers joined in on the demand (or at least avail- ability) of mass-market murder mystery novels. Dozens of competing series were produced, all using the term giallo, further defining the literary genre within an Italian context. A quick perusal of a list of those books published in the 1930s and early 1940s reveals that Edgar Wallace seems to have been one of the most popular authors—certainly translations of his novels are plentiful in the various series, followed closely by Agatha Christie, Conan Doyle, and Dorothy Sayers. T h e term giallo acts as a metonym for the entire mystery genre: in a British or North American bookstore, if we wanted to What Is Giallo? ~ 3
find, say, an Agatha Christie novel, we would look for a section called "Mys- tery"; however, in an Italian bookstore, that section would likely be called "Giallo." So at the most basic level, any murder-mystery narrative could be
classed as giallo.1 Despite their popularity during this period, gialli were seen as corrupt and decadent by the Italian Fascist government; it viewed the books as advocat- ing the worst kinds of criminal behavior (as opposed to the "right" kinds of criminal behavior, like their Racial Laws). In spite of this, or maybe because of it, filmmakers tended to overlook the giallo as potential source material. Fascist cinema tended to prefer the facade of sophistication in the so-called
"White Telephone" films. 2 Literally the first giallo film was made under Mus- solini's nose toward the end of Italy's participation in the Second World War. Luchino Visconti's Ossessione ( 1 9 4 2 ) , although mostly heralded as the first neorealist film, since the film is loosely based on James M. Caine's novel The
Postman Always Rings Twice ( 1 9 3 4 ) , is also the first giallo film. 3 Perhaps sig- nificantly, Visconti did not read Caine either in the original English or in an Italian translation, but in French; the novel was given to him by Jean Renoir (Liehm 1984: 5 2 ) . So, whether or not Ossessione was literally a giallo—that is whether or not an Italian translation published by Mondadori or any of the other competing publishers was then currently available—might be moot; the crime film, based on the popularity of the crime novel {giallo) was seen as potentially ideologically subversive, at least under Fascism. That being said, perhaps it is ironic that, although the script for Ossessione passed by Mussolini's censors untouched, Vittorio Mussolini, II Duces son, was said to have been appalled by the film, and officially it was condemned by the gov- ernment (Liehm 1984: 5 7 - 5 8 ) . What is significant for this current discussion of Ossessione in respect to the giallo is that part of the filmmaker's mandate was to "reopen Italian film to foreign influences and to re-establish contacts with the world culture disrupted by the fascist isolationism" (Liehm 1984:
57).4 T h e later giallo filmmakers tend to be contextualized within other forms of exploitation horror cinema, although often they worked in as many different genres as were being produced within Italian cinema at the time—mondo documentaries, zombie pictures, police action films (poliziotto), and sex comedies. So most histories of giallo cinema, such as are available, contextu- alize the genre within the history of Italian horror cinema, rather than the crime film, with Mario Bava unofficially credited with inventing the giallo as a cinematic genre. This invention can be said to have occurred through two specific films. Bava's The Girl Who Knew Too Much (La Ragazza che sapev troppo) ( 1 9 6 2 ) established the giallo films' narrative structure: an innocent 4 <—--' Chapter One
person, often a tourist, witnesses a brutal murder that appears to be the work of a serial killer. He or she takes on the role of amateur detective in order to hunt down this killer, and often succeeds where the police fail. Two years later, Bava further developed the genre with Blood and Black Lace (Sei donne per I'assassino) ( 1 9 6 4 ) . This film, although the narrative structure is quite dif- ferent from Girl, introduced to the genre specific visual tropes that would be- come cliched. Specifically, the graphic violence was against beautiful women; there were many murders committed (in Girl, all the victims are stabbed the same way, but in Blood and Black Lace we see stabbings, strangu- lations, smothering, burnings, and other violent acts); but most important is the introduction of what was to become the archetypal giallo killer's disguise: black leather gloves, black overcoat, wide-brimmed black hat, and often a black stocking over the face. Obviously, at the time these films were being made, Bava thought he was just making entertaining horror/mystery pictures, not that he was establishing a genre as such. Nevertheless, Gary Needham sees the opening sequence of Girl, where we are introduced to Nora Davis (Letitia Roman) on an airplane arriving in Rome for a holiday, reading a gi- allo novel, as announcing the arrival of a new self-aware kind of genre, what
Needham calls mise en abyme ( 2 0 0 3 : 1 3 6 ) . 5 T h e year 1970 is generally considered the key threshold for giallo cinema, due to the international success of Dario Argento's The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (Luccello dale piume di cristallo) (1970), which takes the innocent eyewitness who becomes an amateur detective through a grisly series of murders from Bava's Girl and adds the graphic violence and iconically dressed killer (black hat, gloves, and raincoat) from Bava's Blood and Black Lace. It is this combina- tion that really defines the giallo film as it is more commonly understood. An av- alanche of similar films was quickly brought out by Italian producers looking to cash in on Argento's success, all using combinations and variations on the com-
plexity of the mystery, with the standard giallo-killer disguise. 6 In West Germany at the time, there was a parallel movement in crime cin- ema, the krimi. In many respects, Bava's The Girl Who Knew Too Much drew upon the German krimi tradition, which predated Bava's first giallo by a year: Dead Eyes of London (Die Toten Augen von London) (Alfred Vohrer, 1961) and The Green Archer (Der Griine Bogenschiltze) (Jiirgen Roland, 1961) were both based on novels by Edgar Wallace, who appears to have had a remarkable pop- ularity in postwar Germany. Likewise, Dario Argento was heavily influenced, not only by Bava, but by these krimi films too, as Julian Grainger noted:
Argento drew on the German brand of murder-mystery (or krimi), usually based on the works of Edgar Wallace and hugely popular in the 1950s and What Is Giallo? <—-- 5
1960s. In Wallace's novels the hero was usually a Scotland Yard detective but the cases he was called upon to solve often had something of the bizarre or ex- otic about them. B o t h The Cat O' Nine Tails and The Bird with the Crystal Plumage were sold in Germany as based on novels by Edgar Wallace's son Bryan. T h e Italian giallo mixed the krimi with the police procedural and added a twist of its own; an almost fetishistic attention to the murderer and the killings he (and sometimes she) perpetuated. ( 2 0 0 0 : 1 1 8 )
As Ken Hanke noted regarding the cross-fertilization between the gialli and krimi:
The final film from Rialto, Massimo Dallamano's Cosa avete fatto a Solange? . . . , was ultimately less a krimi than it was an early giallo, the form that took over from the krimi in many ways. Old Rialto favourites Joachim Fuchsberger and Arin Baal were in the cast and the film claimed to have been "suggested" by Wallace's The Clue of the New Pin, but it was a different sort of film for a different audience and a different time, and might best be viewed as an homage to the krimis rather than a true member of the series. ( 2 0 0 3 : 1 2 3 )
I point out this parallel tradition to demonstrate that the giallo was not entirely an independent phenomenon; these films were heavily influenced by, not to mention funded by and marketed to, international interests beyond Italy.
Filone
Although, in Italian, the word genere does literally mean "genre," within the context we are currently discussing genre, the Italian filone may be more ap- propriate. In literary studies, the giallo, like crime or detective fiction as genre, would he considered genere. Filone, on the other hand, would tend to be used primarily in a more scientific context, like geology (where filone would refer to a vein of mineral in a rock) or geography (as in the main cur- rent in a river). However, rather than the more traditional literary approach, filone here tends to be used more idiomatically, as in the phrase "sullo stesso filone" ("in the tradition o f ) or "seguire il filone" ("to follow the tradition o f ) . Even the geological use of filone has an English equivalent: to be "in the vein of." Wagstaff defines filone as "formula," which in reference to cinema is of- ten "dismissed as sottoprodotto (a debased, ersatz product)" (1992: 2 4 8 ) . Paul Hoffmann, writing in the Neu> York Times, defined filone (in the sense I am discussing it) as "streamlet," as in a small stream off a main river (quoted in McDonagh, 1994: 9 5 ) . Putting these together, if we think of a larger generic 6 •—' Chapter One
pattern as a river, in this context the giallo as genre, several smaller "stream- lets" branch off from that genre-river, occasionally reconnecting to the main flow farther "downstream." Perhaps, in some cases, what we think of as a film genre, like the giallo, may be a cluster of concurrent streamlets, veins, or tra- ditions—filone.
It should be understood then that the giallo is something different to that which is conventionally analysed as a genre. T h e Italians have the word filone, which is often used to refer to both genres and cycles as well as to currents and trends. T h i s points to the limitations of genre theory built primarily on Amer- ican film genres but also to the need for redefinition concerning how other popular film-producing nations understand and relate to their products. (Needham 2 0 0 3 : 1 3 5 - 3 6 )
On the one hand, as Gary Needham does, we can see the giallo as less a distinct genre of film than as a filone of the larger horror or crime genres (this latter, of course, in Italian, is giallo). On the other hand, from a more con- servative literary perspective, if we see the giallo as referring to the entire crime genre of literature (which it does, at least in the original language), then it should be possible to identify smaller variations on that genre—the various filone that make up the genre, at least in popular cinema. Or, as I am here, we can see filone more idiomatically, as a "tradition" to be followed; and, as we shall see below, the giallo appears more as a tradition of film nar- rative than as a genre. Seeing the generic diversity of the giallo in terms of its various filone strikes me as more productive than the subordinated term "subgenre." I noted above that Mario Bava introduced the theme of "the unlikely witness becomes am- ateur detective" in The Girl Who Knew Too Much, and then introduced what was to become the sine qua non of giallo-killer disguises—black hat, black overcoat, black gloves (sometimes wearing a mask)—in Blood and Black Lace, but that it was Dario Argento who brought these two together in The Bird with the Crystal Plumage. From Bird's release in 1970, a slew of similar films were produced that likewise featured this archetypal killer disguise and the amateur detective role. Using filone in this sense, Argento was sullo stesso filone Mario Bava, but then a number of films were produced that were sullo stesso filone Dario Argento, that is, in the tradition of first Bava and then Ar- gento. These films make up the central core of the giallo film, and perhaps we should designate them as "classic giallo." This corpus of films includes, in ad- dition to those already mentioned, Giuliano Carnimeo's The Case of the Bloody Iris (Perche quelle stran gocce di sangue sul corpo di ]ennifer?) ( 1 9 7 1 ) , Massimo Dallamano's Solange (Cosa avante fatto a Solange?) ( 1 9 7 2 ) , Aldo What Is Giaüol • 7
Lado's Who Saw Her Die? (Chi I'ha vista moriré?) ( 1 9 7 2 ) , Luciano Ercoli's Death Walks at Midnight (La Morte accarezza a mezzanotte) ( 1 9 7 2 ) , Armando Crispino's Autopsy (Macchie solari) ( 1 9 7 3 ) , Umberto Lenzi's Eyeball (Gatti rossi in un libirinto di verto) ( 1 9 7 5 ) , and Argento's Deep Red (Profondo rosso) ( 1 9 7 5 ) . As can be gleaned from the selection above, the "classic" period of the giallo film ran from approximately 1970 until 1975. If the film takes the narrative perspective of the police in investigating and finally revealing the machinations of the plot, then rightly the film is more of a police procedural thriller than a classic giallo. Italian vernacular cinema recognizes the poliziotto as a separate filone: films where the police are the protagonist. Despite the differences between the giallo and the poliziotto film, both focus on the hunt for a serial killer or the investigation into some kind of drug or white slavery ring. Often these filone are difficult to tell apart, with many poliziotto referred to as giallo in their marketing (at least in the contemporary marketing of these films on D V D to horror fans). A number of films in this period and under consideration here clearly fall within the cycle of the police procedural. In particular, Paolo Cavaras The Black Belly of the Tarantula (La Tarantula dal ventre nero) ( 1 9 7 2 ) runs the gamut between both giallo and poliziotto, privileging the investigative perspectives of both an am- ateur detective Paolo Zani (Silvano Tranquilli) and police officer, Inspector Tellini (Giancarlo Giannini). Massimo Dallamano's A Black Veil for Lisa (La Morte non ha sesso) ( 1 9 6 8 ) and What Have They Done to Our Daughters? ( 1 9 7 4 ) are much more poliziotto than classic giallo, with the centrality of the police reflected in the latter's original Italian title (La Polizia chiede aiuto, lit- erally, "The police need help"). Flavio Mogherini's The Pyjama Girl Case (La Ragazza dal pigiama giallo) ( 1 9 7 7 ) , despite the use of the word giallo in the original Italian title, focuses more on Inspector Thompson's (Ray Milland) investigation than the events leading up to the murder being investigated. Significantly, Dallamano's Black Veil was made before the classic giallo began to dominate Italian terza visione screens (i.e., those films sullo stesso filone Ar- gento's The Bird with the Crystal Plumage) and Mogherini's The Pyjama Girl Case is fairly late in the cycle. So while the classic giallo dominated Italian vernacular cinema roughly between 1970 and 1975, this filone was topped and tailed by more traditional poliziotto films. Stephen Thrower noted "Italy's exploitation directors had, during the seventies, turned from the labyrinthine narrative excesses of the giallo to the right-wing law enforcement wet dreams of the poliziesco [sic.]" ( 1 9 9 9 : 109). While Thrower's dismissal of the poliziotto is perhaps overly simplistic, films such as Lucio Fulci's The New York Ripper (Lo Squartatore di New York) ( 1 9 8 2 ) and Argento's The Stendhal Syndrome (La Síndrome di Stendhal) ( 1 9 9 6 ) , both more poliziotto than classic giallo, seem to 8 • Chapter One
support his point. Contemporary gialli, like Occhi di cristallo (Eros Puglielli, 2 0 0 4 ) , focus almost exclusively on the police investigation. This suggests to me that the classic giallo existed as filone in the first half of the 1970s and emerged out of an existing demand for more traditional poliziotto films. Once the cycle had run out of steam, the filone returned back to the more familiar cop dramas. Some gialli tended to avoid both the police and the amateur detective, co- alescing around plot lines that are more akin to suspense thrillers than either of the two gialli forms noted previously. As Charles Derry defined it, "The sus- pense thriller [is] a crime work which presents a generally murderous antag- onism in which the protagonist becomes either an innocent victim or a non- professional criminal within a structure that is significantly unmediated by a traditional figure of detection" ( 1 9 8 8 : 6 2 ) . In the classic giallo films, the am- ateur detective looks for the killer "out there," somewhere in the city; the in- vestigation is external to the film's protagonist, even if the killer may be a friend or relative of the amateur detective. Likewise, in the poliziotto films, the investigation is externally driven, despite the possibility of uncovering internal corruption within the force. But in the "suspense thriller" gialli, the criminal activities (murder, blackmail, adultery, incest) are internally driven. These films tend to feature fewer settings and locations, restricting most of the action to one or two locations. For example, in Enzo Castellan's Cold Eyes of Fear (Gli occhi fredda della paura) ( 1 9 7 1 ) , most of the film occurs in the home of a wealthy solicitor whose nephew, Peter Flower (Gianni Garko), has been living there. Two escaped convicts, Welt (Frank Wolff) and Quill (Julian Mateos), break in holding Peter and his girlfriend Anna (Giovanna Ralli) hostage as revenge for Juez Flower's (Fernando Rey) botched defense of Welt. Instead of any external investigation in the public spaces of the city, these "suspense thriller" gialli are internalized within more private and domes- tic spaces. Aldo Lado's Night Train Murders (L'Ultimo treno della notte) ( 1 9 7 5 ) , an Italian version of Wes Craven's Last House on the Left ( 1 9 7 2 ) , limits its ac- tion to a train compartment and the home of Professor Giulio Stradi (Ernico Maria Salerno). T h e liminal space of the train compartment is particularly highlighted in this film—while a semipublic space (anyone who has a ticket can occupy the space), it is a closed space with doors and curtains. Other films in this filone include Mario Bava's Hatchet for the Honeymoon (¡1 Rosso sego della follia) (2969), Five Dolls for an August Moon (Cinque bambole per la lima d'agosto) ( 1 9 7 0 ) , and Bay of Blood (Reazione a catena) ( 1 9 7 1 ) ; Umberto Lenzi's Paranoia ( 1 9 6 9 ) ; Lucio Fulci's One on Top of the Other (Una sull'altra) ( 1 9 6 9 ) and A Lizard in a Woman's Skin (Una Lucertola con la pelle di donna) ( 1 9 7 1 ) ; Sergio Bergonzelli's In the Folds of the Flesh (Nelle pieghe della came) What Is Giallo? — 9
( 1 9 7 0 ) ; Luciano Ercoli's The Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion (Le Foto proibite di una signora per bene) ( 1 9 7 0 ) ; and Fillippo Walter Ratti's Crazy Desires of a Murderer (1 Vizi morbosi di una governante) (1974)- Troy Howarth noted:
An over-simplification of the codes of the giallo would be that the genre focuses on the more unsavoury aspects of crime detective fiction, specifically sexual peccadilloes and gruesome acts of violence. In fact, not all gialli dwell on the morbid details of violent death (Lucio Fulci's Una sidl'altra/One on Top of the Other, 1968, and Riccardo Freda's A doppia faccia/Double Face, 1969, have nary a violent confrontation to their credit), but the threat of violence is always there, and voyeurism, sexual dysfunction and the like are never far behind. T h e ultimate result is a totally chaotic spectacle which inevitably bends, twists and destroys the (typically naive) world views of their protagonists. ( 2 0 0 2 : 7 1 - 7 2 )
Again, with a quick perusal of the films in this filone, it appears that this was a popular form quite early on in the cycle, to some extent overlapping the move from poliziotto to classic giallo. Without denying Argento his his- torical role in developing the giallo film with Bird, in the same year, 1970, Sergio Martino s Next! (Lo Strano v'mo della Signora Wardh) fused the internal suspense thriller plot of deceit and murder, with the external investigation of the "Classic giallo." Martino's Torso (J Corpi presentano tracce di violenza car- nale) ( 1 9 7 3 ) , again begins as a classic giallo, but approximately halfway through, moves indoors to the older form of the "suspense thriller"; but this particular fusion of external serial killer stalking an internally bound group of young women may be the first proper slasher film, a discussion I will return to toward the end of this book. As crime fiction, the giallo must conform to the demands of Cartesian logic, no matter how baroque the solutions to the crimes may be (a topic I discuss in a later chapter). Most of these films intentionally eschew a super- natural explanation in favor of a more rational one. Some supernatural ex- planations may be used as a cover for the murders (as in Crispino's Autopsy), but the murderer is always human. But with their focus on the more ex- ploitative aspects of crime fiction, namely the graphic depiction of violence and murder, these gialli films are often linked directly with the horror genre, despite the absence of any supernatural agency. There are, however, a small number of gialli-like films, which draw from the visual rhetoric of the giallo but situate that rhetoric into the context of a more traditional supernatural horror film. Kim Newman refers to these films as giallo-fantastico in a quite reasonable coinage (1986a: 2 3 ) . Perhaps the most explicit of these is Dario 10 •—' Chapter One
Argento's Phenomena ( 1 9 8 5 ) , wherein the traditionally dressed giallo killer is hunted down by the traditional amateur detective, Jennifer (Jennifer Con- nelly), but in this film, the young detective also is able to telepathically com- municate with insects, and through this conceit is able to track down the
killer.7 Mario Bava's Kill, Baby . . . Kill! {Operazione paura) ( 1 9 6 6 ) features a traditional Conan Doyle-type murder mystery plot, wherein the detective tries to disprove the belief that a rash of suicides are the result of seeing a ghost, but in fact, the ghost of a young girl is haunting this German village and is compelling all who see her to kill themselves. Likewise a killer pussy- cat is on the loose in Lucio Fulci's The Black Cat (Il Gatto nero) ( 1 9 8 1 ) , de- spite all the film's giallo trappings. Sergio Martino's All the Colors of the Dark (Tutti l colori del buio) ( 1 9 7 2 ) , while availing itself of the tropes of the giallo, specifically the killer's disguise and the themes of adultery, blackmail, and murder, contextualizes these within a plot about a witches' coven. Witches' covens and giallo killers also appear in José Maria Elorrieta's Feast of Satan (Las Amantes del diablo) ( 1 9 7 1 ) and in Riccardo Freda's The Wailing (L'Ob- sessione che uccide) ( 1 9 8 0 ) , while a Satanic sex-cult is featured in Aldo Lado's The Short Night of Glass Dolls (Malastrana) ( 1 9 7 1 ) . But these giallo-fantastico are largely infrequent, worth mentioning in passing but not significant enough to dwell on. However, the beliefs these films engender are significant enough to discuss in a later chapter.
giallo in the Context of Italian Popular Cinema
Exploitation cinema, by its very nature, is derivative. Whether we are talk- ing about horror movies, action films, or even pornography, these movies are rarely taken seriously. Pam Cook noted:
Exploitation is a derogatory term, implying a process of "ripping off." It also im- plies an economic imperative—very low budget, tight production schedules, low-paid, inexperienced, non-union personnel, minimal production values, "sensational" selling campaigns and widespread saturation booking aimed at specific markets (predominantly the youth/drive-in audience generally uninter- ested in critical reviews), all in the interests of making a fast buck. ( 1 9 8 5 : 3 6 7 )
Given Cook's characterization of the reception environment of exploitation cinema, it becomes even easier to dismiss certain films if they are "foreign," or someone else's exploitation trash. Italian popular cinema, particularly horror cinema, is highly derivative. Ital- ian screenwriter and director Luigi Cozzi is quoted as noting: "In Italy . . . What Is Giallo? 11
when you bring a script to a producer, the first question he asks is not 'what is your film like?' but 'what film is your film like?' That's the way it is, we can only
make Zombie 2, never Zombie 1" (quoted in Newman 1986c: 9 2 ) . 8 1 have already noted that Aldo Lado's Night Train Murders is an Italian reworking of Wes
Craven's Last House on the Left.9 Sergio Martina's All the Colors of the Dark is highly derivative of Rosemary's Baby (Roman Polanski, 1968). As Maitland Mc- Donagh noted, "Italian cinema, lacking Hollywood's dense multi-studio struc- ture and with a great deal of power concentrated in a very few hands, is simply more so: a hit unleashes a veritable flood of imitations in record-breaking time" (1994: 9 5 ) . It is this culture of production that creates the environment of the filone. But first we need to contextualize this culture. W h e n one thinks of Italian cinema one tends to immediately focus on high-art filmmakers and internationally recognized "classics" of world cinema. "Historical surveys of Italian cinema prefer to concentrate on neo- realism, existential angst and Visconti, rather than on films that are every bit as Italian but that tip their hats to Hollywood" (Frayling 1998: xii). Luigi Cozzi noted:
In that period [the 1960s], only directors like Fellini or Visconti were consid- ered, at least by intellectuals, as representative of Italian cinema, whereas somebody like Bava was primarily ignored, because [of] those low independent companies that often went bankrupt even before the movies came out in the- atres (usually third-rate suburban cinemas). Indeed, Bava's films never surfaced in first-class theatres, and were seldom reviewed in newspapers. ( 2 0 0 2 : 5)
I discuss these "third-rate suburban" movie houses in the next chapter, as well as the dominance of high-art filmmakers like Fellini within the scholar- ship on Italian cinema. But at this preliminary stage, it is worth noting, at least in passing, that those canonical filmmakers rose to their status on the shoulders of "jobbing" filmmakers, making films for the working-class audi- ences. As Stephen Thrower noted:
T h e success of the industry was not, however, based on the artistic credibility of its emerging international directors. Italy was producing its own specific brand of mainstream entertainment: populist, and keenly attuned to audience demand, it provided a constant whirl of different genre amusements. It was this ingenious mainstream product that accounted for the industry's high level of activity. It also provided for the financial security necessary to make Italy's "art" cinema vi- able. Producers could afford to gamble on critically lauded but "difficult" direc- tors like Michelangelo Antonioni because the home market provided a steady flow of cash from the less esoteric, more populist entertainments. (1999: 4 2 ) 12 Chapter One
Thrower's point is a significant one and needs highlighting: the only way an intellectual and critically acclaimed film culture can exist, particularly with- out complex studiolike systems as in Hollywood, is through an exploitation and populist cinema. It is in this context that new filmmakers can gain ex- perience, ideas can be explored (albeit oftentimes quite roughly and crudely), and revenues gained from "lower" films can be used to help finance more "prestige" pictures. And parallel to all of this is the hegemonic domination of Hollywood (see Cook 1 9 8 5 ) . In response to Hollywood, Italian filmmakers produced a steady flow of popular films, including the gialli discussed here. Certainly the most famous of these popular genres is the "spaghetti western," Italian-made (often in Spain) movies about the American West that were often more violent and grisly than anything Hollywood had produced to date. Equally popular, at least in the early 1960s was the peplum, the "sword and sandal" epics, often taking place in a mythical Classical world, that dominated popular cinema in the wake of Hercules {Le Fatiche di Ercole) (Pietro Francisci, 1 9 5 8 ) . And by the time the 1970s rolled around, Italy was producing hundreds of horror and spectacle films, cheaply and quickly. 10 Christopher Frayling, in his study on the spaghetti western, noted:
Italian formula films of the 1960s and early 1 9 7 0 s were certainly popular, and were the product of an industry which seems to have been directly in touch with its audience: toward the end of this period, Italy, with help from c o - producers, was producing over 2 0 0 feature films a year (a total surpassed only by India, especially Bombay, and Japan), could support nearly 1 3 , 0 0 0 cinemas (a total surpassed only by the U S S R and the U S A ) , and registered over 5 4 0 million cinema attendances per annum (a total surpassed only by the U S S R and India); perhaps this had something to do with the fact that Italians (mainly Northern and Central Italians) only owned 11 million television sets (a total surpassed by the U S A , U S S R , Japan, West Germany, the UK and France). ( 1 9 9 8 : xxi)
Stephen Thrower, writing from a more explicitly British perspective and about the giallo specifically, noted similar statistics.
Figures for the early 1970s illustrate the strength of the Italian film market in comparison to the U K . In 1972, Italy's total population was around 5 4 . 8 mil- lion. C i n e m a admissions for that year totalled 5 5 3 . 6 million, meaning that on average each citizen attended the cinema ten times a year! Compare that with the figures for the UK in 1972: the population was approximately 55.7 million, almost the same as Italy; but with cinema admissions reaching a mere 156.6 What Is Giallo? ~ 13
million, the average number of visits for the year per head of population was only 2 . 8 1 . . . . Small wonder that the Italian pastiche and parody of whatever was popular, was able to flourish on such a hyperactive scale. ( 1 9 9 9 : 6 6 )
Although this will be discussed in more detail in the next chapter, it is worth noting here that Italians, particularly in the working-class neighborhoods where gialli, as well as spaghetti westerns, peplum, and other forms of popular cinema were shown, would, as likely as not, go to the movies every night; therefore the demand on a sufficient supply of film product was quite tremen- dous.
Unlike the Hollywood Studio system, which produced movies within a strong Fordian industrial tradition, the Italian "studio," Cinecittà, operated very differently. Christopher Frayling outlined several significant aspects of the Cinecittà way of making movies including
the need to attract co-production money, if possible; the key role played by Spanish producers and audiences (and cheap Spanish labour on location
work);11 the hasty shooting schedules and the necessity of dubbing (more up- market products, by contrast, being shot in various foreign-language versions); the use of pseudonyms (a relatively recent phenomenon—most directors of muscleman epics worked under their own names); the flexibility about scripts, and the strange compulsion to make this film more bizarre than the last one. This system—evidence of the tendency of Cinecittà producers to capture au- diences rather than to keep them, to seize on any immediately available con- sumer potential—has been interpreted by Lino M i c c i c h è as "in many ways typ- ical of the popular c i n e m a of underdeveloped regions—the comedieta populachera of Mexico, the Egyptian song-film, the Brazilian chanchada, the In- dian 'picturised song,' the South American telenoi»e!a, and Italy's film-fumetto." By the time of the Spaghetti Western boom, this "capturing" of audiences ( M i c c i c h è calls it "rape"), this pitching of a fresh "genre" at (predominantly Southern) Italian urban audiences when the products of the assembly-line ceased to get top figures on the home market, had been a characteristic of the Cinecittà production system for over ten years. ( 1998: 7 0 )
Thrower, again, characterizes how this kind of low-budget exploitation film could be produced so quickly, in what within the industry is referred to as the "presale" ( 1 5 0 ) . Giallo screenwriter Dardano Sacchetti explains the presale thus:
[Italian exploitation films are] made for foreign investors, because in Italy there's no market for them. Great Britain, Germany, Denmark, France, Japan, and even the U S A are very hungry for strong hon"or movies, thrillers or adventures. T h e 14 ' — ' Chapter One
problem is the foreign market is tougher, there is greater competition; at MIFED, in the Cannes market, there are movies from everywhere in the world. So the producers go to the markets with a brochure, a title, a synopsis, saying: "I've got this movie to sell." Actually they sell the idea: when and if they find a buyer, they make him sign a contract promising to buy the movie for a certain amount of money. On the basis of this paper they are able to obtain the financing from the banks. They make the movie, sell it to the buyers and give back the money to the bank. So the budget of the movie depends upon the number of buyers and the amount they are willing to pay. (Fulvia) would go to M I F E D with a couple of posters, ten lines of plot and a tentative title: when they found a buyer they would call me from Milano and say: "Dardano, we've sold 'Whatchacallit'—start writing now! You have six days, we're giving them the finished copy in three months!" (quoted in Thrower 1999; 150)
Given the fast turnaround required in producing these films, it is not sur- prising that so many of these Italian vernacular films are derivative of (often) Hollywood products. While Kim Newman refers to these films as "Rip- Off/Spin-Off" films (1986b: 5 4 ) , Stephen Thrower coins the phrase "prema- ture emulation" ( 1 9 9 9 : 193).
We have to thank American movies that give us something to eat! . . . O b - viously, it's easier for a producer to get money if he cashes in on the success of another film. So when they call you to make one of these movies, it's up to you to profit from the occasion to make something different and personal, or to chose to make a bad copy of the original; I always try to make something dif- ferent. It's easier when you work with intelligent people; sometimes you write one way and then the movies comes [sic] out as a copy of the model, and then sometimes not. Take Zombi 2, which was based on Romero's Dawn of the Dead, Zombi in Italy. A producer decided to make a small horror film, although my inspiration came not from the Romero movie, but from the comic-strip hero T e x Miller." (Dardano Sacchetti, quoted in Thrower 1999: 148)
Donato Totaro noted that
the Italian horror industry has continually struggled against cultural stigmati- sation, financial constraints, industry apathy and the over bearing presence of American cinema. Because of this latter fact, the industry developed a parasitic relationship with American cinema. Sometimes out of financial necessity, sometimes out of creative laziness, Italian cinema became . . . extremely de- rivative of popular American cinema. But the Italians, with their spirit of rec- onciliation and ability to make the best of a bad situation ("arte di anangiarsi"), managed to turn a negative into a positive by adapting their own cultural and artistic temperament to an American model. (Totaro 2 0 0 3 : 161) What Is Giallo! 15
Not only were these Italian exploitation films derivatives of American cinema in the first instance, but also since the vast majority of these films were actually produced with a global market in mind, Italian exploitation film producers were often highly successful at remarketing these films back to the United States.
There were plenty more Italian gialli released on the American exploitation circuit during the seventies. Hucksterish US distributors soon realised there was money to be made in the wake of home-grown independents like Night of the Living Dead and Last House on the Left. Cheap, bloodthirsty horror films, though generally despised by Hollywood and the mainstream press, were doing just fine, both in the big cities where high levels of blue-collar custom kept the grind-houses open and down in the southern states where the drive-ins flour- ished on a smaller basis. Enterprising distributors found the parallel excesses of the Italian horror/thriller genres a handy (and relatively cheap) source of shock-milking revenue. T h e y could be marketed aggressively under lurid new titles, with attention-grabbing ad-copy that promised ever more traumatic sights in store for the curious; and of course the Italian films tended to stir plentiful nudity into the equation too. (Thrower 1 9 9 9 : 6 7 )
Conclusions
So what is the giallo! T h e giallo is, on the one hand, a literary genre (genere), the Italian equivalent of crime fiction or mystery. But as understood within a filmic context, the giallo is a filone, or perhaps a series thereof, a short-lived cycle of films "in the vein of or "in the tradition of the murder mysteries of Wallace, Poe, Conan-Doyle, and Christie. These filone go even further by emulating previously successful films "in the vein of directors such as Mario Bava and Dario Argento. And to consider the giallo as filone is still to cast the net wide: there are sev- eral different kinds of gialli, or at least of films that have been marketed as such. While the classical giallo features a serial killer clad in black gloves, hat, and overcoat being hunted by an amateur detective, the poliziotto puts the police investigation front and center in the investigation. Other gialli tend to focus on more private and interior settings, creating more of a suspense giallo. Still oth- ers, embracing the strong connection between the giallo and the horror film, of- fer a more supernatural narrative, the giallo-fantastico. What we mean by giallo, then is quite a broad spectrum of films, despite their formulaic narratives. The giallo film is a kind of vernacular cinema. Its discourses, while neither subtle nor abstract in presentation, are directed toward a distinct vernacular audience, those predominantly of the terza visione theaters of the late 1960s 16 Chapter One
and early 1970s (discussed in the next chapter). As such, by approaching these films as vernacular discourses, we gain insight into the cultures for which these films were predominantly made. If I am correct in asserting that vernacular cinema depicts the cultural concerns of vernacular culture, then the giallo film depicts the cultural con- cerns of vernacular Italian culture. If there is any single theme that binds the entire genre together, that is, any single discourse that is common across the entire giallo cinema, it is that these films display a marked ambivalence to- ward modernity. T h e early 1970s was a period of marked change within Ital- ian culture and society—stretching across the entire country—varying by re- gion, but profound throughout. Things were changing, and while it might be academically advantageous to say the Italian "folk" were resistant to such changes, and viewed modernity with suspicion, such an approach is simplis- tic and only partially true. Modernity is not condemned in these films, but neither is it praised. T h e changes within Italian culture, across all the differ- ent regions of the country, can be seen through the giallo film as something to be discussed and debated—issues pertaining to identity, sexuality, increas- ing levels of violence, women's control over their own lives and bodies, his- tory, the state—all abstract ideas, which are all portrayed situationally as hu- man stories in the giallo film. The gialli were not intended for consumption in the first-run theaters in Italy or meant to circulate internationally through film festivals and art- house theaters. These films circulated on the margins of Italian, European, and International film exhibition—the drive-ins and grind houses, rather than the art houses. They appealed to the most salacious aspects of literary crime fiction, thereby making these films closer in spirit to horror films than to mysteries. And within this context, not only in terms of production but perhaps more importantly consumption, a traditional aesthetic consideration of the giallo alongside high-art filmmakers such as Fellini, Bertolucci, and Antonioni cannot work. T h e giallo is not high art; it is vernacular in its mar- keting, consumption, and production. And it is vernacular cinema to which I now wish to turn my attention.
Notes
1. See Agnelli, Bartocci, and Rosellini ( 1 9 9 8 ) . 2. A "White Telephone" film is the term given to Italian Fascist-era romantic melodramas. T h e s e films were set in the contemporary world and filled with elegance and sophistication. W h i t e telephones in the decor were seen as indicative of this el- egant lifestyle. What Is giallo? ~ 17
3. T h a t being said, when conducting this research and attempting to discover the publishing history of James M. Caine's novel in Italy, I put out an e-mail request on the Italian Cultural Studies listserve e-mail group. Although it was as a result of this query that I was able to confirm the Jean Renoir connection, one respondent in par- ticular was outraged that I was debasing this classic of neorealism by referring to it as a giallo. As 1 discuss below, the attitude of Italian cinema scholars to the giallo is marked by such biases. 4. Troy Howarth ( 2 0 0 2 ) , while he recognizes Bava's The Girl Who Knew Too Much as the first "proper" giallo film, suggests that the earliest precursor is not Ossessione (which he does not mention), but Cortocircuito ( G i a c o m o Gentilomo, 1 9 4 3 ) . 5. A similar image occurs a few years earlier in George Pollock's Murder She Said ( 1 9 6 1 ) , based on Agatha Christie's novel, 4 : 5 0 from Poddington ( 1 9 5 7 ) . In Pollock's film, Miss Marple (Margaret Rutherford) settles down on the (novel's) titular train with a murder mystery novel (giallo, by any other name), just prior to her glancing out the window and seeing, in a passing train, a young woman being murdered by a black gloved, black-overcoat-wearing figure—a disguise Bava will appropriate a few years later in Blood and Black Lace ( 1 9 6 4 ) , and will become the archetypal giallo-killer disguise. 6. Chris Gallant offered the following useful summarization of giallo: "Giallo, which translates literally as 'yellow' is the Italian term for the whodunit thriller, de- rived from the yellow covers of detective novels, rather like the French serie noir. In the Italian language, the word may just as easily refer to an Agatha Christie novel as to an Argento thriller, and applies to whodunit detective fiction in a broad sense. In the vocabulary of English-speaking audiences, its application tends to be restricted to the Italian whodunit-thriller film (one wouldn't refer to an Agatha Christie novel as an example of the 'giallo' in English). T h e genre as it tends to be categorized by English-speaking audiences has its own conventions and clichés: the visual enigma, which may be solved through the gradual exploration of memory; anxiety over gen- der confusion; the murder sequences as an elaborate and artistic tableau, and so on. T h e 'giallo film' draws heavily upon the tradition of Agatha Christie's fiction, hard- boiled American detective novels and film noir. Blood and Black Lace is one of the genre's earliest examples, the tale of a series of gruesome murders in a fashion house. Bava's film and Peeping Tom must share some of the responsibility for ushering in and popularising the plot that revolves around the murders of a series of young women, with its overtones of misogyny and sexual aggression" ( 2 0 0 0 a : 19). 7. Maitland M c D o n a g h refers to Phenomena as "a giallo with paranormal (if not quite supernatural) underpinnings" ( 1 9 9 4 : 1 8 7 ) . 8. W h i l e Cozzi's point is well taken, it is not entirely accurate. Lucio Fulci's Zom- bie ( 1 9 8 0 ) , known in Italy as Zombi 2, seems to be Cozzi's example here; however, George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead ( 1 9 7 8 ) was released in Italy as Zombi. S o , con- tra Cozzi, Zombi 2 did have a precursor, although the two films are not very similar. 9. And, of course, Craven's film is an exploitation reworking of Ingmar Bergman's Tfie Virgin Spring ( 1 9 6 0 ) . 18 Chapter One
10. Although never using the word filone, Kirn Newman produced a series of three articles in the British Monthly Film Bulletin ( 1 9 8 6 ) where he defines and discusses a number of these cycles. In these articles, Newman discusses the peplum ( 1 9 8 6 a : 2 0 - 2 2 ) , the Italian G o t h i c horror film ( 1 9 8 6 a : 2 2 ) , the mondo documentaries ( 1 9 8 6 a : 2 2 - 2 3 ) , the giallo ( 1 9 8 6 a : 2 3 - 2 4 ) , the "Superspy" movies ( 1 9 8 6 b : 5 1 - 5 2 ) , the spaghetti western ( 1 9 8 6 b : 5 2 - 5 3 ) , Italian sex and violence movies including the Nazi sexploitation film ( 1 9 8 6 b : 5 3 - 5 4 , also see Koven 2 0 0 4 : 1 9 - 3 1 ) , the tradition of "ripping o f f popular Hollywood movies ( 1 9 8 6 b : 5 4 - 5 5 ) , " T h e G o t h i c Revival" ( 1 9 8 6 c : 8 8 - 8 9 ) , the cannibal films ( 1 9 8 6 c : 8 9 - 9 0 ) , the return of the peplum in the 1980s ( 1 9 8 6 c : 9 0 - 9 1 ) , and the cycle of "Warriors of the Future" movies ( 1 9 8 6 c : 9 1 ) . Taken together, Newman's pieces are a remarkable introduction to Italian vernacu- lar cinema and these articles should be better known than they are. 11. Frayling is discussing Cinecitta's production operations, of course, within the context of the spaghetti western, but several gialli were also made in Spain, with Spanish money (as coproducers), and utilizing Iberian actors. Giallo regular Susan S c o t t (born Nieves Navarro) is from Spain, to cite but one famous example, and U m - berto Lenzi's Eyeball takes place in Barcelona as a handy cover for the Spanish fund- ing of the film.
i
Alan O’Leary
Political/Popular Cinema
Popular culture is a site where the construction of everyday life may be examined. The point of doing this is not only academic – that is, as an attempt to understand a process or practice – it is also political, to exam- ine the power relations that constitute this form of everyday life and thus reveal the configurations of interests its construction serves. — Graeme Turner, British Cultural Studies, 20031
The political in cinema has variously been theorised as a question of legis- lation and economics (the circumstances and systems of production and exhibition), of legitimation and representation (who gets to ‘speak’ and for whom), of film form, and of content. Perhaps the last continues to preside in critical discussions of Italian cinema where there is a widespread understanding of politics as what is, or what was, or what should be ‘in the news’.2 Thus, a ‘political film’ might be concerned with the mafia, with the anti-democratic activities of Silvio Berlusconi, with the employment conditions of contract workers, with the plight of migrants to Italy, and so on. Such themes are of undoubted and often urgent importance; the problem lies in the fact that ‘politics’ in Italian cinema has typically been discussed in terms of film-makers’ engagement with issues that have been predefined as valuable or important, even as political per se. The adequacy
1 Quoted in J. Storey, Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: An Introduction (Harlow: Pearson, 2006), 12. 2 M. Fantoni Minella, Non riconciliati: Politica e società nel cinema italiano dal neore- alismo a oggi (Turin: UTET, 2004), vii. 108 Alan O’Leary of the makers’ depiction of the issues is then assessed, using criteria more or less explicit, and the films judged successful or not. Such an approach is not mine in this chapter. I assume that politics is not something ‘out there’ which is then expressed with varying degrees of adequacy in films, ‘popular’ or otherwise. The forward slash in my title is intended to suggest that the relationship of the political and the popular is something that emerges in specific contexts, and that the manner in which the popular is political is not something that can usefully be pre- scribed by critics in advance. I make no attempt to be comprehensive in this chapter. I will deal here with the character of the politics in/of two popular filoni (sub-genres or cycles of films): thepolizottesco or cop film of the 1970s, and the cinepanettoni or Christmas films produced between 1983 and 2011. I hope to show, with these two examples, different ways in which popular cinema does politics. I will close the essay by offering a definition of the popular that treats it in terms of address to ‘other people’, and an understanding of popular political cinema as a cinema that articulates the concerns of people in their ordinariness. The risk with the account of popular cinema I will articulate here is that of sliding into what Fredric Jameson characterises as an ‘essentially negative’ and anti-intellectual populism that opposes itself to elitism only to become elitism’s mirror-image.3 Such a populism would merely repli- cate the process, described below, by which popular culture is typically ‘othered’ – so I hope to have evaded it. But it is a risk I am prepared to run in order to treat the political relationships enabled by popular cinema in way that does not reduce them to mere false consciousness or ersatz tokens of ‘mainstream’ cinema’s conditions of production.4
3 F. Jameson, ‘Reification and Utopia in Mass Culture’,Social Text 1 (1979), 130–48; 130. 4 Jameson himself called for the rethinking of ‘the opposition high culture/mass cul- ture’ in order to ‘read high and mass culture as objectively related and dialectically interdependent phenomena, as twin and inseparable forms of the fission of aes- thetic production under late capitalism’ (Jameson, ‘Reification and Utopia in Mass Culture’, 133–4). Proposed more than three decades old, such an approach might be assumed to have become common sense, but it is remarkable how often popular Political/Popular Cinema 109
Serial Poetics, Ritual Politics
Maurizio Grande has written that political cinema is a kind of mirage.5 This is due in part to the fact that politics itself can be elusive of definition. By ‘politics’ do we mean, say, the workings of government and issues of public life, or should we have something broader in mind? Terry Eagleton sug- gests the latter when he writes of politics as ‘the way we organise our social life together, and the power-relations which this involves’.6 Some critics complain that such an expanded understanding of politics implies that all films are political, so that political cinema becomes a meaningless category. Actually, the problem is deeper still: criticism and theory are revealed in this expanded understanding to be themselves political, in that they deal with questions of value and of what constitutes meaning, and therefore of the allocation of intellectual and economic resources.7 The political character of film criticism and scholarship is clearest in its will to validate or render illegitimate certain registers and forms of film-making and the intellectual or affective investments that audiences might make in them. A totalising or dismissive account of great swathes of popular cinema is one version of this politics of criticism. Christian Uva has written of ‘la miopia e la superficialità con cui molta critica ha bollato in termini ideolog- ici e spregiativi fenomeni rilevanti della produzione di genere […], finendo
Italian cinema (be it praised or derided) is still treated in aesthetic terms derived from the appreciation of canonical films, while auteurs and art-house cinema are rarely treated in terms derived from the popular. My impression is that the project of treating Italian cinema as a unitary, or at least ‘twin and inseparable’, phenomenon has yet to be actualised. For the standard dismissive account of ‘mainstream’ cinema, popular comedy included, see William Hope’s introduction to L. d’Arcangeli, W. Hope and S. Serra, eds, Un nuovo cinema politico Italiano?, i: Lavoro, migrazione, relazioni di genere (Leicester: Troubadour, 2013), ix–xx. 5 M. Grande, Eros e politica (Siena: Protagon Editori Toscani, 1995), 15. 6 T. Eagleton, Literary Theory: An Introduction (2nd edn, Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), 169. 7 J. Champagne, ‘A View from the West: Italian Film Studies or Italian Film Studies’, The Italianist 33/2 (2013), 273–9; 276. 110 Alan O’Leary per legittimare e reiterare nel tempo l’equazione: popolare = reazionario’.8 Uva notes that one particular victim of this critical habit has been the poliziottesco, the Italian cop film of the 1970s. The purpose of my discussion of the poliziottesco here is not, however to defend the filone from familiar accusations of exhibiting the ‘wrong’ sort of politics. Instead, I consider the films in terms of the kind of elaboration, or ‘working through’, the poliziottesco performs on behalf of its audiences. ‘Working through’ is the Freudian metaphor adopted by John Ellis in his work on the role of televi- sion in contemporary society.9 For Ellis, our sense of ‘impotent witness’ before traumatic events is elaborated and tackled (worked through) by the exhaustive and repetitive nature of television news reporting working in tandem with serial genres like soap opera, the plots of which tend to feature issues and concerns drawn from the contemporary public sphere. My argument is that, as a quasi-serial form, the poliziottesco performed a similar function. Typically, individual genre films are recuperated as artistically or politi- cally valuable by identifying certain of their makers – usually a director – as exceptionally skilled, or particularly well endowed from a political perspec- tive.10 The term used for commercial cinema that deals deliberately with issues defined as political is ‘cinema di consumo impegnato’;11 it is usually the director of the film who is ‘impegnato’, rather than the text itself, in this
8 C. Uva, ‘Appunti per una definizione del (nuovo) cinema politico’,The Italianist 33/2 (2013), 240–320; 241. For a history of critical attitudes to Italian popular cinema, see L. Bayman and S. Rigoletto, ‘The Fair and the Museum: Framing the Popular’, in L. Bayman and S. Rigoletto, eds, Popular Italian Cinema (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 1–28. 9 J. Ellis, Seeing Things: Television in the Age of Uncertainty (London: I. B. Taurus, 2000), 102–29. 10 This is Peter Bondanella’s approach in a widely read study, in which the account of genre cinema is concerned especially to recognise the exceptional films. See P. Bondanella, A History of Italian Cinema (New York: Continuum, 2009). 11 G. De Vincenti, ‘Politica e corruzione nel cinema di consumo’, in L. Miccichè, ed., Il cinema del riflusso: Film e cineasti italiani degli anni ’70 (Venice: Marsilio, 1997), 265–82; 268. Political/Popular Cinema 111 account.12 The problem with this auteur-in-the-genre-machine approach is that it fails to grasp the quasi-seriality of genre cycles, in which films must obey an ‘injunction to minimal difference’:13 they must recapitulate the pleasures provided in earlier films of the cycle even as they are obliged to be different enough to distinguish themselves as product. This condition of quasi-seriality equips (even obliges) filone cinema to acquit something like a ritual function, in which beliefs and values are articulated, chal- lenged or reiterated,14 and engagement with social conditions occurs in something like ceremonial fashion. We can observe this process at work in the poliziottesco. As mentioned above, the 1970s cop film has been dismissed as ‘a manipulative, cliché-ridden, reactionary, proto-fascist genre’.15 Certainly, the filonethrived during a period in which Italian society witnessed many acts of political violence, often authoritarian in inspiration. The historian of Italian cinema Gian Piero Brunetta has argued that the Italian citizenry in this period exhibited a sterling faith in Italian democracy even as vio- lent and perplexing events filled the daily news, but that thepoliziottesco sought to undermine this faith with a crude ethical schema, purloined from Hollywood revenge fanstasy, of a face for an eye.16 In actual fact the poliziottesco tended to denounce the ideologies and activities of the far right
12 I do not mean to suggest that a given director is necessarily associated with the Italian Left, but rather that s/he decides to make a critical intervention using a film. The ‘impegno’ precedes the text rather than being instantiated through it. 13 The phrase is Evan Calder Williams’s, used in discussion during the CineRoma seminar at La Sapienza, Rome, June 2012. 14 See K. B. Karnick and H. Jenkins, Classical Hollywood Comedy (London: Routledge, 1995), 11–12. 15 This is Alex Marlow-Mann’s exasperated summary of typical criticisms (‘Strategies of Tension: Towards a Reinterpretation of Enzo G. Castellari’s The Big Racket and the Italian Crime Film’, in Bayman and Rigoletto, eds, Popular Italian Cinema, 133–46; 134). Marlow-Mann’s article is the best piece to date on the poliziottesco. 16 G. P. Brunetta, Il cinema italiano contemporaneo: Da ‘La dolce vita’ a ‘Centochiodi’ (Rome: Laterza, 2007), 410–15. 112 Alan O’Leary and the state’s covert support for neo-fascist activity.17 La polizia ringra- zia (Stefano Vanzina 1972), the prototype of the cycle, already contains a critical representation of right-wing vigilantism and of the desire for an authoritarian takeover of the state.18 It is true that the ‘collateral’ death of the passer-by or kidnap victim, a topos in the films, stands for the sense of insecurity of the Italian urban dweller, and the violent cop protagonist is a compensatory surrogate who assuages or avenges that insecurity while ultimately confirming it with his death. Likewise, there is a sense in which the exaggerated violence projected onto the streets of Italy has a celebratory aspect. ‘Rome as Chicago’ is the title Brunetta gives to his short account of the cycle;19 in the films themselves such a comparison is intended to flatter: the metropolis envy which identifies the Italianurbs with the very exemplum of modernity, the American city, presents the degradation, criminality, and political terrorism of contemporary Italy as essential to its vitality. This operates as part of the films’ compensatory or consolatory function: the sense of insecurity, the danger of mugging, murder, massacres or coups d’état, seem a source of pride, not regret. As such, the poliziottesco evinces a fascination with the terrible events it portrays that may be said to be characteristic of how popular cinema deals with disturbing circumstances. It is conventional to deplore this, but perhaps more valuable to consider how the effort of elaboration is indis- tinguishable from the act of exploitation. In any case, the ritual function of the filone can be identified in its assumption of the task of mourning for the victims of violence in the period. This occurs through the reiter- ated death of the policeman protagonist. The tough cop, in his virility and vigour, is a fantasy projection of the spectator even as he is compromised
17 Relevant films includeLa polizia sta a guardare (Roberto Infascelli 1973), La polizia accusa: Il servizio segreto uccide (Sergio Martino 1975), and Poliziotti violenti (Michele Massimo Tarantini 1976). 18 The filmas w imitated because of its box office success, and contains features that would be embellished and recombined in the more than one hundred films of the cycle. See R. Curti, Italia odia: Il cinema poliziesco italiano (Turin: Lindau, 2006), 7, 97. 19 Brunetta, Il cinema italiano contemporaneo, 413–14. Political/Popular Cinema 113 by his honesty and essential purity – in this context a kind of naivety from which the spectator can take comfort by not sharing. Through his martyrdom the cop has witnessed the criminality, degradation, but also the vitality, of contemporary Italy on our behalf (the word ‘martyr’ comes from the Greek for ‘witness’). As a formulaic product, similar from film to film, thepoliziottesco was able to perform something like a ritual function for its spectator. Its itera- tive and its exploitative character was proper to the working through of the experience of urban insecurity and violence. It provided opportunities for mourning and offered compensation for the sense of being cast adrift by processes greater than oneself. In that sense, it was to a lesser extent about politics – justly, Marlow-Mann argues that the poliziottesco ‘invokes social and political issues that are of concern to the viewer in order to create an affective experience’20 – than it was an articulation of the relationship of its audience to disturbing events in the public sphere.
The Politics of Evacuation
I have argued above that the delimitation of political cinema is itself a political activity, predicated on the authority to say what pertains to a topic, what is worthy of study, and what constitutes a ‘model of legitimate cultural explanations’.21 This disciplinary ideology is expressed in the suspi- cion of popular cinema, and can be observed in the lack of attention paid to certain phenomena. My example in this section is the cinepanettone, the Italian Christmas film.22 The remarkable success of thisfilone over
20 Marlow-Mann, ‘Strategies of Tension’, 136. 21 M. Landy, Film, Politics and Gramsci (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994), 4. 22 The films, associated with the company Filmauro, were first produced in 1983, and then annually from 1990 until 2011. They achieved particular success in the first decade of the new century. 114 Alan O’Leary a long period was not reflected in critical or academic attention. So it is that, in an authoritative but prescriptive overview of Italian film-making in the new millennium, William Hope can relegate any mention of the cinepanettone to a single footnote in which one of the series is referred to as a ‘vacuous comedy’.23 That ‘vacuous’ is revealing: it exposes the writer’s belief that the political inheres in a particular sort of content (actually the film deals vividly with the aging body, and with questions of status and desire), but it is precisely the cinepanettone itself that is being ‘evacuated’ as an object of study in Hope’s account – and not only his. On the other hand, another form of ‘evacuation’ – toilet humour if you like – is essential to the political character of the films themselves, best thought of in terms of the carnivalesque, as described by Mikhail Bakhtin.24 In Bakhtin’s celebratory account, carnival was a period of symbolic death and renewal in which the whole community participated in the inversion of hierarchies and the suspension of normal codes of behaviour, something which involved the indulgence of appetites and all the pleasures and needs of the body. The cinepanettone lends itself to analysis in terms of the carnivalesque because it is associated with a festive suspension of quotidian norms and priorities, and with the cycle of renewal marked by the death of the old year and birth of the new. Its employment of coarse language, of the ‘grotesque’ body, its ridiculing of cultural pretensions and its inversion of hierarchies and conventional moral priorities (or the revela- tion of their hypocrisy), are all perfectly consistent with Bakhtin’s account of carnivalesque humour. As Victor Turner writes: ‘simpler societies have ritual or sacred corroborees as their main meta-social performances; proto- feudal and feudal societies have carnival or festival; early modern societies have carnival and theatre; and electronically advanced societies, film’.25
23 W. Hope, Italian Film Directors in the New Millennium (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010), 33n. 24 M. Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, trans. H. Iswolsky (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984). 25 V. Turner, ‘Frame, Flow and Reflection: Ritual and Drama as Public Liminality’, Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 6/4 (1979), 465–99; 468. Political/Popular Cinema 115
It seems a particular characteristic of Italian culture that forms of taste are projected in political terms, so that the cinepanettone is perceived to be a reactionary form in both aesthetic and ideological senses. Bakhtin allows us to refute this deterministic equation when he argues that carnival and other ‘forms of protocol and ritual based on laughter’ offer an ‘extrapolitical’ dimension: ‘They belong to an entirely different sphere’. By this he means that the carnivalesque eludes officially ratified systems of value: ‘carnival is the people’s second life, organised on the basis of laughter’.26 To consider the cinepanettone as a version of the ‘people’s second life’ allows us to get beyond the impasse of ideological distaste; it allows us to find a utopian impulse at work in the escapist and transgressive pleasures offered by the comic form.
For Other People
If the meaning of ‘politics’ is elusive, and so too the character of ‘political cinema’, our problem seems to be compounded when we add the notion of ‘popular’. The word ‘popular’ comes from the Latinpopularis , from popu- lous, that is ‘people’; at root, then, ‘popular’ simply means ‘of the people’, though to acknowledge as much is to beg the question: who are the ‘people’, exactly?27 For this reason, Christopher Wagstaff wonders (and doubts) if a useably restrictive definition of the category ‘of the people’ can be arrived at in relation to Italian ‘popular’ cinema.28 I want to suggest that such a definition can indeed be proposed, one that can help to locate both the political and the popular in Italian cinema.
26 Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 5–8. 27 H. N. Parker, ‘Toward a Definition of Popular Culture’,History and Theory 50 (2011), 147–70; 154–5. 28 C. Wagstaff, ‘Italian Cinema, Popular?’, in Bayman and Rigoletto, eds,Popular Italian Cinema, 29–51. 116 Alan O’Leary
What I have in mind relates to the understanding of popular culture as always oppositional, in the sense that ‘popular’ culture is necessarily dis- tinguished from other forms of culture:29 ‘popular culture is always defined, implicitly or explicitly, in contrast to other conceptual categories: folk culture, mass culture, dominant culture, working-class culture, etc.’.30 This does not imply that popular culture is oppositional in a political sense, but it does begin to suggest its status as somehow secondary or supplementary: ‘popular culture carries within its definitional field connotations of inferi- ority; a second best culture for those unable to understand’.31 In a similar vein, John Caughie has observed that much writing on the theme assumes that ‘popular culture is what other people like’,32 and Tony Bennett notes how often it is considered to be culture for ‘other people’.33 When Bakhtin speaks of carnival as the ‘people’s second life’, we can read him as intending the ‘people’ precisely as this other: there are people and there are people, so to speak, and some people are more equal than others. This is suggested by Giorgio Agamben when he talks of the dual meaning in Italian of popolo,34 a word which can denote the sum of citizens as a unified political body (the upper casePopolo ), but also and conversely, a marginalised part of the populace, those who belong to the lower classes, or any rate those who are excluded from the body of the nation (the lower- case popolo). Agamben points out that this dual sense persists in English: ‘Anche l’inglese people, che ha un senso più indifferenziato, conserva, però, il significato diordinary people in opposizione ai ricchi e alla nobilità’.35 If the upper-case Popolo is the constituency from which the modern democratic
29 Parker, ‘Toward a Definition of Popular Culture’, 148. 30 Storey, Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: An Introduction, 1. 31 Storey, Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: An Introduction, 6. 32 J. Caughie, ‘Popular Culture: Notes and Revisions’, in C. MacCabe, High Theory/ Low Culture (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1986), 156–71; 170. 33 T. Bennet, quoted in Storey, Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: An Introduction, 26. 34 G. Agamben, Mezzi senza fine: Note sulla politica (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 1996), 30–4. 35 Agamben, Mezzi senza fine, 30. Political/Popular Cinema 117 state is understood to derive its legitimacy and which it exists to serve, then the lower-case popolo – ‘ordinary people’ – is the grouping within it most likely to be acted upon by that state, whether as an embarrassing deviation to be eliminated, ‘improved’ or punished, or even as the bearer of messages intended for the citizenry in its political aspect (Popolo). As Stuart Hall puts it: ‘One way or another, “the people” are frequently the object of “reform”: often for their own good, of course – “in their best interests”’.36 We might say that reform, like popular culture, is for other people. This lower case popolo, subject to improvement, disapproval, or paternalistic attention, is always ‘other’. And it is this understanding of popolo that may offer the usefully restricted meaning of ‘people’ that Wagstaff finds elusive in the article mentioned above: ‘a variety of social groups which, although differing from one another in other respects (their class position or the par- ticular struggles in which they are most immediately engaged), are distin- guished from the economically, politically and culturally powerful groups within society’.37 We can say that popular culture is culture for the lower case popolo; popular film is film for ‘ordinary people’ constructed as ‘other’. In short, then, the politics of popular cinema can refer to two things. The first is the process by which a cinema is constructed as other. ‘Political’ has often functioned as a value-laden genre label that is also a way of saying ‘better’.38 Secondly, though, it refers to a cinema that articulates the con- cerns of people in their ordinariness. Popular cinema is political, that is, in the paradoxical sense that it deals with the pre-political, that which has not yet entered into the realm of recognised political discourse.
36 S. Hall, ‘Notes on Deconstructing the Popular’, in J. Storey, ed., Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: A Reader (Harlow: Pearson, 2006), 442–53; 478. 37 T. Bennett, quoted in Storey, Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: A Reader, 12. 38 P. Noto, ‘“Uno sceneggiato non è un programma di storia”: Appunti su polit- ica, impegno e miniserie all’italiana’, The Italianist 33/2 (2013), 285–91. A. Fisher, ‘“Il braccio violento della legge”: Revelation, Conspiracy and the Politics of Violence in the Poliziottesco’, Journal of Italian Cinema and Media Studies 2/2 (2014), 167–81; 178. Popular Italian Cinema
Edited by Louis Bayman King’s College London, UK and Sergio Rigoletto University of Oregon, USA 8 Strategies of Tension: Towards a Reinterpretation of Enzo G. Castellari’s The Big Racket and the Italian Crime Film Alex Marlow-Mann
Introduction: critical responses to the poliziesco
In this chapter I will be using Enzo G. Castellari’s 1976 film, The Big Racket/Il grande racket as a case study in order to question traditional criti- cal interpretations of the poliziesco – a short-lived but highly successful cycle of well over 100 crime films produced in Italy between 1972 and 1979. The poliziesco can be considered the direct heir of the Spaghetti Western for three reasons: firstly, because its rise coincided with the Spaghetti Western’s decline; secondly, because virtually all of the film- makers and actors responsible for the poliziesco came directly from a back- ground working on Spaghetti Westerns;1 and thirdly, because it borrowed many of the narrative and stylistic conventions of the Spaghetti Western and relocated them to a contemporary Italian setting. Like the Western the poliziesco features an isolated hero who uses violence to bring order to a corrupt world in a contemporary restaging of the classic ‘hero myth’. However, the poliziesco’s shift in setting had an impact on the discursive structures through which this archetypal narrative form was articulated and this had a significant impact on the way in which the genre was inter- preted by the critical establishment. The Spaghetti Western was ostensibly set in a remote time and place (the American Wild West of the nineteenth century), but this setting was far removed from the social and political con- cerns of Italian filmmakers and audiences. Moreover, the deserts of Almeria functioned as an abstract, mythical place and only occasional films like Tonino Valerii’s The Price of Power/Il prezzo del potere (1969) made explicit reference to historical events or contemporary reality. Conversely, the poliziesco took place in a concrete social and geographic reality intimately familiar to its audience.2 Moreover the scripts were loaded with explicit
133 L. Bayman et al. (eds.), Popular Italian Cinema © Louis Bayman and Sergio Rigoletto 2013 134 Popular Italian Cinema references to contemporary society and to recent news – most obviously the Circeo massacre, which formed the explicit backdrop to three films in the same year the crime took place, 1976.3 All of the films make refer- ence to the seemingly uncontrollable proliferation of crime at the time, and many also invoke political extremism, terrorism and the bombings of Bologna and Milan. As a result, virtually all the critical responses to the genre – both at the time and in subsequent analyses – have tended to interpret the films in relation to the social context of the anni di piombo.4 Most accounts of the poliziesco are undermined by a naïvely ‘reflec- tionist’ understanding of the relationship between film and society. For example, Antonio Tentori says, ‘If there exists a genre capable of faith- fully reflecting the reality of Seventies Italy […] then that genre is surely the poliziesco’ (quoted in Patrizi and Coutmaccio, 2001: 7).5 This is also broadly true of the only serious article on the poliziesco in English: while discussing cop films in general Christopher Barry argues that ‘[their appeal] is not hard to understand when considering it as a reflection of the demands governing the male psyche,’ and that cop films constitute ‘a medium not for reflecting truth but for reflecting desire’ (Barry, 2004: 77). However once he begins discussing the Italian films he gets so caught up with their social content that he describes them as ‘a reflex reaction to the explosive political environment’, arguing that Sergio Martino’s Violent Professionals/Milano trema: la polizia vuole giustizia (1973), one of his case studies, ‘provides accurate coverage of the whole of Italian political may- hem during the 1970s’ (Barry, 2004: 80 and 85). Critics with a more rela- tional understanding of the connection between film and society tend to be concerned with questions of ideology and this has resulted in a cari- cature of the genre as a manipulative, cliché-ridden, reactionary, proto- Fascist genre, which is often disparagingly referred to as the poliziottesco.6 For example, the newspaper Il corriere della sera described The Big Racket as being characterized by a ‘cynically reactionary ideology’,7 while in Il giorno Morando Morandini described it as ‘a Fascist film… a vile film… an idiotic film’ (quoted in Curti, 2006: 159 and 220–1).8 I do not want to suggest that the ideological deconstruction of popu- lar texts is not a legitimate and potentially enlightening activity, but there is a problem with the way this has been carried out in relation to the poliziesco. Such an approach is based on a simplistic and con- descending conception of audience response: it presupposes the critic as a sophisticated viewer able to unpack ideological contradictions of which the average viewer is unaware. Thus, such analyses tend to work best when revealing concealed ideological contradictions through close analysis, as in Robin Wood’s book on Hollywood of the period, Strategies of Tension: The Italian Crime Film 135
Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan, to which I will return in due course. But the poliziesco wears its ideological concerns on its sleeve and critics have tended to simply take at face value ideologically dubious state- ments made by the films’ protagonists, assuming that these must reflect the ideological ‘message’ of the films themselves. However, I would argue that the viewer must understand and consciously engage with the issues the films raise in order to respond fully on an emotional level, and this contradicts the idea that spectators are passive and unwitting recipients of a concealed ideological agenda.9 This ideological approach also ignores the fact that the main aim of poliziesco filmmakers is not to articulate a political message, but rather to provide an emotional experience; it therefore confuses the means with the ends. Enzo G. Castellari claims that he turned to the poliziesco because he ‘liked the idea of telling the story of a strong and courageous protagonist, ready to take part in crazy car chases and breathtaking shoot-outs.’ He goes on to say that he attempts to ‘interpret the feeling’ of the characters and ‘to completely engross the spectator’ (quoted in Grimaldi and Pulici, 2000: 48).10 This approach is evident in Castellari’s sophisticated use of cinema’s expressive potential in order to create an immersive and emotive experience, as evident in the extraordinary sequence shot from inside the protagonist’s car as it is rolled down a cliff (Figure 8.1).11 Obviously the relationship between the emotive and
Figure 8.1 The Big Racket, Nico Palmieri (Fabio Testi) becomes a victim of the racket when his car is pushed off the edge of a cliff in the film’s most aesthetically striking and technically brilliant scene 136 Popular Italian Cinema ideological aims of the poliziesco is a complex one and this chapter will consider how one such film invokes social and political issues that are of concern to the viewer in order to create an affective experience; and how this process results in a rather more ambiguous ideological position than conventional accounts of the genre have assumed.
The Big Racket
The Big Racket tells of a violent protection racket under the control of a shady lawyer with political and big business connections which is menacing the shopkeepers of Rome. The racket is opposed by a lone policeman, Nico Palmieri. However, Palmieri’s hands are tied by the legal system – the victims of the racket’s intimidation are too afraid to testify and every time he arrests a member of the gang, the lawyer gets them out on a technicality. Thus the film sets up a state of tension through a triangular structure: helpless innocent citizens on the one hand, ruthless and unstoppable criminals on the other, and in the middle an archetypal hero handicapped by a series of obstacles and limitations. This structure points to the fact that the narrative has its basis in archetypal narrative structures, and that these are as important to the film’s construction and effect as its ideological trappings. As Roberto Curti observes, ‘The starting point is once again topical events, but everything is drained [of meaning], reduced to mere narrative function […] recent news is transfigured onto a mythic plane’ (Curti, 2006: 158).12 Palmieri eventually resorts to tactics of questionable legality in order to combat the racket, giving a gentleman thief, Peppe, free reign to commit robberies in order that he can infiltrate the racket and act as an informant. Palmieri is ultimately dismissed from the police force when this plan goes wrong but rather than give up, he takes the only course of action open to him and forms his own band, selecting people who have a personal grudge against the racket including Peppe (whose nephew has been killed), Giovanni (whose wife was raped and killed in retaliation for his intervention in a shoot-out) and Luigi (whose adolescent daughter was raped and then committed suicide after he refused to yield to the racket’s extortion). The Big Racket thus straddles two narrative typologies characteristic of the poliziesco. This first half corresponds to the renegade cop narrative typically identified with Maurizio Merli’s Commissario Betti in films like Violent Rome/Roma violenta (1975) and A Special Cop in Action/Italia a mano armata (1976). The model for these narratives is Don Siegel’s Dirty Harry (1971) and, like Clint Eastwood’s Harry Callahan, Nico Palmieri ulti- mately finds there is no place on the force for him. Thus the second half Strategies of Tension: The Italian Crime Film 137 deals with ordinary citizens who take the law into their own hands. There are two prototypes for this vigilante narrative: Castellari’s own Street Law/ Il cittadino si ribella (1974) and Michael Winner’s Death Wish (1974).13 Although there are clear parallels between the cop and vigilante nar- ratives it would be a mistake to conflate the two, because the pleasures they offer the viewer are not the same. Like the detective genre, cop films are supposed to be reassuring in that they depict an institutional figure that brings about the restoration of order in a corrupt and socially unbal- anced world. I should clarify that 1970s Italian films emphasize the fact that the cop has to work against bureaucracy and a corrupt or inefficient judicial system and thus, strictly speaking, operates on the edges of the socially and legally sanctioned force of law and order he represents, a fact alluded to in the original Italian title of Castellari’s prototypical High Crime (1973) – La polizia incrimina, la legge assolve, which translates as ‘The Police Incriminate, the Law Absolves’. Nevertheless, despite the means he sometimes employs, the figure of a policeman who is able to overcome the tide of lawlessness remains much more reassuring than that of the vigilante, whose very presence reminds the viewer of the ulti- mate failure of the professional class of lawmaker to tackle the wave of crime sweeping the country. As the protagonist of the cycle’s prototype Il cittadino si ribella puts it, ‘If you don’t defend yourself, then nobody will.’ Instead, the appeal of the vigilante film is bound up with the notion of vengeance. As Patrizi and Cotumaccio put it, ‘You can only respond to violence with violence: this is the moral of The Big Racket’ (Patrizi and Cotumaccio, 2001: 33).14 Rather than the cop film’s re-establishment of a social order, the vigilante film is primarily concerned with the re- establishment of a moral order in which the villain gets his just deserts. While the manner in which this takes place undoubtedly raises ethically troubling questions, rather than engaging in a knee-jerk response to the theme of vengeance, we can better understand its function through refer- ence to the ideas of moral philosopher Robert Solomon.
The ethics of vengeance
In suggesting that ‘emotions constitute the framework (or frameworks) of rationality itself’, Solomon takes issue with the Kantian tradition that governs most of our understanding of morality and aligns himself with Schopenhauer and Hume. He argues that:
‘Negative’ emotions such as indignation and vengeance are part and parcel of our human nature […] our sense of justice cannot ignore, 138 Popular Italian Cinema
and to some extent develops out of, these rather vile emotions. This is not to deny that justice requires and presupposes compassion, respect, and a sense of duty as well, but justice also involves the often despised and dismissed emotion of vengeance, which may, in fact be (both historically and psychologically) the seed from which the plant of justice has grown. (Solomon, 2004: 21)
Obviously Solomon is not calling for the kind of behaviour displayed by the poliziesco. However his ideas reveal that the pleasures the poliziesco provides should not be considered aberrant, but rather dependent on a natural sense of outrage at injustice and a desire to see justice done. Paraphrasing Susan Jacoby, Solomon goes on to claim that ‘our denial of the desire for vengeance is analogous to the Victorian denial of sexual desire, and we are paying a similar psychological price for it in all sorts of displaced destructive behaviours and anxieties’ (Solomon, 2004: 39). If Victorian melodrama provided a cathartic outlet for sexual repression, then it would seem legitimate to entertain the idea that the poliziesco might serve a similar function with regard to audiences in crime- stricken 1970s Italy.15 The Big Racket utilizes three strategies to achieve such a cathartic effect: it caricatures its villains, it escalates the nature and extremity of their crimes and it emphasizes a sense of satisfaction and poetic justice in the final retribution. All of the films’ villains are depicted in the most Manichean fashion as grotesque caricatures of immorality. For example, our first intro- duction to one of the members of the racket shows him intimidat- ing a toy-shop owner by making sexually perverse gestures towards a toy doll and then asking whether it bleeds if you cut its throat. Significantly, the criminals seem less inclined to threaten violence as a means of extorting money than with indulging in violence for personal gratification. Indeed, many of their actions in the film are at best peripheral to the goal of extorting money and at worst entirely counter-productive. The idea of a protection racket is thus a narrative pretext for showing a group of completely vile and violent criminals on the rampage. This results in an escalation of violence, compared to the poliziesco’s American counterpart.16 For example, when one shopkeeper, Luigi, cou- rageously informs on the racket to the police, they respond by kidnap- ping and raping his adolescent daughter, who subsequently commits suicide.17 Similarly, when Giovanni intervenes in a shoot-out between the police and the racket, they respond by breaking into his apartment, Strategies of Tension: The Italian Crime Film 139 beating him senseless, raping his wife before his eyes, urinating on her body and then burning her alive. Such acts are so excessive that the viewer cannot help but be shocked and outraged. Moreover, if Death Wish featured one gang rape, then The Big Racket stages two, and if Dirty Harry featured one criminal, then The Big Racket features a whole gang. To compensate for this escalation of crime and violence, in its latter part The Big Racket replaces the lone avenger of its American predecessors with a whole gang of vigilantes. This outrage produces an emotional tension in the viewer, and in the final reel Castellari attempts to provide a cathartic release for this tension. In order to provide an emotionally satisfying comeuppance following such extreme crimes, Castellari uses two strategies: first, he establishes a sense of poetic justice in that each of the vigilantes gets to kill the criminal most directly responsible for the crime against them, and second, he prolongs and emphasizes the villain’s suffering through a Peckinpah-like use of slow-motion.
Catharsis
Many critics have seen this reliance on a cathartic act of violence as problematic, in that it can serve as an incitement to real violence. However, such an approach is hardly unique to the poliziesco; indeed, it is endemic in action cinema throughout the world. The poliziesco is different only in that, as I observed earlier, it strips this idea to its bare essentials and pushes it to extremes – something which the Spaghetti Western had already done with the classic Western myth. The idea that such a catharsis is dangerous is based on a number of deeply rooted assumptions, which Murray Smith has convincingly challenged in an excellent deconstruction of Brechtian theory and the critical tradition it influenced (Smith, 1996). Firstly, it assumes that the spectator conflates representation and reality – and thus that (s)he may take the vigilante’s actions as a potential model for reality. However, it is worth observing that, despite its recurrent references to contempo- rary social and political reality, the poliziesco actually portrays a highly conventionalized, unrealistic world, like the Spaghetti Western. This is important because, were the film to realistically portray a vigilante policy, many viewers would probably be horrified. As Carl Plantinga has observed in relation to Dirty Harry,
The promotion of such untroubled use of violence can only occur in a world of Manichean good and evil, and such is the San Francisco 140 Popular Italian Cinema
of Dirty Harry. In fact, Siegel and Eastwood create one of the most loathsome villains of all time in Scorpio, the snivelling murderer, torturer, masochist, and rapist whose intended purpose is to evoke spectator disgust on many levels. When confronted with such a clear embodiment of evil, who needs due process? (Plantinga, 1998: 73–4)
Clearly Plantinga is unfamiliar with the villains of The Big Racket, not to mention a character like Tomas Milian’s Giulio Sacchi in Almost Human/ Milano odia: la polizia non può sparare (1974), who make Scorpio pale by comparison. Secondly, it assumes that the heightened emotional state in which the viewer is placed prevents him/her from reflecting critically on what (s)he sees. However, cognitive theory has demonstrated that the con- ventional opposition between emotion and rationality is misleading, given that cognition is a prerequisite to any emotional response and that emotion itself plays a fundamental role in allowing us to respond appropriately to stimuli. As Murray Smith states,
emotions play what Ronald de Sousa calls a strategic role in our behaviour, by directing our attention and thinking toward particular aspects of situations, and deflecting them from other aspects […] The point here is that emotion is integrated with perception, attention, and cognition, not implacably opposed to any of them. (Smith, 1996: 133)
In the poliziesco, the viewer must be consciously aware of the socio- logical and political tensions the filmmaker mobilizes and engage with them in order to respond fully on an emotional level. Thirdly, it assumes that the final act of catharsis simply erases all that has gone before in the film; an idea with which Murray Smith takes issue: ‘While there can be no doubting the rhetorical weight carried by the outcome of a story, narratives do not rely on a repression that eradi- cates either earlier phases of the narrative or alternative possibilities that they do not instantiate’ (Smith, 1996: 144). In The Big Racket the sup- posedly redemptive violence of the final reel does not close off anxieties about the use of such vigilante methods raised elsewhere in the film. For example, the rape and murder of Giovanni’s wife in the scene described above is carried out in retaliation for his earlier intervention in a shoot- out with police and this suggests that citizens taking the law into their own hands generally results in an escalation of violence. Similarly, in Strategies of Tension: The Italian Crime Film 141 the scene in which Palmieri’s plan to use Peppe to infiltrate the gang goes wrong, the racket alerts the police about a robbery he is commit- ting and both Peppe and his nephew are trapped inside the bank. The racket then spreads lies about the violence they have supposedly carried out during the robbery, turning the crowd into a violent lynch mob which beats the largely innocent young nephew to death. This scene thus suggests that retributive justice without due process risks spilling innocent blood. Both these scenes call into question the vigilante ethos that the film’s final scene seems to celebrate by presenting the tragic consequences that vigilantism can lead to.18 The film complicates our response to vigilantism in other ways, too. While we can empathize with Luigi’s desire for vengeance after the rape and death of his daughter, the film clearly shows that this tragedy has left him borderline psychotic and after completing his revenge, he blows his own brains out.19 The violence of the final shoot-out described above is also troubling. Carl Plantinga argues that, in the classic Western,
‘Good’ violence is undertaken according to a codified set of govern- ing conventions. The hero resorts to violence only when conven- tional ‘justice’ demands its use to resolve conflicts or to mete out ‘just’ retribution. Moreover, the hero doesn’t revel in mayhem […] The Westerner may kill, but he kills in accordance with strict conven- tions and protocols. He never shoots his opposition in the back or ambushes his opponent in a surprise attack. Instead, he engages in the ‘fair fight’ – the ritualized shootout. (Plantinga, 1998: 72)
However, the ‘heroes’ of The Big Racket violate all of these moral pre- cepts. Firstly, by ambushing the racket the vigilantes clearly break the protocol of the fair fight. Secondly, because the vigilantes all have highly personal motivations for taking revenge and thus their notion of justice is not an abstract one. This fact emphasizes the role of pas- sion in our sense of justice described by Solomon, something which is further reinforced by the film’s emphasis on poetic justice in the way each of the vigilantes gets to kill the villain most directly responsible for the crime against them. And thirdly, because the vigilantes take obvious pleasure in their revenge, effectively torturing their victims as they kill them. Castellari reinforces this effect for the viewer by filming several of the killings in slow-motion, while gunshots and screams echo on the soundtrack with exaggerated reverb.20 142 Popular Italian Cinema
Figure 8.2 An incomplete catharsis: Nico Palmieri (Fabio Testi) vents his frustration and feelings of impotence in the film’s final scene
Nevertheless, despite the ending’s emphasis on the villains’ suffering and the sense of poetic justice, given the film’s escalation of violence and the Manichean caricaturing of its villains, the film fails to exorcise fully the horror of the crimes that have gone before or to provide an entirely satisfactory emotional release. One could argue that, rather than the Fascist apology it is usually taken as, The Big Racket actually complicates such a position by indulging the fantasy of violent retribu- tion, only to show its inadequacy. Rather than articulating the liberal’s usual response that retribution on the part of the State or victim is somehow immoral, The Big Racket actually shows that if your justifica- tion for such actions is revenge, then the punishment, however brutal, is somehow never sufficient. Indeed the film’s final image, after all the members of the racket have been dispatched, depicts Palmieri smashing inanimate objects surrounding him with the butt of his gun in a violent rage deriving from an ill-defined sense of frustration and impotence (Figure 8.2).
Conclusion: an incoherent text
In describing the role of counter-cultural sensibilities in the American cinema of the 1970s, Robin Wood identifies both a ‘return of the repressed’ in the social commentary of films by directors like George A. Romero and Larry Cohen and a strand of ‘incoherent texts’ like Strategies of Tension: The Italian Crime Film 143
Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1976), which refuse to take a consistent ideological position and instead align themselves with morally ambiva- lent characters who occupy an ambiguous position within the social and political landscape in which they operate (Wood, 2003: especially 41–62). Xavier Mendik has convincingly argued that Death Wish actu- ally constitutes such a text, rather than the reactionary Fascist film it is usually seen as, through the way in which it associates its vigilante hero with the diseased urban landscape and the criminal underworld he confronts (Mendik, 2002). Similarly, rather than a reactionary film which creates both emotive and ideological closure through a final cathartic act of violence, The Big Racket would seem to be an example of such an ‘incoherent text’, a site of both ideological and emotive tension, which it either fails or refuses to defuse. Admittedly not all polizieschi display quite this level of ambiguity; however many do. For example, in Manhunt in the City/L’uomo della strada fa giustizia (1975) the protagonist seeking revenge for the death of his daughter is tricked by a shady lawyer secretly heading up a clandestine group of neo-Fascists into killing the wrong people as part of his revenge. Even the genre’s prototype, Execution Squad/La polizia ringrazia (1972) undercuts the apparently reactionary agenda of the first half when it becomes clear that the crimes are being committed by a vigilante organization of ex-policemen who eventually kill the film’s protagonist. This is not to advance the somewhat perverse argument that these films constitute liberal texts – although it is undoubtedly true that a number of left- leaning directors who articulated liberal messages in other films contrib- uted to the poliziesco, together with directors whose work is exclusively apolitical. Rather, it is to suggest that these films constitute ideological battlegrounds and that their ‘incoherence’ has been far too simplisti- cally misinterpreted by most critics. As Roberto Curti, who has written the only serious historical study of the poliziesco, states, ‘Contemporary critics made the mistake of judging these films from a political per- spective […] when their ideology is a shifting and unbalanced variable whose ultimate meaning was frequently obscure even to the filmmakers themselves’ (Curti, 2006: 154).21 The title of this chapter is therefore both provocative and apt. It is provocative because it invokes the so-called strategia della tensione, through which reactionary right-wing factions employed the terror- ism of the 1970s in order to create a sense of tension which – it was claimed – would inevitably lead to calls for a more repressive regime. Ideological critics argue that the poliziesco essentially performs an analo- gous function: by depicting a violent and chaotic Italy delivered into 144 Popular Italian Cinema the hands of lawless criminals by a weak, liberal judiciary, these films force viewers into a reactionary, right-wing point-of-view and encourage the return of a more repressive political agenda. This is an interpreta- tion which I have resisted by insisting that rather than concealing an implicit reactionary ideology, The Big Racket makes explicit such politi- cal positions, while simultaneously exposing and exploiting their emo- tive and ideological contradictions. This process is made explicit when the boss of the racket explains his agenda to his collaborators. He says, ‘People will soon learn they have no defence against the terror we will create’, and then goes on to add that their actions will not be met with opposition because, ‘politicians love chaos; it gives them greater con- trol over their constituents.’ Rather than being an unwitting ideologi- cal vehicle articulating a ‘strategy of tension’, The Big Racket explicitly outlines such a strategy and places it in the mouth of the leader of the racket, its embodiment of corruption and archetypal evil. ‘Strategies of tension’ is also apt because it is an accurate descrip- tion of the way in which The Big Racket constitutes a site of emotional tension which is never completely defused. The poliziesco’s ideological incoherence is part of a strategy to create an emotional tension in the viewer: by invoking contemporary social and political concerns and playing on the spectator’s innate sense of justice, The Big Racket raises the possibility of a final catharsis which never fully comes to pass. Given the poliziesco’s obviously fictional status this is likely to result not in the spectator stepping back onto the streets and voting for the far right, as traditional ideological critics imply, but rather stepping back into the cinema demanding an escalation of retributive violence in future cinematic spectacles. This would explain the process of escalation that, as I suggested earlier, characterizes the poliziesco and perhaps partly explains its significant commercial success during the period.
Notes
1. Directors like Fernando Di Leo, Enzo G. Castellari and Marino Girolami as well as actors like Tomas Milian, Fabio Testi and Franco Nero, to name just a few of the most significant examples, all came directly from a background of the Western. 2. Numerous films render this process explicit by adopting titles featuring the word Italy or the names of cities like Milan, Rome, Naples or Turin. 3. The Children of Violent Rome/I ragazzi della Roma violenta (1976), Terror in Rome/I violenti di Roma bene (1976) and Roma, l’altra faccia della violenza (1976). Strategies of Tension: The Italian Crime Film 145
4. Literally ‘the years of lead’, the term is used in Italy to characterize the 1970s, a period dominated by terrorist acts perpetrated by both left and right, and by the tension and insecurity created by such violent acts and the political rhetoric which surrounded it. For a fuller explanation of the origins and use of this term, see O’Leary, 2011; especially 7–10. 5. ‘Se esiste un genere in grado di rispecchiare fedelmente la realtà italiana degli anni Settanta […] quel genere è sicuramente il poliziesco.’ 6. A disparaging term that has more recently been adopted by some genre revi- sionists, just as the once derogatory term Spaghetti Western was adopted by historians like Christopher Frayling. 7. ‘[…] ideologia cinicamente reazionaria.’ 8. ‘[…] un film fascista… un film abietto… un film idiota.’ 9. This position is supported by recent cognitive theories of response – see below and Plantinga and Smith, 1999. 10. ‘Mi piaceva l’idea di raccontare una storia con un personaggio protagonista forte e coraggioso, pronto a lanciarsi in auto in inseguimenti pazzeschi, a cimentarsi in sparatorie mozzafiato.’ He goes on to say that he attempts to ‘interpretare il feeling’ of the characters and to create in the spectator ‘un forte interesse e un coinvolgimento completo.’ 11. The fact that it is the film’s star, Fabio Testi, rather than a stunt double in this scene is clearly important in reinforcing the spectator’s identification with his experience. Castellari only recently revealed how he achieved this extraordinary effect in the audio-commentary on the American DVD released by Blue Underground. 12. ‘Il punto di partenza è ancora una volta l’attualità, ma tutto è prosciugato, ridotto a pura funzione narrativa […] trasfigura la cronaca in chiave mitica.’ 13. Other examples of the vigilante tendency include Manhunt in the City/L’uomo della strada fa giustizia, and Syndicate Sadists/Il giustiziere sfida la citta (both 1975), Kidnap Syndicate/La città sconvolta: caccia spietata ai rapinatori (1975), Go, Gorilla, Go/Vai gorilla/The Hired Gun (1976), and Death Hunt/No alla violenza (1977). 14. ‘Alla violenza non si può rispondere che con la violenza, questa è la morale de Il grande racket.’ 15. The violent or criminal acts sometimes perpetrated by ‘ordinary’ Italians in these films should be understood in similar terms to the presence of wide- spread prostitution in Victorian Britain, as a ‘return of the repressed’. Yet the audience for these films obviously also comprised a vast number of ordinary Italians who conceivably fantasized about performing such acts without ever actually committing them, and for such spectators the poliziesco would have served a cathartic function. 16. As Christopher Barry observes, compared to their American prototypes, Italian crime films ‘raised the violence bar tenfold’ and in this, too, they resemble the Spaghetti Western (Barry, 2004: 86). 17. Remarkably, this character is played by the director’s own daughter, Stefania Castellari. 18. It is indicative of the slapdash approach to analysis which has resulted in critical over-simplifications of the genre that, in labelling the film ‘vile’ and ‘Fascist’ in the aforementioned review, Mario Morandini suggests that the violence against Peppe’s nephew functions as an incitement to lynching, rather than as an indictment of it (quoted in Curti, 2006). 146 Popular Italian Cinema
19. Morandini also suggests that we are invited to laugh at the father whose daughter is raped, when actually he is clearly an object of pity (quoted in Curti, 2006). 20. Castellari has often expressed his admiration for Sam Peckinpah’s use of slow-motion in The Wild Bunch (1969), but here the device functions rather differently – prolonging and emphasizing the victim’s suffering rather than functioning as part of an elegy to the tragic demise of the film’s heroes (Blumenstock and Kessler, 1993: 19). 21. ‘L’equivoco in cui cade la critica dell’epoca è di giudicare questi prodotti sec- ondo un’ottica politicizzata, applicando un reticolo di significati e propositi a un cinema dove il valore ideologico è una variabile oscillante e impazzita, il cui senso ultimo talvolta sfugge agli stessi cineasti e produttori.’
Bibliography
Barry, C. (2004) ‘Violent Justice: Italian Crime/Cop Films of the 1970s’, in E. Mathijs and X. Mendik (eds), Alternative Europe: Eurotrash and Exploitation Cinema Since 1945 (London and New York: Wallflower), 77–89. Blumenstock, P. and Kessler, C. (1993) ‘Enzo G. Castellari: An Interview Conducted by Peter Blumenstock and Christian Kessler (Part 1)’, ETC – European Trash Cinema, 2:9, 16–20. Curti, R. (2006) Italia odia: il cinema poliziesco italiano (Turin: Lindau). Grimaldi, I. and Pulici, D. (eds) (2000) Intervista a Enzo G. Castellari (Milan: Nocturno). Mendik, X. (2002) ‘Urban Legend: The 1970s Films of Michael Winner’, in X. Mendik (ed.), Necronomicon Presents Shocking Cinema of the Seventies: The Decade That Humanity Forgot (London and New York: Wallflower), 58–73. O’Leary, A. (2011) Italian Tragedy/Tragedia All’italiana: Italian Cinema and Italian Terrorisms, 1970–2010 (New York: Peter Lang). Patrizi, F. and Cotumaccio, E. (2001) Italia calibro 9 (Rome: Mondo ignoto/ Profondo rosso). Plantinga, C. (1998) ‘Spectacles of Death: Clint Eastwood and Violence in Unforgiven’, Cinema Journal, 37:2, 65–83. Plantinga, C. and Smith, G. M. (1999) ‘Introduction’, in C. Plantinga and G. M. Smith (eds), Passionate Views: Film, Cognition and Emotion (Baltimore, MD, London: Johns Hopkins University Press), 1–17. Smith, M. (1996) ‘The Logic and Legacy of Brechtianism’, in D. Bordwell and N. Carroll (eds), Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press), 130–48. Solomon, R. C. (2004) ‘Sympathy and Vengeance: The Role of Feelings in Justice’, in In Defence of Sentimentality (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press), 20–42. Wood, R. (2003) Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan… and Beyond (New York: Columbia University Press. Italian Cinema Gender and Genre
Maggie Günsberg Professor of Italian University of Manchester 5 The Man With No Name: Masculinity as Style in the Spaghetti Western
Introduction
The spaghetti western is notorious for its memorable iconography of masculinity involved in sadomasochistic violence taken to surreal excess and displayed in close-up detail. Its homosocial and predomi- nantly homoerotic base allows little room, as a rule, for femininity and heterosexuality (Landy 2000, p. 190). Films featuring central female characters are few, and even in these cases femininity is usually repre- sented exclusively through sexuality, often directly through pros- titution (for example, Leone’s C’era una volta il West, 1969, and Marcellini’s Lola Colt, 1967). A rare spaghetti western by a female direc- tor, Lina Wertmüller’s Il mio corpo per un poker (1968), centres on a female outlaw (the real-life Belle Starr), but even in her case emphasis is on her physical beauty, with sexual attractiveness remaining the dominant focus. In other words, it is how these women look, rather than what they do, that is crucial to their role, namely as token affirmation of male heterosexuality in a homosocial and homoerotic genre. Instead, given the paucity of central female characters, the posi- tions of femininity can be seen taken up by the racial, rather than gen- dered, other of dominant white masculinity, and on occasion by feminized adolescent or homosexual masculinity. In diametric opposition to postwar melodrama, with its preoccupation with domestic, maternal femininity and contemporary Italian setting, the spaghetti western deals with the mythologized historical past of another nation whose films had dominated Italian screens from the mid-1910s. Taking its cue from the American western, it deals with the pre-civilized Old West and Mexico of the 1800s and early 1900s, an era not conducive to family stability and, by connotation, to the traditional,
173 174 Italian Cinema: Gender and Genre domestic concerns of femininity. Hardy gun-toting women existed in the real West, like the bandit queen Belle Starr (Myra Belle Shirley) (Levitin 1982). In Corbucci’s Johnny Oro (1966), the sheriff’s wife even shoots expertly and fearlessly alongside her husband in a few scenes. However, the spaghetti western generally chooses to sideline this type of femininity, with few exceptions (most notably the female Mexican bandit/revolutionary). Instead, the genre centres on mascu- linity, taking over the generic adventure strand from the declining peplum in the mid-1960s and allowing the hero, now transformed into anti-hero, to continue a different quest in another, more pungent, parodic vein. This is not to say that an emotionalism equal in intensity to that evoked by melodrama is absent from the spaghetti western, a genre that has even been labelled male melodrama (Lusted 1996, Landy 1997). The Italianization of the American genre during this period characteristically involved accessing, through parodically extreme visual and aural means, deep-seated psychosexual dynamics generally contained in a more prosaic way by the narrative in the classic Hollywood western. The golden era of the spaghetti western, known in Italy as western all’italiana or western-spaghetti, is regarded as running from 1964 to the early 1970s. It was one of the most prolific of all the genres, with around 450 films produced from 1964 to 1978.1 Despite this high number of films, made by numerous directors, the genre is primarily, if not exclusively, identified with Sergio Leone, who revitalized an existing genre of some 25 films with his first of six westerns, Per un pugno di dollari (1964), and went on to gain auteur status.2 The film was made on a low budget, with the same sets and production team of Caiano’s big-budget western Le pistole non discutono, but had a much greater impact. Leone completed his famous trilogy with Per qualche dollaro in più (1965) and Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo (1966). His C’era una volta il west (1968) is held to be the apotheosis of the genre, while Giù la testa! (1971) and Il mio nome è Nessuno (1973) continue the exploration of masculine identities.3 Other directors include Ferdinando Baldi, Enzo Barboni, Sergio Corbucci, Damiano Damiani, Antonio Margheriti, Gianfranco Parolini, Giulio Questi and Duccio Tessari, to name but a few. The iconography and major characteristics of masculinity in the genre were established by Clint Eastwood (the American actor from the western TV series Rawhide), and perhaps most successfully imitated by Gianni Garko in Margheriti’s Se incontri Sartana, prega per la tua morte (1968). Eastwood starred in Leone’s trilogy, mirroring the role of Steve The Man With No Name 175
Reeves, who had set the template for musculinity in the peplum six years earlier. Other American actors were also used (among them Rod Cameron, James Coburn, Henry Fonda, William Holden and Lee Van Cleef), as well as Italian actors (Giuliano Gemma, Franco Nero), some with the by now standard custom of Anglicized or Americanized names for the home market (Mario Girotti as Terence Hill and Carlo Pedersoli as Bud Spencer). Among key nicknames of male characters used, after initial success, to promote series of films as a way of prolonging the genre were Django, Ringo, Sabata, Sartana and Trinity (with Django the most prolific in the re-titling of films for export).4 The withholding of genuine names, and even non-naming, as in the case of Eastwood’s character, raises interesting issues of gender identity in relation to the symbolic, as we shall see. Americanized pseudonyms were common for film personnel of the genre. Leone went under the name of Bob Robertson for his first western, after his father’s directorial pseudonym Roberto Roberti, reverting to his own name after his credentials had been established with Italian audiences.5 Even music composers did not use their own names, at least initially. Music, an important Italian national cultural medium, is key to the Italianization of the Hollywood western, its cinematic presence exem- plified by the postwar cineopera (of which around 50 were produced in the late 1950s, just a few years before spaghetti western production began) (Brunetta 1993, III, pp. 544–9, Frayling 1998, p. 54). Musical elements were, of course, present in the American western from its beginnings (the live piano accompaniment to the silent westerns, with music used to create suspense, the repetition of motifs in the sound- track to underline certain themes, the intradiegetic playing of instru- ments, and singing soldiers, cowboys and saloon girls). However, thanks largely to Ennio Morricone, the Italian western added a whole new dimension to film music, moving music out of the background by making it conspicuous, and often featuring an extensive musical score that led to the genre itself being described as operatic. The first feature- length Italian western, Koch’s Una signora dell’ovest (1942), was in fact based on an opera, the homonymous work by Puccini (1910). The inclusion in the musical motifs of unexpected instruments and sounds, in conjunction with characterization and stereotypical action scenes pushed to extremes, contributes to the parodic effect of the genre. The music thereby compounds the spaghetti western’s strategy of ‘making strange’ what is familiar (in line with the Russian Formalist definition of art in the 1920s), the Italianization of the genre in itself a form of defamiliarization in its playing with the conventions of the 176 Italian Cinema: Gender and Genre
American western. Parody, a key feature of the 1960s spaghetti west- erns, was already in evidence in the 1940s with Ferroni’s skit on Koch’s film, Il fanciullo del West (1943). Both the parody western and its origi- nal were box office hits on domestic release. Crucially, the parodic style raises issues concerning the status of representation of gender stereo- types when these appear excessive and open to ridicule (as discussed in the chapter on commedia all’italiana). In tandem with highly stylized visual effects, music in the spaghetti western is often instrumental in establishing characterization, much like the use of the leitmotif in opera (for example, the recurring mis- chievous motif accompanying Eastwood’s antics in Per un pugno di dollari). Characterization, like plot, follows the genre rule of easy-to- follow simplicity and Manichean opposites, as in the peplum that pre- ceded it, and the medium of the comic strip to which both genres are linked (and from which Corbucci, for example, borrowed cutting effects) (Frayling 1998, p. x).6 However, the use of flashback in many of the spaghetti westerns, unlike the peplum, offers insights into charac- ter psychology. Moreover, while a title such as Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo may appear simplistic, the parodic nature of the genre throws into question the meaning of these moralistic and aesthetic categories, especially in relation to their use by the American host genre. Differences between the Italian variant and the American original in terms of plot motifs have inevitably been the focus of study. Frayling adapts Wright’s oppositions (good–bad, inside society–outside society, wilderness–civilization) to the Italian western as follows: victim–- executioner, gringo–Mexican, insider (local community)–outsider (local community), pro-faction versus anti-faction, family-oriented versus self-oriented, amity–enmity, money–commitment to a cause (Frayling 1998, pp. 50–1). Staig and Williams foreground spaghetti western characteristics of volatile emotionalism, violence, vendetta, family, ambivalence towards religion, all portrayed with a greater sense of realism as well as humour, the last central to Italian cinema generally and rooted in the tradition of Roman satire (Staig and Williams 1975, p. 33). In terms of plot variations, this prolific genre has been distilled into a variety of phases. Frayling, building on Wright’s structuralist analysis of the American western, divides the Italian variant into three plot phases: foundational (c.1964–7), transi- tional (c.1966–8) and Zabata-spaghetti (c.1967–71) (Frayling 1998, pp. 53–6). As far as gender is concerned, masculinity is a constant, with femininity appearing only under ‘whores’, ‘female friend’ and, pre- sumably, under ‘family’ in the first variant, and not at all in the The Man With No Name 177 second and third. For Wright, female characters feature as the prize for the lone hero of the classic plot defending family and community, while the professional plot (a scenario common in the spaghetti western), concerns itself with a male elite that rejects community and female company (Frayling 1998, p. 43). Brunetta distinguishes three plot phases: grand guignol, revolutionary and parody using the ‘eroicomico’, this last variant (represented by the Trinity films at the end of the cycle) recapturing family audiences alienated by the violence of the preceding types (Brunetta 1993, IV, pp. 46–7).7 Italian, and indeed European, interest in western themes dates back as far as the crystallization of the genre in America during the nine- teenth century with dime novels (which included female characters), travel literature, drama and biography, all dealing with the West and its otherness (Buscombe 1996). A popular literary western tradition of novels, sometimes serialized in newspapers, and both in translation and homegrown (such as the novels of Emilio Salgari) already existed in Italy at the turn of the century. This tradition was particularly stim- ulated by the highly publicized Wild West shows of Buffalo Bill Cody, performed in Italy in 1890 and 1905 (Cristofori and Menarini 1986–7, II, Carloni 1993, Frayling 1998, p. 40). Dominated by the spectacular in terms of setting (the West), highly visual action drama (fights, rob- beries, kidnappings) and distinctive iconography (items of clothing, weaponry, horses), the western moved easily from the written word to theatre, comic strip and silent screen. Europe was open to this exotic cinematic genre from the beginning, in terms of exhibiting American westerns and producing Euro-westerns. Frayling even posits a European, rather than a US, market, for the earliest silent westerns, which made most profit in France (Frayling 1998, p. 99). Italy, Germany and France all produced westerns in the silent era. One of the first Italian westerns, La vampira indiana (1913), involved Leone’s parents (it was directed by his father, Vincenzo, and starred his mother, Bice Valeriano, in the title role) (Brunetta 1995, I, p. 95, Buscombe 1996, p. 119). After the sharp decline of the Italian film industry during the First World War, and coupled with the rapid growth in the US film industry (reaching a high of around 700 films produced in 1926), production did not pick up until the effects of Fascist protectionist measures and the building of the Cinecittà studios in the late 1930s had kicked in (Buscombe 1996, p. 427).8 This is the context for renewed production of westerns in Italy during the 1930s and early 1940s, culminating in Italy’s first feature-length western, made under Fascism in 1942 (Koch’s Una signora dell’ovest). 178 Italian Cinema: Gender and Genre
Few Italian, and indeed European, westerns, were produced during the period 1946–60 (the earlier part of which saw an end to protection- ism with postwar American occupation, and the release of a backlog of thousands of Hollywood films onto the Italian market). However, Frayling draws attention to a series of particularly violent Italian Wild Bill Hikock copies of Hollywood ‘B’ movies in the early 1950s, of inter- est in that they prefigure the extreme use of violence in the spaghetti westerns a decade later (Frayling 1998, p. 33). In the early 1960s, Italian, German and Spanish producers were galvanized into financing Italian westerns, in the first instance by the European success of Sturges’ The Magnificent Seven (1960), a film based on Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai (1954). This gave a fresh take on the standard western and was set in Mexico, a setting that was to be favoured by the spaghetti western. A few years later came the German Reinl’s Winnetou films, The Treasure of Silver Lake (1962) and Winnetou the Warrior (1963), the latter starring the American Lex Barker (of Tarzan fame), with both films highly successful in Europe, and especially Italy. These German films inaugurated the 1960s era of mainly co-produced, distinctively Eurostyle westerns, with the spaghetti western taking the lead role after the impact of Leone’s first film (Frayling 1998 pp. 113–15).9 Numerically, Italy’s 450 or so films represented a major proportion of the Euro-westerns (Weisser lists 558 for the period 1961–77) (Weisser 1992). Italian co-productions, already in evidence in the 1940s, would rise steeply during the peplum and especially the spaghetti western era.10 At the same time that the spaghetti western was thriving, box office success of Hollywood westerns had hit a low point.11 In Italy, produc- tion of spaghetti westerns, non-existent in 1958, rose to 25 from 1963 to 1964, after which Leone’s Per un pugno di dollari triggered production rising to 72 per annum by 1967 (Frayling 1998, p. 50).12 The success of the spaghetti western in Italy had some boosting effect on US produc- tion of westerns in terms of numbers, which rose into the twenties from 1964 (with Italy always an important market for US films, and in these years still boasting the highest audience numbers in Europe, despite a continuing downward trend).13 However, the major impact was in US investment in westerns made more cost-effectively in Europe (Spain and Italy), and in the feeding back into Hollywood westerns of aspects of the Italianized western (the example usually cited is Peckinpah’s excessively violent The Wild Bunch, 1969). Particularly notable is the role of Clint Eastwood, icon of the spaghetti western, in keeping the Hollywood western on the cinematic map into the 1990s, as both actor and director. The Man With No Name 179
The profits realized by the majority of the Italian westerns, with high box office receipts and relatively low production costs, reinvigorated the Italian cinema industry after the fading out of the lucrative peplum, and came mostly from the domestic market, with only around 20 per cent of the films exported (Frayling 1998, p. 63).14 This would seem to indicate not just the continuing hold of US film genres on the Italian imagination, but also a predilection for a homegrown western that somehow resonated with the 1960s Italian social context. The commercial success of a genre with so little room for femininity, indeed the least inclusive of femininity of all the genres, invites a closer look at the workings of the home market. In this context Wagstaff draws attention to the central importance of class and gender difference between audiences of prima and terza visione cinemas. First- run cinemas were located in main cities, mostly in the more modern- ized North and Centre, and catered for a middle-class audience, which included women, especially from the younger generation. Third-run cinemas, by contrast, were situated in rural areas and provincial towns, mostly in the South, with a significant lower-class audience compo- nent from which, given only 30 per cent cinema attendance, women would appear to have been largely absent (Wagstaff 1992). Commercial success for the spaghetti western initially derived from prima visione runs, with high ticket prices enabling films in 1965 to make twice as much as any previous Hollywood western. But it was terza visione showings to a predominantly male, lower-class audience, paying cheaper ticket prices, that pulled in profits over a longer period of four to five years. In attempting to account for a lack of (hetero)sexual content in much of the genre, uncharacteristic when compared with other genres of the time, Wagstaff points out that this audience had not developed the consumerist attitute to sex of the more modern areas of Italy, where commedia all’italiana fared better and where the influence of the Church was on the wane (Wagstaff 1992). As in the era of the peplum, the industry was prompted to mass- produce films for this male-dominated Southern market in a continu- ing climate of falling ticket sales, to the extent that 350 out of the 450 westerns made were produced for these cinemas (Wagstaff 1992). The gender and class constitution of this audience in some respects resem- bles that of the American series western of the 1920s and the similar ‘B’ westerns. These US westerns, shown mostly in rural areas and small towns, appear to have attracted mainly men and children, and to have been unpopular with women (Buscombe 1996, pp. 36–7). However, American female audiences for big-budget ‘A’ films were pulled in by 180 Italian Cinema: Gender and Genre the use of female and male stars brought together in romantic plots, a phenomenon not generally mirrored by the spaghetti western. While the sheer number of spaghetti westerns produced, together with the immense profits they yielded, point to a certain popularity of this variant of the adventure genre, albeit, like the peplum, mostly among Southern, lower-class males, Wagstaff sounds a warning note in relation to the problematic nature of the notion of popularity. In particular, Italian cinema-going practices indicate not so much a choice of film as regular attendance at the same cinema, whatever film is being shown. The cinema was a social meeting place (crucially so for young city women, as discussed in the chapter on melodrama), and the film would not be watched intently from beginning to end, but only sporadically, in between conversations and at points of gratification (laughter, thrill, titil- lation) heralded by the music (Wagstaff 1992). However, it is indicative that box office success of the early spaghetti westerns took place in prima visione cinemas, which would have regularly seen female audiences. The situation regarding the question, already asked in relation to commedia all’italiana, of what might interest the female spectator in this male- dominated genre, is also complicated by the contemporary view of spectatorship, reiterated throughout this study, as not simply a matter of female audiences identifying with female characters. Whatever the gender aspects of consumption, with the demise of the terza visione cinemas as prima visione cinemas once again took over, the Italian western, no longer prima visione material, began to fade out in the 1970s. Mass taste was becoming increasingly urbanized, and rising cinema-going has been seen as a reflection of rising incomes among the urban middle classes (Micicché 1998, p. 146).15 Other reasons given by Wagstaff for the demise of a genre so dependent on terza visione outlets, with their cheap tickets, are the quadrupling of ticket prices from 1964 to 1978 on the back of the 1973 oil crisis, inroads made by television as broadcaster of films resulting from the increase in numbers of television stations after the sector was deregulated in 1976, and the renewed presence of Hollywood in Italy, particularly in the distribution sector (Wagstaff 1992, p. 251). Other genres were also coming to the fore, such as spy thrillers, police and political films, while the by now entrenched ‘sexy’ documentary, in a climate of lessening censorship, contributed to increasing (heterosexual) sexploitation in other genres, including the spaghetti western towards the end of its major era.16 There is also the inevitable waning of genres when variation on repetition appears to be exhausted. Only a different era, with a different social context (or indeed a different national culture), can provide a new set of variations to The Man With No Name 181 encourage a fresh genre lifespan. None the less, the golden era of the spaghetti western, lasting about a decade, in many ways outlasted that of other genres, even the preceding peplum run of six years. The spaghetti western provided the next step for directors and com- posers previously involved in other genres, particularly the peplum (Leone, Corbucci, Tessari, and the composers Rustichelli and De Masi). Many areas of continuity have been traced between these two adventure strands. From a gender standpoint, changing contextual social factors, in conjunction with the gender dynamics of produc- tion, distribution and consumption in an industry of continuing patriarchal hegemony, contribute, as always, to the cinematic celebra- tion or demonization of particular forms of masculinity and feminin- ity. As in the case of the popularity of the semi-naked musclebound male hero on the side of ‘right’ in the peplum, the subsequent emer- gence of an amoral or immoral excess of violence in the spaghetti western as a key function of masculinity has been theorized in terms of the social climate in contemporary Italy. As we saw in chapter 3, peplum masculinity functioned to reassure those sidelined by eco- nomic growth and prosperity in a fast but unevenly industrializing country, with the fantasy that traditional physical prowess (a form of displaced unskilled manual labour power) was still valuable and even heroic. It has been suggested that the peplum corresponds to the infantile tastes of a childhood Italy, where physical power can solve problems without recourse to technology, while the spaghetti western represents the adolescent tastes of a post-boom Italy in which use of technology is all-important (Paolella 1965). In other words, while the peplum, with its half-naked, muscle- bound heroes celebrates masculinity in its use of the body, the spaghetti western updates and ‘professionalizes’ masculinity with modern technology in order to feed fantasies of control over fast- moving industrialization and product development. The excessive violence of masculinity in the genre has been read as a sign of ideo- logical and moral confusion in a period culminating in the 1968 crisis in values, while at the same time resonating, not with grandiose ‘frontier epic’ values, but rather with the everyday Italian ‘urge to overwhelm’ in order not to be overwhelmed (Micicché 1998).17 The mercenary cynicism of the spaghetti western has also been related to the ‘blind social materialism’ of the 1960s – a trait already exem- plified in the commodification of social relations in commedia all’ital- iana (Brunetta 1993, IV, p. 406). The 1960s was also a period of increasingly militant Italian feminism, a factor difficult not to relate 182 Italian Cinema: Gender and Genre to the sidelining of femininity by the spaghetti western and to the submersion of a token heterosexuality into the safe zone of homo- eroticism and the ever-present patriarchal baseline of homosociality. Certain aspects of the spaghetti western have also inevitably been aligned with perceptions and representations of Southern Italian char- acteristics: vendetta, ‘amoral familism’, or privileging the family at the expense of others (Frayling 1998); volatile emotionalism, violence, bru- tality, criminality, the importance of landscape, demographic mobility, crumbling local communities, the ambiguous role of the Catholic Church (Landy 1997). In terms of Southern Italian cinema audiences, there is already a longstanding familiarity with American culture in general, dating back to the mid-nineteenth-century beginnings of emi- gration to America (both North and South) from the Abruzzi, Calabria and Sicily (Landy 1997). Even before the appearance of the violent spaghetti western, the more sanitized American western had long pro- vided wholesome family entertainment for Italy as a whole, and, approved of by the Church, had proved a particularly popular genre in the 1950s (Forgacs 1996, p. 209). Wagstaff foregrounds the commercial imperatives at work in the making of the spaghetti western, and genre cinema generally, with films using pre-existing sets and clichés cobbled together around points of gratification. While this is certainly the case, the end result is not an abstracted, culturally aspecific jigsaw of haphazardly connected parts, as it could well have been, but a text embedded in, and imbued with, gender formations pertaining to the culture of the era and conditions of consumption. Of special interest is the outcome of this cobbling together in a preoccupation with exclusively masculine concerns represented by an emphasis on style and the interlocking dynamics of sadomasochism, racial difference and homosociality.
Masculinity as masquerade
With parody a key feature of the Italianized western, masculinity takes on a highly stylized aspect that can be read in terms of masquerade, with all the implications of gender as performance. The visual focus on masculinity as style and surface leads to an intensification of the icono- graphic, fetishistic effect already an ingredient in the American western, and inherent in the cinematic medium itself. As a result, the external paraphernalia of masculinity (guns, boots, spurs, dusters, cigars, horses) acquires extraordinary significance over and in excess of narrative requirements. The Man With No Name 183
The emphasis on clothing also goes back to the roots of the cine- matic western in performance, notably its showmanship origins in the Wild West shows, where fantasy played as much a role as the reality of historical rangerider gear (Gaines 1996, p. 99). As Gaines points out, the clothing style of the silent cowboy films, in drawing on these shows, placed it already two steps away from the real West. In this context, the paraphernalia of cinematic masculinity in the spaghetti western is based as much on fantasy as on historical research into the exact details of clothing and weaponry. In other words, it is created to represent a specific iconographic variant of masculinity that appears rooted in reality, but which, to the expert eye, is at times anachronistic or historically incorrect, as in the case of Leone’s use of guns (Frayling 1998, p. 170). The rule of fantasy over reality in the iconographic sphere clearly also begs the question of the (patriarchal) fantasy nature of the masculinity thus represented. It has been suggested that one specific function of the focus on clothing in a genre dominated by masculinity is the deflection of male sexuality away from the body and on to the ‘hip and the heel, where the lethal concentration of steel and leather held in check the possi- bility that the male body might turn into pure spectacle’ (Gaines 1996, p. 99). This same danger of masculinity as sexual spectacle was even greater in the peplum, with its semi-clothed male bodies and huge, exposed muscles, worn like clothing and covering the ‘normal’ body beneath with their sheer excess, artificiality and unnaturalness. In the spaghetti western the emphasis on clothes may similarly serve to dis- tract from the body beneath in creating distance between the masquer- ade and what it covers. In this context Gaines observes that western heroes sleep in their clothes, ostensibly so as to be ever-ready for action, but in effect also disavowing male nakedness. This custom, functioning also to preserve the association of masculinity with the outside world by bringing the outdoors inside, is illustrated in Leone’s first film of the genre, as Silvanito draws attention to Eastwood’s fully dressed body in bed with the question: ‘Is this how you go to bed?’ In Per qualche dollaro in più, emphasis is again drawn to Eastwood’s body, this time by the fact that he does not wear underwear (unusually, according to Gaines), as he throws down a pair of longjohns after the terrified Mexican he has evicted from the hotel room he wants to occupy, with the words: ‘I don’t wear em.’ Ultimately the denial of male nakedness through gratuitous empha- sis on clothing, much like Freudian negation, actually achieves the opposite effect. It draws the gaze to Eastwood’s body, and not just the 184 Italian Cinema: Gender and Genre gaze of the desiring female spectator within the diegesis of this film, namely the voluptuous wife of the hotel owner observing the long- johns incident, and the female spectator of the film whom she impli- cates. More transgressively, the denial attracts the gaze of the male spectator of the film, thereby inducing a homoerotic dynamic. Indeed, as Gaines argues elsewhere, western attire (leather on skin, the steel of spurs) lends itself exceptionally well to the iconography of gay pornog- raphy (Gaines and Herzog 1998, p. 179). Focus on the male body, then, while forever denied, is a constant side-effect of the masquerade, also veering into sadomasochistic violence in the denial of homosexuality (Neale 1993). With femininity largely displaced, masculinity becomes the main object of both the diegetic and the film spectator’s look. On occasion masculinity even fills the screen with just one part of the body, with extreme close-ups of the face featuring almost from the outset of Per un pugno di dollari, together with the ground-breaking close-up eyes sequence of Eastwood and Volonté in the shootout at the end of the film. Leone’s characteristically huge, prolonged and repetitive close- ups of the face, accompanied by Morricone’s musical score beginning slowly and quickening in pace with the ever-faster sequence of shots, were to set the pattern for the preliminary part of the shootout in future films. This extreme use of the close-up, a shot associated, rather, with horror and melodrama, was virtually absent, as Bazin observed, from the American western (Bazin 1972, p. 147). Neale singles out Leone’s characteristic use of the close-up as a means of mediating the gaze of the male film spectator, whose direct gaze at the male body is diverted, with the intradiegetic look, moreover, one of hatred rather than desire (Neale 1993, p. 18). With the duration of the close-up progressively lengthened in the drawn-out three-way shootout in Per qualche dollaro in più and Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo, and the shot held to maximum duration at the beginning and end of C’era una volta il West, this inflection of the close-up became a defining feature of the genre. As a result, timing becomes a central element in creating the style of masculinity. Prolonged close-ups open up a space for contemplation, and particularly fetishization, of a fragmented part of the male body, a fragmentation traditionally more characteristic of the cinematic female body. In addition, from a prag- matic, consumer point of view, these prolonged close-ups and the dramatic music accompanying them, galvanize spectator attention and allow Italian audiences time to settle back into an imminent action scene in between socializing. The Man With No Name 185
Masculinity in the spaghetti western takes up the traditional position of femininity on the screen as style and surface, in terms of the style versus content, surface versus substance, oppositions. As Doane summar- izes, femininity is ‘more closely associated with the surface of the image than its illusory depths, its constructed 3-dimensional space which the man is destined to inhabit and hence control’ (Doane 1991 p. 20). The western, with its panoramic outside space characteristic of the adventure strand (as in the peplum) is dominated by masculinity, its wide open landscapes more suggestive of three-dimensional space than the (however equally illusory) indoor domestic scenario traditionally associ- ated with femininity. Masculinity is mobile rather than static, moving around and almost permeating a space with no boundaries (walls, national frontiers). Eastwood’s illicit entry into the home of the Baxters in Per un pugno di dollari, for instance, appears osmotic, as do the border crossings in the films (for example, those of Ringo in Johnny Oro). Masculinity controls modes of transport, mounting and dismounting at will, usually horses, but also trains (Mortimer forces the train to make an unscheduled stop at Tucamcari in Per qualche dollaro in più, Frank gets on and off Morton’s train whenever he feels like it in C’era una volta il West, and Nobody easily hijacks a train for his own purposes in Il mio nome è Nessuno). Any enclosure (trains or hotel rooms) is only ever temporary. The enclosing, domesticating effects of femininity are to be avoided by free-moving masculinity if the ‘hero’ is to remain at liberty to ride into the open landscape from which he often emerged at the outset of the film. In terms of Eco’s superman, he must not ‘consume’ himself with the finite domestic resolution of marriage, but remain available to re- emerge from the landscape for his next quest, possibly in the next film of the series (Eco 1981). Although, as we have seen, there has been speculation on the reasons for the marginalization of femininity in the spaghetti westerns, linked especially to the Southern Italian, predominantly male market for the genre, in a sense this marginalization merely represents an overt and conspicuous return of cinema to its traditional patriarchal baseline, where only masculinity is validated. However, as far as distribution was concerned, femininity, or rather femininity in its reductive form of female sexuality, was used to market the films whenever possible. The advertised presence of a female character in any western promises some sort of sexual content, however fleeting and minor this turns out to be (while in the case of publicity posters highlighting Marianne Koch in Per un pugno di dollari, this also reflects the use of the famous German star as a condition of German financing for this co-production). 186 Italian Cinema: Gender and Genre
The representation of femininity in American westerns is constructed according to the traditional patriarchal madonna–whore divide (mother, wife, sister, daughter, school marm versus saloon girl/prosti- tute). In other words, although femininity is portrayed in the host genre (and is certainly more prominent that in most spaghetti west- erns), it can be argued that its presence functions merely as a foil to masculinity, with women used ‘only as signs, ciphers, markers of the boundaries of the masculine’ (Kirkham and Thumim 1993, p. 20). In the spaghetti western the predominance of male characters means that they tend to act as a foil to each other, rather than the more usual use of female characters as arenas for homosocial relations. Femininity generally appears in much reduced form merely to establish mascu- linity as heterosexual, as evidenced by the saloon girl as its most common, and exclusively sexual, representation. Femininity defined by family belonging is less prevalent, and professional femininity, like Janet in Killer calibro .32, trained by her father as a bank accountant, is an exception (the hero observes: ‘strange, isn’t it, a girl who keeps books’). The ostentatious masquerade of femininity in the ornate, highly coloured costumes of the saloon girl (especially in Se incontri Sartana, prega per la tua morte, where they contrast with the general drabness of the scene) only ever provides temporary distraction from the genre’s central concern with masculine masquerade. In foreground- ing masquerade and performance, parodic representation of masculin- ity in the end leads to an exposure, or ‘making strange’, of patriarchal masculinity, which manages simultaneously to glorify and ridicule it, while revealing its inherent contradictions (especially the precarious nature of masculine possession of the phallus). As suggested earlier, this dual action of parody works on the spectator rather like Freudian negation. In other words, while masculinity as unbelievably phallic and potent is taken to absurd lengths and so parodied, or made to appear a ridiculous impossibility, at the same time the fantasy of omnipotent control over others and over events is actually envisaged. While gender as performance, rather than as innate, essentialist biology, was discussed in relation to the semi-naked, primitive muscu- lar male body relying purely on physical strength in close combat in the peplum, the notion of masquerade or mask is particularly fitting in the context of masculinity in the western, a genre equipped with, and actually defined from the start by, a powerful and specific iconography of clothing and weaponry that defeats from afar (guns, cannon, dynamite, grenades). The terms masquerade and mask draw attention to the outer signs and accoutrements of gender performance, as well as The Man With No Name 187 suggesting concealment of, and so distance from, another reality beneath. Both terms were first used in relation to women by Joan Rivière, in her article ‘Womanliness as Masquerade’ (1929), to refer to the compulsion of an intellectual, and by her definition therefore mas- culine, female patient, to hide this masculinity by ‘assuming’ and ‘wearing’ womanliness ‘as a mask’, and indulging in ‘compulsive ogling and coquetting’ with older male members of her audience after delivering her lectures. This foregrounding of the feminine side by pro- fessional women would feature the ‘feminine interest’ of attention to ‘personal appearance’ (Rivière 1986, p. 36). In particular, ‘When lectur- ing, not to students but to colleagues, she chooses particularly feminine clothes’ (Rivière 1986, p. 39). Elaborating on the notion of what is ‘beneath’, conjured up by the notion of the masquerade as womanliness that is ‘worn’ in order to ‘hide’ the possession of the phallus, Rivière shifts the metaphor of the masquerade, thereby exposing it as metaphor, to explain that it is not a question of separation between the masquerade and ‘genuine woman- liness’ beneath, or, put differently, it is not a matter of two layers. Rather, she defines womanliness as a ‘capacity’ inherent in all women. It is the use to which this capacity is put that makes it either ‘genuine’ or a masquerade (‘genuine’ referring to its use as a ‘primary mode of sexual enjoyment’, as opposed to masquerade, or the use of womanli- ness ‘as a device for avoiding anxiety’) (Rivière 1986, p. 39). It is there- fore important to bear in mind the status of the masquerade as metaphor in its role as an analytical tool. More recently her notion of gender masquerade has been reworked for the analysis of cinematic femininity and female spectatorship by Doane, who draws attention to the use of femininity as a ‘decorative layer’ (Doane 1991, p. 25). In par- ticular, she highlights the excessive nature of the use of the ‘accou- trements’ of femininity: ‘The masquerade doubles representation; it is constituted by a hyperbolization of the accoutrements of femininity’ (Doane 1991, p. 26). In relation to masculinity as masquerade, she comments that, while this is indeed a possibility, it is unnecessary because of the dominance of masculinity in the patriarchal gender hierarchy: ‘it is not that a man cannot use his body in this way but that he doesn’t have to’ (Doane 1991, p. 26). The use of womanliness as masquerade is a defence mechanism against masculinity for Rivière (namely, a reaction-formation resulting from anxiety about punishment or castration by the father/masculinity for having stolen the phallus in her appropriation of the intellectual role). It would seem that masculinity has no need for such a reaction. 188 Italian Cinema: Gender and Genre
However, as Lacan was to point out in ‘The Signification of the Phallus’, neither gender really possesses the phallus, so that castration anxiety is in fact common to both genders. This anxiety is betrayed not only by the feminine masquerade, but also its equivalent, and in a sense therefore ‘feminized’, masculine display: ‘The fact that feminin- ity finds its refuge in this mask … has the curious consequence of making virile display in the human being itself seem feminine’ (Lacan 1985, p. 291). Indeed, masculinity has even greater need of the mas- querade than femininity, because it bears the onus of possessing the phallus: ‘No one has the phallus but the phallus is the male sign, the man’s assignment … The man’s masculinity, his male world, is the assertion of the phallus to support his having it. To the woman’s mas- querade there thus corresponds male display (parade is Lacan’s term)’ (Heath 1986, p. 55). As a result, cinematic wish-fulfilment under patri- archy tends to fetishize femininity, in Lacan’s terms, as ‘being’, and masculinity as reassuringly ‘having’ the phallus/woman (Lacan 1985, p. 289). As Heath summarizes, ‘The fetishization of the masquerade that cinema captures is the male distance: having, possession, the woman as phallus as the term of the fantasy of the man, her identity for him’ (Heath 1986, p. 58). This clearly works in genres focusing on femininity as spectacle and fetish object, such as melodrama and horror. When femininity is sidelined and masculinity becomes central as spectacle, as in the Italianization of the western, the intensification and parodic manipula- tion of traditional western iconography of masculine accoutrements construct masculinity as masquerade instead.18 Particularly fore- grounded is the fact that ‘All the trappings of authority, hierarchy, position make the man, his phallic identity: “if the penis was the phallus, men would have no need of feathers or ties or medals … Display [parade], just like the masquerade, thus betrays a flaw: no one has the phallus”’ (Heath 1986, p. 56). For ‘feather or ties or medals’ we might substitute guns, hats, dusters, boots, spurs and cigars. However, whereas femininity as masquerade is an anxiety-driven defence against patriarchal retribution for appropriating the phallus, masculinity as masquerade functions as an anxiety-driven defence against the suspi- cion that, despite patriarchal claims, masculinity does not, after all, really possess the phallus. At this point we should recall that masquerading possession of the phallus forms part of a larger phantasy originating in the mirror stage of infancy, but relived and reiterated during the fantasy work of film spectatorship. The first phase of Lacan’s mirror stage (discussed in The Man With No Name 189 chapters 3 and 4) establishes a dynamic of pleasurable primary narcis- sism when the image of a unified, whole body is glimpsed in the mirror for the first time. Contrasting with the prior sense of fragmenta- tion and helplessness, the mirror image appears to affirm the desired phantasy of an ideal ego, a unified, omnipotent and therefore phallic, body. It is this narcissism, with its features of self-sufficiency and phallic omnipotence, together with the fear of their loss/castration and the suspicion of lack, that motivates the excess of masquerading mas- culinity in films exhibiting the male body as spectacle, and this is par- ticularly true of the spaghetti western. Neale chooses the Eastwood character in Leone’s trilogy as an exemplification, in extreme form, of the cinematic expression of the phantasy of ‘the more perfect, more complete, more powerful ideal ego’, noting that ‘the hero’s powers are rendered almost godlike, hardly qualified at all’, and suggesting that this may account for the ritualization of these powers and thence the apparent inevitability of his victory by the end of the narrative (Neale 1993, p. 12) (Figure 9). However, not all heroes in the spaghetti western maintain the invio- lability of Eastwood’s character, with some failing to fulfil the phan- tasy. Neale’s criteria for the defeat of the cinematic hero, read as the ‘eventual disintegration’ of the ‘image of self-possessed, omnipotent masculinity’, and used to analyse the fate of Alain Delon’s gangster in Melville’s Le Samourai (1967), can be applied to Silence (Jean Louis Trintignant) in Corbucci’s Il grande Silenzio (1968). The omnipotence of these male characters, both silent and apparently invincible, comes
Figure 9 In control of the shootout: Clint Eastwood in Leone’s Per qualche dollaro in più (1965). 190 Italian Cinema: Gender and Genre under threat after contact with femininity which is also racially differ- ent (Delon’s exchange of looks with a black female singer, and the sexual relationship between Silence and Pauline, the black widow who hires him to avenge her husband’s murder). As Neale points out in relation to Delon’s character, who is subsequently shot and wounded, the narcissistic omnipotence of masculinity is threatened by the ‘double difference’ of gender and race (Neale 1993, p. 12). Similarly Silence has his hands mutilated, an act symbolic of castration, before he is killed, as part of the sadomasochistic dynamic functioning both to express fear of loss of phallic narcissism and to disavow homosexu- ality. Neale, following Mulvey, draws attention to the centrality of this theme of ‘lost or doomed male narcissism’ in westerns that elaborate on the threat by ‘women, society and the law’, and resulting in what he calls the ‘nostalgia Western’ (Neale 1993, p. 15). Of special interest in this context of nostalgia for a lost male narcis- sism is Leone’s C’era una volta il West. The film is exceptional as a spaghetti western in its centralizing of femininity, as well as masculin- ity, as spectacle, and in its return to the traditional cinematic use of female sexuality as arena for homosocial relations, fetishistic reassur- ance of phallic possession and affirmation of male heterosexuality. Claudia Cardinale as the prostitute Jill McBain frequently fills the screen, but not of course as action heroine equivalent to Frank, Harmonica and Cheyenne (the only time she takes a rifle from the wall sees her shooting ineffectually into the night). Her character functions as a sexually charged reference point constantly returned to and reiter- ated as the objectification of male desire. Her powerful screen presence provides the traditional cinematic, fetishized embodiment of the phallus for masculinity, while her own desire is acknowledged only to be negated and denied (most strikingly in her prolonged gaze at Harmonica before he leaves at the end of the film). She embodies con- stant reassurance that masculinity does, after all, possess the phallus, if not in directly possessing her (which Frank in fact does), then in the constant possibility of such possession. In terms of spectatorship (both diegetic and on the part of the cinema audience), looking at her is already a form of possession. As Cheyenne tells her: ‘You don’t know what it means to a man, seeing a woman like you.’ Affirmation of mas- culine possession of the phallus is particularly important in a film imbued with nostalgia, notably for an omnipotent phallic narcissism doomed, if not to extinction, then to transformation or displacement as civilization and the law advance on the West. They do so in the form of the railway and the town built around it, a civilization that The Man With No Name 191 brings with it the power of state (rather than anarchic) law. On the surface this civilization appears to be headed by femininity (Jill inherits the land where the new town is built), but it is Harmonica and Cheyenne who ensure that she keeps it. Jill’s sexuality is foregrounded, her identity subsumed into that of prostitute, the most common form of femininity in the genre, sexually available to all comers not just as satisfier of male desire, but as affirmation of heterosexuality, particularly in the three main male characters. The other, desexualized feminine roles of the wife and mother she could have been are introduced only to be denied (her marriage of one month to McBain is situated in the antefact of the film; her husband and adoptive family of three children are already dead by the time she arrives in Sweetwater; her husband’s death means she cannot, after all, give him more children). She is not allowed to remarry at the end of the film (so denying her desire and the film the romantic happy ending, of Wright’s classic American western plot). Rather than cutting a familial, matriarchal figure at the forefront of civ- ilization in the final frames of the film, in which she is surrounded by male workers (the usual interpretation of this scene), she represents a lone, sexualized femininity ‘reassuringly’ swamped by masculinity, doubtless having her behind slapped, as Cheyenne foretold earlier, in a gesture of possession and domination. This latter reading is supported, moreover, by the historical prevalence of prostitutes (rather than female harbingers of civilization) in communities springing up along the railroad as it was being built, to provide for the needs of the male workers. However, running alongside the fetishism of femininity as phallus in this film, and indeed the more common scenario in the spaghetti western, is the fetishism of the accoutrements of masculinity as bearers of this particular value. In terms of the role played by material culture in identity formation, we are back in the realms of Veblen’s conspicu- ous consumption (theorized during the period in which the western is often set). Material possessions are consumed, in other words, paraded as well as simply used, in order to signify social status. This notion of consumption came to the fore particularly in commedia all’italiana, a genre grounded in the economic boom and its associated emphasis on mass production and consumption in Italy from 1958 to 1964. It is perhaps no accident that the spaghetti western, begun in the early 1960s on the back of this wave of consumerism, also displays a con- summate and especially visual interest in the social meaning of things (although from a parodic rather than a satirical viewpoint). 192 Italian Cinema: Gender and Genre
The material goods in question are clearly very different. Apart from the technology of guns, they are usually more primitive, given the pre-mass industrial setting (while the advance of civilization and its law means that the gunslinger will become obsolete, a major theme in C’era una volta il West and Il mio nome è Nessuno). The car, icon of urban commedia all’italiana, is relatively unusual in the repre- sentation of an era when the horse was the main mode of transport and the expansion of the railroad across the American West was in its infancy. The unexpected and startling appearance of Sean’s motor- bike in the Mexican landscape of Giù la testa!, a car in Quièn sabe? and even a bi-plane in Il mercenario, are exceptions that prove the rule, symbols of white wealth and status, while the motorized Mexican Army, in Giù la testa! and Il mercenario, for instance, repre- sents repression and brutality in the context of the revolution. Instead, social, and particularly gender, status, more commonly attaches to the breed of animal used for transport, with the mule regarded as indicating lesser wealth and phallic power than the horse. In Per un pugno di dollari Eastwood makes his entry on a mule, graduating to a horse after payment from the Rojos. When Baxter’s men deride him for riding a mule, his mock interpretation of this as an insult to the animal is a metaphor highlighting the mule or horse as a status-marked extension of the male body. The later political spaghetti western aside, the early films that estab- lished the genre and its iconography, and in particular Per un pugno di dollari, focus on primitive, atavistic social relations (the more complex politics of the Mexican revolution in this film, and of the American Civil War in Per qualche dollaro in più and Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo, are invoked mainly to illustrate their irrelevance to the personal objec- tives of the male characters and to historicize the action, while also, in the case of the last film, making an anti-war statement). These primi- tive social relations, pared down to the minimum, are none the less constituted with constant reference to material goods, as men relate to each other through things (gold or money, guns, style of clothes, the manipulation of a cigar), or chattels (horses, ‘woman’). The construc- tion of masculinity as masquerade means that the accoutrements of masculinity communicate socially-specific meanings in a code under- stood by all. As in consumerist commedia all’italiana, the spaghetti western focuses on the fetishizing of commodities by emphasizing not just their utility, but also added social, gender-specific value. The gun, to take a major masculine accessory, is not just prioritized in the films in terms of its utility (although this is of course of key The Man With No Name 193 importance, with much technical, if not always historically accurate, information given in the films on different makes, their characteristics and effectiveness, leading to a cult of spaghetti western weaponry (Frayling 1998). However, the gun (whether it be a .45 pistol or a Winchester rifle) functions not merely as useful deadly tool in the spaghetti western. On the contrary, it is the obsessive object of repeated, lingering close-ups, and of man-to-man conversations that take this prop outside and beyond narrative space. The focus on how fast it is used, the sound it makes when fired (as Tuco remarks in Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo), where it is kept and even its angle to the body make the gun a prime determinant not just of the individuality of a man, but of his phallic potency. The fetishistic overvaluation of the gun beyond utility as signifier of the phallus in the western and urban crime thriller is by now a commonplace. With the spaghetti western, this association is taken to such lengths as to suggest not only parody, but also a masculine masquerade signalling lack in its anxiety to convince otherwise. Most usually worn nozzle down in a holster alongside the hip, where it hangs parallel to the penis, the gun must be withdrawn in a split second and held in the up or horizontally erect position from which it is fired. This is the classic way in which Eastwood in Leone’s trilogy wears his pistol. Mortimer in Per qualche dollaro in più is distin- guished by wearing his pistol towards the front rather than at the side of the hip. When Eastwood interrogates the old man about Mortimer, it is the position of the gun on his body that proves to be his identifying marker. Harmonica in C’era una volta il West wears his pistol behind him. In Corbucci’s influential Django (1966), Django (Franco Nero) conceals his machine gun (a phallic indicator so huge it cannot be secreted on the body) in a coffin. This parodic variation inevitably led to a spate of unusual places from which guns are unex- pectedly fired: the toe of a boot in C’era una volta il West, a guitar in Johnny Oro, a banjo in Ehi, amico … C’è Sabata, hai chiuso. Guns are emphasized verbally as well as visually. Tuco and the old gunsmith he is about to rob in Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo share common ground in their gun knowledge, with Tuco using parts from different guns to make his own, personalized version. In Per un pugno di dollari Eastwood and Ramon have an ongoing dialogue about the relative efficacy of the pistol and the rifle, with Ramon offering a veiled challenge: ‘When the man with the pistol meets a man with a Winchester, the man with the pistol is a dead man.’ In the shootout at the end of the film Eastwood proves him wrong, as he urges an 194 Italian Cinema: Gender and Genre incredulous Ramon to shoot him repeatedly in the heart (shielded, unbeknown to Ramon, by a metal plate) as he himself moves into pistol range. The phallic connotation of a gun hanging idly, then sticking out and up, together with the eroticization of the shootout, is unmistakable (the foreplay of the sequence of facial close-ups as the participants look deep into each other’s eyes, the striptease effect as the flap of a jacket or duster is slowly pulled aside, or the poncho lifted, to reveal the holster and its deadly contents, the taking out of the gun and firing/ ejaculation). In the case of Indio, for whom sex and death are irrevoca- bly intertwined, the deaths he inflicts are followed by languor and a post-coital smoke in Per qualche dollaro in più. For Eastwood in the trilogy and his imitators in successive films, lighting up a cigar in a situation of potential conflict is a phallic gesture, a sign of cool detach- ment and bravado, particularly emphasized by his idiosyncratic manip- ulation of the cigar between his lips. His cigar becomes a fetishized substitute, standing in for his presence in Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo, as Tuco tracks him down by following his discarded cigars and calculating how close he is by the ever-increasing heat in the tip. Items of clothing also stand in metonymically for the male body, taking the masquerade to its extreme in a fusion of the mask with the man. For example, Eastwood’s hat and poncho, draped strategically over the back of a chair, take the bullet meant for him in Per qualche dollaro in più. Similarly Harmonica uses the duster to signify ‘gunman’ in his account of his experience at the railroad in C’era una volta il West: ‘I saw three of these dusters waiting for a train’. The leather dusters made a special impact when the film was shown in Paris, where it ran for six years, giving rise to a fashion craze (although Eastwood had already worn one in Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo). The effect of this cinematic costume on street clothes design reiterates the function of the cinema screen as a shop window in a consumer culture (discussed in relation to commedia all’italiana). Historical research combines with fantasy in the adaptation of this garment for the western. Gaines notes that the duster, a type of frock coat, was adapted from the medical coat of the Civil War or the nineteenth- century coachman’s coat, and is not in fact traceable to the historical West (Gaines and Herzog 1998, p. 175). The duster became the sign of the gunfighter, and as such is worn in Il mio nome è Nessuno by Nobody, taking over from the retiring gunfighter, Beauregard, who wears a jacket and waistcoat, and swaps his Stetson for a woollen hat on the ship bound for Europe and a new life. The Man With No Name 195
Visually the long, heel-length duster served to make its wearer look tall and so more threatening, as do the characteristically tight-fitting trousers and heeled boots worn by Eastwood, for instance. But of all the accoutrements contributing to the masculine masquerade, the gun remains the most powerful. However, the illusory nature of this potency is underlined in some films, while at the same allowing the spectator to revel in the fantasy of the masquerade. In C’era una volta il West, for example, the theatrical backdrop of a massive advert for a show features prominently in the scene where Harmonica saves Frank’s life when his own men fire on him. In Il mio nome è Nessuno, Nobody remonstrates with his challenger in the saloon for wearing his gun at the wrong angle, going on to demonstrate how much faster he himself is on the draw in an impossibly fast performance of showmanship. The fairground scene, with its opportunities for testing various phy- sical skills, at which Nobody excels, repositions gun display in the context of the Wild West shows in which the western-as-performance originated (with Girotti reprising the farcical showmanship skills of his character from the first of the successful Trinity series, Lo chiamavano Trinità, 1970). Masculinity as masquerade in the spaghetti western is all about showmanship and performance. In Il mio nome è Nessuno it is repeatedly exposed as an illusion, perhaps most forcefully in the staged fake final shootout between Nobody and Beauregard before the intradiegetic camera of a newspaperman (with another fake shootout at the beginning of Se incontri Sartana, prega per la tua morte). During a shootout in a hall of mirrors, Nobody, unlike his unfortunate oppo- nent, is master-spectator of multiple mirror images, a proliferation of omnipotent ideal ego reflections for his gratification and that of the film spectator. Ultimately, however, the parody of omnipotent phallic power is itself parodied, as Nobody finally replaces Beauregard in the barber’s chair, pushing his fingers into the groin of the barber/assassin where Beauregard had pushed his pistol. The iconography of masculinity as masquerade, relating to style and surface, raises the question of the role of verbal language in relation to the visual in terms of both the accoutrements and actions of masculin- ity. Like the adventure strand of which it is a variant, the western is linked historically to the comic strip, with its emphasis on the more easily accessible portrayal of visual action rather than dialogue, and to the condensed narrative of adventure literature. Similarly the melo- drama, with its roots in the fotoromanzo, relied more on the visual, photographic depiction of emotion than on lengthy dialogue, restrict- ing the verbal dimension to short pithy sentences and commonplaces. 196 Italian Cinema: Gender and Genre
In addition, on the production side of film-making, language was not infrequently a problem, given the international make-up of the cast of genres like the spaghetti western. Eastwood’s crucial role in cutting down the number of lines he had to speak in the influential Per un pugno di dollari, and generally shaping his character into the much- copied laconic model of 1960s Anglo-masculine cool, is also well known (if at the time perplexing, he recalls, to Italian actors from the more verbose and physically dynamic school of acting) (Frayling 1998). The 1960s saw an upsurge in anglophilia, reflected also in Italian auteur, as opposed to commercial genre, cinema, with the cool, modern London scene providing the inspiration for both Fellini’s La dolce vita (1960) and Antonioni’s Blow-Up (1966). Under Eastwood’s influence, Leone’s ‘heroic’ characters tend to follow the Anglicized format of understatement, where verbal language is restricted to short questions and statements. This is taken to extremes with the character of Silence, the mute hero in Corbucci’s Il grande Silenzio (although not with other characters in the film). Many other directors, on the other hand, continued to promote the Italian style of acting, for example Tessari’s extremely verbose and physically busy Una pistola per Ringo, and Corbucci’s Sergio, whose talking to himself undermines his cool in Il mercenario. The later political spaghetti western strand, on the other hand, inevitably involves more dialogue (this is the case in the latter parts of Giù la testa!, for instance, a film that develops a focus on the Mexican Revolution). As far as the films that established the genre are concerned, however, the representation of masculinity as masquerade predominates in the iconographic and generally visual domain, rather than in extended dialogue. Neale explains as follows:
Theoretically, this silence, this absence of language can further be linked to narcissism and to the construction of an ideal ego. The acquisition of language is a process profoundly challenging to the narcissism of early childhood. It is productive of what has been called ‘symbolic castration’. Language is a process (or set of processes) involving absence and lack, and these are what threaten any image of the self as totally enclosed, self-sufficient, omnipotent. (Neale 1993, pp. 12–13)
At the same time, language and entry into the symbolic allow access to power, and as such are usually a masculine prerogative, with feminin- ity traditionally restricted to the pre-symbolic phase. The preference of The Man With No Name 197 western and spaghetti western heroic masculinity for object-relations over language use, as in the case of the peplum, may serve as a means of identification and reassurance for male working-class audiences who do not possess the power of the symbolic (while also recalling Paolella’s use of the metaphors of childhood and adolescence in rela- tion to the peplum and spaghetti western respectively). However, written, as opposed to verbal, use of the symbolic, maintains its associ- ation with power, notably in terms of racial difference within the hier- archy of masculinity, as we shall see. Lingering close-ups on the faces of male characters, and their atten- tion to each other’s actions and masculine accoutrements (weapons, clothes, horses), emphasize visual rather than verbal communication. Like verbal language, however, this masquerade also engages the sym- bolic in that it operates according to a socially accepted code. The visual signs of the masquerade are, like verbal language, encoded and decoded within a system that is culturally specific. In this context, verbal and written language play a reduced role proportional to the social formation of the films, namely pre-capitalist, pre-industrial society, with masculinity as free, mobile and, importantly, as style. This contrasts with masculinity of substance, tied to the stasis of private property in land and home, and to the promoting of patri- lineality through family and association with femininity (a more common variant of masculinity in the classic American western). Eastwood’s statement that he will buy a ranch in Kansas with his booty at the end of Per qualche dollaro in più may be true, but is not fulfilled within the diegesis, and marriage as the happy ending to films in this genre is rare. Written language is not usually central, and verbal lan- guage is coded as inferior to action. As Tuco explains to his garrulous pursuer before shooting him from his bubble bath in Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo: ‘When you gotta shoot, shoot, don’t talk.’ The function of naming, so crucial to patrilineality and patriarchal property concerns, is of particular interest in the spaghetti westerns, with attention frequently drawn to its inauthenticity or even absence. Some of the most striking examples of roving super-masculinity have no name at all. Eastwood’s characters in the trilogy do not reveal their real name, leading to the ‘man with no name’ legend (although the no-name topos was already current in the thriller novels of Dashiel Hammett) (Frayling 1998). Nobody in Il mio nome è Nessuno is another archetypal hero, an Everyman figure with whom to identify. Alterna- tively, male characters acquire pseudo-names according to certain char- acteristics (Silence because he is mute, and brings the silence of death 198 Italian Cinema: Gender and Genre with him wherever he goes, in Il grande Silenzio, Harmonica because of the musical instrument he plays in C’era una volta il West, Angel Eyes because of the shape of Van Cleef’s eyes, contrasting with his charac- ter’s non-angelic penchant for torture, and Blondie, the man with no name, because of his hair colour, in Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo). Concealment of true identity, unlike the public patrilineal celebration of property ownership and family headship, is a part of the masquer- ade and its masking of the inner self that can be crucial to survival in a gun culture. At the same time, continued concealment of identity fuels desire for its revelation on the part of others, a desire that can become obsessive, as in the case of Frank’s repeated question to Harmonica, ‘Who are you?’, which punctuates C’era una volta il West. Ehi, amico … C’è Sabata, hai chiuso! ends on the question of Sabata’s true identity, as he is asked: ‘But who are you?’ and answers enigmatically: ‘Haven’t you realized yet?’ Similarly, Se incontri Sartana, prega per la tua morte concludes with the interchange: ‘You still haven’t told me who you are’, ‘A first-class pallbearer’. Names can be dangerous, and their misuse fatal. The last surviving McBain child, witness to his family’s slaughter in C’era una volta il West, also has to be killed because, as Frank intimates to his fellow gunslinger who has addressed him: ‘Now that you’ve named me …’. Tuco’s adoption of Bill Carson’s name in Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo alerts Angel Eyes to the fact that he may know the identity of the grave where Carson has buried the gold, and as a result he has him tortured. His decision not to torture Eastwood is based on his expectation that the latter would not talk. In other words, a white North American is perceived as possessing mastery over the verbal/symbolic, whereas Tuco, a Mexican, has no control and reveals all. When in a later scene Eastwood turns away to write the name of the grave on the back of a stone, a strategy to prevent being shot after verbalizing it, this is a trick. It transpires that he has written nothing; the grave is marked ‘unknown’. Language is treacherous and slippery, and its meaning can evaporate. Written language, much like the laws of civilization, is par- ticularly deceptive and dangerous. When Sean hears Juan’s version of what revolution really means in Giù la testa!, he throws away Bakunin’s book on the subject, only for it to provide a clue to his whereabouts for his future assassin. The masquerade of phallic omnipotence, then, takes place in the visual, in preference to the verbal, realm of the symbolic, and with only minimalist recourse to the latter. The focus on male bodies, rather than just male minds, in interaction, together with the virtual exclusion of The Man With No Name 199 femininity, shifts sexuality away from the patriarchally safe terrain of heterosexuality and closer to that of homoeroticism and homosexual- ity. The threat posed by this shift fuels disavowal in the form of sado- masochistic violence characterizing all-male action genres (Neale 1993). As a result of this shift, other areas of identity in which masculinity masquerades, in addition to the phallic display of narcissistic omnipo- tence, also come into play. As Holmlund emphasizes, masculinity must be read in terms of multiple masquerade, not just that of gender, but also those of sexual and racial identity (Holmlund 1993). Perhaps the most crucial masquerade of all in the spaghetti western, from the point of view of gender politics, is masculinity masquerading as heterosexual to disguise not simply homosexuality, but homosociality itself, namely the sociopolitical foundation of patriarchal male hegemony. Contributing to this masquerade, but at the same time managing to expose it, are the dynamics of sadomasochism, and interlocking with it is the issue of racial difference.
Sadomasochism, race and sexuality
Violence and death are integral parts of the western genre, formulaic ingredients that the film audience expects to see repeated, with novel variations. In the male-dominated spaghetti westerns social relations are regularly characterized by violence, whether at the macro-level in the political strand featuring the American Civil War and the Mexican Revolution, or at the micro-level of interpersonal relations as the solitary hero pursues his individual quest, only temporarily combin- ing forces and bonding with others to further his own interests. In this predominantly male environment, eruptions of man-on-man sadomasochistic violence function, according to Neale, to negate the eroticizing of constantly interacting male bodies for the voyeuristic, fetishizing gaze of the film spectator, an idealized patriarchal gaze assumed to be male (Neale 1993). In the event, this attempt at negation serves only to attract attention to homosexual possibilities with its heavy-handed form of denial, espe- cially in a genre where masculinity overtly prefers its own company. Sadistic mutilation of men by each other, rather than dampening erotic tension, stimulates it by legitimating the male body as object of the gaze. Even though the male body is for the moment no longer a whole, healthy, omnipotent object of desire, when it is the hero who is the object of mutilation, the audience knows that this is only tempo- rary and that he will soon recover, often with miraculous speed, to 200 Italian Cinema: Gender and Genre become so once again. Sadism, moroever, has sexual connotations. Inherent in these sadistic images is the ‘power over’ dynamic engaged by sexual relations, with mastery as sadism over helplessness as masochism. The sadistic dynamic recalls the initial sense of erotic plea- sure in the phantasy of the unified, omnipotent and phallic, rather than the fragmented, helpless and impotent, body, validated and enjoyed as primary narcissism in the mirror stage. At the same time, the infantile sense of fragmentation, helpless dependence and merging with the maternal body also holds its own erotic pleasure, namely that of plenitude and jouissance, a masochistic state to which masculinity must resist the desire to return. However, sadomasochistic mutilation of the body also reworks the anxiety underlying the narcissistic phan- tasy, namely fear of fragmentation, castration and impotence. The breaking of Eastwood’s hands in Per un pugno di dollari inaugu- rates the genre’s portrayal of this fear with prolonged, sadistic mutila- tion disabling the hero’s use of the gun/phallus, with Django suffering a similar fate in Se sei vivo, spara!, while instances of thumbs shot away abound in Il grande Silenzio. This film, far from assuaging these fears, takes them to their nightmarish conclusion as Silenzio, omnipotent and sadistic castrator of others (his accurate shooting regularly deprives men of their thumbs), is himself shot in the hands before being killed. Fear of losing an eye, a common expression of the fear of castration elaborated by Freud in his essay on the uncanny, features in Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo, with the dying, one-eyed Carson, and with Tuco’s near-blinding on the orders of Angel Eyes. Loss of leg-use (Morton’s legs in C’era una volta il West and the Colonel’s legs in Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo, or their absence, as in the case of Shortie, the legless ‘half-soldier’ in the latter film) also connotes castration, as we saw in the chapter on horror. In similar vein a man’s ear is sliced off in Django, while actual castration takes place offscreen in Il mercenario. Freud indicated that sadomasochism is motivated by pleasure: ‘These names [sadism and masochism] chosen by Krafft-Ebing bring into prominence the pleasure in any form of humiliation or subjection’ (Freud, ‘The Sexual Aberrations’, 1984, p. 71). Mutilation of male bodies in Per un pugno di dollari is constructed as pleasurable for intradiegetic male onlookers, who laugh as Eastwood is beaten up and his hands broken by the heel of a spurred boot, and again when he is beaten up in Per qualche dollaro in più. When Silvanito is tortured by Ramon’s men in the former film, on the other hand, this is accompa- nied by the sound of offscreen male laughter. Audience identification is particularly invited by the anonymity of the intradiegetic voyeur of The Man With No Name 201 the sadomasochistic scene. Silvanito is an older, grey-haired, paternal figure, and the cackling laughter sounds like that of another old man. This serves at one level to disqualify Silvanito as object, and the laughing voyeur as subject, of desire, thereby suppressing the sexual component. But at the same time it introduces a variant of oedipality suggesting incestuous homosexual desire: the taboo desire of the sons (Ramon’s men) to kill the father (the wise old barkeeper), is sexualized in this scene by virtue of the sadomasochistic dimension. Close-ups of male faces in Il grande Silenzio also suggest spectator participation in their voyeuristic/sadistic, fetishistic/masochistic fascination, as a man’s thumbs or hands are shot away. Leone’s westerns are singled out for analysis of the interaction of voyeurism and fetishism by Neale. Concentrating on the shootout, he observes that:
the exchange of aggressive looks marking most Western gun-duels is taken to the point of fetishistic parody through the use of extreme and repetitive close-ups. At which point the look begins to oscillate between voyeurism and fetishism as the narrative starts to freeze and spectacle takes over. The anxious ‘aspects’ of the look at the male [homosexual voyeurism] … are here both embodied and allayed not just by playing out the sadism inherent in voyeurism through scenes of violence and combat, but also by drawing upon the structures and processes of fetishistic looking, by stopping the narrative in order to recognize the pleasure of display, but displacing it from the male body as such and locating it more generally in the overall components of a highly ritualized scene. (Neale 1993, p. 17)
For Neale, the shootouts ‘involve an imbrication of both forms of looking, their intertwining designed to minimize and displace the eroticism they each tend to involve, to disavow any explicitly erotic look at the male body’ (Neale 1993, p. 18). However, despite the design behind this carefully constructed mix of voyeuristic and fetishistic looks, the erotic aspects of the shootout, with its prolonged foreplay, striptease and phallic ejaculation, unavoidably sexualize not just the male, but also the female film spectator’s gaze. The diversionary tactic of sadomasochistic violence mediating the male gaze by a combination of voyeuristic and fetishistic constructions in effect fails singularly to de-eroticize the male body, and for a number of reasons. First, the eroticizing of the male body as spectacle 202 Italian Cinema: Gender and Genre is already an inevitable consequence of projecting the body and its parts magnified on screen, thereby feeding voyeuristic, fetishistic spec- tator desire and scopophilia, and triggering a set of interlocking identifications. Second, in light of the role of the male body in desire and phantasy, the repeated placing of several male bodies together immediately suggests a complex of psychosexual interrelations involv- ing eroticism and potency. Third, as suggested earlier, sadomasochistic violence, rather than distracting from sexuality, actually introduces it as a possibility, because a degree of sadomasochism is always present in ‘normal’ sexual activity, only becoming pathological in excess (as dis- cussed in the chapter on horror). Last, but not least, the iconography of metal spurs, leather on skin, high-heeled boots and whips intro- duces homosexuality by resonating with contemporary gay porn, at the same time also feeding into sadomasochist fantasy (Gaines and Herzog 1998, p. 179). (A key precursor to this is the sadistic Valance’s whip, with its ornate metal handle, in Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, 1962.) In Il grande Silenzio and Il mercenario lassoes are used to capture and bind victims. The latter film also sees Sergio, a self-sufficient, narcissis- tic gunfighter who shows a marked disinterest in women, not just bound in a horse’s harness by Paco, but also sporting the leather head- piece and bit, the point of which is unclear unless read in terms of a gay bondage scenario (Figure 10). Significantly, he is in this masochis- tic position on Paco’s wedding night, and at precisely the time when Paco has sex with Columba. The film also exposes an overt homosex- ual agenda. Jack Palance’s character, Curly, is stereotyped as homosex- ual by his effete voice, curly hair, feminized clothes sense and band of male followers. The way he interacts with other male characters further supports this agenda of homosexuality as a ‘perverse’ feminization of masculinity (for instance, he weeps openly when one of his men is killed). The position of femininity, otherwise marginalized, is similarly taken up by the adolescent Evan, victim of homosexual rape in Se sei vivo, spara!, and is emphasized by prolonged close-ups of his smooth, hairless face, big blue eyes and longish blond hair, as, bound by Zorro, he casts long looks at Django that are overtly homoerotic. When Curly is captured trying to inflict a similar fate on Sergio, he behaves in a sexually provocative manner in a scene that develops the suggestion of male rape. Paco’s men tear off Curly’s clothes as he lies on the ground, and a zoom shot moves in to his crotch as they undo his zip and pull off his trousers. When Sergio remarks that he is too ugly to be naked and should be left with some clothes on, Curly The Man With No Name 203
Figure 10 Male bondage: Sergio (Franco Nero) in Corbucci’s Il mercenario (1968).
defiantly takes off his shirt to reveal a well-defined torso. Another crotch-shot features towards the end of the film, as Paco is framed between Curly’s legs at the beginning of their shootout. Overt homo- sexuality, stereotyped as effeteness and feminization, is introduced as negative and dismissed (Curly is shot at the end of the film). However, homoeroticism is rife around Sergio, and not only in the scene when he is bound and masked by Paco. In a bathing scene, his naked, pale golden torso is on display to the admiring intradiegetic male gaze of numerous Mexicans, again emphasized using close-ups. Such is the degree of homoerotic tension in the film that a female character, the Mexican Columba, enters the narrative. She does so ostensibly as an enthusiastic revolutionary, but functions primarily to attempt to mediate, with her female heterosexuality, the homoerotic look of the (male) film spectator at Sergio’s body. In order to correct the balance of the sexualities, Columba even marries Paco, a highly unusual event in the spaghetti western (although mitigated by the fact that they are Mexican rather than white). This is necessary to distract 204 Italian Cinema: Gender and Genre from the growing bond between Paco and Sergio, whose wrestling over her (despite the fact that Sergio evinces no desire for her at all) pro- vides yet another opportunity for close male contact. This bond, with its iconographic intimation of sadomasochistic, bondage-style role- reversals (Paco first binds and masks Sergio, who in turn later lassoes him), is particularly threatening in its exposure of a homosexual agenda. Crucially, more than just laying bare homosexual possibilities, sadomasochism in the films ends up training a focus, with its intensification of all-male relations, on the underlying homosocial power base of patriarchy. In other words, as far as gender politics are concerned, homosexuality in the spaghetti western functions as a titil- lating distraction, attempting to draw attention away from the gen- dered power base of patriarchy, and into the terrain of sexuality. It does so, moreover, in a decade in Italian society when this power base increasingly became an object of feminist critique and activism. Sadomasochism in the spaghetti western can therefore ultimately be read as an ineffectual denial of homosociality/homosexuality (or, to use Irigaray’s neat encapsulation, ‘hom(m)osexuality’), and as a failed attempt to affirm male heterosexuality (Irigaray 1985, p. 171). The compulsory heterosexuality of patriarchy is represented by mar- riage, which also signals the passage of masculinity from the self- sufficiency of phallic narcissism into the realm of the symbolic/the social/the law. This passage heralds the completion of the oedipal tra- jectory, in other words, the socially satisfactory resolution of the Oedipus complex defining classic Hollywood closure. But as Mulvey points out, this is often not the outcome in the western genre, in which ‘the rejection of marriage personifies a nostalgic celebration of phallic, narcissistic omnipotence’ – a rejection especially fore- grounded by Frank, Harmonica and Cheyenne in C’era una volta il West (Mulvey 1981, p. 14). Rather than resolve the Oedipus complex via heterosexuality and marriage (in other words, transferring desire for the mother onto another woman, and transforming competition with the father into identification with his position in heading a new patriarchal family formation), the complex is on occasion sidestepped or drastically scaled down in the spaghetti western. In some films the traditional family trio (father, mother, son) is completely replaced by an all-male family (Ramon and his men in Per un pugno di dollari, Indio and his men in Per qualche dollaro in più, Zorro and his homosexual ranch hands in Se sei vivo, spara!, Juan and his six sons in Giù la testa!). Alternatively, the family is reduced to the father–son dyad, thereby The Man With No Name 205 excluding femininity altogether and preserving homosocial exclusivity (as in Se sei vivo, spara!). Importantly, in order to disavow father–son incest and homosexuality, as well as homosociality, the two must part at the end of the film (Irigaray 1985, pp. 192–3). This dynamic can be also seen at work in ‘old man’/‘boy’ pairings. In Per qualche dollaro in più Colonel Mortimer and Eastwood’s character address each other with these terms of affection only when their part- nership is at an end. Eastwood’s uncharacteristically inviting ‘What about our partnership?’ as Mortimer turns to ride away betrays a reluc- tance to break their bond, and evokes a sense of loss suggestive of melodrama and its family dynamics. However, Mortimer leaves him his inheritance (having avenged his sister, he is not interested in the reward money), turning round to check in paternal fashion that Eastwood is not in trouble when a shot is fired. A similar separation occurs at the end of Il mio nome è Nessuno, as Nobody takes over from his role-model, the older Beauregard, a retiring gunfighter who departs for Europe. Their growing bond has distinct homoerotic overtones, most notably in the prolonged exchange of looks as they eat together on the train. Loss is once again evoked by Beauregard at the end of the film, as he voices a paternally affectionate letter he is writing to Nobody, but of which the latter is oblivious. Successful resolution of the Oedipus complex begins with separa- tion from the mother/femininity. This process also involves sado- masochism, the dynamic, as we have seen, invoked to de-eroticize male relations in the genre. Sadomasochism is a factor in the process of infantile masculine separation and differentiation from the m/other (as opposed to from the father/same), and, after the resolu- tion of the Oedipus complex (inasmuch as it is ever completely resolved), in the reiteration of differentiation from femininity. As Benjamin argues, the masculine need for separation and differentia- tion can fuel sadism against femininity, in an extreme attempt to disavow masochistic desire for reincorporation by the pre-oedipal maternal body. Femininity evokes both fear (of incorporation and loss of identity) and desire (for the plenitude and jouissance accompa- nying incorporation). From the perspective of masculinity, femininity is alarmingly characterized by an absence of differentiation, namely the desire to merge with others, its identity formation governed by interrelations in the context of marriage, the family and domesticity. In Ehi, amico! … C’è Sabata, hai chiuso, we are privy to Banjo’s night- mare about a woman wanting commitment, while in films like Killer calibro .32, women ask the hero ‘Do you have to leave?’ All this must 206 Italian Cinema: Gender and Genre be rejected if the boundaries of masculinity are to remain intact and impenetrable, a rejection that can fuel misogyny. In one of the most extreme expressions of misogyny, the sadistic display of masculinity over femininity uses sex to transform the separation/rejection drive into rape, with the display element key to reaffirmation of masculine identity boundaries in gang rape (a scenario feared by Jill in C’era una volta il West). In this context, femininity is made responsible for rape, with the ‘need’ to assert masculine identity laid at the door of femininity as ‘cause’ of this need. This dynamic is at work in Texas, addio, in which revenge is sought by two brothers for their father’s murder. By contrast, the mother, raped by the murderer, is not avenged, but, on the contrary, blamed for the rape by its product, the younger brother (a standpoint internalized by rape victims who kill themselves, rather than their assailants, like Mortimer’s sister in Per qualche dollaro in più, and Evan in Se sei vivo, spara!). Violent assertion of gender and class differentiation combine in cross-class rape, for instance when Juan, a Mexican peasant/bandit rapes a middle-class Mexican woman travelling in Giù la testa!,a misogynistically directed scene that portrays her as a sexually provoca- tive snob who is justifiably ‘taught a lesson’ by a future hero of the Mexican Revolution; in other words, by a character with whom the audience is encouraged to empathize. Both gender and racial differenti- ation are found in combination in certain rape scenes, as we shall see. Cross-gender rape encapsulates an array of sadistically enforced differ- entiations (gender, class, race), while at the same time functioning to affirm the heterosexuality of masculinity in a genre dealing in homoso- ciality, homoeroticism and homosexuality. The feminization of Evan, victim of homosexual rape in Se sei vivo, spara!, for instance, continues the paradigm of sadistic rejection of femininity by masculinity, together with a cross-race assertion of difference (Evan is white, Zorro’s ranch hands are Mexican). Another form taken by the differentiation of masculinity from femi- ninity, this time in its domestic and familial, rather than sexual, associ- ations, is the perversion of food use in the spaghetti western. Food provision is a key aspect of nurturing. attributed to femininity in the home. In Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo, Angel Eyes regales a hungry Tuco with a lavish meal in his quarters. However, the food is merely a prelude to a prolonged torture scene, triggered when Angel Eyes offers Tuco snuff at the end of the meal, only to trap his fingers shut in the snuffbox. Mealtime represents the traditional heart of everyday family life, but is not sacrosanct to Angel Eyes, who at the beginning of the The Man With No Name 207
film establishes his scorn for familial domesticity by killing a father of two at table, and then one of his children. The McBain family are all killed as they prepare the wedding feast, a ritual meal signalling the formation of new family unit with Jill’s arrival in C’era una volta il West. Ramon and his followers, a pseudo-family, eat a last supper before their downfall in Per un pugno di dollari, joined by a Judas-like Eastwood who is also on the payroll of their enemies (Frayling 1998). Eating a meal is rarely without unpleasant connotations in the films. Sean in Giù la testa!, Sergio in Il mercenario and Beauregard in Il mio nome è Nessuno all dine at table in saloons (a sign of white sophistica- tion), only for their meals to be disrupted by trouble (with their continuing to eat regardless, a sign of bravado). Differentiation from femininity/domesticity/family is key to the self- sufficiency of narcissistic masculinity and to the preservation of its boundaries. This is made particularly clear in the flashbacks of male characters, contradicting the view of characterization in the genre as undeveloped and even non-existent. These flashbacks not only explain character motivation and history, but, importantly, illustrate how the family can be a source of suffering for masculinity. Eastwood’s enig- matic comment, ‘I never found home that great’, in Per un pugno di dollari, leaves much to the imagination. However, flashbacks in Per qualche dollaro in più, C’era una volta il West, Il grande Silenzio and Texas, addio,for example,all reveal traumatic family events, often from child- hood, that mark the male characters for life and fuel their desire for revenge. The experience is rarely recounted verbally (as it is in Texas, addio), with masculinity remaining silent in order to preserve self- sufficiency and not display emotion (while in the case of Silence, this is underlined by his enforced muteness after the killers of his family cut his vocal chords). In Per qualche dollaro in più, flashback instalments occur when Indio falls into a reverie as he relives his illicit entry many years previously into a bedroom, his shooting of a young man and rape of a young woman, who shoots herself (rather than him) while he is still on top of her. But as the film progresses it becomes clear that at least some of the events in the flashback are also seared in Mortimer’s psyche, and the revelation that the young woman was his sister offers an insight into his suffering and desire for revenge. Harmonica’s flashback to his child- hood in C’era una volta il West, again relived in instalments, beginning out of focus and gradually becoming clearer, concerns the murder of his brother, an event that defines and shapes his character. The hazy figure moving ever nearer to the young Harmonica with each flashback 208 Italian Cinema: Gender and Genre turns out to be Frank, the final clarity of image coinciding with the dying Frank’s dramatic recognition and remembrance of the event as Harmonica thrusts a harmonica between his teeth. Like the chiming watch in Per qualche dollaro in più, it is an inanimate object, and not verbal language, that communicates the trauma for which revenge is now sought. Flashbacks in Texas, addio explain Burt’s desire to avenge the murder of his father, which he witnessed as a child of seven years. Flashback nostalgia for family members lost in tragic circumstances is a form of masochism, a painful yet pleasurable re-immersion into the feminine dynamic of relations with others, of merging with family (or in the case of Sean’s graduated flashback in Giù la testa!, with friends). The experience is so traumatic that the hero, the characteristic lone rider in the films, always moves on at the end of the film (if he survives), remaining solitary in order to be self-sufficient and invul- nerable to yet more trauma. Close relations, especially with women, are replaced by material possessions, such as the gun, gold or silver. The combination of the two (Ringo’s golden gun in Johnny Oro, Silver’s silver gun in Killer calibro .32) signals the perfect narcissistic substitution of heterosexuality by the costly, prized phallus/the mas- culine self. The interchangeability of gold with femininity is made clear by Ringo in his declaration that gold is his first love, after his mother. He is introduced by an extradiegetic song over the initial credits: ‘He rode off all alone with a pistol in his hand, he didn’t care about lovin’, only glittering gold, and love was a thing he thought could be bartered and sold, in his loneliness he has only gold’. In Killer calibro .32 Silver tells Janet he has been in love, but now has his silver Colt revolver as a companion instead, with the song over the final credits also referring to a lost love and to his loneliness. As well as offering reassurance of the hero’s heterosexuality, the songs indicate emotion and feelings of loss. However, these emotions are all carefully contained outside the diegesis. The other that must be kept at bay, initially the incorporating mater- nal and then the feminine, is not just the gendered other, but also signifies in the racial domain in the spaghetti western, as already inti- mated. With femininity often only cursorily present, introduced merely to establish masculine heterosexuality, the racial masculine other, such as the Mexican, or, less commonly, black, Native American or Chinese, often takes over the role of subordinate. At other times, the imposition of hierarchical gender and racial difference coincide, notably in cross-race rape; for instance, the near-rape by a Mexican of the white Ruby in Una pistola per Ringo and by a white North American The Man With No Name 209 man of the black Pauline in Il grande Silenzio, the Mexican Indio’s rape of Mortimer’s sister in Per qualche dollaro in più, and the Mexican Tuco’s conviction for rape of a ‘virgin of the white race’ as well as rape of a ‘minor of the black race’ (her virginity left unspecified, either because she was not a virgin or because virginity was not considered an issue in relation to the ‘black race’) in Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo. Homosexual rape in Se sei vivo, spara! is firmly associated with the Mexican male other as perpetrator, with the white outlaws led by Oates establishing their heterosexuality in an inordinately lengthy scene in which they leer at a saloon-girl as she sings and displays herself. When the hero is involved in cross-race rather than same-race male bonding, this leads to a partial displacement of focus from gender dif- ference to racial difference (Eastwood and Tuco in Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo, Sean and Juan in Giù la testa!, Sergio and Paco in Il mercenario, as opposed to Eastwood and Mortimer in Per qualche dollaro in più, or Nobody and Beauregarde in Il mio nome è Nessuno). However, homo- eroticism still places homosexuality on the agenda in both types of male bond. Crucially, cross-race male bonding usually works to promote the superiority of white masculinity (with the half-Mexican, half-North American Ringo and Django in Johnny Oro and Se sei vivo, spara!, respectively, rare examples of heroic miscegenation). In particu- lar, the racial other provides masculinity with a means to differentiate in a triumphant assertion of whiteness and all the genre-specific forms of supremacy this entails (weapons, leadership skills, tactical expertise, sparse but effective use of the spoken word, literacy, kindness to women, children and horses combined with independence and the ability to disassociate from femininity and the family). In the following elaboration of the genre-specific forms taken by white supremacy in the spaghetti western, the concept of whiteness versus non-whiteness takes precedence over racial difference (Dyer 1997, pp. 1–40). Even this apparently transparent opposition is not watertight, as is often the fate of ideologically tendentious binary con- ceptualization, in that there are, as Dyer points out, greater and lesser degrees of whiteness (with whiteness a cultural perception rather than an accurate description of skin colour). This immediately raises issues of audience consumption of whiteness in Italy as opposed to, say, white North America or Northern Europe. In particular, Italian audience interpretation of cinematic representation of whiteness and non-white- ness would have its own connotations as far as Mexicans, the most common racial other in these films, are concerned. Mexicans are not ‘black’, but they are not ‘white’ either. Italians, as Southern Europeans, 210 Italian Cinema: Gender and Genre are (stereo)typically darker-skinned than Northern Europeans, and as such would have more in common, in terms not only of non-whiteness of skin colour, dark hair and eyes, but also, as Latins, with Mexicans as Spanish speakers, than would white, (stereo)typically blond-haired, blue-eyed Anglo-Saxon audiences. On the other hand, from a socioeco- nomic and geographic point of view, the Italian audience’s European belonging would align it more with modernized (white) Europe than with a less developed country like Mexico in a continent on the other side of the world. Within Italy itself, with its cultural and socioeconomic North–South divide, perceptions of whiteness would also differ. Northern audiences, particularly in the industrial triangle Milan–Turin–Genoa and the Veneto, for instance, would consider themselves more Northern European than Southern, with Northern Italians generally regarding Southern Italy as another country. Moreover, the concern of peasants with land-ownership, an issue at the heart of the Mexican Revolution often featured in the spaghetti westerns, bore some similarity with the problems of a predominantly agricultural, underdeveloped and impov- erished Southern Italy. This contrasts with the higher standard of living in the more prosperous Northern cities, a contrast paralleled by the class, wealth and urban–versus–rural divide between the snobbish stagecoach travellers from the city and Juan’s peasant family, featured at the beginning of Giù la testa!. Migration from Southern to Northern Italy, particularly as a result of the economic boom (1958–63), was, indicatively, at a peak during the early years of the spaghetti western. By the end of the 1960s, as the genre began to decline, Turin had become ‘the third largest “southern” city in Italy, after Naples and Palermo’ (a demographic issue elaborated in its effects on both the migrant Southern family and the host popula- tion in Visconti’s Rocco e i suoi fratelli, 1960) (Ginsborg 1990, p. 220).19 Historically-specific perceptions of civilized, Northern Italian, urban whiteness, and uncivilized, Southern Italian, peasant non-whiteness, therefore inform various positions of identification with North American whiteness and Mexican non-whiteness as encoded by the films. With spaghetti western production aimed at rural Southern Italian terza visione audiences after the takeover from initial urban prima visione production, this area of identification takes on added interest. Given this context, and in the absence of appropriate data, one can only speculate that the fantasy work of film spectatorship would, for Southern Italian masculinity, involve a degree of identification with Mexican non-whiteness, but also a considerable degree of wish-fulfilment The Man With No Name 211 in identifying with white superiority. As far as feminine spectatorial fantasy work is concerned, the mostly ancillary role in the films of femi- ninity, both white and non-white, none the less involves the additional, alluring element of glamour and fashion. The white former prostitute Jill in C’era una volta il West, and the white wife in Johnny Oro, for example, allow for representation of the western genre’s inherent exoticism of North American costume from another era (an exoticism also in evidence in the male fashion craze for the duster in Paris, as we saw earlier). This exoticism is extended to include ethnic fashion with female Mexican bandits/revolutionaries like Columba in Il mercenario, Dolores in Una pistola per Ringo and Adelita in Quièn sabe?, all of whom go through many costume changes. Crucially, these representations of non-white feminin- ity (Neale’s ‘double difference’) are allowed more active roles and more screen space than their white counterparts (white female outlaws are not a common feature of the genre). Adelita in particular is a fully-fledged bandit who lives the outdoor life alongside her compatriots, even ‘hero- ically’ riding off on her own at the end of her plot-line. However, like Columba and Dolores, she still dreams of marriage, domesticity and ‘a life not on horseback’, while all three conform to the feminine beauty ideal, unlike the real ‘hard women’ of the West as photographically recorded. The whole issue of racial difference and the superiority of white over non-white masculinity in the cinematic western has been traced back to Owen Wister’s essay ‘The Evolution of the Cowpuncher’ (1895), which registered a racist response to the immigration of Jews and Eastern Europeans, and his novel The Virginian (1902), on which Fleming based his western film, The Virginian (1929) (Tompkins 1992). The representation of the Mexican other, so common in the spaghetti western, also has a long history in Hollywood cinema. As noted earlier, preceding the spaghetti western, and helping to trigger the Eurowestern in both Germany and Italy, was the European success of Sturges’ The Magnificent Seven (1960), with its Mexican village setting. The film features North Americans (the seven) on the side of the peasants against the bandits led by Eli Wallach, a complex scenario of whiteness both with and against non-whiteness.20 Mexico, rather than North America, was favoured as the predominat- ing fictional spaghetti western setting because the landcape of Spain, and especially Almeria, lent itself to cheaper location shooting. In addition, the Mexican, rather than the Native American, black or Chinese other, could be convincingly played by Italian actors due to physical similarities (a factor further complicating Italian audience identification in terms of whiteness). 212 Italian Cinema: Gender and Genre
In the scale of degrees of whiteness, ultra-whiteness, and so superior- ity in all genre-specific areas of expertise, is usually connoted by blond hair and blue eyes, and epitomized by Eastwood in Leone’s trilogy. Tuco, a Mexican bandit, calls Eastwood’s character Blondie in Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo, drawing attention to his pale skin during the desert ordeal to which he subjects him, and remarking pointedly that fair- haired people, with their pale skin, have less tolerance for the sun. Blondie’s face becomes blistered and mutilated by sunburn, a visible sign of cross-race sadism. White masculinity in the western is stereotyp- ically associated with fair skin and hair, cleanliness and attractiveness, while the Mexican has darker skin, and is often dirty, sweaty, swarthy and unappealing.21 This was characteristic of early Hollywood portrayals of Mexicans, who were called ‘greasers’, leading to complaints from the Mexican government (Buscombe 1996, p. 185). Close-ups of Ramon’s sweating face during the shootout in Per un pugno di dollari helped estab- lish this feature for the spaghetti western. In terms of representation of racial difference, the dichotomy between (white) cleanliness versus (non-white) sweat and dirt in the films can also be read in relation to femininity as posited in terms of purity (the asexual madonna), as opposed to the association of its opposite, dirt and pollution, with danger and the threat of the other (the sexualized, menstruating whore) (Douglas 1985). Recurrence of the adjective ‘dirty’, replacing the noun ‘greaser’ but used in equally racist fashion in relation to Mexicans, can be read in this context (as in Se sei vivo, spara! and Il mercenario). Blondie triumphs in the end with his overall supremacy over Tuco in terms of tactics and gun expertise, both talents already foregrounded in the first film of Leone’s trilogy as superior to those of his Mexican adversary, Ramon, and, together with Mortimer and his array of guns, over Indio in Per qualche dollaro in più. To these skills Ringo even adds surgical talents, as he removes a bullet from a Mexican bandit in Una pistola per Ringo. Weapons expertise and tactical skills are key to the superiority of blond/grey-haired, blue-eyed, Irish Sean over Juan, the Mexican peasant-bandit-revolutionary in Giù la testa!. While one of Juan’s men blows himself up trying to prove they do not need the help of a gringo, he is the master of dynamite, and only he knows how to assemble a Gatling machine-gun. This dynamic is repeated in Il merce- nario with the blond-haired, blue-eyed Sergio hiring out his machine- gun expertise and leadership skills to Paco and his Mexican bandits-turned-revolutionaries. El Chuncho in Quièn sabe? is an excep- tion to this racial division of weapons knowledge, with his ability to use a Gatling gun. He is, however, illiterate. The Man With No Name 213
One aspect of the superiority of white over non-white masculinity is the hero’s relation to language. As discussed earlier, the spaghetti western hero tends to use verbal language sparingly to prevent self- revelation and maintain his boundaries. Non-white masculinity, on the other hand, tends towards garrulousness and an over-use of language in a way that is encoded as feminine. This expression of white supremacy is established at the outset of Per un pugno di dollari by Eastwood’s taciturn response to the talkative Mexican bell-ringer who greets him on his entry into the village. The hero’s first appearance in the film therefore establishes him as the strong, silent type, shifting attention to the iconography of his appearance. Garrulousness is often a key feature of Mexican masculinity, with Indio’s hysterical outbursts in Per qualche dollaro in più a high point aligning him with the tradi- tionally feminine position (the wanted poster shows him laughing, mouth wide open, the epitome of emotional self-revelation and ‘speak- ing the body’). While use of verbal language exposing the inner self does not connote a powerful masculine position, literacy is a require- ment for superior white masculinity. The association of illiteracy with stupidity is clear as Eastwood in Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo helps a struggling Tuco read a note left for them by Angel Eyes (‘See you soon, idiots’), remarking, ‘It’s for you’. The representation of white and non-white masculinity in the spaghetti western is complex at the level of performance, as well as that of consumption both within and outside the diegesis. For example, the blond-haired, blue-eyed Sergio Kowalski in Il mercenario is called ‘americano’ by the Mexicans, but is in fact a Polish émigré. Whiteness crosses several racial and continental boundaries here, not least because he is played by the Italian actor Franco Nero. Similarly, the part of the ultra-white, blond-haired, blue-eyed Nobody, the expert gunslinger in Il mio nome è Nessuno, as well as Trinity in the epony- mous series of films, is ostensibly played by an actor of Anglo-Saxon origins, Terence Hill. This is of course the pseudonym of the Venetian actor Mario Girotti, his colouring allowing him access to white hero roles (which he subverts in the popular Trinity films with his filthy, sweaty appearance and piggish table manners, doubtless as part of the ‘safe’ appeal to juvenile, family audiences who ensured Continuavano a chiamarlo Trinità (1974) the place of highest-grossing film in Italian cinema history as late as 1990) (Weisser 1992, p. 330). To complicate matters further, the Mexican Tuco is played by a North American actor, Eli Wallach (reprising his role as bandit chief in The Magnificent Seven), Juan in Giù la testa! is played by the North American actor Rod Steiger, 214 Italian Cinema: Gender and Genre and the Mexicans Ramon (Per un pugno di dollari), Indio (Per qualche dollaro in più) and El Chuncho (Quièn sabe?) are played by the Italian actor, Gian Maria Volonté. Similar crossing of white/non-white bound- aries occurs in the case of female characters (the Mexican Marisol in Per un pugno di dollari is played by a German actress, and Italian actresses commonly play both white and Mexican female characters). The performativity of white and non-white masculinity and feminin- ity in the spaghetti western, beginning with the primary performance level of actor-character as white masculinity or femininity inhabit the non-white other, is underlined as masquerade. In particular, the transparency of whiteness as masquerade indicates the problematic nature, not just of racial difference, but also, by association, of gender difference, together with the hierarchizing structure into which these differences are ideologized. The boundaries established to demarcate difference are ultimately unstable and permeable. One key metaphor for this is the frequent setting of the films either near or on the Mexican border. Crossing the border from North America into Mexico was already seen in Hollywood films as passing into the different, exotic and dangerous terrain of the racial and cultural other. The spaghetti western replicates this association. In Per un pugno di dollari, for instance, Eastwood sends Marisol and her family over the border into North America, where they will be safe from Ramon’s uncivilized treatment. In particular, for both heroic and unheroic masculinity, the permeability of the frontier is not only a key feature of masculine mobility and freedom of movement, but also works as a metaphor for other types of border crossing between the various social categories defining identity. The spaghetti western is especially concerned with the borderline between different genders, sexualities and races. It both investigates and polices the boundaries of masculinity against the incursions of femininity and non-whiteness, invoking and then denying male homoeroticism, and, on occasion, homosexuality. Ultimately, from a sociopolitical, as well as psychical, gender standpoint, the genre rein- forces homosociality against the threat of gynosociality, a fundamental dynamic that we have also seen at work in the case of other genres. Notes
Introduction
1The high point for American imports pre-1970s were the immediate postwar years. In 1948 Italy imported 668 American films out of a total of 874 foreign films, in 1949, 502 out of 669, and in 1950, 394 out of 539 (figures recorded by ANICA, Associazione Nazionale Industrie Cinematografiche ed Affini) (Monaco 1966, table 11). In terms of world- wide export of Italian films in the period 1950–65, figures rose from 848 in 1950 to 2,993 in 1965, with high points in 1963 of 3,953, and in 1964 of 3,947. The highest number of films (106) exported to the US during these fifteen years occurred in 1963 (Monaco 1966, tables 12–14). Wagstaff notes a shift from the beginning of 1946 (when only 13 per cent of box office earnings in Italy went to Italian films for which there was no export market) (Wagstaff 1996, p. 220; 1998, p. 78) and 1947 (a year of low domestic production and high US imports resulting in a debt to foreign owners of 90 per cent of receipts of films shown in Italy), to a situation thereafter of relative import–export parity by the mid-1950s (40 per cent of receipts came from exports) (Wagstaff 1998, p. 76), and of profit by the mid-1960s (Wagstaff 1995, p. 97; p. 105, table 5). 2 Co-production allowed financial risk-sharing while doubling the size of the protected market in terms of screen quotas and tax rebates (Wagstaff 1992). It rose from 12 per cent of national production in 1950 to 75.3 per cent in 1965, with Italo-French co-productions in particular totalling 764 films during the period 1950–65 (Wagstaff 1998, p. 76). 3 For an overview of gender relations in Italy, see Passerini 1996. 4 In relation to the Formalist definition of art as ‘making strange’, one might argue that this element is kept to a minimum in genre cinema (with its basis in repetition) as opposed to art cinema. On the other hand, the formulaic struc- tures in genre cinema are already an artistic rearrangement of the building blocks of reality. 5 On the prima, seconda and terza visione system of film exhibition in Italy, see Wagstaff 1995, pp. 113–15. 6 Discussion of the cultural and economic reasons for the dominant role of US culture in Italy, and evaluation of the effects of acculturation and openness to cultural imports on Italian national culture, can be found in Forgacs 1990, 1996, and Gundle 1986. 7Forgacs gives a figure for 1967 of 1,733 Italian films as against 4,669 imports (of which 2,987 were US) (Forgacs 1990, p. 148). For most of the period from the 1920s onwards, at least half the number of films shown were imports, with a percentage of over 70 until the 1950s (Forgacs 1990, p. 26). 8 For an early structuralist genre study, see Wright 1975 on the western.
215 216 Notes
Chapter 1
1 For a 1947 cover illustration of Grand Hotel featuring the couple in Mancato appuntamento, see Hine 1997, facing p. 338. 2 The use of highly condensed narrative structures in fotoromanzi and then in film melodrama also finds a precedent in the reduced narratives of the Biblioteca dell’italiano popolare (Galani edition), sold from the beginning of the century for 25 centesimi (Brunetta 1998, II, p. 130). 3 Sales of top fotoromanzi like Grand Hotel did not decline alongside their cin- ematic equivalent. This magazine was still selling nearly 900,000 copies a week twenty years later in 1976, with a later fall to 400,000 in 1992 due to television as an outlet for melodrama repackaged as soap opera (Hine 1997, p. 338). A higher figure of one and a half million copies of Grand Hotel sold weekly in 1976 is given in Aprà and Carabba 1976, p. 46. 4 Blondness has long been associated with Hollywood depictions of danger- ously sexualized, unmaternal femininity, such as Barbara Stanwyck’s Phyllis, the femme fatale in Wilder’s archetypal film noir, Double Indemnity (1944). Italian cinema has followed suit, often equating blondness with threatening foreignness, as with Ingrid, the blond lesbian Nazi drug-dealer who seduces the dark-haired Concetta in Rossellini’s Roma città aperta (1945), and, more recently, Heidi, the blond Nordic model from the future who disrupts dark-haired Italian Maria’s marriage in Nichetti’s Ladri di saponette (1989). 5The song Lacreme napuletane (‘Neapolitan tears’) provided much of the subject-matter on which the plot is based (Aprà and Carabba 1976, p. 22). 6 The medicalization of female desire as illness, such as hysteria, is discussed by Showalter 1987, pp. 121–44. It has a long history in Italian culture, finding expression especially in theatre, for example, with the plays of Goldoni and Pirandello (Günsberg 1992, 2000). 7In practice the sale parocchiali did not always follow censorship regula- tions, showing excluded films in the absence of sufficient numbers of films suitable for all or almost all (‘per tutti’ and ‘per tutti con riserva’) in order to fulfil the financial need to show around 150 films a year. In the process these cinemas created damaging competition for commercially- run cinemas in some areas (while overall constituting only one-third of Italy’s cinemas, and providing a mere one-tenth of all cinema seats) (Valli 1999, pp. 35–9). 8 See ‘La famiglia’, L’enciclopedia cattolica, vol. 5, cited Ginsborg 1990, p. 23. 9In 1921 in Italy, around ten times more women than men worked as typists, stenographers and copyists (5,841 women vs 571 men) (Istituto Centrale di Statistica, Censimento della popolazione, 1921). 10 The oedipal dynamic in Catene is also noted by Aprà and Carabba 1976, p. 53. 11 Caldwell gives the following figures based on government surveys of 11,500,000 Italian families from 1950 to 1953: families in wretched conditions with lowest living standards (13,570,00 or 11.7 per cent); fami- lies in poor conditions with low living standards (1,345,000 or 11.6 per cent); families in average conditions (7,616,000 or 65.7 per cent); families in well-off conditions (1,274,000 or 11.0 per cent) (Caldwell 1991, pp. 48–9). Notes 217
Chapter 2
1 For an account of economic miracle, see Ginsborg 1990, pp. 210–53. 2 The ill-timed irruption of advertising into films shown on television would become a scourge, and is satirized to great effect by Nichetti’s Ladri di saponette (1989). 3 The intricacies of genre differentiation in relation to comedy are discussed in a Hollywood context in Neale 2000 pp. 65–71. 4For Marx’s critique of the working day under capitalism, see Marx 1974, I, pp. 222–86. 5 On the role of visual or sight gags in comedy, see Carroll 1991. 6 An examination of British audience response to Hollywood stars in terms of purchasing clothes and copying hairstyles can be found in Stacey 1994. 7For a discussion of all three types of fetishism, see Gamman and Makinen 1994, Dant 1999. 8 An account of the social connotations of different makes of cars, and their significance in the comedies, is given in Giacovelli 1995, pp. 150–6. 9 See Introduction, note 6. 10 The mother in this 1963 film clearly does not belong to the increasing number of households owning a television (which rose from 12 per cent in 1958 to 49 per cent by 1965) and a fridge (from 13 to 55 per cent), let alone the more expensive washing-machine (from 3 to 23 per cent) (Ginsborg 1990, p. 239). 11 A discussion of building speculation during the boom can be found in Ginsborg 1990, pp. 246–7. 12 Palmiro Togliatti, postwar leader of the PCI (Partito Comunista Italiano) and focus of hope for social change, has been criticized for not going far enough in addressing the situation of women, notably in his failure to unpick the role of the Church in women’s oppression, and for submerging women’s issues in the traditional left-wing preoccupation with class as the locus for struggle. This criticism represents a common feminist view of Marxism, while in an Italian party-political context it relates specifically to the strategic ‘historic compromise’ between the Communists, the Church and the DC. Sordi’s character in Una vita difficile is imprisoned on suspicion of involvement in the attempt to assassinate Togliatti in July 1948. 13 On the role of women during the boom, see Chianese 1980, pp. 109–22.
Chapter 3
1 This figure is given by Wagstaff 1996, p. 224. Discussion of 89 of these films can be found in Cammarota 1987. 2 For an account of the adventure genre, see Cawelti 1976. 3These films were at the time called variously film d’azione, film di costume, film d’epoca, film storico, film storico-avventuroso, film storico-mitologico (Cammarota 1987, p. 15). See Martinelli’s filmography of 183 films belonging to this silent first muscleman cycle (Dall’Asta 1992). 4With ticket prices for 1957 at 149 lire, a figure of 887 million lire indicates an audience of nearly 6 million (5,953,020) for Le fatiche di Ercole in one season (Quaglietti 1980, Table E). 218 Notes
5D’Annunzio writes on 30 June 1913: ‘The Roman hero of the action is called (Plinio) Fulvio Axilla. His super-strong companion is a freed slave from the Marche, named Maciste (an ancient surname of the demi-god, Hercules)’ (Dall’Asta 1992, p. 217). 6A list of pseudonyms appears in Ghigi 1977, p. 738, n. 6 and Cammarota 1987, p. 205. 7 For an examination of the relatively new role of the female action heroine in Hollywood cinema, see Tasker 1993. This has accelerated since her book was written, with powerful female figures like Lara Croft, adventuress and tomb raider, successfully taking part in the masculine world of action in her transition from computer game to the big screen. 8 The comic strip association with the peplum can be seen in advertising for the first cycle. See the poster illustration for L’atleta fantasma (1919) in Dall’Asta 1992, p. 82. 9One exception occurs in Ercole contro Roma. In this film Hercules lives and works as a village blacksmith. However, he is not the original Hercules, but the one reborn every 100 years since Hercules first fathered a child in the village. 10 See Theweleit 1987–9, for psychoanalytical readings of hard military body-coverings in the context of Nazi Germany. 11 An analysis of La battaglia di Maratona in terms of popular taste is given in Lagny 1992. 12 For a discussion of the choice of white versus non-white as the least unsatisfactory set of terms, together with other related theoretical and methodological issues, see Dyer 1997, pp. 1–40. 13 The term ‘homosociality’ is used by Sedgwick 1985, following Irigaray. 14 The expressions ‘l’entre-femmes’ and ‘l’entre-hommes’ are used by Irigaray in an interview entitled ‘Women-Amongst-Themselves: Creating a Woman- to-Woman Sociality’ in Whitford 1991a, pp. 190–7 (pp. 192, 191). The second expression is equivalent to Irigaray’s own term ‘hom(m)o-sexuality’, later transposed into English as ‘homosociality’, while the first can be said to approximate to the opposing term, ‘gynosociality’. 15 Wyke notes that this phrase was used by Fox to publicize Theda Bara’s portrayal of Cleopatra in 1914, the implication being that audiences would be attracted to the spectacle of marriage and family destabilized by female desire. 16 The notion of affidamento was suggested by the Milan Libreria delle Donne (Kemp and Bono 1993, p. 26 n. 17).
Chapter 4
1 For an analysis of fear and desire in the English gothic novel, see Day 1985. 2 Desire for change also involved an increase in the numbers of women film- makers in the 1960s. Miscuglio notes: ‘The concept of a women’s cinema first emerged during a period of protest, when women made a link between struggle against cultural misogyny and the appropriation of the means for the transmission of culture and ideology’ (Miscuglio 1988, p. 155). In general, their films would not have gone on general release, and are not Notes 219
easily obtainable today. One outstanding exception is Lina Wertmüller, who honed her skills with Fellini on Otto e mezzo (1963), and went on to direct commercially successful films thereafter. 3 For an introduction to the horror genre, see Jancovich 1996, Wells 2000. 4See Berenstein 1996 for a gender-specific account of Universal’s 1931–6 cycle of horror films. 5 Hunt 1992, Jenks 1992, Troiano 1989, and Wells 2000 give 1956 as the year of production, whereas 1957 is given in Brunetta 1993 and Mora 1978. 6 La maschera del demonio came 109th, with 141 million lire, followed by L’amante del vampiro (124th with 106 million), Seddok, l’erede di Satana (128th with 93 million), and L’ultima preda del vampiro (131th with 75 million) (Mora 1978, p. 298). 7The fullest account of films from the classic Italian horror cycle remains Mora 1978, II, pp. 287–322. 8Bava’s La maschera del demonio (1960) was banned in England for eight years (Hunt 1992), while a particular case in point in British horror is the outrage that greeted Powell’s Peeping Tom, also 1960. 9See Hunt’s recapitulation, in the context of Italian horror, of Bordwell’s definition of art film characteristics as ‘patterned violations of the classical norm’: unusual camera angles, stressed cutting, prohibited camera move- ment, failure to motivate cinematic space and time by cause-effect logic, enigmas of narration (who tells the story, how and why it is told) (Hunt 1992, p. 69, Bordwell and Thompson 1997). 10 Williams cites horror, melodrama and pornography as genres of excess evoking extreme bodily responses in the spectator (Williams 1999). 11 Dadoun regards the body ‘dismembered or divided into pieces’ in horror as an echo of shamanistic rites (Dadoun 1989, p. 49). 12 An analysis of the Medusa myth in the context of horror and psychoanalysis can be found in Creed 1993, pp. 105–21, 151–66.
Chapter 5
1 This figure is given in Wagstaff 1992, p. 260 n. 4. Brunetta estimates nearly 800 Italian westerns produced between 1964–74 (1993, IV, p. 403). 2Carabba believes the number of Italian westerns preceding Leone’s first western to be considerably less than 25. He also draws attention to the popularity of existing comedy westerns starring the duo Franchi and Ingrassia (Carabba 1989, p. 81). 3 Il mio nome è Nessuno is credited as supervised and presented by Leone, and directed by Valeri, but is often included in Leone’s filmography. 4For a list of films sporting the name Django, not always in the original Italian title but inserted for export to Germany, see Wagstaff 1998, p. 81. 5A list of pseudonyms used by performers, directors, music composers, scriptwriters and cinematographers is given in Weisser 1992, pp. 363–461. 6 The comic strip heritage is especially clear in the title sequence of some of the films, beginning with Per un pugno di dollari and continuing with films like Killer calibro .32. 7 See also Volpi’s plot phases in Nowell-Smith et al., 1996, pp. 67–8. 220 Notes
8 Wagstaff notes that Italy’s production of films collapsed from a high of 562 in 1915 to a low of 12 in 1930, rising to over 100 a year by 1942 (Wagstaff 1996, p. 219). Figures comparing Hollywood western production numbers in relation to other films from 1926 to 1967 are given in Buscombe 1996, p. 427, table 4. Table 1 (p. 426) gives figures for western productions from 1921 to 1977. 9 Per un pugno di dollari was based on Kurosawa’s Yojimbo (1961), also incor- porating ideas from Goldoni’s play Il servitore di due padroni (The Servant of Two Masters) (1746). The play features Arlecchino (the part taken by Eastwood), a servant whose desire for money (also Eastwood’s motivation) leads him to serve two masters (the Baxters and the Rojos, rival families), one of whom is Beatrice (the Rojos matriarch for whom Eastwood works) cross-dressed as a man, and the other is her lover, for whom she is search- ing. The plot allows for plentiful physical farce as Arlecchino rushes to serves each in turn. Violence is also in evidence (as part of the overall violence, Eastwood is beaten and has his hands broken), not least from Beatrice to her servant. Whereas in the play Beatrice and her lover are finally reunited, the film ends with the destruction of both families, with Eastwood as catalyst. 10 Co-productions rose from 12 per cent of all Italian films made in 1950, to 75.3 per cent in 1965, peaking in 1970 (Wagstaff 1995, Frayling 1998, p. 63). 11 Production fell from a high of 227 in 1925 to 54 in 1958, and just 11 in 1963 (a remarkable drop even in the context of a fall in production of feature films generally in the US) (Buscombe 1996, pp. 48, 426). By the end of the 1960s Italy was making more films than Hollywood (300 per annum), with more than half the profits during that period coming from Italian films (Wagstaff 1996, p. 220). 12 Carabba gives 190 spaghetti westerns made in Italy from 1964 to 1968, with a high of 63 per annum in 1968, falling to 16 in 1969, after which the genre was revived with the Trinity series (Carabba 1989, p. 84). 13 Wagstaff gives audience figures of 745 million for Italy in 1965, compared with 501 million in the UK and 419 million in France (Wagstaff 1998, p. 74). 14 See Wagstaff 1998 for a detailed analysis of profits. 15 Frayling estimates 1,690 communes without a cinema in 1963, rising to 3,399 in 1969. Given that the overall number of cinemas did not decrease, this implies more cinemas in urban centres (Frayling 1998, p. 56). 16 For a list of spaghetti westerns from 1971 onwards showing full frontal female nudity, see Weisser 1992, p. 38. (Black) back female nudity was already present in Il grande Silenzio (1968). 17 A summary and translation of the arguments of Paolella and Micciché can be found in Frayling 1998, pp. 53–6. 18 For Levitin, speculating on the possibility of roles for feminists in the western, it is the parody westerns of Mae West, rather than the straight western, that provide the only convincing roles for realistic female western- ers. However, the centrality of the camp, mannered masquerade to the Mae West persona hardly makes her a realistic representation of femininity, as well as reinforcing, rather than subverting, the stereotypical patriarchal Notes 221
location of femininity in surface (Levitin 1982). A more realistic and power- ful female westerner role can be found in Raimi’s The Quick and the Dead (1995), whose central female character’s shooting, tactical and coopera- tional skills enable her to avenge her father’s murder, and ride off alone, in true loner hero style, at the end of the film. 19 An analysis of migration in Italy is given in Ginsborg 1990, pp. 210–52. 20 The question of race in The Magnificent Seven is discussed in Buscombe 1993. For further discussion of the representation of Mexico in North American cinema, as well as essays on Mexican cinema, see King et al., 1993. 21 There are, of course, exceptions to the portrayal of the Mexican as sweaty and unattractive. While the Mexicans in Leone’s trilogy conform to the model (particularly the huge, sweating, sadistic henchman of Ramon, Indio and Angel Eyes), in Il mercenario Paco’s appearance becomes progressively more attractive (his facial hair decreases, he looks cleaner) as the film proceeds. This is in order to facilitate both the film’s promotion of homo- eroticism, and its concern to deny it by making him a suitable object of desire for Columba. the italianist 30 · 2010 · 183-201
Out West, down South: Gazing at America in reverse shot through Damiano Damiani’s Quien sabe?* Austin Fisher
For a filoneso vaunted for its stylistic panache, it is remarkable how seldom the Italian Western’s cinematography is afforded serious academic attention. Time and again, such adjectives as ‘operatic’ or ‘baroque’ scratch the surface before the scholar returns to more pressing, narrative, issues. Where socio-historical or political readings are concerned the tendency is at its most marked, and it is here that this paper seeks to intervene by identifying and analysing intertextual, transcultural nuances in the camerawork of the Mexican Revolution fable, ¿El Chuncho, quién sabe? (Damiano Damiani, 1966); henceforth abbreviated to Quien sabe?.1 Co-written by Marxist screenwriter par excellence Franco Solinas, this film is often read as a ‘political’ text in a linear or superficial sense: an exuberant, riotous application of revolutionary sentiment to the Western all’italiana. Ignacio Ramonet responds to Quien sabe? and its radicalized legacy with the question ‘who says leftists never have fun?’, 2 while academe’s own Italian Western doyenne Christopher Frayling describes it as ‘Frantz Fanon, Spaghetti-style’.3 Both writers focus on the allegorical nature of the narrative, and on its close structural and thematic resemblance to Solinas’s later, more widely revered, screenplay for Queimada! (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1969). Anglophone critiques of Quien sabe?’s radicalism, indeed, have so far focused exclusively on these plot-based aspects (most overtly in Bert Fridlund’s structuralist approach to the Italian Western, where the film is categorized within a ‘social bandit’ narrative schema).4 It is certainly not my intention to suggest that such readings are erroneous, since the most cursory summary of the film’s storyline attests to the transparency of its allegory. More often than not, however, a synopsis alone is seen to be sufficient in asserting the ‘political’ nature of Damiani’s film. Briefly to join in with this expositional exercise, the narrative of Quien sabe? purposefully allegorizes and critiques US Cold War interventionism in antagonistic terms broadly pertaining to a global outlook characteristic of the nascent ‘New Left’. A North American assassin named Bill Tate (played by Lou 184 the italianist 30 · 2010
Castel) enters the Mexican Revolution, hired by the country’s government to track and kill a guerrilla leader named General Elias. To reach his prey, Tate befriends a native bandit named Chuncho (Gian Maria Volonté), and joins the Mexican’s outlaw band, offering his technical expertise to ingratiate himself. After Tate’s counterinsurgency mission is complete, Chuncho realizes that he has been manipulated. In the final scene his eyes are opened to the presumptuousness of the gringo’s intrusion into native affairs, and he shoots Tate dead as the American boards his train home. As a resolute affirmation of Frantz Fanon’sThe Wretched of the Earth (1961), 5 this violent, cathartic denouement is widely read as the film’s key political moment. So far, so militant. If, however, we wish to understand how the filmmakers used the cinematic medium to articulate these themes, we must look beyond mere synopsis. Indeed, to take Quien sabe?’s narrative unity for granted is to overlook the film’s aspect as ‘popular’ cinema, along with the industrial, cultural and stylistic implications of that term. Christopher Wagstaff suggests that critical models associated with prestige Hollywood production practices do not suffice in analysing such formula cinema as the Spaghetti Western phenomenon, which was pitched primarily at audiences who were apt to wander in and out during the show, and talk during the boring bits.6 Quien sabe?, it must be stressed, was not a creation of the terza visione production line which Wagstaff describes, but a relatively large- scale, internationally-released film. What is clear, however, is that Damiani was operating within the conventions of a genre in which verisimilitude, narrative coherence and dialogue did not necessarily come before cinematic style in filmmakers’ production practices. This paper will argue that Quien sabe? is characterized by a didactic positioning of the film camera which, in conjunction with other elements of cinematic style and narrative construction, seeks to guide its audience through manipulation of shot, mise-en-scène, point-of-view and dramatic irony. Specifically, I locate the film as a cinematic counterpoint to Vera Cruz (Robert Aldrich, 1954), demonstrating how it offers a confrontational reworking of the Hollywood Western’s representational practices in the Cold War years. The filmmakers’ intentions thus identified, however, the concluding part of the paper will look at both the era and the political milieu from which Quien sabe? emerged, and posit a cultural anomaly in its agenda. A forum for resistance and a rejection of hegemonic texts: both of these readings are available and, doubtless, intended. Yet, upon analysing the film’s deployment of cinematic devices, one senses the ambiguities surrounding Italy’s intimate transatlantic encounter of the post-war era. Though seeking to register cognitive resistance to the codes of US popular culture, by so directly appropriating such a visible, and visual, manifestation of Americana as the Western, the film inadvertently records a considerably more nuanced cultural relationship than is apparent in its outwardly militant polemic. Fisher · Gazing at America in reverse shot through Quien sabe? 185
Crossing the border
As Chuncho waits at Ciudad Juárez train station in Quien sabe?’s penultimate sequence, he turns to face the camera, and the carefree bandit’s stare becomes fixated. A point-of-view shot reveals the subject of his attention to be Bill Tate (Figure 1). ‘Get out of my way’, the conspicuously affluent Westerner demands, pushing in at the front of a queue of peasants. ‘Who does this gringo think he is?’, asks one of them; ‘it’s always like this’, complains another. As a reaction shot returns to Chuncho, the camera zooms in on his frowning visage, still staring in the direction of this spectacle (Figure 2), and an ominous musical refrain announces an impending confrontation.
Figure 1 Figure 2
As a framing device, this scene’s formal construction performs an important cognitive function within the broader signifying practice which defines Quien sabe?’s attempt at political communication. The sequence described above narrates Chuncho’s final revelation in an efficient, terse expositional progression. The Mexican’s eyes are here opened to the pernicious nature of Tate’s intrusion, swiftly preparing the viewer for the film’s violent conclusion. Contextualized within the full arc of Quien sabe?’s epistemological and perceptual positioning of its audience, these shots themselves become a visual, stylistic and intertextual climax, completing the film’s didactic journey. I shall return to the finer points of this sequence, and demonstrate the processes by which the filmmakers lead the viewer towards it, in due course. Firstly, however, I must explain why Quien sabe?’s cinematic techniques, and this scene in particular, are important if we are fully to understand how the film operates. To do so, I turn my attention briefly across the Atlantic, to contemporaneous trends within the Hollywood Western. Damiani himself was at pains to distance his film from America’s oldest genre: Quien‘ sabe? non è un western […] Il western appartiene alla cultura protestante nord-americana […] Quien sabe? è un film sulla rivoluzione messicana, ambiento nella rivoluzione messicana, e quindi è chiaramente un film politico e non poteva non esserlo’.7 Implicit in this assertion is a desire to avoid the intellectual stigma associated with the Cinecittà / Elios production line – by this time churning out Westerns at a rate 186 the italianist 30 · 2010 of over fifty a year – and to locate the film as part also of the revered oeuvre of Franco Solinas. Equally evident in Damiani’s argument, however, is a statement of intent that Quien sabe? is an outright rejection of the formulations peddled by the Hollywood myth machine. Nowhere is the fallacy of authorial intent so apparent, for this film is intimately entwined in a dialogue with the narrative, ideological and cinematographic norms of the American format. That the post-war Hollywood Western offered a rationalization for the USA’s emergence as a superpower, a bastion of freedom and a ‘global sheriff’ as the Cold War intensified is well-travelled scholarly territory. Numerous writers, such as Stanley Corkin, Tom Engelhardt and – most notably – Richard Slotkin,8 emphasize in particular the extent to which white adventurers crossing the Mexican border became, in the context of Korea and Vietnam, a highly politicized paradigm, replete with signifiers of interventionism, containment and imperialism. A mythic Mexico fascinated by, and aspiring towards, North American freedom had been nurtured and promulgated as far back as Viva Villa! (Jack Conway, 1934) and Juarez (William Dieterle, 1939), and re-inscribed with overtly Cold War-era inflections in Viva Zapata! (Elia Kazan, 1952). By the 1960s, what Slotkin labels the ‘counterinsurgency Western’ had become a familiar and recurrent model within the Western genre.9 Oppressed peasants in an underdeveloped Third World Mexico are shown gratefully receiving assistance from their technologically and militarily superior neighbours to the north in films such as Vera Cruz (Robert Aldrich, 1954), The Treasure of Pancho Villa (George Sherman, 1955) and Bandido (Richard Fleischer, 1956). Corkin argues that the pervasiveness of interventionism in the lead-up to the 1960 US election is especially palpable upon analysing two Westerns of that year whose political stances are at odds with one another, yet which share an affirmation of a benevolent USA spreading freedom through the world: The Magnificent Seven (John Sturges, 1960) and The Alamo (John Wayne, 1960).10 Amidst the intensification of nationalistic ideologies, Corkin holds, these films register widespread late-1950s assumptions of the legitimacy and beneficence of white rule which informed conceptions of ‘modernization’ theory both liberal (The Magnificent Seven) and conservative (The Alamo). Most importantly, for the purposes of this paper, Corkin’s study also highlights the extent to which this ethnocentrism finds expression through each film’s camerawork. In The Magnificent Seven, for example, low-angle, tracking and point-of-view shots establish Chris and Vin (Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen) as the audience’s primary points of identification as they enter the narrative, while the Mexican peasants whom they rescue from tyranny are repeatedly dwarfed in comparison to their gringo saviours by the perspective and the angle of the film camera. Before turning to the methods by which Quien sabe? critiques such cinematic language, I draw the reader’s attention to one scene in particular, from Fisher · Gazing at America in reverse shot through Quien sabe? 187
Vera Cruz, which distils the modes of representation against which Damiani’s film reacts. Early on in the film, a pan shot follows Ben Trane (Gary Cooper) as he rides into a town, ties his horse up outside a bar and with a genial ‘howdy’ walks inside. Hollywood’s ‘A’-list cowboy star is going about his usual business, but the locale the camera registers is curiously alien. Instead of a saloon there is a cantina; instead of boardwalks and wooden façades, the buildings flanking this main street are made of ancient stone; instead of the industrious hustle of a boom-town there are peasants in sombreros leaning against walls and Latino women carrying food atop their heads. Both outside and inside the cantina, however, there are North American gunslingers, scowling at Trane’s repeated attempts at politeness. A few choice words later, Donnegan (Ernest Borgnine) is sent flying courtesy of Trane’s fist, and the camera follows his progress from inside the cantina, to the door, to peer out at the dusty street where a row of peasants stands watching the show.11 The rough-and-tumble bar-room brawl, the gang of menacing outlaws and the virtuoso gunplay with which Joe Erin (Burt Lancaster) enters and defuses the situation are all familiar ‘Western’ spectacles displaced to this distinctly southern locale. As Erin approaches the camera, a low-angle shot emphasizes this Westerner’s looming, powerful presence. When he then observes with amusement Borgnine’s ample physique hurtling exaggeratedly outside and slumping unconscious, the camera’s position inside the cantina allows the audience to share his point-of- view, and his broad grin. The Mexican peasants watching the show are literally a backdrop, gazing at the antics of white American supermen yet excluded from the cantina and denied their own point-of-view shot when the film cuts straight back to the protagonists and their affairs. In short, these peasants fit comfortably into Hollywood’s ‘counterinsurgency Western’ format, reflecting back over the Rio Grande the manner in which a generous USA would like to be perceived by less advanced cultures. Quien sabe? offers a firm rebuke to such assumptions of benevolence as are manifest in the films discussed above. Bill Tate’s mission south of the border is a direct and purposeful echo of this ideologically-laden scenario, which had been rehearsed on numerous big-budget occasions in post-war Hollywood. The ‘counterinsurgency Western’ is here appropriated and re-moulded into its own ideological antithesis, so that the gringo’s intrusion is no longer welcomed. As Chuncho’s revelatory point-of-view and reaction shots suggest, the filmmakers’ manipulation of formal cinematic devices is an integral component of this agenda’s articulation. The gaze of the marginalized yet aspirant subaltern at his affluent neighbour, summarized above in the case of Vera Cruz, is itself adopted then reversed in the service of this enterprise, mediating the cognitive relationship between Chuncho and Tate, and between each man and the audience. At every turn, the development of these relationships is carefully arranged by the framing of the shots, the timing of the cuts and the positioning of the film camera. 188 the italianist 30 · 2010
In the following pages I shall demonstrate both how these elements of the filmmaking process contribute toQuien sabe?’s political message, and how they are integrated into a larger structure of complementary stylistic devices. In a process closely related to what Mu rray Sm it h has termed a ‘mu ltifaceted alig n ment’ of cinematic techniques,12 director Damiano Damiani, editor Renato Cinquini, director of photography A ntonio Secchi, production designer Sergio Canevari and composer Luis Bacalov work together to construct subjective points-of-view and dramatic irony, guiding the viewer towards the desired ideological position. The film embarks on this didactic journey in its very first sequence, which works to establish Bill Tate as the audience’s primary point of contact with the on-screen action. Firstly, a fast-moving tracking shot follows four men as they walk alongside a wall daubed with the revolutionary slogan ‘viva Carranza el pacificador!’, and follows them until they come to a halt. A montage of rapidly- spliced shots then ensues, showing in quick succession two of these men hugging, another covering his face with a cloth, peasant children gathering to watch, a firing squad solemnly obeying their orders, and a crowd of Mexican women yelling incomprehensibly. As the condemned men are then executed, one of their number defiantly bellows insurgent slogans as he dies (Figure 3). The rapidity of the editing and the increasingly cacophonous soundtrack in this brief sequence evoke a frenetic perceptual ambience in keeping with the exuberance, exoticism and danger of a cinematic ‘Mexican Revolution’ lifted directly from Hollywood. The viewer is both positioned as a curious but detached observer watching this recognizable spectacle unfold, and predisposed to view Mexico through recourse to the familiar tropes of the Western genre. When, the moment after the firing squad have pulled their triggers, the camera cuts to zoom in on Bill Tate watching the grisly spectacle with an impassive detachment (Figure 4), his cognitive position therefore appears to mirror our own. The cutting and the soundtrack then combine actively to invite this impression. Immediately after Tate’s reaction shot we cut back to the firing squad finishing off their wretched victims, with what now appears, by virtue of its positioning in the sequence, to be a point-of-view shot from Tate’s perspective. A voice-over then affirms the sense that we are viewing an exotically turbulent culture: ‘Scenes of this kind were commonplace, as the various factions tried to dominate the others and bring order out of chaos’. While this technique does not necessarily
Figure 3 Figure 4 Fisher · Gazing at America in reverse shot through Quien sabe? 189 align us with Tate in an ideological or epistemological sense, it does encourage the viewer to imagine how he perceives the events which are unfolding before his eyes: ‘imagining from the inside’ in Smith’s terminology.13 By the time the credits start to roll, announcing our formal point of entry into the cinematic world, the film has therefore already positioned Tate as our sole on-screen referent. The tracking shot which follows him as he crosses the rail tracks to board his train consequently appears further to confirm his status as the key protagonist. He is dressed in conspicuously urban clothes while the camerawork, following the conventions exemplified by Ben Trane’s pan shot in Vera Cruz, simultaneously frames the locals as a colourful cultural backdrop of sombreros, peasant overalls and Rurales (Figure 5).
Figure 5
As Tate’s train then heads into the Mexican interior, and he dozes beneath his prim trilby, the accompanying sequence further positions the viewer alongside the semi-conscious gringo on a perceptual level by depicting a colourful phantasm of the Western imagination. The array of slumbering sombreros, breast-feeding mothers and guitar-playing Rurales fill the overcrowded, Third World locomotive with all the trappings of a comic-book Mexico to Luis Bacalov’s uplifting Latino score. Chuncho’s own entry into the narrative merely assimilates him into this Occidental reverie, when gunfire rings out from the hills surrounding the munitions train. Rurales drop dead but, with no depiction of the guerrillas, they are disembodied, ethereal and at one with the landscape, fram ing Mex ico as a recog ni zably dangerous and alien environment for the Western adventurer south of the border. Having established this perceptual alignment with Tate as he enters Mexico, Quien sabe?’s narrative exposition then works to locate the viewer epistemologically close to the gringo. Again, this is not to say that we are compelled to sympathize with him ideologically. Indeed, that we see his disdainful attitude to the local culture very early on is itself an important factor in the film’s steady construction of dramatic irony. When Tate pushes to the front of a ticket queue in the first scene, foreshadowing his identical act in the last, we witness at the very beginning what it takes Chuncho the entire course of the narrative to see for himself (both literally – Tate pushing into the queue – and symbolically, that his presence in Mexico is presumptuous and arrogant). 190 the italianist 30 · 2010
Once Chuncho himself has entered the narrative over the lip of a hill, hollering and whooping in a manner thoroughly in keeping with a Hollywood ‘Latino’ stereotype, the filmmakers reveal a series of clues to the audience alone which, while not fully explaining the nature of Tate’s counterinsurgency mission, clearly indicate that he has a hidden agenda. In each case, the mise-en- scène renders Chuncho blind to the information, placing him either out-of-shot or looking the wrong way. Firstly, when Chuncho’s gang ambushes the train, it pulls away to escape, precipitating a brief chase sequence of tracking shots from the fleeing train and low-angle pan shots of pursuant bandits accompanied by a rhythmic, pounding score. Spliced with this exhilarating, if generic, action is a steady progression of close-up shots which employ dramatic irony to establish Tate as the principal protagonist, and place the audience on a higher level of understanding than Chuncho. We see Tate climbing onto the engine car, killing the driver, stopping the train and handcuffing himself to fool Chuncho into thinking that he is a prisoner. Once Chuncho has blasted Tate free of his bonds, the Mexican rides out of shot a split second before a further series of medium close-ups shows the gringo reaching for the hidden keys, unlocking the handcuffs himself and re-holstering his supposedly ‘found’ gun before disembarking. Later, once Tate has joined the gang in a series of action-packed insurrectionary vignettes, the two men find themselves alone in the desert, where their interpersonal drama intensifies and develops as Chuncho tenderly nurses Tate through a bout of malaria. Hughes14 uses this scene to suggest that the filmmakers are depicting a sexual attraction between the characters. Certainly, the story of Quien sabe? is one of an intimate and complex relationship between two men, and such a reading is by no means alien to critiques of the Italian Western. Maggie Günsberg, for example, builds on the valuable work undertaken on the US genre by Lee Clark Mitchell, to identify a repressed homoerotic tension in the Western filone’s obsessive focus on masculine prowess and sadomasochistic violence.15 I suggest, however, that such an ascription to the relationship between Tate and Chuncho is due largely to the filmmakers’ preoccupation with the gaze of each man at the other, which is accentuated from the very point at which they are isolated in each other’s company in the desert. Homoeroticism is clearly one available interpretation of the characters’ fixation with one other, but this is to over-simplify the film’s scopophilic nuances, whereby the spectator’s gaze is aligned first with one man then the other. It is, indeed, from this point of the film onwards that the filmmakers most painstakingly mediate the relationship between the two characters through both cognitive positioning and subjective point-of-view. At fi rst, a series of f u r ther clues as to Tate’s hidden agenda, to which Chu ncho remains oblivious, is revealed to the audience. When Tate operates a machine gun to kill soldiers in pursuit of a messenger from General Elias, Chuncho takes a rifle to finish the fight in single combat, and we view his heroic act from Tate’s point-of- Fisher · Gazing at America in reverse shot through Quien sabe? 191
Figure 6 Figure 7 view behind the machine gun as Chuncho runs away from us (Figure 6). As soon as Chuncho has exited the frame and is otherwise engaged, the viewer sees Tate turning the machine gun on the rebel messenger, searching the messenger’s corpse to find money brought to pay for armaments and surreptitiously hurling the coins over a cliff (a narrative device which ensures that he and Chuncho will now have to meet General Elias in person). The filmmakers then ensure that we remain cognitively, and literally, closer to Tate with the dramatic irony of Chuncho’s meticulous, and vain, search for the money in the background of a deep-focus shot, as the Westerner nonchalantly reloads the gun in the foreground (Figure 7).
Figure 8
When Tate falls ill and Chuncho is nursing him back to health, the Mexican is given his first chance to share with the audience a clue as to Tate’s purpose. Searching Tate’s valise for quinine, he finds a single golden bullet (which will later be used to kill Elias). As Chuncho examines it an extreme close-up registers his cu riosit y while the bullet enters the frame in the foreg rou nd held delicately bet ween his thumb and forefinger. The tense background music which accompanies the shot, however, gives a further clue to the viewer alone, and the bullet stays out- of-focus, its significance symbolically beyond Chuncho’s comprehension (Figure 8). The spectator remains in a privileged position over him, and continues to be supplied with clues which he misses. When his curiosity resurfaces in the very next scene, for example, he asks a recovered Tate why the bullet is there, but his back is turned to both the camera and Tate when the gringo’s expression shows brief alarm, which is registered in centre-frame close-up (Figures 9 and 10). By the time Chuncho has turned around, Tate has regained his composure and deflects suspicion by explaining ‘it brings me good luck’. 192 the italianist 30 · 2010
Figure 9 Figure 10 The next scene shows the two men arriving at General Elias’s mountain encampment. Here, Chuncho undergoes an abrupt realization, which coincides with the filmmakers communicating an increased level of understanding on his behalf. When he is told of the dire consequences of his mercenary neglect in leaving the rebel town of San Miguel to fend for itself, Volonté’s bipolar portrayal – one moment comic-opera bandido, the next contemplative revolutionary – communicates the first stage of Chuncho’s revelation. Narrative structure, aural and visual editing, and performance all now serve to relate the hero’s awakening and lead the viewer towards the explosive climax. In the very next sequence, Tate’s agenda once again becomes clear to the viewer before it does to Chuncho, as the Westerner loads the golden bullet into his rifle, the camera again placed behind him and sharing his point-of-view (Figure 11). Though we then see him taking aim, however, and another point-of-view shot emphasising his target to be General Elias, when the rifle is fired the viewer’s position of aloofness over Chuncho begins to diminish. Firstly, there is no visualization of the General being hit by the bullet. Instead, the sound of the gunshot announces a cut back to Chuncho and his brother Santo, so that the audience hears the gunfire at the same time as they do. When another shot rings out, Chuncho once again has his back to the camera, but now turns around in time to see what the viewer cannot. It is only when Santo’s dying hand enters the left of the frame that the audience discovers at whom the second gunshot was aimed (Figure 12). As the very first instance of Chuncho possessing a privileged position over the audience, albeit for a split second, this timing is significant. The Mexican’s understanding of events now steadily approaches parity with that of the viewer. Revelations which Chuncho sees directly, indeed, are now occurring for the audience only as they enter the camera’s field of view, denying us prior knowledge of
Figure 11 Figure 12 Fisher · Gazing at America in reverse shot through Quien sabe? 193 their presence. Less than a minute after Santo’s hand had entered from the left of the shot, the golden bullet enters from the right in close-up, to be held up to the gathered crowd (Figure 13). This exactly replicates the framing from earlier in the film, when Chuncho held the same object in a blur of confusion, but this time the bullet is in sharp focus. The contrast with the earlier shot indicates that Chuncho now understands Tate’s plot. Accordingly, his back is no longer turned, and he is afforded a close-up reaction shot (Figure 14) demonstrating that his companion’s betrayal is apparent to him as he looks up to the mountain top, where Tate had been hiding.
Figure 13 Figure 14
Two zoom shots – one of Tate watching the firing squad at the beginning, the other of Chuncho watching Tate at the end – articulate the filmmakers’ didactic manipulation of perceptual alignment in its clearest terms. This cinematic technique, along with its corollary – the extreme close-up – is, of course, a commonplace in the Italian Western. In particular, a notable fixation with the protagonist’s eyes (and with the reverse shot depicting the object of his gaze) emerges in Sergio Leone’s Per un pugno di dollari (1964) and proliferates in this filone thereafter. The foregrounding of this practice in Quien sabe? can therefore at least in part be ascribed to the film’s industrial and generic context. As a central component in a larger signifying structure, however, the point-of-view and reaction shots which frame Chuncho’s gaze in the denouement at the train station also function as the culmination of the character’s cognitive journey, and the consummation of Quien sabe?’s contrapuntal relationship with the Hollywood Western. By this point of the film, Chuncho is apparently reconciled with Tate. Dressed in Western finery, infantilized by his gringo companion and preparing to leave his country behind for a life of decadent luxury, the Mexican appears every inch the compliant subaltern emulating the world north of the Rio Grande. His final revelation, however, is now articulated through a combination of cinematic technique and expressive performance which positions the viewer alongside the bandit. As Chuncho turns to admire a well-dressed woman, we see Tate walking to the front of the ticket queue ready to repeat the presumptuous intrusion to which we were party at the film’s opening. Once again, the Mexican has his back to this spectacle and his demeanour is jovial, but as he then turns around to face 194 the italianist 30 · 2010
Tate, meeting the reverse camera angle in close-up, Gian Maria Volonté’s features drop to a frown. T his stern point-glance shot, along with the steady arc of dramatic irony that has been constructed by the filmmakers up to this moment, allows the subsequent point-object shot to solicit, not only a perceptual, but an epistemological alignment between the viewer and Chuncho. As our gaze is drawn towards Tate’s arrogant act, the framing immediately carries the message that Chuncho at last understands what we have known since the start of the film. The editing and the soundtrack combine to underscore this sense that the Mexican is undergoing a meaningful awakening and, through the manipulation of visual and aural point-of-view, to align the viewer’s moral allegiance with this epiphany. Accompanying the point- object shot, we hear the conspicuously affluent Westerner ordering an elderly peasant to ‘get out of my way’. ‘But I was here fi rst’, protests the Mex ican. ‘ Now I’m here’, retorts Tate. The reaction shot that then returns to Chuncho and zooms in to a tight close-up to linger on his still frowning face, along with the tense musical refrain, indicates that he has registered this impertinence, and he departs from the frame having, it transpires, decided to kill Tate. That he is no longer looking at the ticket queue means that when we then return once again to the point-object shot, with the soundtrack registering more peasants’ complaints – ‘who does this gringo think he is?’; ‘it’s always like this’ – we are no longer being invited to ‘imagine from the inside’. Instead, we are now viewing a non-subjective expositional framing, which affirms Chuncho’s newly-discovered ideological outlook, and encourages us do likewise. Portrayed as an oppressor, the impending demise of the Western adventurer down Mexico way is now imperative. Contrast this to the aforementioned scene in Vera Cruz, which uses the film’s expositional and ideological positioning to solicit a very different notion, that Mexican peasants are aspirant, grateful and cordial towards gringo intruders. Aldrich’s film cumulatively places the narrative focus on complex North American characters, both fallible and heroic, while subordinating local concerns to normative ‘Western’ frames of reference: with the scrolling text announcing ‘as the American Civil War ended, another was just beginning [...] Into this fight rode a handful of Americans’; with the opening shots framing Ben Trane as a lone rider in an alien country; with the uneasy interpersonal drama between Trane and Joe Erin; with the pan shot which follows Trane and registers Mexicans as picturesque scenery; and with the low-angle framing of Erin as he approaches the camera. The peasants who huddle together in the middle distance, staring at the exploits of these gringo superheroes arriving to rescue their nation from tyranny, therefore appear awe-struck and extraneous, positioned as spectators and reflecting the audience’s admiration for the Western adventurers in Mexico. By associating Chuncho’s political realization with a didactic arrangement of elements of the filmmaking process designed to elicit subjective perceptual Fisher · Gazing at America in reverse shot through Quien sabe? 195 alignment with the viewer, Quien sabe?’s climax performs a purposeful cognitive reversal. After Hollywood’s familiar framings have been appropriated on behalf of Tate in the opening sequence, Chuncho’s revelatory close-up and point-object shots offer a trenchant riposte to the assumptions of the ‘Western’ camera which peers out of Vera Cruz’s cantina. One might almost say that, in a figurative sense, they are spliced with that film’s shot composition, offering the marginalized peasants of the earlier film their own point-of-view shot. More literally, they invert normative modes of ethnic representation fostered by Hollywood’s myth machine to frame the Westerner down south as an oppressive and pernicious interloper. Vera Cruz’s fantasy of the aspirant subaltern is banished.
Chuncho’s gaze in retrospect
The belligerent intentions of Quien sabe?’s makers thus identified, what is the scholar to extrapolate from this confrontational intertextual exchange with Hollywood’s language of representation? In the remainder of this paper, I shall offer some conclusions concerning the film’s engagement with these cinematic conventions and what this tells us about processes commonly referred to as ‘Americanization’ in 1960s Italy. Quien sabe? resides along a diverse spectrum of responses to those processes, which emerged from within the political Left around the time of its release. Clearly, on the one hand, the film registers a space for resistance against the ostensibly hegemonic codes of US cinema within what is commonly branded the ‘popular’ in Italy’s post-war film industry. Paradoxically, however, by adopting, appropriating and re-working those same codes so carefully throughout its running time, the filmmakers’ cinematic language can also be said to affirm the dominance of Hollywood in the semiotic marketplace. These very issues surrounding perceived resistance and capitulation to transatlantic paradigms are entirely germane to contemporaneous debates among the Italian Left. For all the Cold War posturing of the Italian Communist Party’s leadership,16 this subculture’s relationship with American cultural imports was far from straightforwardly antagonistic. The vibrant mythologies of US culture exerted considerable appeal amongst the young in particular, and cinema was a key player in this phenomenon. In 1954, for example, Giuseppe Turroni interviewed a twenty three year old PCI member who admitted preferring Westerns and adventure films to the neorealism championed by his party, which was ‘too intellectual and difficult’.17 The ubiquity of Hollywood imagery in post-war Italy dictated that the mythic ‘America’ of the silver screen could not be dismissed easily. In the course of the 1960s the problem of confronting the Americanized consumerism, the burgeoning mass media and the proliferation of transatlantic film genres which had arisen since the Economic Miracle became one of the most 196 the italianist 30 · 2010 pressing and divisive issues within the Left. Mino Argentieri, for one, condemned such filmmakers as Michelangelo Antonioni as ‘Hollywood collaborationists who do not even dare to denounce their own servitude’.18 These very issues surrounding US cultural hegemony and cognitive resistance to transatlantic formats remained hot topics of debate throughout Western Europe’s ‘New Left’ into the late 1960s, and once again cinema was co- opted into carrying this ideological burden. Most notably, from 1966 onwards Jean-Luc Godard incrementally rejected the generic frameworks, handed down from Hollywood, with which his earlier work had engaged. In Week-end (Jean- Luc Godard, 1967), Le Gai Savoir (Jean-Luc Godard, 1968), and to an even greater extent in his collaborations with Jean-Pierre Gorin as the Groupe Dziga Vertov, he purposefully unravelled received models of representation including, with Vent d’Est (Groupe Dziga Vertov, 1970), those of the Western. The adoption and subversion of Hollywood genre convention undertaken in these films is considerably more radical and far-reaching than that which we have seen practiced in Quien sabe?, and the popular aesthetic of Franco Solinas’s highly marketable political treatises consequently drew Godard’s ire: ‘[Hollywood studios] don’t even need to make movies themselves anymore, they have found slaves every where to make the movies they want’.19 Quien sabe? ’s entwinement with the genre described by André Bazin as ‘the American film par excellence’ was therefore a contentious choice in this political milieu.20 Indeed, closely related concerns to those outlined above are dramatized and negotiated through this film’s formal construction. The didacticism we have seen at work on the one hand problematizes the commonplace notion that filone cinema was characterized by transatlantic parasitism. Anglophone scholarship concerning Italian film, it is true, has begun to unburden itself of its neorealist yoke to shine a light into the academically murky world of the country’s popular cinematic forms, thanks largely to the travails of Christopher Wagstaff, Dimitris Eleftheriotis, Christopher Frayling and Catherine O’Rawe.21 Much work remains, however, to chart the heterogeneous ideological coordinates of the filoni of the 1960s and 1970s; specifically, those of the Italian Western.22 Though, amongst Italy’s political Left, the lure of Americana in the post-war years was widely inflected with misgivings over the socio-cultural impact of an increased transatlantic flow, on a cinematic level such disquiet is identified chiefly in films by the canonical post-war auteurs (La dolce vita (Federico Fellini, 1960) and Rocco e i suoi fratelli (Luchino Visconti, 1960) being two notable examples). It is telling that when Michalczyk works within the category ‘Italian Political Filmmakers’, his frame of reference is limited to Francesco Rosi, Gillo Pontecorvo, Elio Petri, Lina Wertmüller, Bernardo Bertolucci, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Marco Bellocchio.23 Where discontent with the Economic Miracle and the onset of US-led modernity is concerned, the popular filoni of the 1960s are consistently overlooked. Fisher · Gazing at America in reverse shot through Quien sabe? 197
Quien sabe? demonstrates that the superficially imitative category offilone filmmaking indeed offered a paradigm within which resistance to the codes of US popular culture could be inscribed. The semiotic term ‘codes’, indeed, is vital here, for I do not refer solely to the film’s extensive subversion of Hollywood plot, characterization and, to borrow a phrase from Richard Slotkin, ‘mythic space’24 (though each of these is of course a key component of Quien sabe?’s agenda). In this paper we have seen that the filmmakers also register their cinematic mutiny through the adoption and ideological inversion of a normative Hollywood mode of representation. By literally turning the camera around to confront the Western’s role as ambassador for a US-oriented polity, they clearly seek to register an altogether less-than-awe-struck gaze at bourgeois culture, from the perspective of those discontented with American hegemony both in Italy and abroad. It is possible, for example, that one intention behind the bitterness of Chuncho’s revelatory gaze at his affluent and arrogant northern neighbour is to portray the alienation felt by those in the Mezzogiorno for whom the north’s Economic Miracle had been less a reality than a spectacle. Southerners as primitive peasants, northerners as industrious capitalists: the conceit would be neither subtle nor novel, fitting in comfortably with a rich tradition of stereotyped representation of the Italian peninsula stretching back to Montesquieu and Dumas.25 Such an intervention on behalf of the wretched of the Earth would also, of course, accord with the film’s overt leanings towards Fanonism, signifying a stylistic and thematic unity of purpose running through Quien sabe?’s exposition. That Italy’s post-war ‘Americanization’ was less a process of subordination to a hegemonic cultural imperialism than one of appropriation, negotiation and resistance is therefore a tangible premise when filtered through this film’s agenda. By reworking and subverting the signifiers of the Western genre, the film reflects processes of creative participation in the meanings of transatlantic artefacts which characterized much of the nation’s cultural output in this era. Indeed, the discourse of transculturation has become a familiar area of scholarly enquiry where the Western all’italiana is concerned. Elef theriotis applies Mar y L ouise Prat t’s theories of ‘contact zones’ to this filone’s hybrid cultural dynamics,26 and the peculiar blend of reference points to be found therein can equally be illuminated by Michel de Certeau’s formulation of a colonial society where ‘users make […] innumerable and infinitesimal transformations of and within the dominant cultural economy in order to adapt it to their own interests and their own rules’.27 The academy’s outlook on popular cinema more broadly, too, increasingly seeks to challenge commonplace assumptions concerning both its dichotomous relationship with ‘art’ cinema and the passive nature of its audiences.28 Quien sabe?’s extensive requisitioning of Hollywood’s syntax, by registering an ideologically contrary audience constituency actively participating in a display of re-interpretation, certainly adds grist to this theoretical mill. 198 the italianist 30 · 2010
On the other hand, is there not inflected in Chuncho’s revelatory gaze something more ambiguous concerning Italy’s post-war encounter with US popular culture? The reading offered above may correctly identify the filmmakers’ intentions, but these should certainly not be taken at face value. With hindsight, indeed, Quien sabe?’s manipulation of the medium communicates a considerably less assured message than that which was apparently planned. The meticulous care with which the filmmakers not only dismantle, but selectively re-formulate the Western’s ethnic framings brings to mind Cesare Pavese’s description of American culture in the post-war years as ‘una sorta di grande laboratorio dove […] si perseguiva […] [il] compito di creare un gusto, uno stile, un mondo moderni’.29 Pavese’s metaphor, arising from the desolation of war, expresses a sense that Americana offered Europeans a source from which modern identities and outlooks could arise. Such an enthralled engagement with US culture is famously satirized in the comic film Un americano a Roma (Steno, 1954). When Nando Moriconi (Alberto Sordi) walks the late-night, deserted streets of Trastevere, he is immersed in a private world of Hollywood mythology, imaginary guns drawn as he darts between pillars and doorways to portentous noir-esque music. Returning home from his local cinema where, jostling for position with equally wide-eyed children he has just been engrossed in the latest Hopalong Cassidy Western, Sordi’s endearing fool projects his transatlantic fantasies onto the familiar locale. From this brief sketch one can extrapolate an apposite symbol for the level of engagement with US culture that is inadvertently reflected by Quien sabe?. Nando Moriconi is not a passive member of the audience, gazing longingly at America and its mythic codes. Once he leaves the cinema, he utilizes and re- moulds Hollywood’s semantic structures to define his own outlook on the world which surrounds him. By no means, however, does this creative negotiation constitute a discourse of resistance, since Nando is obsessive in his emulation of US popular culture: an enraptured man-child playing with the building blocks of modernity. Nor should Quien sabe? be read in terms of linear rejection. Even while seeking to subvert the ideological inscriptions of Hollywood the filmmakers, like Nando Moriconi, adopt and play with its semiotic structures. The extent of borrowing is so ingrained in the making of this film, indeed, that Hollywood provides the very language through which it expresses its ostensibly subversive agenda. Appropriating the ‘counterinsurgency’ Western is one thing; meticulously re-formulating its syntax takes this transcultural borrowing to another level – one on which cognitive formulations are blended from, filtered through, and defined by, recourse to Americana. The above conceit is perhaps somewhat whimsical, but it does demand that an alternative conclusion be offered concerning Damiani’s attempted revolt against Hollywood: namely, that Quien sabe? is as informative for what it omits to say about America as it is for its intended contrary inscriptions. By formulating their Fisher · Gazing at America in reverse shot through Quien sabe? 199 outlook through such close contact with the malleable signifiers of US popular culture, do the filmmakers not affirm both the normative status of Hollywood and the need to work within that dominant cultural economy? Certainly, as a snapshot of an Italy where the tropes of US culture are instantly recognizable reference points, Quien sabe? is no straightforward assertion of hostility towards the transatlantic myth machine. Subtlety is an attribute rarely associated with the Western all’italiana: hardly surprising, one might reasonably protest, of a filone which embedded Django’s spring-action coffin-cum-machine-gun in the popular imagination.Quien sabe?, too, is not found wanting where explosive set-pieces, cackling bandidos and three-figure body counts are concerned. Yet, behind both the generic motifs and the didactic approach of its makers, the film resides along a nuanced spectrum of responses to Italy’s post-war transatlantic relationship: a space of cultural blending and semiotic negotiation whose formal construction offers the scholar a novel and intriguing route towards unlocking an inadvertent significance. Damiani was certainly vociferous in proclaiming his film to be an anti-American diatribe in keeping with the radicalism of his famed screenwriter, and purposeful in inscribing semantic structures to this end. At this crossroads in the communist subculture’s outlook, however, his text is suffused with ambivalence towards transatlantic culture. Not only does this register the crisis occurring within the political Left; it renders any auteurist notion of the filmmaker bestowing meaning upon his audience entirely insufficient. As Quien sabe? draws to a close and the hero’s political awakening is at last realized, Chuncho casually informs Tate: ‘I like you. It’s a shame I have to kill you’. To the gringo’s desperate cry of ‘why should you want to kill me?’ comes only the phrase ‘quien sabe?’ (Spanish for ‘who knows?’). Damiani interprets the line, and the film’s enigmatic title, thus: ‘Non lo so perché non ho la cultura per razionalizzare tutto questo, però ti ammazzo perché sento che ti devo ammazzare’. 30 The intended meaning – that the ideological inarticulacy of the subaltern does not preclude a political awakening expressed solely through violence – is a clear nod to the central tenets of Frantz Fanon, so revered by Franco Solinas and glorified by sections of Europe’s radical Left. There is, however, a hint of irony in this dramatic representation, for does not an inability to express ideological revulsion for America in a coherent, programmatic manner equally describe the confusions and obfuscations of the filmmakers themselves? Chuncho’s crisis and indecision offers us a symbol for the film’s own inner tensions, between a fascination with the codes of US cinema on the one hand, and unease towards those codes’ attendant ideologies on the other. Bellissima (Luchino Visconti, 1951) critiques a perceived fixation with Americana, when Anna Magnani gazes longingly at the Hollywood Western Red River (Howard Hawks, 1948).31 Her awe-struck exclamation ‘guarda 200 the italianist 30 · 2010 guarda’ registers more than just a swoon for Montgomery Clift. The Western itself here symbolizes the aspirational significance of a mythic America. As the USA’s altruistic veneer peels in the Vietnam era, Chuncho’s gaze is similarly aimed squarely at Hollywood’s oldest genre, but now foregrounds the brash arrogance of Western imperialism. Despite his intentions, however, Damiani does not reject what Slotkin calls the ‘counterinsurgency Western’. Chuncho’s acquisition of the gaze of the film camera is more appropriately read as a dialogue with the representational dynamics of Hollywood. The ideological, narrative and cinematographic norms of this format are appropriated and re-moulded, not discarded. In the film’s didactic journey can therefore be gleaned processes of negotiation and re-inscription within the so-called ‘Americanization’ of post-war Italy. As a grand narrative, the film fails to fulfil its anti-American remit. As a meeting place of cultural reference points, however, it is a fascinating document of a tumultuous period in Italy’s popular culture.
Notes * The images in this article are used by kind permission of 8 Stanley Corkin, Cowboys as Cold Warriors: The Western Surf Film/Argent Films Ltd. and US History (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1 Throughout the article I refer to the original 115 minute 2004); Tom Engelhardt, The End of Victory Culture: Cold cut, released in Italian cinemas in December 1966. This War America and the Disillusioning of a Generation (New version of the film is currently available from Argent Films York: BasicBooks, 1995); Richard Slotkin, Gunfighter (2008), under its English-language title, A Bullet for the Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century General. America (New York: Atheneum, 1992). 9 2 Ignacio Ramonet, ‘Italian Westerns as Political Parables’, Slotkin, p. 405. Cineaste, 15 (1986), 30-35 (p. 31). 10 Corkin, pp. 179-80. 3 Christopher Frayling, Spaghetti Westerns: Cowboys 11 Regretably, copyright permission for this film still was and Europeans from Karl May to Sergio Leone, 2nd edn only available at prohibitive expense. I hope, therefore, (London: I.B.Tauris, 1998), p. 227. that my description will suffice in relaying the scene to 4 Bert Fridlund, The Spaghetti Western: A Thematic the reader. Analysis (Jefferson: MacFarland, 2006), pp. 173-81. 12 Murray Smith, ‘Imagining from the Inside’, in Film 5 Frantz Fanon, Les damnés de la terre (Paris: François Theory and Philosophy, ed. by Richard Allen and Murray Maspéro éditeur, 1961); Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of Smith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 412-30 the Earth, trans. Constance Farrington (New York: Grove (p. 417). Press, 1963). 13 Smith, p. 412. 6 Christopher Wagstaff, ‘A Forkful of Westerns: Industry, 14 Howard Hughes, Once Upon a Time in the Italian West Audiences and the Italian Western’, in Popular European (London: I.B. Tauris, 2004), p. 98. Cinema, ed. by Richard Dyer and Ginette Vincendeau 15 Lee Clark Mitchell, Westerns: Making the Man in Fiction (London: Routledge, 1992), pp. 245-61 (p. 253). and Film (London: University of Chicago Press, 1996); 7 Franca Faldini and Goffredo Fofi,L’avventurosa storia del Maggie Günsberg, Italian Cinema: Gender and Genre cinema italiano raccontata dai suoi protagonisti 1935-1959 (London: Palgrave, 2005), pp. 199-208. (Milan: Mondadori, 1981), p. 300. Fisher · Gazing at America in reverse shot through Quien sabe? 201
16 For detailed examinations of the PCI’s attitudes towards Westerns, pp. 217-244, and Austin Fisher, ‘A Marxist’s transatlantic culture see David Forgacs, ‘The Italian Gotta Do What a Marxist’s Gotta Do: Political Violence Communist Party and Culture’, in Culture and Conflict in on the Italian Frontier’, Scope: an Online Journal of Postwar Italy: Essays on Mass and Popular Culture, ed. Film and Television Studies, 15 (2009)
University of California Press, 2005), ii, 140. Mezzogiorno, 1860-1900 (London: MacMillan, 1999), p. 37. 21 See: Wagstaff, ‘A Forkful of Westerns’; Christopher 26 Wagstaff, ‘Italy in the Post-War International Cinema Eleftheriotis, Popular Cinemas of Europe, pp. 101-102. Market’, in Italy in the Cold War: Politics, Culture and 27 Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, 2nd edn Society 1948-1958, ed. by Christopher Duggan and (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), pp. xiii- Christopher Wagstaff (Oxford: Berg, 1995), pp. 89-115; xiv. Christopher Wagstaff, ‘Italian Genre Films in the World 28 See, for example, Richard Dyer, Only Entertainment, Market’, in Hollywood and Europe: Economics, Culture, 2nd edn (London: Routledge, 2002), and Alan Lovell National Identity 1945-95, ed. by Geoffrey Nowell-Smith and Gianluca Sergi, Cinema Entertainment: Essays on and Stephen Ricci (London: British Film Institute, 1998), Audiences, Films and Film Makers (Maidenhead: Open pp. 74-85; Dimitris Eleftheriotis, Popular Cinemas of University Press, 2009). Europe: Studies of Texts, Contexts and Frameworks 29 Anna Maria Torriglia, Broken Time, Fragmented Space: (London: Continuum, 2001), pp. 92-133; Dimitris A Cultural Map for Postwar Italy (London: University of Eleftheriotis, ‘Spaghetti Western, Genre Criticism and Toronto Press, 2002), p. 79. National Cinema: Redefining the Frame of Reference’, 30 in Action and Adventure Cinema, ed. by Yvonne Tasker Faldini and Fofi, p. 300. (London: Routledge, 2004), pp. 309-27; Frayling, 31 This particular Hollywood Western possesses a singular Spaghetti Westerns; Christopher Frayling, Sergio Leone: symbolic currency as a romanticized depiction of both Something To Do With Death (London: Faber and Faber, American society and cinema, replicated in a nostalgic 2000); Catherine O’Rawe, ‘“I padri e i maestri”: Genre, tenor in The Last Picture Show (Peter Bogdanovich, 1971), Auteurs, and Absences in Italian Film Studies’, Italian which is also set in the early 1950s. Studies, 63: 2 (2008), 173-94. 22 For an introductory review of the political trend inspired by Quien sabe? within this filone, see Frayling, Spaghetti
Austin Fisher, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK ([email protected])
© Department of Italian Studies, University of Reading and Departments of Italian, University of Cambridge and University of Leeds
10.1179/026143410X12724449730097 Copyright of Italianist is the property of Maney Publishing and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. 1403970998ts01.qxd 5-9-06 9:47 PM Page iii
Women in Italy, 1945–1960: An Interdisciplinary Study
Edited by
Penelope Morris 1403970998ts14.qxd 5-9-06 9:48 PM Page 193
13
“I Don’t Want To Die”: Prostitution and Narrative Disruption in Visconti’s Rocco e i suoi fratelli
Danielle Hipkins
lthough the title Rocco e i suoi fratelli (1960) might suggest otherwise, Aan analysis of the film’s creation and reception gives new insight into shifts in the representation of women in this period. This chapter will not take up Guido Aristarco’s challenge to investigate Visconti’s mooted misogyny,1 but it will begin with a less controversial reminder of the director’s patriarchal vision of women, openly acknowledged by Visconti himself,2 that through its emphasis on the importance of family sees them in a series of restricted roles. This focus on the family as the measure of a woman’s worth finds its expression in Rocco in the classic dichotomy between the two main female characters: a mother (Rosaria Parondi played by Katina Paxinou) trying to hold the family together and a pros- titute (Nadia played by Annie Girardot) pulling it apart. Nonetheless on this apparently unpromising territory I hope to demonstrate the potential for the cinematic process of the period to confound stereotypes, by demonstrating that Nadia’s character—as an intersection of scriptwrit- ing, direction and performance—represents the principal fault line along which the dominant patriarchal discourse of this film breaks down. I also intend to undermine further what Nowell-Smith describes as that “absurd” interpretation of auteur theory in which “every detail of a film is the direct and sole responsibility of its author, who is the director,”3 making room for the women who contributed to the film’s creation. 1403970998ts14.qxd 5-9-06 9:48 PM Page 194
194 DANIELLE HIPKINS
Background—The Prostitute in Italian Cinema
While the female prostitute was not completely absent from Italian cinema in the later years of the Fascist regime,4 her presence in postwar film is striking. As the restrictions of Fascism lifted and the influence of a neore- alist drive spread, cinema strove to narrate the visibility of prostitution in Allied-occupied Italy and the flipside of idealized Italian family life, and later began to revel in a limited new cinematic freedom regarding sexual mores.5 These factors made the prostitute a widespread presence in Italian cinema of the period 1946–1960, but representations of her tend to have three common features:
Redemption/Punishment Motif
Critics at the time were aware of the repetitive nature of “flights of rheto- ric about tarts with hearts”6 and Aristarco upbraided one director for his lack of sociological research.7 Yet in the light of Laura Mulvey’s seminal essay on visual pleasure and narrative cinema the representation of the prostitute is problematic more as a result of the gendered power structure of cinema than as an exercise in verisimilitude. For Mulvey the potentially castrating female is offered two possibilities by the classical Hollywood- inspired cinematic narrative: redemption or punishment on the one hand, or fetishization on the other.8 While it is impossible to apply Mulvey’s the- ory to the representation of all women and all possible spectatorial posi- tions in cinematic narrative, it could well tally with the central figure of the “whore with a heart of gold” in postwar Italian cinema. The initial sense of sympathy for the figure is both enhanced and cut short by the social con- demnation of prostitution, making punishment the necessary alternative to satisfy, according to Mulvey’s theory, castration anxiety.
Center Versus Periphery
The films featuring prostitutes divide into two groups, in both of which the prostitute is used instrumentally as a stereotype. The first group fea- tures the prostitute in cameo, “color-giving” appearances that connote a certain underworld ambience or move the plot forward.9 The second group makes the prostitute its heroine, from the neorealism of the Rome scenario in Paisà (1946) and Lattuada’s Senza pietà (1948), to the melodra- mas of the early 1950s,10 to the early auteurist cinema of the likes of Fellini in Le notti di Cabiria (1957).11 It is in this latter group that the focus on the redemption/punishment motif is strongest. 1403970998ts14.qxd 5-9-06 9:48 PM Page 195
“I DON’T WANT TO DIE” 195
Identification with the Nation
Critics have emphasized the use of the female body to articulate a new vision of the nation in postwar Italian cinema. For Millicent Marcus this is symp- tomatic of a long tradition in Italy, but in the work of postwar filmmakers, she argues, this “feminized body politic becomes a sign of resistance, an index of the will to challenge official notions of the Italians’ national self.”12 In the case of the female prostitute figure this is particularly pronounced, linked as she is with the idea of a fallen Italy that must pay a price. Atonement for one’s (or rather Eve’s) original sin is made vicariously via the figure of prostitute for both spectator and male protagonist. Thus the restoration of social order is repeatedly produced at the prostitute’s expense, making punishment rather than redemption the preferred pattern in repre- sentations of the Italian prostitute. Expiating the sins of the nation, the suf- fering prostitute acts as the titillating scapegoat of many a postwar film. The Merlin law of 1958 had outlawed the hitherto state run brothel, theoretically signaling a major change in the status of the prostitute in Italy. It severed the financial link between the nation and the prostituted body (the state no longer gained revenue from brothel tax) and was per- ceived to have given rise to an increase in the “punishment” of prostitutes as violent crime against them rose. This law was passed only after a great deal of debate—Socialist MP Lina Merlin struggled for over a decade to introduce it (see Tambor’s chapter (9) in this volume). It is evident that cinema and politics entered into dialogue over this issue, since one regula- tionist argued that “all the streets of Italy are destined to become the ‘streets of Cabiria’ ”13 in the wake of abolition, while in 1960 Pietrangeli dealt directly with the deregulation of prostitution in Adua e le compagne. A weary comment made by one of the scriptwriters for Rocco is revealing about the extent to which the prostitute dominated the Italian imagination and media by 1960:“In all the crimes, in all the most fantastical stories that took place in Italy, dig a little, and the prostitute lay at the bottom.”14 Given the intense controversy over prostitution immediately preceding the plan- ning of Rocco it is hardly surprising that the centrality of the prostitute should have been perceived as too obvious, nor is it surprising that old models for her representation had become outmoded.
The Plot and its Origins
An outline of the plot of Rocco and his Brothers does not however appear to offer much more than the usual redemption and inevitable punishment for the woman who attempts to bargain with the devil, by selling a body that in a patriarchal society is not hers to sell. 1403970998ts14.qxd 5-9-06 9:48 PM Page 196
196 DANIELLE HIPKINS
The film begins with the arrival from Southern Lucania of four of the Parondi brothers and their recently widowed mother, who have come to join their eldest brother Vincenzo (Spiros Focas), already working in Milan. The domineering mother, Rosaria, insists that Vincenzo forget his engagement to fellow migrant, Ginetta (Claudia Cardinale) and look after his family. The family finds an apartment and the brothers initially strug- gle to earn a living. It is at this point that Nadia first enters the plot, invited by a bewitched Vincenzo when thrown out of the family flat above the Parondi’s by her father. Shortly afterwards, partly at her suggestion and their mother’s, the three middle brothers, Simone (Renato Salvatori), Rocco (Alain Delon) and Ciro (Max Cartier) try their hand at boxing, in the hope of making the family fortune. Simone attracts the attention of an important gym owner, Morini (Roger Hanin), who has him trained up for championships. After his first major victory Simone finds Nadia waiting for him and the two begin an affair. Simone falls in love with her, but Nadia sees him as little more than a light relief from her profession. As Nadia pulls away from him, Simone tries to woo her with stolen goods. Nadia, not wanting to get involved with Simone’s obvious downward spiral, returns the brooch to Rocco. A year later sees Rocco coming to the end of his military service. In his garrison town he bumps into Nadia who has just come out of prison, after serving a sentence for prostitution. A great feeling springs up between the two, as Rocco expresses his sympathy for Nadia and promises to see her back in Milan. There, Rosaria has a new flat for her family, Vincenzo has started a family with Ginetta, Ciro is working for Alfa Romeo and Simone’s boxing career is floundering on alcohol and women. Called to be Simone’s sparring partner in the gym, Rocco suddenly catches the attention of Simone’s trainer and he begins to show much more promise than his dissolute brother. The love between Rocco and Nadia grows as a reformed Nadia attends typists’ school, but news of the relationship reaches Simone. Aided and abetted by Milanese lowlife he surprises the two lovers in an iso- lated spot one night where he rapes Nadia in front of Rocco and then viciously beats Rocco up. Rocco feels that Simone must have really loved Nadia and insists she return to his brother. Bitterly disillusioned, Nadia eventually does this, even going to live with Simone. As Rocco’s boxing career takes off he tries to keep Simone on board, but Simone has become an alcoholic, particularly since Nadia has left him again. He has been pros- tituting himself to the gym owner Morini, who, after Simone attacks him, denounces him to the police. The other three older brothers promise to repay Morini, who demands a sum so large that the only way to repay him is through Rocco’s agreement to a long-term contract as an international boxer—even though he does not like boxing. On the night of Rocco’s first 1403970998ts14.qxd 5-9-06 9:48 PM Page 197
“I DON’T WANT TO DIE” 197
big championship, Simone finds out where Nadia now takes her clients, goes to the deserted lakeside and murders her, as Rocco wins the fight. The post-victory family meal is interrupted by a blood-covered Simone’s reve- lation of the murder. While Rocco and his mother hasten to cover for him, Ciro leaves to denounce him. The final scene sees the youngest brother Luca (Rocco Vidolazzi) visit Ciro in his lunch hour to tell him that Simone has been arrested and to ask him to return home. In the final speech of the film Ciro tells Luca that neither Rocco nor Simone fits into the modern world but that a fairer future is waiting for him and above all for Luca. What immediately separates Nadia from the central prostitute charac- ters mentioned earlier is that her creators initially appeared to have no desire to make a story about a prostitute. The story most definitely intended to portray Rocco and his Brothers;in fact the film is divided into five episodes, one named after each brother. On studying the shaping of the film through material in the Visconti archive, it became clear from the initial treatment that while the story was not initially about her, the prob- lem of Nadia’s character was central to the genesis of the story. She was intended to represent the corrupting influence Milan has on the innocent Southerners and in this respect she initially appeared closer to those peripheral representations of the prostitute. In a transcript of one of the early discussions of the treatment the brutally instrumental use the writers intended to make of the female character was as a “symbol-girl,”“this devil that goes from one brother to the next,”although one of those present did point out that it was going to have to be a bit subtler than that.15 This ini- tial attempt at diffusion lead to the creation of a whole host of minor female characters, pursuing, seducing the brothers and prostituting them- selves, femme fatales, country girls made good, innocents fallen—a chorus of stereotypical womanhood. The focus on the brothers began to strain and so the scriptwriters soon moved back to the single character. To embody everywoman in Nadia’s character the writers progressed through the history of female representation. They began with the biblical castrating female. Nadia was to be a Potiphar’s wife, her sights set on the delectable Rocco, “she won’t let go,”16 we are told, she throws herself at Rocco “like Salomé upon St. John’s head.”17 In one earlier version of the script she even causes the saintly Rocco to slap her.18 She was to seduce each brother in turn, just about sparing the twelve year-old and sow ruin in an innocent Southern family. This femme fatale dominated the scripts for a long time, reaching her scheming apex when she actually introduces Simone to the joys of pornography and male prostitution.19 The final product is something rather different. Rocco has frustrated many by not covering the tracks of its change of heart well enough, partic- ularly regarding the five titled sections, apparently promising equal 1403970998ts14.qxd 5-9-06 9:48 PM Page 198
198 DANIELLE HIPKINS
attention to each brother, when in fact the story soon becomes that of the relationship between Simone, Nadia, and Rocco. Reluctant to relinquish the security of this structure the director and critics usually acknowledge that two brothers have come to dominate the film, but often mention Nadia only as an afterthought.20 Spinazzola was one of the few critics to note that Visconti attempts to “bring attention back from the female char- acter to the male characters, from Nadia to the Parondi family: an attempt at rebalancing that actually causes the serious structural problems in the film.”21 It is Nadia’s simultaneous peripherality and centrality that allows cracks to appear in the instrumental use of the prostitute figure. As John Foot has observed, the character does contain traces of the clichéd “whore with the heart of gold,”22 but her movement between periphery and center enables her to transcend this cinematic type and make the film as much Nadia’s story as that of “Rocco and his Brothers.”
Stage One: The Script-writing Process
The complexity and length of the script-writing process, involving five scriptwriters and lasting nearly two years,23 contributed indirectly to the subversion of the prostitute role allocated to Nadia, in so far as the differ- ent directions pursued leave traces of contradiction in her character that question the typical narrative functions of the prostitute outlined earlier. One way in which the character changed was as a result of changes made to others. Gradually the femme fatale figure fell by the wayside as Simone became ever more inclined to be corrupted and less in need of a corruptor.24 As the brothers took on strong individual characteristics Nadia’s character had to change too, if only to preserve some logic. Following the decision to have the saintly Rocco become involved with Nadia, an inspiration from Testori, 25 it became evident that to charm Rocco she was going to have to offer more than sex: the opportunity to redeem. However to make Nadia worthy of redemption the scriptwriters needed to backtrack. Here was the first crucial stage in the development of Nadia, namely Suso Cecchi D’Amico’s intervention. Since 1946, Suso Cecchi D’Amico, the only well-known female scriptwriter of the period, has collaborated widely with many significant Italian directors, most successfully with Visconti. Brunetta highlights “the equal and simultaneous attention she dedicates to the culture of decaden- tism and new figures emerging in the social sphere, of women catapulted into present-day roles.”26 This tension in D’Amico’s contribution is typical of the duality that I wish to emphasize in the overall representation of Nadia. D’Amico does not shun traditional cinematic tradition so much as 1403970998ts14.qxd 5-9-06 9:48 PM Page 199
“I DON’T WANT TO DIE” 199
move within it. In her notes on Nadia, for example, she suggests that the character assume the enigmatic behavior typical of the femme fatale.27 Nonetheless D’Amico explains in interview that she was responsible for all the female characters and felt compelled to defend them, Nadia in particular,28 and she was fully aware of Visconti’s limited vision of women: “Luchino Visconti has a thoroughly patriarchal notion of family.”29 Her most important defense of Nadia took the form of “the bedroom speech.”30 In this, one of the longest speeches in the film, Nadia tells Simone and, more directly, the viewer (because Simone is only half listen- ing) how, in the immediate postwar period at the age of 13, she was seduced by a neighbor—a dentist—and continued to sleep with him just to escape the crowded conditions of her own poor home. The camera’s long held close-up of Nadia’s face, a device which privileges her interiority, echoes the force of male interference as an overexcited Simone breaks into the frame of the intimate shot in attempts to sleep with her again. The choice of Nadia’s name was, D’Amico acknowledges, influenced by the character of Natasya Filippovna in Dostoevsky’s The Idiot.31 The madness of Dostoevsky’s female protagonist is initially grounded in her exploitation by a much older “benefactor” in her youth (the parallel with the dentist is evident).32 D’Amico picked up on the novelistic “grounding” of her char- acter, an element she considers lacking in earlier cinema,33 and provided the basis for one of the film’s most moving scenes that informs the specta- tor’s response to Nadia in a lasting way. A major, and accurate, criticism of the film has emphasized its failure to make the kind of sociopolitical commentary Visconti aspired to. Focusing as it does on the internal dynamics of the family, the film fails to set the characters’ behavior in the context of widespread poverty. Nadia’s charac- ter, however, is one of the few clearly rooted from the outset in social dep- rivation, and, in this respect the film speaks more from a woman’s perspective about a class-ridden society than it does from that of male Southern immigrants, despite critical blindness to the former aspect of the film.34 It was only in the final versions of the script that Rocco’s crucial statement to Nadia, trigger of their intimacy, appeared: “I don’t know why, but I feel very sorry for you.”35 D’Amico has confirmed to me that this was her contribution, again probably of Dostoevskyian origin in its mingling of pity and romantic love, and it certainly reinforces the parallel Rocco has drawn earlier in their conversation between the time Nadia has spent in prison for soliciting and the arrest of some Southern peasants in his birthplace for their occupation of the land. This reference to Rocco’s community of origin comes too late in the film—scene 62—to outweigh the sense of a family locked in the timeless conflict of sibling rivalry. However the cumulative effect of these two episodes, the bedroom and the 1403970998ts14.qxd 5-9-06 9:48 PM Page 200
200 DANIELLE HIPKINS
garrison town meeting, draw Nadia out of the Lombrosian myth of female prostitution as a predisposition and into a wider concrete problem of social inequality.36 Sam Rohdie’s suggestion that Nadia and the mother are characters “related not to the public but the private, not to the historical but to the primal, not to time but to the eternal,”37 seems therefore inappropriate where Nadia is concerned. D’Amico’s intervention shows a modern con- sciousness of the female condition that resists exclusion from history. Nadia’s character teeters on the edge of a different experience of her gen- der, since, with Rocco’s temporary support, she is able to go to typists’ school. In the light of the two scenes mentioned earlier this detail suggests she a woman who has lost faith in society and cannot move forward with- out social support, which ultimately Rocco alone is unable to offer.
Stage Two: The Sacrificial Plot—Structural Assessment
Christine Gledhill suggests that “one form of subversion feminists will look for . . . are those moments when in the generic play of convention and stereotype the male discourse loses control and the woman’s voice dis- rupts it, making its assumptions seem strange.” By focusing on the theme of sacrifice in the film, I would now like to examine in detail to what extent Nadia’s “structural location within the narrative”38 disrupts the dominant discourse. The constant parallels the film draws between prostitution and boxing constitute one of the ways in which attention is shifted from the corrupting female body to a universal exploitation of the body of poorer classes by the richer as a form of social sacrifice. In the earlier scene in which Nadia enters the Parondi household, as the boys gaze upon her body, she turns her gaze upon theirs, commenting on Vincenzo’s boxing photos and appraising the others’ potential. Later she says to Simone,“But, if I’ve understood correctly, you box the way I sleep around.” Although I am sure these emphases are deliberate they appear to raise internal contra- dictions. For Rohdie, Rocco’s contracted future demonstrates that “to save what is dignified and human in a world given over to commodities where all values have their price, everyone needs to become a whore,”39 but this glosses over the important distinction between Rocco’s figurative and Nadia’s literal prostitution.40 As Steve Neale has suggested: “in a heterosex- ual and patriarchal society, the male body cannot be marked explicitly as the erotic object of another male look; that look must be motivated in some other way, its erotic component repressed.”41 Boxing is the obvious way of doing this—while Nadia’s body is repeatedly appraised directly as 1403970998ts14.qxd 5-9-06 9:48 PM Page 201
“I DON’T WANT TO DIE” 201
erotic object, the erotic gaze toward Rocco is largely displaced by appraisals of his body as a fighting machine, however improbable. Even at a moment in the film when the erotic gaze of the camera is apparently turned directly upon Rocco without the mediation of the boxing ring (the final shot in the Simone episode), as the camera lingers on his reclining and pensive naked upper half, Delon’s delicate features and silken hair feminize him. Neale writes of such a technique that it serves as an “indication of the strength of those conventions which dictate that only women can function as the objects of an explicitly erotic gaze.”42 Since the stocky figure of Renato Salvatori cannot be feminized it is Simone’s descent from boxing Adonis to male prostitute that forces the viewer to confront the erotic that is repressed in the gaze upon the men. The nature of the gym owner Morini’s gaze upon Simone is suggested by the more than strictly professional, uneasy exchange of glances from shadow to light in the shower scene, but the erotic nature of this gaze is subsequently confirmed by the scene of Simone’s prostitution to Morini. This shift undermines the gendered status quo of the gaze and casts Nadia in a new light. The female’s role as prostituted erotic object is suddenly less of the “naturally” female one her original role as temptress implied and now more obviously a common consequence of imbalances of power and human weakness for both sexes. Such an open inclusion of male prostitu- tion was perceived as a first for Italian cinema.43 Its impact on the repre- sentation of Nadia should not be underestimated. The parallels drawn between Nadia and Simone, and the eroticization of Simone’s body within this power structure, reveal a more profound questioning of the gendered economy of the gaze than Italian cinema had witnessed up to that point.44 These parallel prostitutions represent one area in which the dominant male discourse loses control, but the apex of Nadia’s own disruption lies in her death. Perhaps her murder was the inevitable outcome of this film; many other endings, in which Nadia was left alive, were considered,45 but eventually the narrative power of the punishment motif in the representa- tion of the prostitute was clearly too strong to resist. The way this is played out however dislodges the spectator’s interest in the ostensible main plot. The film’s dualistic treatment of Nadia, the tug-of-war between center and periphery, problematizes the identification of the film’s real hero(in)es. The murder scene is famously cross cut with Rocco’s championship boxing match, supposedly to emphasize the futility of his self-sacrifice to save Simone, who is obviously beyond redemption. Rohdie writes: “As Rocco tries to save Simone, Simone is destroying himself by the murder of Nadia in a symmetrically opposite and simultaneous action,”46 but to take this viewpoint assumes that the spectator should identify with the supremely alienating self-sacrifice of Rocco—an odd assumption, whatever the title 1403970998ts14.qxd 5-9-06 9:48 PM Page 202
202 DANIELLE HIPKINS
of the film. This sequence is the culmination of a triangular relationship, in which all three characters have achieved equal stakes in the spectator’s attention. In 1966, for Spinazzola, with the melodramatic excess of making Rocco Nadia’s redeemer and, at one small remove, murderer, Visconti had unbalanced the spectator’s sympathies and questioned the necessity of her death.47 The sacrifice of the prostitute, such a common cinematic cipher, was revealed to be not a restoration of social order, but the product of male obstinacy. The cross cutting not only underlines the brothers’ “shared responsibility for the crime,”48 but more importantly forces a comparison between Rocco’s sacrifice and Nadia’s, supposedly foregrounding Rocco’s, but inevitably belittling it. The ambiguity over to whom the final sacrifice belongs stretches into the jubilation of the post-victory dinner speeches, when Rocco nostalgi- cally turns his thoughts to the memory of his village, recalling that the chief builder, before starting a new house, would throw a stone on the shadow of the first passer-by,“because a sacrifice is needed for the house to be well built.”49 Although the camera pans meaningfully to a photograph of Simone,Visconti makes clear in interview that “that sacrifice is Rocco.”50 Yet Nadia goes to her murder scene dressed like the proverbial lamb to the slaughter in a white fur coat and, as Simone stabs her, she stands in front of a tall wooden post and holds her arms out to her sides. While Rocco has a saintly namesake, Nadia is much more radically turned from Magdalene into Christ. That we have evidence of Visconti showing Girardot how to make this crucifix suggests that his sympathies were also torn.51 Perhaps only Visconti’s “fabulous scene-setting ability”52 was responsible, but it is a reminder of the coincidence of the many factors in making a film that may well contribute to its complex evolution. The significance of this female Messiah is such that her death hangs over the rest of the film, either unacknowledged by the characters, or repressed with such vehemence that the audience cannot but recall her. The brothers’ hysterical weeping scene sees Rocco desperate only to cover for Simone, the mother say,“She was a tart,”53 and Simone show more hor- ror over the sight of blood and the thought that someone might have seen him than any remorse. The murder scene also gives rise to the most blatant example of the crit- ical determination similarly to dismiss Nadia and drag the film kicking and screaming to its ostensible storyline. Pio Baldelli criticizes the shooting of her murder, in which the camera lingers over her dying body:
To justify the shot the camera should be focused on Simone: the body of the dying woman doesn’t interest us in that moment but rather Simone’s moral, furious reaction (it is him we expect to see after the first blow54 1403970998ts14.qxd 5-9-06 9:48 PM Page 203
“I DON’T WANT TO DIE” 203
This critical obstinacy is blind to Visconti’s own artistic integrity. For all his instrumental intentions vis-à-vis Nadia, he could not gloss over the end of a character who had become a principal one. Baldelli may be correct in claiming that the director lost the plot, but few critics are interested in where it really went.
Stage Three: Casting, Performance, and Direction
In interview D’Amico describes Annie Girardot’s dramatic impact upon the film’s production, when early on in the filmmaking process she and actor Renato Salvatori (playing Simone) fell in passionately love:
A work, at a certain point, starts to take on a life of its own and it happened a little like that with this picture. We always wanted Simone to be attracted to the girl and in his way to be in love, but not so much. It is true that there was this tribal reaction to the fact that Nadia was in love with his brother but it was not intended to be as much of a story of jealousy and passion as actu- ally came out in the film. What is funny is that if you read the screenplay you’ll find a perfectly respectable story which wanted to put the accent on how people from a city ruined and corrupted people who were more tribal, more pure.55
I have already suggested that the screenplay contains the seeds of the disruption of this story, particularly through the social rooting of Nadia’s own destiny. That D’Amico seems to have temporarily forgotten her own hand in this is typical of the tension between the decadent and the socially committed that Brunetta sees in her touch. While the powerful chemistry between Nadia and Simone does leave all other characters in the shade, Girardot’s impact on the character of Nadia runs deeper than her role as object of desire on and off screen. The choice of a French woman to take the part of Nadia was not partic- ularly unusual in the case of this film, made up of an international cast. Visconti worked much more happily in France than in Italy anyway and had worked with Girardot in a successful theatrical production two years earlier.56 Nonetheless Girardot (b. 1931) undoubtedly brought a strong theatrical background to the role. Her national difference also weakened the link between the prostituted body and rather tired attempts to tie it to an idea of nationhood. This coincided with Antonio Pietrangeli’s decision to cast Simone Signoret as the former prostitute in his film of the same year, Adua e le compagne,another marker ofthe turn away from the feminizing of Italian body politic in the figure of the fallen woman. 1403970998ts14.qxd 5-9-06 9:48 PM Page 204
204 DANIELLE HIPKINS
Although I have emphasized that the character of Nadia consistently fractures the mould of a stereotypical prostitute, it is important to bear that mould in mind—the conventional cast that characterizes Visconti’s (and at times D’Amico’s) vision of the prostitute. Nowhere is this more evident than in Carancini’s interview with the film’s costumer:
If we meet Nadia, for the first time, wearing an evening dress, high-heeled shoes, decorated with sequins, we give the spectator the means to understand immediately—by the contrast of evening dress and camelhair overcoat— what it is Nadia is doing in that moment.57
No matter that we do not eventually see Nadia appear in this state—this scene (18) was filmed, but cut—for when she does appear it is in “a rather provocative bodice underneath a little dressing gown,”even more “revealing” according to the language of cinema costume. Almost the entire interview focuses on Nadia, underlining her ostensible function as object of the gaze. Yet the duality I have spoken about as characterizing Nadia is partly due to both Girardot and Visconti’s conception of melodrama. In discussion of Visconti’s passion for melodrama, Rohdie has spoken of the essence of this film being the theatrical, artifice.58 In Nadia’s case this concept meets its mistress in Girardot. Nowell-Smith’s criticism that in Rocco “the characters act out their roles with a hapless air of being miscast in the fiction that has been constructed around them”59 is precisely what makes Nadia’s character live. Able to effect infinitesimal shifts between the seductive whore and the vulnerable woman beneath, Girardot’s treatment of the role could be likened on a psychoanalytical level to the notion of “masquerade,” in which a hyperbolic assumption of the trappings of femininity effects a break with it.60 On top of this self-conscious performance of a woman who mocks the men who try to direct her life, while going through the motions, it is pos- sible that Girardot herself made small, but significant, additions to the script at crucial moments which swing the spectator’s sympathy toward her. After the rape she approaches a shocked Rocco, begging for support and reassurance: “Tell me that . . .”(words absent from the scripts at all stages) and Rocco turns away from her: a moment for which few spectators can really forgive him. The other phrase she adds she manages to slip in quite literally on her last breath, “I don’t want to die” she cries, after stag- ing a welcoming pose for Simone’s knife, undercutting the performance of her female destiny with a glimpse into the abyss of subjective existence beneath. The origins of these additions remain something of a mystery however and may equally be attributed to Visconti’s own change of heart during the post-synchronization. Those scenes cut between the final script and the actual filming, and sometimes between the filming and the editing, suggest the struggle 1403970998ts14.qxd 5-9-06 9:48 PM Page 205
“I DON’T WANT TO DIE” 205
Visconti faced with this protagonist who wasn’t really supposed to be one. Some of the cuts may serve simply to reduce Nadia’s screen presence in the interests of paring down an over-long film, but also to limit the spectator’s identification with her. Particularly significant is the scene (scene 18 in published script, also filmed) in which Nadia first appears, bringing her mother cakes and champagne—a clear reference to Nadia’s own need to make good her background, drawing a further parallel between her and the brothers.61 The second (crossed out in the final, pre-filming script) fol- lows Nadia in the lift down from the top of the cathedral, where Rocco has rejected her, as she catches a glimpse of her tear-stained face in the mirror. In the published script this same scene has become a shot of her removing her make up pensively at her dressing table. While these scenes don’t quite make it to the filming they are evidence of her growing subjectivity within the scriptwriters’ consciousness.
Conclusion
I have taken the phrase: “I don’t want to die” as emblematic of Nadia’s character, because it cuts two ways. Nadia is ultimately not a willing victim and the spectator is made aware of that. Consequently s/he withdraws some of his/her sympathy from Rocco and his family, his supposed hero- ism and their unity, both fractured by this empty sacrifice. Indeed the punishment of the prostitute no longer serves to restore order in this family. Equally we can read Nadia’s final phrase as a reminder that elements of Italian society did not want a certain kind of prostitute to die—namely one regulated by the state. John Foot’s research is illuminating on two counts in this respect. He reminds us that the film met with censorship during production as the Milanese authorities prevented the crew from using the sporting lake “l’idroscalo” as the venue of the murder.62 Since l’idroscalo really had been the location of the murder of a prostitute in March 1959 and was regularly used by prostitutes and their clients, the objection of the Milanese authorities hinged on the representation of prostitution, provoking the famous statement from one MSI member that it was time for “films based on prostitutes and bicycle thieves” to end.63 Foot has also uncovered the chequered history of the film’s initial reception, suggesting that the bour- geois public that called for its censorship was “shocked by what they saw as a real breakdown in the moral and spiritual values in society, and by the images of violence and sex which Rocco so graphically displayed; hence the concentration of their protests around the rape and murder scenes, and the relationship between Morini and Simone.”64 All the scenes challenged by the censors come into conflict with the conventional cinematic place of 1403970998ts14.qxd 5-9-06 9:48 PM Page 206
206 DANIELLE HIPKINS
the prostitute. Of the several scenes that Christian Democrat Italy attempted to cut in the film one was supposed to have been Nadia’s speech about her childhood abuse. In this case a image of womanhood as inexpli- cable evil clashed with an image of a woman subject to social pressures. The rape scene was also a target for charges of obscenity, despite a myriad of protests that it was crucial to the logic of the film.65 The fact that it was not gratuitous sexual violence, but a consequence of prostitution, was really too much for many to stomach. Even more severe, of course, was the reaction to the scene of Simone’s prostitution—in addition to the homo- phobia it unleashed, its suggestion that men can be prostitutes too upset a patriarchal economy structured around the logic of exchange of the female body and partially justified by the Lombrosian theory of a female predis- position to prostitution. Debates have raged and will continue to rage about what makes this film a “flawed masterpiece,” which at once surpasses and falls short of its ambitions. Nowell Smith recognized that, “changes have taken place in the structure of the film which Visconti perhaps did not fully foresee and which he would not necessarily recognize as having taken place.”66 I hope to have taken this insight one step further in suggesting that these often unacknowledged changes find a conduit in the character of Nadia. The scriptwriting process, Cecchi D’Amico’s central role in that, Nadia’s struc- tural location within the narrative, Girardot’s performance, and Visconti’s artistic integrity lead her to question the “symbol-girl” role originally envisaged. Thus she disrupts the three categories I outlined as typical of the representation of the female prostitute in Italian cinema of the period: the redemption/punishment motif, center versus periphery, and identifi- cation with the nation. Rather than addressing the issue of internal immi- gration, Visconti’s film has more to say about that lesser known debate of the 1950s, regarding the role of the female prostitute in Italian society. Through Nadia’s narrative disruption, the film contextualizes the female prostitute in the power structures of contemporary society rather than leaving her complacently unquestioned as “a born prostitute.”
Notes
1. Aristarco, Cinema italiano 1960, 71. 2. “Women can even have a profession, they can be artists, but they have to put certain tasks above everything else, and these involve being a lover, a mother, a wife, probably, and thereby completely recreate the family group in the solid way it was up until a century ago” (all translations from Italian by the author) cited in Laura, “Il linguaggio nei film di Visconti,”98. 3. Nowell-Smith, Luchino Visconti, 10. 1403970998ts14.qxd 5-9-06 9:48 PM Page 207
“I DON’T WANT TO DIE” 207
4. Films from the period that include clear references to prostitution include: Amleto Palermi, La peccatrice (1940), Luigi Chiarini, La bella addormentata (1942), Mario Mattoli, Stasera niente di nuovo (1942) and Luchino Visconti, Ossessione (1943). 5. In fact scriptwriter Suso Cecchi D’Amico describes this period as the one “in which prostitutes were fashionable on screen” in Francione, Scrivere con gli occhi, 76. 6. Vice, “Il mestiere del critico,”380. 7. Aristarco,“Il mestiere del critico,”218. 8. Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure,”591. 9. These include Luigi Zampa, Un americano in vacanza (1945), Alberto Lattuada, Il bandito (1946), Aldo Vergano, Il sole sorge ancora (1946), Marcello Pagliero, Roma, città libera (1948), Vittorio De Sica, Ladri di biciclette (1948), Mario Costa, Perdonami (1953), Raffaello Matarazzo, Vortice (1954), Federico Fellini, La strada (1954), Antonioni, Il grido (1957), Visconti, Le notti bianche (1957) and Fellini, La dolce vita (1960). Their function as a plot device may even involve their featuring as a corpse, for example in Antonioni’s I vinti (1952) and Damiano Damiani’s Il rossetto (1959). 10. They include: William Dieterle, Vulcano (1949), Mario Bonnard, Il voto (1950), Luigi Comencini, Persiane chiuse (1950), Duilio Coletti, Wanda la peccatrice (1952), Luigi Comencini, Tratta delle bianche (1952), Gianni Franciolini, Il mondo le condanna (1953), Raffaello Matarazzo, La schiava del peccato (1954), Augusto Genina, Maddalena (1954), Alberto Lattuada, La spiaggia (1954), Mario Mattoli, L’ultimo amante (1955). 11. Others in the period up to 1960 include: Carlo Lizzani, “Amore che si paga” in Amore in città (1953) and Cronache dei poveri amanti (1954), the final episode of “Teresa” in De Sica’s L’oro di Napoli (1954), Luigi Zampa, La romana (1954), Renato Castellani, Nella città l’inferno (1959) and Antonio Pietrangeli, Adua e le compagne (1960). 12. Marcus, “The Italian Body Politic,”335. 13. Cited in Gibson, Prostitution and the State, 224. 14. Transcription of recordings of the subject preparation, 026-004851, Visconti archive. 15. Ibid. It is probable that this is a transcription of the initial discussions for the treat- ment prepared by Luchino Visconti, Vasco Pratolini, and Suso Cecchi d’Amico. 16. Visconti archive, treatment C26-004884. 17. Ibid., C26-notes on Nadia, 13. 18. Ibid., C26-004868. 19. Ibid., treatment C26-004919. 20. See Rohdie, Rocco and his Brothers, 10. 21. Spinazzola, “Rocco e i suoi fratelli,”308. 22. Foot, “Cinema and the City,”223. 23. After the development of the first subject-treatment by Visconti, Vasco Pratolini and Suso Cecchi D’Amico and the second treatment by Visconti and Enrico Medioli, the scriptwriters were Visconti, Cecchi D’Amico, Pasquale Festa Campanile, Massimo Franciosa, and Enrico Medioli. 1403970998ts14.qxd 5-9-06 9:48 PM Page 208
208 DANIELLE HIPKINS
24. Visconti archive, treatment papers, C26-004871,“Simone is made to be corrupted by a big city, he has a vocation for it. When Nadia meets him at the Ice Palace he’s already well on his way.” 25. Testori’s story “How Do You Do It, Sinatra” deals with two Southern brothers who have been out with the same woman and gives rise to the rape scene. 26. Brunetta, Storia del cinema italiano, 286. 27. “The girl is never sincere, or rather, she never answers the questions she is asked . . . In this way we will never know the exact reason for the scene at home when we first meet her, even though we might guess it, just as we won’t know what she does afterwards.” Suso Cecchi D’Amico, Visconti archive, Notes, C26-004881. 28. “We did write different segments, but then we all changed because I had all the women to deal with. We took a section and then we changed and changed and changed. Of course I defended a character like Nadia because I was the only woman, so I said, ‘Leave me in peace, I know better.’ ” Cecchi D’Amico, “Writing Rocco and his Brothers,” 169. 29. Cited in Baldelli, Luchino Visconti, 254. 30. In an interview Cecchi D’Amico confirmed that she was responsible for this speech (private interview, January 29, 2003). 31. Ibid. 32. Totsky, a rich landowner, rescued her as an abandoned orphan and brought her up as his ward. On discovering that she was becoming quite beautiful he took her as his summertime mistress. When he decided to marry a society lady Natasya, the scales falling from her eyes, was transformed into the bitterest of disillusioned idealists and swore to wreak revenge upon him. It was the suffering caused by her brutal awakening that Prince Myshkin, the “idiot,” saw written on her countenance, giving rise to great pity and a destructive passion for her. 33. Private interview (January 29, 2003). 34. See, for example, Canova, “Visconti e le aporie,”182. 35. In published script (edited by Aristarco,132), scene 62, he uses “Lei,”but in the film itself “tu.” 36. For Cesare Lombroso (1835–1909), influential positivist criminologist, prostitution was the “typical” female crime, the state to which primitive woman would revert. Most prostitutes were regarded as “born prostitutes,”like the “born criminals” of his earlier theory. See Gibson, Prostitution and the State in Italy, 1860–1915, 122. 37. Rohdie, Rocco and his Brothers, 66. 38. Gledhill, “Klute 1,”74–75. 39. Rohdie, Rocco and his Brothers, 58. 40. Nadia’s identity as a product literally for consumption is underlined by her introduction of herself as being from Cremona, “like mustard.” 41. Neale, “Masculinity as Spectacle,”258. 42. Ibid., 263. 43. This was posited by a shocked contemporary critic, A Solmi in Oggi cited in Baldelli, Luchino Visconti,194.There was in fact an earlier reference to male prostitution in Mauro Bolognini’s La notte brava of the previous year. 1403970998ts14.qxd 5-9-06 9:48 PM Page 209
“I DON’T WANT TO DIE” 209
44. Derek Duncan has observed the early signs of this important dynamic at work in Visconti’s Ossessione of 1943 in “Ossessione,”103. 45. See C26-004864; C26-004856; C26-004870; C26-004862-63, Visconti archive. 46. Rohdie, Rocco and his Brothers, 38. 47. Spinazzola, “Rocco e i suoi fratelli,”308. 48. Aristarco, Cinema italiano 1960, 71. 49. Published script, 184, scene 108. 50. Visconti archive, C-26-005233, Interview with Luchino Visconti. 51. Published script, photograph no. 114. 52. Pier Paolo Pasolini, response to “Quattro domande sul cinema italiano,”229. 53. Published script, 187, scene 108. 54. Baldelli, Luchino Visconti, 201. 55. Cecchi D’Amico, “Writing Rocco and his Brothers,”167. 56. Deux sur la balançoire (Two for the Seesaw by W. Gibson), Paris, Théatre des Ambassadeurs, November 1958. 57. Piero Tosi, costumist, cited in Carancini, “Diario del film,”206. 58. “[S]ince what is true is represented as the most ‘theatrical,’ ” Rohdie, Rocco and his Brothers, 64. 59. Nowell-Smith, “Visconti,”1047. 60. See Doane, “Film and the Masquerade,”427. 61. See photograph no. 30, published script. 62. Foot, “La gente e il buon costume,”10–12. 63. Ferrari at the Consiglio provinciale, April 13, 1960, as recorded by Carancini, “Diario del film,”240. 64. Foot, “La gente e il buon costume,”18. 65. See, for example, the testimony of a Florentine magistrate, Dott. Romani in Cronaca di Firenze,4. 66. Nowell-Smith, Luchino Visconti, 177.
Bibliography
Aristarco, Guido. “Il mestiere del critico.”In Cinema Nuovo 8 (1953): 218. ———. Cinema italiano 1960: romanzo e antiromanzo. Milan: Il Saggiatore, 1960. ———, and G. Carancini, eds. Rocco and his Brothers.Bologna:Cappelli,1960. Baldelli, Pio. Luchino Visconti.Milano:Gabriele Mazzotta,1982. Brunetta, Gian Piero. Storia del cinema italiano 1945–1959,vol.2.Roma:Editori Riuniti, 1993. Canova, Gianni. “Visconti e le aporie anestetiche della modernità.” In Il cinema di Luchino Visconti,edited by Veronica Pravadelli,175–186.Venice:Biblioteca Bianco e Nero, 2000. Carancini, Gaetano. “Diario del film.”In published script, 195–270. Cecchi D’Amico, Suso. Interviewed by Mark Shivas, “Writing Rocco and His Brothers.” In Projections 6 (1996): 163–172. “Cronaca di Firenze,” L’Unità, November 29, 1960, 4. Doane, Mary Anne. “Film and the Masquerade.” In Film and Feminist Criticism, edited by E. Ann Kaplan, 418–436. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. 1403970998ts14.qxd 5-9-06 9:48 PM Page 210
210 DANIELLE HIPKINS
Duncan, Derek, “Ossessione.” In European Cinema: An Introduction,edited by Jill Forbes and Sarah Street, 94–106. Hampshire and New York: Palgrave, 2000. Foot, John. “Cinema and the City. Milan and Luchino Visconti’s Rocco and his Brothers (1960).”In Journal of Modern Italian Studies 4 (1999): 209–235. ———. “La gente e il buon costume: Luchino Visconti’s Rocco e i suoi fratelli.” In Reflexivity: Critical Themes in the Italian Cultural Tradition,edited by Prue Shaw and John Took, 9–36. Ravenna: Longo, 2000. Francione, Fabio, ed. Scrivere con gli occhi—Lo sceneggiatore come cineasta: Il cinema di Suso Cecchi D’Amico.Alessandria:Edizioni di falsopiano,2002. Gibson, Mary. Prostitution and the State in Italy, 1860–1915.New Brunswick and London: Rutgers University Press, 1986. Gledhill, Christine. “Klute 1: A Contemporary Film Noir and Feminist Criticism.” In Film and Feminist Criticism,edited by E.Ann Kaplan,418–436.Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Laura, Ernesto G.“Il linguaggio nei film di Visconti.”In L’opera di Luchino Visconti: Atti del convegno di studi, Fiesole, 27–29 giugno, 1966,edited by Mario Sperenzi, 96–122. Florence: Tip. A Lipari, 1969. Marcus, Millicent “The Italian Body Politic is a Woman: Feminized National Identity in Postwar Italian Film.” In Sparks and Seeds: Medieval Literature and Its Afterlife—Essays in Honour of John Freccero,edited by Dana E.Stewart and Alison Cornish, 329–347. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols Publishers, 2000. Mulvey, Laura, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” In Literary Theory: An Anthology,edited by Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan,585–595.Oxford: Blackwell, 1998. Neale, Steve, “Masculinity as Spectacle: Reflections on Men and Mainstream Cinema.” In Film and Feminist Criticism, edited by E. Ann Kaplan, 253–264. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Nowell-Smith, Geoffrey. Visconti.London:Secker and Warburg,1967. ———. “Visconti.” In Cinema: A Critical Dictionary—The Major Film-makers, edited by Richard Roud. London: Secker and Warburg, 1980. Pasolini, Pier Paolo.“Quattro domande sul cinema italiano.” In Cinema Nuovo 150 (1961): 228–229. Rohdie, Sam. Rocco and his Brothers.London:BFI,1992. Spinazzola, V. “Rocco e i suoi fratelli.” In L’opera di Luchino Visconti: Atti del convegno di studi, Fiesole, 27–29 giugno, 1966,edited by Mario Sperenzi, 304–311. Florence: Tip. A Lipari, 1969. Testori, Giovanni.“Come fai, Sinatra.”In Il ponte della Ghisolfa.Milano:Feltrinelli, 1958. Vice. “Il mestiere del critico.”In Cinema Nuovo 13 (1953): 380. Visconti Archive (Gramsci Institute, Rome), a variety of materials pertaining to Rocco e i suoi fratelli.I would like to thank the staffat the archive for enabling me to access this material. 4
Dubbing Delon: Voice, Body, and National Stardom in Rocco e i suoi fratelli/Rocco and his Brothers (Luchino Visconti, 1960) Catherine O’Rawe
The major French/Italian coproductions starring Alain Delon (Rocco e i suoi fratelli/Rocco and his Brothers (Luchino Visconti, 1960), L’eclisse/The Eclipse (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1962), and Il gattopardo/The Leopard (Visconti, 1963)) have been little studied from the viewpoint of Delon’s star image and performance style. One of the reasons for this is the relative neglect of star studies until recently within the discipline of Italian film studies: additionally, work on star studies in the Italian context has emphasized the need to view stars as “cultural symbol and conduit for ideas about gender, values and national identity” (Gundle 2008, 263) and so has been unable to account for the influence and importance of non-Italian stars working in Italian cinema. Much attention has also been paid to the female stars of postwar Italy such as Sophia Loren and Gina Lollobrigida and their relation to changing conceptions of national identity; the reason why male stars have been comparatively neglected may be due to their perceived universality, in the sense that masculinity is presumed to be invisible or transparent while femininity is the marked, overly visible category.1 The naturalizing of the connection between femininity and beauty (and, indeed, between femininity and women), and the marginalizing of male beauty, have allowed masculinity and male stardom to be taken for granted and to elude analysis in the Italian context. Similarly, Alain Delon’s star persona has been read, most influentially by Ginette Vincendeau, as tied to the context of French national cinema and identity: Vincendeau has said that Delon and Jean Paul Belmondo “redefined French stardom and offered parallel yet divergent visions of French masculinity” (2000, 158).2 In this chapter, for reasons of space, I will examine only Delon’s
9781623567606.indd 59 11/03/15 8:35 PM 60 Alain Delon
performance style in Rocco e i suoi fratelli, probing the established definitions of his “impassive acting style” (Hayes 2004, 52) and “expressionless face” (Austin 2003, 82). I will raise the question of whether Delon’s critical status as an homme fatal who is “too beautiful” (Vincendeau 2000, 173) has obscured his performance style in these French/Italian films; I will also consider how the fact of dubbing his voice into Italian works to support or undermine his position as erotic object of the camera’s gaze. Finally, I will relate these questions of Delon’s mute beauty and vocal ventriloquism to the film’s use of melodrama, where silence and gesture take on a complex and significant status.
Beauty and stardom
Delon has conventionally been considered within a paradigm of national cinema, which has been unable to fully account for his career outside French cinema. Recent contributions, however, have started to reassess him from a transnational perspective: Mark Gallagher (reprinted in this volume) has noted that Delon should be detached from the French context and read through the lens of cosmopolitanism, both in terms of his work across different cinemas and production systems and in terms of the model of pan-European stardom he represented in the 1960s: “in the industrial makeup of films in which he stars, in their settings and locations, and in his casting, as characters of multiple nationalities and social classes, Delon belongs indisputably to inter- and transnational film industries and screen cultures” (2013, 77). This reading of Delon in terms of a “cosmopolitan masculinity” (2013, 78) chimes with Vincendeau’s earlier assessment of him as “cosmopolitan playboy” (2000, 158) and also accords with Nick Rees-Roberts’ assessment of Delon’s “continental look” (2012, 85) and cosmopolitanism.3 As Gallagher notes, as well as the prestige collaborations with auteurs such as Visconti and Antonioni, Delon played Italian characters in eleven films between 1960 and 1974, including in comedies such as The Yellow Rolls Royce (Asquith, 1964) and Che gioia vivere/The Joy of Living (Clément, 1961). Thus it is difficult, he argues, to fix Delon’s star persona in terms of its indexing of a notional Frenchness rather than of a “charismatic European masculinity” (2013, 82). At the risk of reinstating the model of auteurist prestige, I am going to focus on the collaboration between Visconti and Delon on Rocco; the aspect I want to concentrate on is Delon’s transnationalism (manifested in Rocco of course at a
9781623567606.indd 60 11/03/15 8:35 PM Dubbing Delon 61
linguistic level, by the fact that he was dubbed into Italian) and how this interacts with the critical trope of Delon’s “excessive” beauty. In Visconti’s film Delon plays the eponymous Rocco, one of the five Parondi brothers who move with their mother from southern Italy to Milan in the throes of Italy’s economic miracle of the late 1950s. The saintly Rocco sacrifices himself endlessly for the good of the family, becoming a boxer in order to pay off his brother Simone’s debt and giving up the love of his life, the prostitute Nadia, after she is raped by Simone, who is also her ex-boyfriend. It is interesting that the mass of criticism on Rocco pays little attention to Delon’s performance; Italian criticism, in particular, has been much exercised about the film’s status as meticulously researched document of the Italian boom period or as excessive familial melodrama. Sam Rodhie’s BFI Classic book on Rocco, for example, does not mention Delon at all (1992).4 Equally, the general attention to Delon’s star persona, physicality, and charisma has not allowed for an equivalent attention to his modes of vocal performance: although Mark Gallagher notes that Delon “lacks cultural specificity” and says of Rocco that “even the realist Rocco and his Brothers, produced with the Italian industry’s standard post- synchronized dubbing, defines Delon’s character in physical and psychological terms, and does not require him to speak in a voice evocative of Rocco’s rural, working-class background” (2013, 82), he is virtually alone in mentioning the fact that Delon was dubbed into Italian. This lack of discussion of the dubbing is, in all likelihood, due to the general neglect of the voice in theories and analyses of performance. Pamela Wojcik has noted how the “privileging of the visual over sound in most film theory” reinforces the idea of sound as secondary, and she asserts that voice acting and dubbing are normally viewed as “somehow lesser forms of acting, an assumption that posits the actor’s body as his true instrument and the voice, if unfastened from the body, as somehow lacking” (2006, 71). The bodily focus in star studies means that the expressive characteristics of the voice, its manipulation through technology and sound design, and its relation to mise- en-scène are rarely addressed.5 It is interesting to think about some of the ways in which Delon’s supposedly “excessive” beauty might intersect with these neglected questions of voice and accent: Delon, as mentioned above, has been read by Vincendeau as “too beautiful” (2000, 173) and as an homme fatal whose “cruel beauty is deadly to those around him and often to himself” (2000, 176). She argues that “Delon’s beauty and objectification by the camera bring to the fore the issue of accommodating an eroticized male figure in the context of mainstream cinema,
9781623567606.indd 61 11/03/15 8:35 PM 62 Alain Delon
traditionally seen as a ‘problem’” (2000, 173–74). Graeme Hayes agrees, talking of Delon’s “narcissistic spectacle of erotic male display” (2004, 47);6 this is clearly visible in the many languorous close-ups and in the framing of Delon in Rocco, to the extent that it might certainly be plausible to include this film in the category suggested by Vincendeau, of “films which simply narrativize Delon’s beauty” (2000, 174). The established trope of Delon’s “femininity” is obviously contiguous with this: Hayes talks of Delon’s “ambiguous masculinity” (2004, 42), his passivity, and his lack of “hypermasculine performativity” (2004, 52), while Danielle Hipkins mentions how Delon-as-Rocco’s “delicate features and silken hair feminize him” (2006, 201, her emphasis).7 The idea that the male star who is the object of the look is rendered passive and “feminine” relates to Kenneth MacKinnon’s view that the male star “who presents his body as an object of the cinematic gaze seems to forfeit his reputation for unassailable masculinity” (1997, 34).8 D. A. Miller says that when Delon turns his face to the camera in one of the lingering close-ups, “he is letting himself be looked at, offering his exquisite face and flesh to the camera with the thrilling submissiveness of an odalisque” (2008, 16, his emphasis). One of the principal ways in which the camera’s lingering on Delon’s face and body in Rocco has been read is through the prism of biography (or anecdote, or gossip), drawing on the frequent, though never substantiated, rumors about the romantic relationship between a director and a star. This is a common type of reading of Visconti and his male stars: for example, Geoffrey Nowell-Smith has written of Visconti’s “erotic investment” (2003, 212) in his male stars, including Massimo Girotti in Ossessione/Obsession (1943), Delon and Helmut Berger in La caduta degli dei/The Damned (1969), Ludwig (1972), and Gruppo di famiglia in un interno/Conversation Piece (1974). Referring specifically to Girotti in Ossessione, Nowell-Smith notes what he calls the “excessive focus” on Girotti’s body and claims that the film’s “homosexual subtext” pushes focus from the character’s actions onto the body of the actor.9 Derek Duncan has pointed out how this reductive notion of Visconti as a “gay director” (Nowell- Smith 2003, 212) and the fixation on Girotti’s body as a “symptom of Visconti’s homosexuality” (Duncan 2000, 103) ignore the ways in which sexuality and artistic production are linked and fail to take into account how a film like Osessione “reveals something about how the technology of cinema encourages spectators to look at bodies in a certain way”—the muscular, vest-clad Girotti is constructed as an “improper” object of desire “in a medium that depends on the stability offered by the heterosexual, male gaze” (Duncan 2000, 104).10
9781623567606.indd 62 11/03/15 8:35 PM Dubbing Delon 63
Delon’s beauty and impassivity in Rocco are also yoked to readings of his body as “implausible” (Nowell-Smith 2003, 125)—repeatedly, critics have noted that Delon is unconvincing as a champion boxer, purely because of his physique, and that the excessive attention on his face, via extended close-ups, speaks to an acknowledgment by the film that his body type is incorrect or inappropriate. So Cynthia Grenier declares him “too pretty” to convince,11 while Miller comments on the film’s “extraneous display” of “extraordinary male beauty” (2008, 13) and the “exquisitely handsome” Delon’s implausibility.12 Vernon Young is most hyperbolic, alleging that it is “difficult to accept this long-fingered faun as a career boxer” (1961, 17).13
Dubbing the star
This reading of Delon’s implausible physique, however, ignores the language issue: Delon was of course dubbed into Italian for Rocco, as with all his Italian films. This is something that the spectator on a certain level knows but might ignore or disavow when watching the dubbed print subtitled into English. Delon was not alone in being dubbed in Rocco, which was a polyglot production from the point of view of the recording process: French actress Annie Girardot (Nadia), like Delon, spoke her lines in French, as did Corsican Max Cartier (Ciro), while the Greek Katina Paxinou (Rosaria, the mother) was a veteran of Greek stage and screen, and the actor playing Vincenzo (Spiros Focas) was also Greek. All were dubbed into Italian.14 Of the main characters, only Simone (played by the well-known star Renato Salvatori) spoke his lines in Italian. Mark Betz has written interestingly of the “loose play between actor and language, voice and body that is everywhere in operation in not only Italian but also French art cinema of the period” (2009, 86–87).15 Dubbing becomes, as Betz suggests, a “site of incoherence” (2009, 56) in much European art cinema of this period and in films such as Rocco in which there is no authentic cut of the film, no “original” sound track. But it is also supposedly a site of incoherence in the sense that Mary Ann Doane, in her seminal essay on the voice in cinema, pointed to: Doane notes that the synchronization of voice to acting body on screen is partly about “perpetuating the image of unity and identity sustained by this body and staving off the fear of fragmentation.” As she goes on to argue, “synchronization binds the voice to a body in a unity whose immediacy can only be perceived as a given” (1980, 47). Alongside Doane’s view of the fragile union of synchronized voice to
9781623567606.indd 63 11/03/15 8:35 PM 64 Alain Delon
visible body, we can read that of Shochat and Stam, who argued that dubbing, which can never create a match with the peculiar individuality of the original speaking voice, is “a kind of cultural violence and dislocation” (1985, 52).16 However, Doane’s influential idea that synchronized sound is a bearer of presence, and that synchronization of voice and image forges a harmonious “imaginary unity” (1980, 45) of the fantasmatic on-screen body, offering “the possibility of re-presenting a fuller (and organically unified) body” (1980, 34) has recently been robustly critiqued by Tom Whittaker, in relation to countries such as Spain and Italy that have routinely used dubbing and post-synchronization for a long time. Writing about Spain, Whittaker notes that the ubiquitous presence of the dubbed voice “pointed conspicuously to its technological mediation, at once throwing into doubt the homogeneity of the speaking subject and revealing the visibility of the post-production process” (2012, 295). Whittaker thus argues that Doane’s “harmonious imaginary unity,” which is based on the sound practices of Hollywood cinema, cannot account for the experiences of non- English-speaking audiences, accustomed to seeing their own language often “quite conspicuously out of synch,” emanate from the mouths of foreign stars. As he puts it, “unmoored from the body, the voice would appear to carve out its own space within the film” (2012, 295). Whittaker’s work is in dialogue with that of Antje Ascheid, who has argued convincingly, against Shochat and Stam’s view of dubbing as violation, that “for those spectators well conditioned to accept the dubbed motion picture the impression is a radically different one. In these cases the dubbed film is perceived as an entirely new product.” She suggests that the dubbed version produces “new” characters, “uttering a translated, which always also means interpreted, appropriated and recreated new text” (1997, 33, her emphasis). Ascheid is of course talking about the dubbing of entire films into the target language rather than the mixed practice on display in films such as Rocco. However, it is true that, as dubbing and post-synchronization were standard industry practices in Italy since the 1930s, Italian spectators were indeed well conditioned to accept it.17 The prevalence of post-synchronization in Italy, since the passing of the law in 1933 that required all foreign films to be dubbed into Italian, and the rejection of subtitling, have created, it can be argued, a highly aware spectator who takes on an active role in “anchoring the image to the sound” (Valentini 2007, 177). As Valentini argues, dubbing “imposes a mode of listening that is aware of the heterogeneous character of the sound and images, and constructs a spectator who is complicit but also savvy at attaching voices to faces, accustomed to create a soundtrack for the film out of the sonic signs
9781623567606.indd 64 11/03/15 8:35 PM Dubbing Delon 65
coming from the speakers” (2007, 175). In this way, the labor of the spectators is that of suturing the rupture between voice and body, a labor for which years of watching and hearing dubbed and post-synchronized films have prepared them. This labor goes relatively unnoticed and little comment is passed upon it, apart from in cases where the dubbed voice is deemed flagrantly inappropriate. It is in this context that, in relation to performance and voice, Betz argues that “in the Italian-dubbed, English-subtitled version of Il gattopardo Burt Lancaster and Alain Delon become, are, Italian as an effect of the spectator’s own desire for imagined nationhood through his or her interlingual relation to the film” (2009, 88, his emphasis). The professionalization of dubbing in Italy, which led to a kind of vocal star system whereby the dubbing artists became as well known as the foreign stars in some cases, also, however, led to a standardization of the Italian dubbed voice.18 It is generally a voice that is “impersonal and non-regional” (Ferrari 2011, 31) and has been described as “a standard voice, metallic and slightly echoing” (Fink, quoted in Valentini 2007, 197). The idea of dubbing as inevitably effecting a kind of “cultural leveling” or blandness is a familiar one, and it is certainly true that the dubbed voice replaces the “acoustic signature” of the original with another kind of vocal signature.19 In addition, the case of Delon in Italy is slightly peculiar, as unlike other foreign actors, he was not regularly dubbed by the same dubbing artist and therefore there is no consistency in his vocal “fingerprint” or signature. Delon was dubbed in Rocco by Achille Millo, a Neapolitan-born actor, although Rocco’s voice is not marked by a Neapolitan accent.20
The face and the voice
These reflections on the voice and its distinctiveness become more pressing when we view the film using its French dialogue track: one of the things that we notice about Rocco, in fact, is just how little he speaks.21 For much of the first part of the film he is a near-mute, even mocked by the girls with whom he works for his shyness and is called “Sleeping Beauty.” As a consequence, there is an increasing focus on his body and his face, via extensive close-ups, with several moments where he appears to gaze directly into the camera silently. In the scene where Rocco and Simone lie in bed after Rocco has passed on the message to Simone that Nadia has left Milan, there is an excessively long and tight close-up on Rocco’s face as he appears to gaze at the camera (Figure 4.1). This narratively
9781623567606.indd 65 11/03/15 8:35 PM 66 Alain Delon
Figure 4.1 Delon as Rocco in a prolonged close-up in Rocco e i suoi fratelli/Rocco and His Brothers (1960)
unmotivated gaze, which lasts over twelve seconds, accompanied by the main motif of the melodramatic Nino Rota score, represents the moment that Miller described as “Delon letting himself be looked at,” although Miller qualifies that reading by asserting that the close-up here becomes so extreme that “it transforms the homoerotic image into a deathly one” and “the living pin-up droops into almost a morgue slide” (2008, 16). The terms of this discussion, though, illustrate the degree to which Delon is here read as silently passive, as an erotic and/or deathly beautiful image. The nature and significance of Rocco’s silence need to be interrogated: this silent, hyperbolic close-up comes at the end of Simone’s long, bitter speech about Nadia’s worthlessness. Although Simone keeps turning his gaze to Rocco as he speaks, the camera does not follow that gaze as we might expect and remains focused on Simone. It is only when Simone has finished speaking and has turned over in bed, pulling the covers over him, that the camera pans over to the other bed where Rocco is lying. Rocco’s response to Simone’s last injunction (“if I ever see her again I’ll turn the other way. If you see her, tell her that!”) is to turn his face to the camera and lift his arm behind his head. Rocco’s mute face here, which dissolves into the next shot, of him leaving the army barracks after which he will bump into Nadia, is the face of destiny, signaling a decisive narrative moment and the direction the film will go in. The meaning of Delon’s contemplative silence here has to be read through or against his facial expression: if the close- up, in Doane’s words, “requires no language” (2003, 93), it offers itself as “an intense phenomenological experience of presence, and yet, simultaneously, that
9781623567606.indd 66 11/03/15 8:35 PM Dubbing Delon 67
deeply experienced entity becomes a sign, a text, a surface that demands to be read” (2003, 94). She also reminds us that it is the facial close-up that, “together with the voice, allow[s] us a privileged access to the humanity of the other” (2003, 106). Alongside these charged silences and lingering close-ups runs the film’s strong current of melodrama, which is often interpreted through its most emotionally charged and hysterical scenes—the rape of Nadia, her dramatic murder cross- cut with Rocco’s boxing victory, the high pitch of hysteria when Rocco finds out Simone is a murderer. But it is important that we also bear in mind the sense of melodrama as, in the work of Peter Brooks, the “text of muteness” (1995, 56). In classical melodrama silence operates as an index of innocence, of victimhood, often standing for the inability to defend oneself against the Law. As Brooks says, mute gesture “is an expressionistic means—precisely the means of melodrama— to render meanings which are ineffable, but nonetheless operative within the sphere of human ethical relationships” (1995, 72). Rocco’s silent close-ups elsewhere function as an index of sacrifice: when he and Ciro and Vincenzo visit the corrupt boxing promoter Morini to find out how much money Simone owes him, again the close-up on Rocco’s face as he swings round to face the camera signals his acceptance of his destiny. The spectator knows that Rocco is deciding to sacrifice himself for Simone, by agreeing to the boxing career he does not want, in order to pay Simone’s debt. Close-ups thus position Rocco as inexplicable victim: when Vincenzo bewilderedly asks Rocco why he is doing this as he hates boxing, Rocco’s close-up is accompanied by his words “is there another way to save Simone from his fate?” and a further, lingering, close-up. The inexplicable nature of Rocco’s sacrifice is of course heightened by the fact that by this point in the film Rocco has witnessed Simone rape Nadia, punishing her for her betrayal of him when she started secretly dating Rocco. The rape scene also shows us Rocco’s muteness, as after being forced to watch Nadia being raped, he weeps, and she staggers over to him, begging him to “say something.” Rocco merely covers his face, and Nadia walks off, watched by all the men. This moment, which Hipkins (2006, 204) terms “a moment for which few spectators can really forgive [Rocco],” nonetheless aligns Rocco and Nadia as victims of Simone and of a malignant destiny. The climax of this shared victimhood is reached during the film’s use of crosscutting between Rocco and Nadia, when Nadia is murdered by Simone at the end of the film. The crosscutting between Rocco’s championship bout and Nadia’s stabbing by Simone sees Nadia raise her arms in resignation as Simone approaches with
9781623567606.indd 67 11/03/15 8:35 PM 68 Alain Delon
his knife and Rocco raising his arms in triumph as he wins the bout, having committed his life to the redemption of Simone and the payment of his debts. Rocco/Delon’s silence, however, must be read in tandem with his mode of speech and its presentation in the film. This is particularly evident in key scenes, such as the encounter between Rocco and Nadia on the roof of the Milan Duomo after the rape, when Nadia begs Rocco to take her back. We can note several things here: firstly, Nadia’s impassioned diatribe against Simone, shot from above, with Delon’s face obscured from the camera, is received impassively by Rocco, who tells her merely that she must return to Simone. Rocco then presses his face into the wall as he delivers his short speech of recrimination for himself and Nadia (“we thought we could start a new life together, without thinking of the harm we were doing to others”). It is only when Nadia impatiently cries “why are you tormenting me so?” that Rocco turns his face toward the camera, and a lingering close-up shows his beautiful face marked by bruises and a band-aid, with a single tear running down his cheek, eyes half-closed in suffering (Figure 4.2). His only response to Nadia, apart from the tear, is to say simply “we will never see each other again.” Rocco’s lack of language is compensated for by the lingering close-up here which reveals his own victimhood. The single tear of melodrama, for Steve Neale, occurs in the space or gap where emotional meaning cannot be fully conveyed: “it is a gap marked not only in the significance of gesture and the inarticulate cry, but also in the non-coincidence of points of view and knowledge” (1986, 19).
Figure 4.2 Delon as Rocco suffering in close-up in Rocco e i suoi fratelli/Rocco and His Brothers (1960)
9781623567606.indd 68 11/03/15 8:35 PM Dubbing Delon 69
The knowledge the spectator has of Rocco’s motivations is never adequate, and the frustration that Nadia has as she shouts “you’ll regret this, but it will be too late! I hate you! I hate you!” and runs off articulates the spectator’s frustration at Rocco’s pointless sacrifice. On the level of dialogue, Italian speakers will note here that the dubbed dialogue of Rocco in the last part of the scene becomes significantly more dialectal in quality, as he talks about his relationship with Nadia and his betrayal of his brother, inviting us to reflect, on the level of character, on Rocco’s destructive attachment to his family and roots. Listening to the French soundtrack, in which both Delon and Annie Girardot perform in French, we hear the timbre of the voices, the intonation (of course even the French dialogue was post-synchronized), reminding us of Roland Barthes’ words in “The Grain of the Voice,” in which the “grain” is “the materiality of the body speaking its mother tongue” (Barthes 1977, 182) that sets up an erotic relation with the body of the performer. Both Delon and Girardot have a much softer intonation in French, and Delon’s dialogue in particular sounds much harsher and more metallic, in Fink’s sense, in Italian. His pronunciation of the line in French, “we thought we could start a new life together” (nous avons cru pouvoir recommencer ensemble une vie nouvelle) gives a sad weariness to the intonation, which is attenuated in the more clipped Italian dialogue. Rocco’s sacrifice becomes, in the original speaking of the dialogue, if not understandable, at least more emotionally grounded. Doane’s thoughts on the “pleasure of hearing” are relevant here, as she describes the “specificity of the pleasure of hearing a voice with its elements escaping a strictly verbal codification—volume, timbre, rhythm, pitch” (1980, 43). Delon’s “acoustic signature,” his Parisian accent, of course would be nonsensical for Rocco, the southerner transplanted to Milan; yet, hearing it reminds us of the importance of accent and intonation in thinking about characterization, performance, and the relation to the body of the performer. In a later scene, after Rocco has improbably become world champion, he offers a toast to this family, again resorting to southern Italian dialect. The Italian audio track, in conjunction with Nino Rota’s melancholy score, once again emphasizes this atavistic attachment to the rural south, which the move to Milan has destroyed. Yet again, the climax of Rocco’s sententious speech (“it takes a sacrifice for the house to become strong”) is delivered in an extremely tight and hyperbolic close-up, this time side-on, lingering on his cheekbone and on the plaster above his eye, the mark of the sacrifice of himself and Nadia, as the wound was inflicted by Simone after the rape of Nadia. This silent contemplation
9781623567606.indd 69 11/03/15 8:35 PM 70 Alain Delon
of Rocco’s face, which almost overwhelms the vocal performance, does the work of positioning Rocco again as the sacrificial victim because of whom the Parondi house might flourish; the French track reiterates that in French Delon’s speech is more soulful and heartfelt, as opposed to the crisper pronunciation of the Italian dubber. The interplay between face and voice is here important in underlining the complex nature of how Delon’s performance is constructed in this film, both vocally through the dubbing of his voice and in terms of cinematography that makes proximity to his face its key characteristic. The melodramatic climax of the film, as Rocco and Simone writhe on the bed after the revelation that Simone has killed Nadia, is the magnificent height of Viscontian male melodrama, and it is significant that Delon’s dialogue in the scene is mainly restricted to sobs and inarticulate cries of grief and anguish. Comparing the French and Italian audio tracks, the quality of his sobs and of this phatic communication is subtly different. Delon sounds as though he is sobbing authentically on the French dialogue track, pausing between sobs to draw breath, while the Italian version has him almost shouting or screaming, at a much higher and more insistent emotional pitch. This affective quality is important: not only does it speak to different cultural modes of emotional expression but the French version suggests that the communication of voice and body are merged and gives the illusion of authenticity of expression, that external emotion is the outpouring of inner feeling. As Jacob Smith writes in relation to language, sound, and performance style: “timbre and inflection of the voice trump words as the site of authentic or truthful expression” (2008, 96).
Conclusion
If Delon’s physique is “wrong” for the film, his fragility calling attention to the mimetic implausibility of fit of the actor to the role, his face is overdetermined by the camera. Rather than understanding that overdetermination of the face as a symptom of a homosexual director in love with his actor, can we instead read it as an attempt to overcompensate for the idea that both Delon and Rocco lack a voice, in the sense that Rocco is a dumb, feminized Sleeping Beauty and sacrificed innocent and also in the sense of Delon as dubbed star? Delon’s voice is elsewhere (in what Tom Whittaker (2012, 293) calls the “ubiquitous yet elusive location of dubbing”), though it can now be reclaimed through DVD technology. If the voice of the actor is a confirmation of their authorship of the
9781623567606.indd 70 11/03/15 8:35 PM Dubbing Delon 71
role (thinking of Doane’s description of speech “as an individual property right,” 1980, 34), it is one that audiences are frequently surprisingly happy to overlook. The restoration of a spoken language is a reminder of the uncanny vocal effect caused by Delon’s nationality and also makes us think further about the link between language, nationality, and the relation of face, body, and voice to the cinematic apparatus.
Notes
1 See Grignaffini (1988) and Gundle (2007). On Loren, see Gundle (1995) and Small (2009); on Lollobrigida, see Buckley (2000). On masculinity and male stars in Italian cinema, see O’Rawe (2014). 2 Graeme Hayes agrees that Delon is a “significant figure for the construction of French national and masculine identities” (2004, 42). 3 Rees-Roberts argues that Delon shared this cosmopolitan persona in the 1960s with Marcello Mastroianni. Soila also aligns Delon and Mastroianni as “pan-European stars” in the early 1960s, to be read in opposition to forms of “vernacular stardom” (quoted in Gallagher 2013, 83). 4 Cinotto (2006) and Foot (1999) offer readings of the film that root it in the historical context of 1960s Italy. 5 The three principal characteristics of the voice that Wojcik identifies are the rhythm of speech (including the use of silence and pauses), the grain of the voice, and the accent (2006, 72). 6 Rees-Roberts similarly refers to Delon’s persona in terms of “homo-narcissism” (2012, 86). 7 A 1962 profile of Delon in Italian sports newspaper Totocalcio describes him as a “mannequin” and an “actor-young lady” (attore-signorina) (Ponti 1962, 13). It also fixates on his beauty, claiming that “Apollo would have had to award him the prize in an all-time beauty contest,” though also suggests that Delon is troubled by discussions of his beauty: “Alain is upset. He would prefer to be the Burt Lancaster type [his costar in Visconti’s Gattopardo], who is all man. Instead, as he is, he appears almost to be wearing make- up.” 8 See also Neale (1983). 9 “It does not require a special antenna to recognize the director’s erotic investment in the performance of certain actors” (Nowell-Smith 2003, 212). 10 Miller’s reading of Rocco is interesting in its avoidance of this kind of biographical speculation: although he comments on the narratively unmotivated beauty of Rocco and Simone and the use of “appreciative close-ups or long shots” (2008, 13),
9781623567606.indd 71 11/03/15 8:35 PM 72 Alain Delon
he is more interested in the homoerotic tension between the brothers and in the ways that the erotic passivity of Delon is ultimately consigned to the “nostalgic, bereft form of the photograph,” referring to the montage of photos of Rocco as champion boxer that ends the film. 11 “Title brother Rocco, played by the French matinee idol Alain Delon, seems rather too pretty to be the champion boxer that the plot requires him to be” (1960, 28). 12 “No-one can pretend for a moment that Rocco Parondi, country boy and world- class boxer, looks like anything but the exquisitely handsome movie star who plays him, Alain Delon” (Miller 2008, 12). 13 See also the contemporary review by Joseph Bennett, who says: “Visconti cast Alain Delon, a Frenchman, as Rocco–at some cost in terms of his skinniness, which makes him only the unreal shadow of the boxing champion he is supposed to be” (1962, 283). The review in the Italian paper L’ Un i t à complained that Delon was “perhaps worshipped a little too much by the camera” (Muzii 1960, 3). 14 Rocco and his Brothers, as mentioned, was a French-Italian coproduction (produced by Titanus with Les Films Marceau), which explains at least the economic imperative for the casting of French stars. 15 As he notes, “to demand a unilingual Italian soundtrack” for films such as Rocco and Il gattopardo is to “erase the linguistic polyvocality that registers the political economy of art filmmaking in the country from the 1950s through the 1970s” (2009, 87). 16 “To graft one language, with its own system of linking sound and gesture, onto the visible behavior associated with another, then, is to foster a kind of cultural violence or dislocation” (1985, 52). They describe voices as “as irreducibly individual as fingerprints” (1985, 49). See also Sisto (2014, 9) on dubbing as “cultural and semiotic violence” in Italian film. Nornes concurs that “dubbing is mired in corruption because it completely erases the experience of foreign sound, one of the most crucial material aspects of language” (1999, 34). 17 As Luyken states in relation to television audiences used to watching dubbed programs: “the strong polarization in the use of method between the ‘dubbing’ and ‘subtitling’ countries is of significance, as audience research has shown that television viewers are very strongly conditioned by the respective predominant methods and, therefore, attitudes to, as well as acceptance of, different or new methods take a long time to mature” (1991, 38). 18 Shochat and Stam term this a “parasitic star system” (1985, 50). 19 The notion of “acoustic signature” was used by Neepa Majumdar in her keynote talk, “Listening to Stardom: Considerations of Voice in Star Studies,” given at the conference on “Revisiting Star Studies” at Newcastle University, 12 June 2013. The term “cultural leveling” is used by Geoffrey Nowell-Smith (1968, 146). Bordwell
9781623567606.indd 72 11/03/15 8:35 PM Dubbing Delon 73
and Thompson (2004, 388) talk of the “bland studio sound” of dubbed voices and go so far as to say that “dubbing simply destroys part of the film.” 20 In Il gattopardo Delon was dubbed by Carlo Sabatini, a Roman, despite the fact that Delon’s character is Sicilian. Delon’s performance as Rocco was generally praised by the Italian press, and I have found no reviews that mention the fact of his dubbing. 21 The French dialogue track is now available as an option on the Eureka! Masters of Cinema DVD of the film (2008).
9781623567606.indd 73 11/03/15 8:35 PM 9781623567606.indd 74 11/03/15 8:35 PM CIAO MASCHIO Politiche di rappresentazione del corpo maschile nel Novecento
ciaomaschio_interni.indb 1 23/01/20 14:20 Giacomo Albert è assegnista dell’Università di Torino e docente del Conserva- torio di Cuneo, e si occupa di musica, arti e media. Giulia Carluccio è Presidente della Consulta Universitaria del Cinema ed è professore ordinario presso l’Università degli studi di Torino, dove insegna discipline cinematografche. Giulia Muggeo è dottoressa di ricerca e insegna discipline cinematografche presso l’Università di Torino. Antonio Pizzo è professore associato in discipline dello spettacolo presso l’U- niversità degli studi di Torino.
ciaomaschio_interni.indb 2 23/01/20 14:20 FRONTESPIZIO
ciaomaschio_interni.indb 3 23/01/20 14:20 © 2019 Rosenberg & Sellier
prima edizione italiana: dicembre 2019 ISBN 978-88-7885-751-3
Pubblicazione resa disponibile nei termini della licenza Creative Commons Attribuzione - Non commerciale - Non opere derivate 4.0
LEXIS Compagnia Editoriale in Torino Srl via Carlo Alberto 55 I - 10123 Torino [email protected] www.rosenberg&sellier.it Rosenberg & Sellier è un marchio registrato utilizzato per concessione di Traumann s.s.
ciaomaschio_interni.indb 4 23/01/20 14:20 Indice
9 Introduzione Giacomo Albert, Giulia Carluccio, Giulia Muggeo, Antonio Pizzo
15 Masculinities and Hegemony. On Some Theoretical Convergences in Film Studies Valerio Coladonato
29 Il corpo dietro la macchina da presa. Immagini del regista durante il fascismo Fabio Andreazza
43 I nudi maschili di Elio Luxardo. Fotografa e virilità nell’estetica fascista Federica Muzzarelli
59 Decostruire il linguaggio del potere. Lo sguardo di Bertolt Brecht Sara Torrenzieri
73 Maschere di uomini e crisi della virilità nel cinema di Ingmar Bergman Fabio Pezzetti Tonion
85 «Andiamoci piano con le lettere d’amore alle dive». I giovani spettatori degli anni Cinquanta e la rete intertestuale della stampa periodica popolare Enrico Biasin
5
ciaomaschio_interni.indb 5 23/01/20 14:20 indice
103 «Sono un duro ma facile alle cotte». Rappresentazione e rinegoziazione del modello maschile di Fred Buscaglione nell’Italia degli anni Cinquanta Giulia Muggeo
117 Il più buono dei tesori di mamma. Note sulle origini dell’immagine divistica di Adriano Celentano Federico Zecca
135 Forzuti, fusti, maggiorati. La destra, il peplum e una certa idea di maschilità Mauro Giori
155 Anche i maschi piangono. Il male weepie italiano tra neorealismo e boom Emiliano Morreale
173 Italian Male-Male Prostitution in 1950s-1960s Fiction. «Many girlfriends ignore how their boyfriends fnd the money to buy their presents» Alessio Ponzio
185 “Viva Maddalena”. Sulla mascolinità dei primi cantautori italiani Jacopo Tomatis
199 La costruzione della mascolinità nelle riviste erotiche maschili. Cinema, autorappresentazione e identità virile in “Men” e “Playmen” (1966-1971) Gabriele Rigola
211 Tex, o il corpo italiano dell’eroe americano Matteo Pollone
225 Politiche del corpo e corpo politico. Pierre Clémenti nel cinema italiano tra il Sessantotto e i primi anni Settanta Giulia Fanara
247 «Lo sai cosa signifca l’ergastolo? Passare la vita senza donne». Profli della mascolinità di commissari e giustizieri nel poliziesco italiano degli anni Settanta Claudio Bisoni
6
ciaomaschio_interni.indb 6 23/01/20 14:20 indice
257 F*cking furious. Corpi, sessualità e desiderio nei diari e nel cinema di Derek Jarman Stefania Rimini
271 Bad all night and day but now not, not so bad. La demolizione della mascolinità nel corpo supermasochista di Bob Flanagan Alfonso Amendola, Vincenzo Del Gaudio, Mario Tirino
289 Leslie Cheung: la mascolinità ambigua nella Hong Kong dell’handover Cristina Colet
299 Take the Lead. Balli di coppia e modelli di mascolinità tra Antonio Banderas e Richard Gere Anna Masecchia
313 Anomalo, morbido e marginale. Mickey Rourke e il Queer come luogo politico di identifcazione Francesca Brignoli
325 «I don’t like acting». Gérard Depardieu e la verità della carne Alberto Scandola
337 Youth. La lunga senescenza di Michael Caine Sara Pesce
349 Migrazioni di maschilità soccombenti. Don José nell’Africa sub-sahariana Annamaria Cecconi
361 From Activism to Gossip. Public Figures Out of the Closet in the Spanish Media Adolfo Carratalá
375 Le autrici e gli autori
7
ciaomaschio_interni.indb 7 23/01/20 14:20 Politiche del corpo e corpo politico Pierre Clémenti nel cinema italiano tra il Sessantotto e i primi anni Settanta Giulia Fanara
Un viaggio in Italia Angelo del trapasso, bello e dannato, demone, mistico, vergine, dandy, Cristo hippie, nuovo Nosferatu, ombra, doppio, cannibale creatura ai primordi della storia, ribelle, amante sadico e sublime, assassino, omosessuale, terrorista mancato, puro e duro, marinaio del Potëmkin sull’incrociatore dell’ideologia, corpo straniero ed estraneo, nemico del cinema commerciale, per Pierre Clémenti il cinema è, come dirà a Pasolini, «fare un viaggio che ha nel fondo la vita e la morte»1. Il suo viaggio in Italia ha inizio con Il Gattopardo (L. Visconti, 1963) per suggerimento, si dice, di Alain Delon, come lui tra i personaggi più conosciuti nel quartiere di Saint-Germain-des-Prés e cliente abi- tuale del Café Flore, il cui piano superiore è spesso frequentato da omosessuali. Si presenta a Visconti «con un paio di jeans e una giacca di pelle. La leggenda vuole che il regista, vedendolo, abbia esclama- to: “Mi hanno portato un teppista, mentre io cerco un principe!”. Clémenti, mostrandogli le mani, avrebbe replicato: “E queste non sono orse le mani di n aristocratico . mmaliato isconti gli a fda il r olo di rancesco aolo fglio del principe di alina ma ad na condizione: che tinga i capelli di biondo»2. Un ruolo che gli sarebbe rimasto cucito addosso, in Francia come in Italia, da Scusi, facciamo l’amore? di Caprioli, 1968, a La vittima designata di cidi flm che pone fne alla s a esperien a italiana a ca sa della carcera io- ne, pochi mesi dopo, e la condanna a due anni di reclusione per detenzione di stupefacenti, che sconterà quasi per intero tra Regina
1 P.P. Pasolini, “Dialoghetti” sul cinema e il teatro (15), “Il Tempo”, 23 novembre 1968; ora in Id., Il caos, Roma, Editori Riuniti, 1995, pp. 70-71. 2 Sabbatini M., Italie, tour, détour. Pierre Clémenti à Cinecittà, in Pierre Clémenti, la liberté à tout prix, “La Revue du Ciné-Club universitaire”, MMXIV, 2, 2014, p. 14, https://www.rts.ch/espace-2/ programmes/matinales/5781379.html [ultima consultazione 13 maggio 2019].
225
ciaomaschio_interni.indb 225 23/01/20 14:20 giulia fanara
Coeli e Rebibbia: «E io avevo, è certo, la barba e i capelli lunghi, una fama di fumatore di hashish e non abbastanza protettori per essere dimenticato. Le guardie non ci hanno messo molto a trovare quello che cercavano», scriverà in Pensieri dal carcere, libro uscito nel 1973 che racconta quell’esperienza e un codice penale ancora improntato alle leggi fasciste, ma anche il suo lavoro di attore, i giorni romani e la “prigione dorata” dell’industria dello spettacolo3. Sono gli anni dell’Italia della V legislatura, del Sessantotto, dell’autunno caldo, di Piazza Fontana, della legge sul divorzio e dei prodromi del terrorismo. Ma riprendiamo la storia da principio. Quando Pierre torna nel nostro paese è già il Sessantotto. In questi cinque anni ha lavorato con molti registi e, soprattutto, l’esperienza teatrale da cui era partito, dal Vieux Colombier, l’École nationale, Jean-Louis Barrault, al suo amore per Artaud, al suo pigmalione André Almuró, viene segnata dal travolgente incontro con Marc’O, compagno di Vian, Isou, Debord nell’avventura del lettrismo, e con la sua innovativa scuola di un teatro allora inseparabile dal cinema. Il successo della pièce Les idoles aveva indotto il regista a tornare sugli schermi, traendone una pellicola l’anno successivo (1967): Clémenti sarà, con Bulle Ogier e Jean-Pierre Kalfon, uno dei protagonisti di n flm destinato a di entare nella s a critica sit a ionista al mondo della musica pop e alla fabbrica delle star della scena yéyé, di culto. Poco dopo, quando il pubblico diserta le sale per i fatti del Maggio, anche Marc’O, che ha occupato alla Sorbona, darà inizio al suo viaggio italiano. Seguiamo il suo racconto: in Italia, ho potuto constatare che Clémenti era divenuto una star. Soprat- tutto grazie al suo ruolo in Bella di giorno. Era una follia. Tutti gli italiani avevano adottato il suo look da dandy: senza dimenticare questo dettaglio: il co nella cal a come nel flm di el. on ci siamo mai persi di vista con Pierre, nemmeno quando era completamente nella droga.4 La stanza in cui Clémenti vive a Campo de’ Fiori, un materasso per terra e decine di candele, è meta di un via vai ininterrotto, l’attore distribuisce i suoi guadagni a chi ne ha bisogno, la sua, dice Kalfon, è
3 P. Clémenti, Pensieri dal carcere, Ripa di Fagnano Alto, Il Sirente, 2007, p. 15 (ed. or. Quelques messages personnels, s.l., S. E. F. Philippe Daudy, 1973). 4 Marc’O, cit. in B. Sabatier, ous sommes eunes, nous sommes fers, la culture eune d’ lvis à Myspace, Parigi, Fayard, 2013, pp. 86-87.
226
ciaomaschio_interni.indb 226 23/01/20 14:20 politiche del corpo e corpo politico
na flosofa esigente e innata 5. Il ruolo da gangster sadico e omo- sessuale6 in Bella di giorno (Belle de jour . el l a e a reso noto al p lico era apparso a el come na armen iranda in tutto il suo appeal esotico e queer «con una giacca tipo smoking, le trecce sulle spalle, una veste di seta con uccelli ricamati a mano, pantaloni scampanati di velluto di un colore diverso per gamba» – ma era stato con Benjamin ovvero le avventure di un adolescente (Benjamin ou les mémoires d’un puceau, M. Deville, 1967) che era divenuto una star7, n flm in cost me in c i n gio ane dall aspetto androgino iene iniziato all’amore nel castello della zia e un genere le cui potenzialità trasgressive e di piacere soprattutto per un pubblico femminile e gay sono state evidenziate da Richard Dyer, Claire Monk e altri8. Il arcel eliano di l menti tras orma scri e hai en il mondo del noir in qualcosa di «sinistro, eccentrico e attraente», l’attore «non occupa lo spazio, lo fa esplodere», la sua «rabbia nascente anticipa quella di un altro dei personaggi di Clémenti, Giacobbe, in Partner di Bernardo Bertolucci […] la più caustica ed estrema delle sue in- terpreta ioni in c i dimentica il confne tra recita ione e ita 9. Quando Bertolucci lo manda a Parigi sulle barricate del Maggio, dove Pierre girerà i materiali che, insieme a quelli romani, daranno vita al suo La révolution n’est qu’un début, continuons le combat (1968), la sua popolarità fa dire ai manifestanti: «“Benjamin, che ci fai qui, non è questo il tuo posto”. Per gli enragés del Sessantotto, la rivoluzione non era posto per una vergine»10. Prima che arrivi maggio… Pierre ha adesso alle spalle le esperienze del gruppo Zanzibar, i gio- ani cineasti dand del maggio che fnan iati da l ina oissonnas ereditiera freak, girano in 35 mm, guardando a Godard ma non alla
5 J.-P. Kalfon, La parentesi incantata, in Associazione Vi(s)ta Nova (a cura di), Lucca Film Festival 2008, Pisa, Titivillus, 2008, p. 79. 6 J.D. Gutiérrez-Albilla, Queering Buñuel. Sexual Dissidence and Psychoanalysis in His Mexican and Spanish Cinema, Londra-New York, Tauris, 2008, pp. 40-41. 7 Chaiken M., Invocation of My Demon Brother. Actor, Filmmaker, and Mystic Nomad Pierre Clém- enti – The French Underground’s Missing Link, “Film Comment”, XLIV, 5, 2008, p. 61. 8 R. Dyer, The Culture of Queers, New York-Londra, Routledge, 2002, pp. 204-224; C. Monk, Heritage Film Audiences. Period Films and Contemporary Audiences in the UK, Edimburgo, Edinburgh University Press, 2011. 9 M. Chaiken, Invocation of My Demon Brother, cit., p. 64. 10 Ibidem.
227
ciaomaschio_interni.indb 227 23/01/20 14:20 giulia fanara
Nouvelle Vague, ed equiparati all’underground americano, quando n flo diretto lega attra erso ico la t ra ar o del n la ac- tor di arhol e i primi flm di arrel. omincia il secondo periodo della s a carriera che sempre pi si identifca con la s a stessa ita. if ta le o erte di a atte lo ot ellini per Satyricon) scegliendo la via di una ricerca mistica e ascetica all’interno della quale il cinema diviene elemento privilegiato e rivelatore. Con la macchina da presa ac istata con i compensi s l flm di el per il ale sare e stato anche un inquietante angelo della morte in La via lattea (La voie lactée, . el inizia a girare le sue opere straordinarie e psichedeliche ere e proprie a tofction destinate a essere riscoperte molti anni dopo. Come scrive Fulvio Abbate nella sua ricostruzione della Roma di quegli anni, raccogliendo i ricordi di Gerald Bruneau, fotografo della provocazione il raga o ierre l menti era raggiante di i ere a oma perfno i costi in citt dei paradisi artifciali gli appari ano con enienti mera igliosi magicamente adeguati ai suoi sogni di rivolta e amore. Pierre era un giovane attore francese […] ha sfavillato nei giorni di Partner, n flm dove s’intravede proprio la città al tempo della contestazione e del Living Theatre […] Di Pierre, ci torna in mente ancora adesso la magrezza ado- lescenziale, le guance scavate sotto gli zigomi, gli omeri sotto la pelliccia.11 In Scusi, facciamo l’amore? di Vittorio Caprioli, Clémenti è Lallo di San Marciano. Nobile rampollo napoletano che la morte del padre mantenuto da una contessa ha lasciato senza il becco di un quattri- no, immigrato nella metropoli lombarda per il funerale, in realtà in cerca di facili fortune, nel ricalcare le orme paterne intrattiene una serie di relazioni con signore dell’alta borghesia meneghina approdando infne ai a ori di n ricco arone tedesco. ome in altri s oi flm trasc rati ma importanti aprioli esplora ancora na volta i limiti di una mascolinità italiana che in Leoni al sole (1961) a e amo isto rid rsi alle amare sconftte di stagionati pla o di fronte all’agentività di una nuova generazione di ragazze in biki- ni e che qui sceglie il corpo di Clémenti per indagare, attraverso il tema caro alla commedia del manten to la mercifca ione del
11 F. Abbate, La Roma di Pierre Clémenti e Tina Aumont, in Id., Roma vista controvento, Milano, Bompiani, 2015, pp. 171-173.
228
ciaomaschio_interni.indb 228 23/01/20 14:20 politiche del corpo e corpo politico
corpo maschile all’epoca della rivoluzione sessuale e in una città capitale delle merci e del capitalismo. Malgrado Lallo colpisca al cuore, saranno pur sempre le sue interlocutrici a tenere salda la barra, come del resto mammà, la madre unruly che svisceratamente ama; e quando sembra che anch’egli possa rientrare nel mondo del lavoro e progetti il matrimonio, sarà la menzogna di una donna, la contessa che sostiene che la raga a che ha scelto s a fglia sia in realtà sua sorella, a indurlo a fare suo il saggio consiglio che l’or- mai attempato collega in imprese di seduzione, Massimo Girotti, gli a e a elargito all ini io del flm. a elle a mediterranea di allo l’importanza che gli abiti, le pellicce, i mantelli assumono nella sua performance o mascherata di maschilità come in quella delle sue amanti ma signifcati amente rif ter di tra estirsi per il allo in maschera), se da una parte pongono in primo piano questioni legate alla modernità industriale e metropolitana, quali la moda, il design la c ra del corpo con n ampia fnestra s ortina colonia milanese dall altra mettono in estione confni di genere asati s l binarismo. Come scrive Bell-Metereau, «i codici dell’abbigliamen- to gli a iti come sistema di signifca ione parlano s na serie di registri: classe, genere, sessualità, erotismo»12. La scelta di Girotti come gigolò sul viale del tramonto che farà appena in tempo ad accasarsi rimanda direttamente alla queerness della sua performance viscontiana, evocata anche dall’ambientazione decadente della casa di Tassi, e a una to-be-looked-at-ness che allaccia il vecchio corpo messo in ridicolo dal la oro del massaggiatore per tenerlo in e fcien a al giovanissimo corpo di Lallo, oggetto dello sguardo e delle contese di vedove e signore più o meno felicemente sposate. Ma anche al ruolo recente dell’attore in Te o re m a (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1968) e alla sua scoperta dell’omosessualità attraverso l’angelo Terence Stamp. Qui l’amicizia virile passa ancora una volta attraverso la donna, o meglio una discussione sulle strategie di conquista delle donne, ma quello che Tassi suggerisce è che non ci sia poi così differenza tra il vendersi all’uno o all’altro sesso. Se l’omosessualità era entrata nel cinema italiano popolare dalla porta di servizio, attraverso, come scrive Giori, «sovrapposizioni fra omosessualità, travestitismo e femminilità»13 fg re come occinelle e am gli spettacoli del
12 R. Bell-Metereau, Hollywood Androginy, New York, Columbia University Press, 1993, p. x. 13 Giori M., “Ma oggi come te movi te piano per…”. L’omosessualità nel cinema italiano degli anni
229
ciaomaschio_interni.indb 229 23/01/20 14:20 giulia fanara
Carousel e le maschere grottesche della commedia, il regista ricorre, come farà poi Ozpeteck in La fnestra di fronte (2003), a una star che ha attraversato il cinema nazionale per negoziare nuove e più com- plesse forme di mascolinità e a un attore straniero, Clémenti, che incarna le potenzialità dirompenti dell’androginia. La minaccia del corpo androgino iene alla fne riassor ita all interno del romance omosessuale, ma non possiamo non notare come quella del giovane attore francese sia un’identità corporea che, al tempo di un cinema senza padri14, mette alla prova con la sua plasticità, con il suo stile, come direbbe Butler15, qualsiasi binarismo. e come ha mostrato o ca lt non p esserci ri essione s l soggetto moderno che non comporti na ri essione s lle tecnologie politiche del corpo – dove «la genealogia, come analisi della pro- venienza, è dunque all’articolazione del corpo e della storia: deve mostrare il corpo tutto impresso di storia, e la storia che devasta il corpo»16 - la costruzione della maschilità all’interno dei processi sociali di assoggettamento conosce in quegli anni un processo di rapida trasformazione, all’interno del quale i giovani emergono come nuovo soggetto sociale e di consumo. Le dinamiche di genere si esplicitano così quali agenti di pratiche relazionali e culturali volte alla critica della societ patriarcale che aprono spa i di con ronto e di con itto anche sul piano simbolico e dove il corpo come la politicizzazione del quotidiano assumono una centralità senza precedenti. L’età, scri e ap ssotti ac ista na n ione inedita nella confg ra io- ne identitaria17 e gi alla fne degli anni in anta erano arri ati in Italia i juke-box, il rock’n’roll, gli urlatori nostrani e i teenager, come li defniscono rotocalchi popolari ali ettimo giorno che condividono abiti, modi di relazione, nuovi consumi e una musica
Sessanta, “Cinergie”, 5, 2014, p. 39, https://cinergie.unibo.it/issue/viewIssue/629/57 [ultima consul- tazione 13 maggio 2019]. 14 G. Canova, La perdita della trasparenza. Cinema e società nell’Italia della seconda metà degli anni ‘60, in Id. (a cura di), Storia del cinema italiano. 1965-1969, Venezia-Roma, Marsilio-Bianco e Nero Edizioni, XI, 2002, pp. 3-29. 15 J. Butler, Gender trouble. Feminism and the subversion of identity, New York-Londra, Routled- ge, 1990 (tr. it. S. Adamo, Questione di genere. Il femminismo e la sovversione dell’identità, Roma-Bari, Laterza, 2013). 16 M. Foucault, Nietzsche, la genealogia, la storia, in Id., Microfsica del potere. Interventi politici, a cura di A. Fontana, P. Pasquino, Torino, Einaudi, 1977, pp. 29-54, p. 37 (ed. or. Nietzsche, la généalogie, l’histoire, Parigi, P.U.F., 1971). 17 E. Capussotti, Gioventù perduta. Gli anni Cinquanta dei giovani e del cinema in Italia, Firen- ze-Milano, Giunti, 2004, p. 203.
230
ciaomaschio_interni.indb 230 23/01/20 14:20 politiche del corpo e corpo politico
che spaventa per il carattere esplicitamente sessuale, incarnato dai movimenti pelvici di Presley e dalle reazioni incontrollate del pub- blico. Per cattolici e comunisti l’America è l’impero del male. Prima della metà del nuovo decennio sono gettati una serie di ponti che mettono in dialogo le nuove generazioni dell’Occidente. Mentre Londra sostituisce Parigi come capitale di una moda che non si divide pi l ngo confni di classe e di genere ma genera ionali nel la polizia sgombra i capelloni di Piazza di Spagna, una questione di ordine pubblico, come non manca di notare il “Corriere della sera” che contro i capelloni ingaggerà a Milano una personale battaglia. «A Barbonia City c’è la libertà d’imparare tutti i peggiori vizi: si diventa facilmente omosessuali e ogni tanto arriva la droga», scrive “La Notte”18. Se le grandi manifestazioni contro il governo Tambroni a Genova e poi a Torino a Piazza Statuto avevano visto ancora adulti e giovani insieme, le piazze adesso sembrano appartenere a questi ltimi dalle prime mani esta ioni pacifste alla nascita di ondo Beat e Onda Verde, ai primi arresti per droga. Il 1966 era stato l’anno della “Zanzara” e dello scandalo dell’inchiesta sulla sessualità tra gli alunni del liceo Parini, ma anche della morte di Paolo Rossi a Roma19. Negli Stati Uniti tutto aveva avuto inizio dieci anni prima con le dichiarazioni di Kerouac sulla Beat Generation e le letture, con Ginsberg, alla Six Gallery, San Francisco 1955, un momento chia e per n merica dissidente che intende sfdare il clima della Guerra fredda, del consumismo e del maccartismo, della discrimi- nazione razziale e dell’omofobia. La Beat Generation, come poi gli hippies, ama viaggiare e Parigi diviene uno dei punti di incontro con quella che era stata la cultura bohémienne, la musica jazz, il lettrismo, l’esistenzialismo e, soprattutto, il situazionismo. La guerra del Vietnam e la parola d’ordine del body count si rovesciano nel rif to della g erra stessa e nel conto dei corpi di na genera ione di giovani americani. “Le rivoluzioni saranno delle feste”, “vivere senza tempi morti”, “godere senza ostacoli” erano alcune della pa-
18 A Barbonia City c’è la libertà d’imparare tutti i peggiori vizi: si diventa facilmente omosessuali e ogni tanto arriva la droga, “La Notte”, 3 giugno 1967; cit. in http://www.giannidemartino.it/mondo-beat/ [ultima consultazione 13 maggio 2019]. 19 Cfr. D. Giachetti, Anni Sessanta comincia la danza. Giovani, capelloni, studenti ed estremisti negli anni della contestazione, Pisa, BFS, 2002; P. Sorcinelli, A. Varni (a cura di), Il secolo dei giovani. Le nuove generazioni e la storia del Novecento, Roma, Donzelli, 2004; F. Lussana, G. Marramao (a cura di), L’Italia repubblicana nella crisi degli anni Settanta. Culture, nuovi soggetti, identità, Soveria Mannelli, Rubbettino, 2003.
231
ciaomaschio_interni.indb 231 23/01/20 14:20 giulia fanara
role d ordine di n op scolo sit a ionista destinato a in en are le giornate del Maggio e l’occupazione della Sorbona20. In Italia cresce la politicizzazione dei movimenti nelle università e, mentre in America gli hyppies celebrano nel 1967 l’estate dell’amore, nascono le comuni, i festival di Re Nudo e una nuova sinistra che prende le distanze dai partiti dando vita al movimento studentesco e alle occ pa ioni delle ni ersit . capelloni sono fnalmente scesi in piazza» aveva scritto “Big” nel marzo 1966, «dunque la loro protesta non si esprime più solo attraverso la musica beat o i capelli. Non si tratta di capelli più o meno lunghi. Si tratta di gioventù»21. Quando arriva il Maggio a Parigi, il fatto nuovo è che i sindacati e i giovani quadri operai scendono anch’essi in piazza e fermano le fabbriche22. Il perturbante fascino del sosia Sono i mesi in cui Bertolucci, dopo quattro anni di inattività forza- ta, è impegnato nelle riprese di Partner e i colori della bandiera del ietnam s entolano nel flm in ogni do e. spirandosi a Il sosia di Dostoevsky e a Il teatro e il suo doppio di Artaud, Bertolucci si cimenta in una messa in scena del doppio che è costante del suo cinema e che si pone come una sorta di summa delle sue idee. Clémenti-Giac- obbe, colui che nel testo biblico “soppianta” il proprio gemello, un insegnante di teatro frustrato dall’incapacità di mettere in pratica le proprie idee, siano esse il teatro o la rivoluzione, trova nel sosia, che, avvolto in un trench come in un noir (e in Bella di giorno), mima i gesti di Nosferatu e “tira” sul pianista, il contraltare violento della propria passi it mentre i confni tra i d e di engono mano a mano indiscernibili quanto quelli tra la scena e la vita. Un doppio che è anche la doppiezza del «cinema della soggettività» di Bertolucci, la «polarità del destino dell’artista, del portatore di passione, tra passi- vità grigia e velleitaria e progettualità eversiva», «consapevolezza del problema della forma e della sua portata ideologica»23. «La natura
20 J.-F. Martos, Rovesciare il mondo. Storia dell’Internazionale Situazionista, tr. it. S. Coyaud, Milano, SugarCo, 1991, p. 167 (ed. or. Histoire de l’Internationale Situationniste, Parigi, P. Lebovici, 1989). 21 D. Giachetti, Anni Sessanta comincia la danza, cit., p. 91. 22 on possiamo segnalare che solo alc ni titoli nella asta i liografa s l essantotto am- pliatasi in modo consistente nella ricorrenza del cinquantennale: L. Passerini, Autoritratto di gruppo, Firenze-Milano, Giunti Barbera, 1988; P. Ortoleva, I movimenti del ’ in uropa e in America, Roma, Editori Riuniti, 1998; M. Tolomelli, Il Sessantotto. Una breve storia, Roma, Carocci, 2008. 23 L. Cuccu, Figli e padri: l’immaturità rivendicata, in G. Canova (a cura di), Storia del cinema italiano. 1965-1969, cit., p. 62.
232
ciaomaschio_interni.indb 232 23/01/20 14:20 politiche del corpo e corpo politico
non è naturale» è il motto pasoliniano che, pronunciato da Giacobbe, interpella lo spettatore spingendolo a na ri essione che dal teatro olge alla politica e al cinema. ilm aconiano come l ha defnito Socci24, il volto di Clémenti vi si disfa come nei dipinti del pittore irlandese, specchiandosi e perdendosi nel volto dell’altro che è il suo stesso olto ma anche flm godardiano e t tta ia contro il montaggio per il piano sequenza e per la sua negazione, espressionista e hol- lywoodiano insieme, parodia di Prima della rivoluzione (B. Bertolucci, t tte declina ioni di na c lt ra cinematografca che l attore riesce a far passare attraverso «una gestualità degna di un acrobata e di una marionetta, una gamma straordinariamente vasta di sfu- mature in una singola sequenza, ma anche all’interno di una stessa inquadratura […] di volta in volta intellettuale frustrato e impotente e terrorista freddo e risoluto, angelo e demonio»25. Il Giacobbe di Partner è, oltre che un militante e un poeta, un omosessuale. Jefferson Kline ha messo in luce come il personaggio erediti, per ammissione dello stesso Bertolucci, i tratti di uno dei tre protagonisti del non realizzato Natura contro natura, i desideri e le fan- tasie dei quali il regista affermava sarebbero poi stati quelli dei giovani del Sessantotto: «la rivalutazione della poesia, l’impegno politico alla sinistra del e la eatifca ione dell omosess alit 26. Giacobbe può amare solo Giacobbe e le due donne che incrociano il loro cammino, una Sandrelli dai boccoli d’oro uscita da un musical di Hollywood e una Tina Aumont godardiana che spopola in quei giorni a Roma non meno che il nostro attore, non possono che morire. L’omosessualità e l’androginia, costanti del cinema di Bertolucci, da una parte, scrive Yosefa Loshitzky, «sono presentate come manifestazione di una ribellio- ne na sfda alle idee orghesi di propriet . n particolare attaccano la famiglia come nesso di repressione civilizzata e oppressione politica imposta all’individuo dal sistema capitalista», dall’altra come «sintomi di decadenza borghese a prescindere dalle tendenze politiche reali» in ella che la st diosa defnisce na politica dell indeterminate a
24 S. Socci, Bernardo Bertolucci, Milano, Il Castoro, 2008. 25 Guarato P., Partner, les deux visages d’un acteur pour un flm schizophr ne, in Pierre Clémenti. La liberté à tout prix, “La Révue du Ciné-club universitaire”, cit., p. 28. 26 B. Bertolucci, cit. in T. Jefferson Kline, I flm di Bernardo Bertolucci. Cinema e psicanalisi, Roma, Gremese, 1994, p. 52 (ed. or. Bertolucci’s Dream Loom. A Psychoanalytic Study of Cinema, Amherst, The University of Massachusetts Press, 1987).
233
ciaomaschio_interni.indb 233 23/01/20 14:20 giulia fanara
sessuale27. Così, in Il conformista, il protagonista non riesce ad affron- tare una omosessualità che nega scegliendo l’ordinario, il repressivo, il banale, l’opportuno. Spara sull’autista (Lino-Clémenti) che lo ha sedotto portandosi dietro il rimorso che solo alla fne si s eler in- fondato, di averlo ucciso. La bisessualità di Anna Quadri, la moglie dell’antifascista che deve giustiziare, conferma il suo sdoppiamento psichico. Come ha notato Marco Sabbatini, mentre Moravia giocava esplicitamente sul nome dei personaggi (Lino, l’autista e Lina/Anna), qui sono due sequenze parallele ad avere la stessa funzione: «Lino, seduto ai piedi del letto, accarezza le gambe di Marcello bambino, mentre Anna, esattamente nella stessa posizione, poggerà la testa sulle gambe nude di Giulia»28. Se, come afferma Bertolucci, il lavoro con Clémenti è stato possibile grazie alla precedente esperienza del regista con il Living Theatre, attraverso il quale ha acquistato «il senso della sacralità del teatro e della recita ione egli stesso è parte di esto gioco s c i il flm si regge La scena in cui Clémenti è nascosto dietro una catasta di libri e comincia il suo monologo, piange, canta la Marsigliese, è una scena basata su di me in quanto voyeur, la mdp e Clémenti davanti ad essa in quanto realtà in cui sta accadendo qualcosa. Anche lo strumento con il quale siamo arrivati a tale intensità è lo strumento tipico di tutti i riti del Living. Clémenti in esto rito è l fciante e l incenso in el momento è la droga. esto è il grado zero da cui siamo partiti per quella scena.29 l menti racconta il loro rapporto s el flm magico come di «amore-passione»: «tra noi, in Partner, che trattava del doppio, dell’omosessualità, del narcisismo e della rivoluzione, si è sviluppato un rapporto molto ambiguo e molto intenso che fu produttore del flm 30. «La rivoluzione parla attraverso l’attore, l’attore è il tramite tra i rivoluzionari e i borghesi», scandisce Pierre nel metraggio recuperato da Partner in apertura di La sua giornata di gloria di Edoardo Bruno (1969). Anni dopo, sarebbe stato molto critico nei confronti di Berto- l cci che defnisce la orghesia italiana che si pone dei pro lemi che
27 Y. Loshitzky, The Radical Faces of Godard and Bertolucci, Detroit, Wayne State University Press, 1995, p. 189. 28 M. Sabbatini, Italie, tour, détour. Pierre Clementi à Cinecittà, cit., p. 23. 29 Aprà A., Ponzi M., Spila P., Intervista a Bernardo Bertolucci, “Cinema&Film”, III, 7-8, 1969, pp. 20-27 (ed. mod. http://www.adrianoapra.it/?p=303 [ultima consultazione 13 maggio 2019]). 30 Veillon O.-R., Clémenti P., ntretien avec Pierre Clémenti, “Cinématographe”, 61, 1980, p. 38.
234
ciaomaschio_interni.indb 234 23/01/20 14:20 politiche del corpo e corpo politico
è di sinistra, che ha del denaro ma nulla da dire»31, il lavoro dell’atto- re resta per lui un’«esperienza di possessione» che coinvolge tutto il corpo, un corpo senza organi come quello di Artaud che segnerà di lì a poco la schizoanalisi dell’Anti- dipo di Deleuze e Guattari, l’attore nel «ruolo di un medium che si offre come possibilità di espressione per gli altri»32. Sono gli anni in cui, come afferma Rancière, si attua «una forma di circolazione tra le pratiche della performance artistica e quelle dell’azione politica»33. Come tutto questo accadesse a Roma, i flm di ertol cci e di r no lo raccontano molto ene come i clich della città eterna, il Vittoriano, i fori, il cupolone, il Colosseo strappati alla Hollywood sul Tevere della dolce vita che divengono scena di un teatro di strada che poco dopo Glauber Rocha, con Claro, aprirà al tropicalismo e alla sua estetica del sogno. Corpi che contano Se in Italia sarà il femminismo a portare avanti la critica più radicale alla maschilità egemonica ancora dominante all’interno dei movimenti, i soggetti maschili da una parte perpetuano il ruolo patriarcale attra- verso il leaderismo, dall’altro si “femminilizzano” in misura crescente. Non a caso Carla Lonzi riconoscerà negli hippies piuttosto che nei militanti gli innovatori più radicali. Il nostro cinema, altrettanto non a caso, sceglierà attori e attrici stranieri34 per raccontare queste n o e soggetti it che sfdano l eterosess alit normati a e pongono in disc ssione i confni di genere inde oliti da na commedia all i- taliana che mette pienamente in mostra l’inettitudine del maschio nostrano di ronte alle sfde della modernit . i il mo imento dei giovani arrabbiati inglesi, il loro cinema come quello della nouvelle vague avevano interamente respinto il modello del breadwinner – in merica lo ha mostrato reciado messo defniti amente in crisi da
31 Clémenti P., “Ciné-Revue”, XXV, 61, p. 43. 32 Veillon O.-R., Clémenti P., ntretien avec Pierre Clémenti, cit., p. 36. Afferma Marc’O: «era un attore della sua vita, anzi, parlando propriamente, un attore dei propri atti», simile a James Dean o a Marlon Brando, ma anche molto diverso, «nella sua follia, nel suo modo di parlare, faceva molto pensare ad ntonin rta d. ra pa o e ando delira a lo ace a in modo magnifco Marc’O, Quello che state per fare. Intervista a Marc’O, in Associazione Vi(s)ta Nova (a cura di), Lucca Film Festival 2008, cit., p. 87. 33 Rancière J., Politique et esthétique, intervista a cura di J.-M. Lachaud, “Actuel Marx”, 39, 2006, p. 199. 34 Clémenti, Lou Castel, Terence Stamp, Jacques Perrin, Catherine Spaak, Jacqueline Sassard, Elke Sommer eccetera.
235
ciaomaschio_interni.indb 235 23/01/20 14:20 giulia fanara
“Playboy”35 – e i Beatles avevano assolto una funzione dirompente rispetto alla “femminilizzazione” del soggetto e alla messa in mostra del corpo maschile come oggetto dello sguardo e del desiderio36, mandando all aria le defni ioni cons ete di mascolinit 37. Gli stili alternativi e le controculture contribuivano a minare «la maniera in cui la moda inglese di inizio secolo esprimeva in un modo dato per inconsape ole confni di classe e genere articolando n o e allean e e atteggiamenti», critiche a ruoli e gerarchie sociali e di genere che presuppongono forme di sperimentazione di una mascolinità che è parte del dispositivo politico e che trova nella androginia, in un look infantile, «un modo di rappresentazione molto sessualizzato» per en- trambi i sessi38. Non solo gli stili corporei ma anche gli ideali affettivi si trovavano, all’interno della cultura rock, più vicini a un’estetica femminile: «Sensibilità, intuitività, pienezza d’animo, ricettività e libera espressione delle forti emozioni erano valorizzate come ideale maschi- le hyppie, in combinazione con capelli lunghi, slanciata sottigliezza, grazia corporea piuttosto che la forza dominante»39. Ma nel 1969, che è l’anno in cui Porcile di Pasolini viene presentato a Venezia senza il suo regista, che, sotto giudizio per la contestazione della Mostra l’anno precedente per protesta presenta il flm a rado e anche l anno di Stonewall, «l’androginia si era spostata verso stili effeminati piuttosto che infantili – i capelli lunghi e i vestiti penzolanti per entrambi i sessi resi popolari dagli hippies», e questa «rilavorazione del genere nello stile nise e e al tempo na carica erotica che oggi è di fcile riafferrare. In parte perché associata a una ribellione generale e a un radicalismo sessuale, in parte perché disfaceva il genere in modo molto più minaccioso del look da ragazzino ripulito dei primi Beatles e di Quant»40. L’androginia non era allora, precisa Wilson, «come sarebbe di- ventata per il femminismo degli anni settanta, una negazione della
35 P. B . P r e c i a d o , Pornotopía. Arquitectura y sexualidad en “Playboy” durante la guerra fría, Barcellona, Anagrama, 2010 (tr. it. E. Rafanelli, Pornotopia. Playboy: architettura e sessualità, Roma, Fandango, 2011). 36 M. King, Men, Masculinity, and the Beatles, Farnham, Ashgate, 2013. 37 Dyer R., Don’t Look Now, “Screen”, XXIII, 3-4, 1982, pp. 61-73. 38 Wilson E., Deviant Dress, “Feminist Review”, 35, 1990, pp. 67-74: 71-72. 39 M. Dekoven, topia Limited. The Sixties and the mergence of the Postmodern, Durham-Londra, Duke University Press, 2004, p. 118. 40 E. Wilson, Deviant Dress, cit., p. 72.
236
ciaomaschio_interni.indb 236 23/01/20 14:20 politiche del corpo e corpo politico
differenza e del desiderio»41. E Luisa Passerini si chiede se questa fg ra ri elle del gio ane eroe a olte asi e e ico a olte andro- gino. Ma più ragazzo che fanciulla» sia un «uomo nuovo, che ha già fatto propri alcuni caratteri della femminilità» o se, «venendo prima della differenziazione sessuale, si presenta come androgino, doppio, indifferente»42, di un’androginia che, secondo Anna Bravo, «toglie spazio alle donne in carne ed ossa»43. Se, come nota Eugeni, i nuovi corpi attoriali non solo permettono «la rappresentazione di alcuni frammenti del corpo sociale», ma sono «il luogo di spostamento e condensazione delle sue tensioni», le loro «spinte energetiche e vita- listiche pronte a far saltare la normalità»44, si articolano anche lungo dinamiche di genere che vanno aldilà del sesso dei protagonisti. Così Clémenti, con i suoi capelli lunghi e il modo di vestire, dai pantaloni aderenti, ai broccati, ai lunghi mantelli sembra avvalorare l’ipotesi di una “disfatta del genere”. Il suo corpo androgino e anarchico diviene, nella sua bellezza mediterranea e straniera, il corpo politico di un cinema italiano ello di asolini e a ani che sceglie di ri ettere sulla politica e sulle rivolte giovanili a partire da una gestualità che, nelle parole di Cavani, viene opposta agli slogan gridati nelle piazze e alla loro mercifca ione non la cronaca di na ri ol ione a erma la regista ma n discorso na ri essione etica s lle genera ioni che passa anche attraverso la scelta del silenzio e di simboli che rimandano al tempo del sacro. on ci st pir che entram i ricorrano alla fg ra del doppio proponendoci i loro eroi: Antigone e Tiresia, Julien e il giovane cannibale impersonato da Clémenti. Cannibali La storia di Julien Kotz-Jean Pierre Léaud, icona della Nouvelle Vague e parte del trio di arcangeli folli Léaud-Garrel-Clémenti45, è quella del rampollo indolente di una dinastia dell’industria pesante tedesca, destinata a incrociare le sue fortune con quella del neoca- pitalista Herdhitze, arricchitosi sui campi di sterminio e ricorso alla plastica facciale, purché i segreti di entrambi vengano mantenuti. Essa
41 Ibidem. 42 L. Passerini, Autoritratto di gruppo, cit., pp. 50-51. 43 A. Bravo, A colpi di cuore. Storie del sessantotto, Bari, Laterza, 2008, p. 70. 44 R. Eugeni, Nuovi volti/corpi attoriali, in G. Canova (a cura di), Storia del cinema italiano. 1965- 1969, cit., p. 188. 45 Marc’O, Quello che state per fare, cit., p. 89.
237
ciaomaschio_interni.indb 237 23/01/20 14:20 giulia fanara
corre parallelamente, sia pure in un tempo diverso ma suturato dal montaggio46 – in un passato che per Pasolini è sempre incardinato al presente così come il mito è l’altra faccia del realismo e il sacro convive col desacralizzato –, a quella del giovane cannibale senza nome perché prima della storia, dal deserto al palazzo, dalle parole e dall’eco di ciò che accade nel mondo, le manifestazioni degli studenti a Berlino cui Ida invita inutilmente Julien ad andare, al silenzio e al rito delle teste mozzate offerte al vulcano. Il suo, come scriveva Aristarco, malgrado l’ambientazione cinquecentesca è il tempo pri- migenio dell’orda e dell’uccisione del padre47, il tempo di un rivolta destinata, come quella di Julian, a essere schiacciata attraverso uno sbranamento che non lasci traccia, perché «la società attuale schiaccia non solo i fgli dis idienti ma persino elli che si compiacciono dell’ambiguità»48: nessun resto come racconterà l’ingenuo Maracchione all’interno del porcile, nessun resto, possiamo immaginare, dei ribelli lasciati in pasto ai cani in uno smembramento dionisiaco. Lo stesso Pasolini accomuna le scelte dei due giovani: l’amore del primo per i maiali è «un amore simbolico, un simbolo analogo al cannibalismo. Con questa sfumatura: il cannibalismo è simbolo di una rivolta as- soluta, che rasenta la più atroce delle santità, mentre l’amore dei maiali in defniti a na orma possi ile dell amore lo lascia a mezza strada»49. e asolini in n flm che ama pi degli altri e che considera l’antecedente di Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma (1975), un flm che ole essere scomodo indigesto sta pi dalla parte di n Julian «che fa poesia della propria vita ed è questo il motivo per cui la società lo divora»50, è il giovane cannibale a essere, con le parole del regista, non il «selvaggio immerso nello stato di natura», non il barbaro capace di piangere e che si pentirebbe pur di aver salva la vita come è Citti, ma «un intellettuale, un ribelle» che affronta quasi voluttuosamente la condanna a morte rivendicando con le sole parole pronunciate l’uccisione del padre e l’essersi cibato con gioia della sua carne. Il cannibalismo è una forma di linguaggio, in quanto forma
46 M. Viano, A Certain Realism. Making Use of Pasolini’s Film Theory and Practice, Berkeley-Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1993, p. 220. 47 Aristarco G., Porcile, “Cinema Nuovo”, XXVIII, 201, 1969, pp. 376-379. 48 P.P. Pasolini, Il sogno del centauro, in Id., Saggi sulla politica e sulla società, Milano, Mondadori, 1999, p. 1489. 49 Ibidem. 50 P. P. P a s o l i n i , Le regole di un’illusione, Roma, Associazione «Fondo Pier Paolo Pasolini», 1991, p. 209.
238
ciaomaschio_interni.indb 238 23/01/20 14:20 politiche del corpo e corpo politico
di rif to totale di rif to mostr oso della com nica ione corren- temente accettata dagli uomini»51. Pasolini, lettore di Foucault, sa che la era sfda è tra il potere e il corpo tra il politico e il i ente. a i legami tra il regista e il floso o rancese anno oltre elli di na io- grafa similare come scri e sposito nelle pagine che dedica all a tore degli Scritti corsari e alla sua precoce scoperta della natura biopolitica del nuovo potere, «ciò che Pasolini coglie è il mutamento strategico del potere neocapitalistico, passato dalla logica dell’esclusione a quella dell’inclusione»52. Non a caso Foucault, vedendolo solo anni dopo, titolerà il suo commento a Comizi d’amore (1956) I mattini grigi della tolle- ranza53. Quella tolleranza e quella incitazione al godimento che si sono sostituiti al potere disciplinare e che porteranno Pasolini a ripudiare la Trilogia della vita e a scegliere una via che troppo semplicemente è stata letta come ella del pessimismo e della sconftta. i trattere e piuttosto, nel caso di Julian, di quello che, analizzando il suo incontro con pino a nel porcile dell omonimo testo teatrale e che nel flm ie- ne sostituito dall’episodio sull’Etna, Gragnolati e Holzhey descrivono come un abbandono gioioso dell’azione e della speranza, e, usando le parole di Judith/Jack Halberstam, «un’arte queer del fallimento»54, un modo creativo di essere nel mondo, un affetto politico, un perdere «senza far rumore, e, nel perdere, immaginare altri scopi per la vita, per l’amore, per l’arte e per l’essere»55. «Ho ucciso mio padre, ho man- giato carne umana e tremo di gioia» è, se vogliamo seguire Foucault, quel coraggio della verità, quel “parlar franco” di fronte al potere e a rischio della vita che appartiene al parresiastes e che Pasolini non cessa di rivendicare. Così i giovani ribelli restando fedeli al loro desiderio si offrono in pasto l’uno all’innocenza dei maiali, l’altro a quello stesso potere che l’ha indotto alla rivolta e all’esclusione, agendo la sola negazione possibile al loro ingresso nel simbolico. In I cannibali di a ani la fg ra di ntigone ritt land tanto cara alla flosofa e alle pensatrici emministe iene a fancata da
51 Id., Il sogno del centauro, cit., p. 1488. 52 R. Esposito, Pensiero vivente. rigine e attualità della flosofa italiana, Torino, Einaudi, 2010, p. 201. 53 Foucault M., Les matins gris de la tolérance, “Le Monde”, 23 marzo 1977, p. 24 (tr. it. I mattini grigi della tolleranza, “aut aut”, 345, pp. 55-59). 54 Gragnolati M., Holzhey C.F.E., Active Passivity? Spinoza in Pasolini’s “Porcile”, in “World Picture Journal”, 10, 2015, pp. 1-10 (tr. it. Una passività attiva? Spinoza nel Porcile di Pasolini, in Pier Paolo Pasolini: resistenze, dissidenze, ibridazioni, “Lo Sguardo”, III, 19, 2015, p. 24. 55 J. Halberstam, The Queer Art of Failure, Durham-Londra, Duke University Press, 2011, p. 88.
239
ciaomaschio_interni.indb 239 23/01/20 14:20 giulia fanara
ella del gio ane iresia ierre l menti che se sem ra confg rarsi come aiutante della protagonista nel suo desiderio di dare sepoltura al fratello ribelle il cui cadavere, come quello di tanti altri giovani, si vuole venga lasciato a titolo di monito sulle strade di una Milano governata da un potere poliziesco che trova nella televisione il più edele alleato fnisce con il confg rarsi sopratt tto a li ello isi o come il suo doppio. Antigone è bionda e Tiresia ha lunghi capelli bruni, ma la snellezza dei corpi, la grazia dei movimenti, l’abbiglia- mento sottolineano la loro androginia. Il giovane pronuncia poche parole in una lingua antica e sconosciuta, si serve di simboli, pesci, conchiglie, arcaici rituali di sepoltura del tutto estranei a un mondo regolato dallo Stato, dai militari, dalla famiglia, dai manicomi, dalle prigioni, dal panopticon televisivo. Essi, come le tombe etrusche, rimandano al tempo del sacro, alla ricerca di quella che Cavani chia- ma «una purezza primitiva», una «sincerità dimenticata» che li rende canni ali rispetto a na societ che li rif ta perch respingono le s e leggi disumane56. Quando vengono arrestati e Antigone torturata, Tiresia è messo alla berlina dal conduttore che lo paragona al giovane selvaggio cresciuto nella foresta e incapace di comunicare. Come ha notato Kaja Silverman, i personaggi maschili di Cavani «occupano tutti posizioni del soggetto che sono più classicamente “femminili” che maschili interagiscono con le donne in modi che sfdano le usuali convenzioni eterosessuali […] sono ai margini o ai limiti della loro cultura»57. a proposito del flm osser ando come le rela ioni eterosessuali vi appaiano «trasversali e instabili», individua proprio nei cambi d’abito58 l’affermazione della loro «reciproca identità» e una «distruzione della differenza sessuale anche a un altro livello», resa possibile dalla «disponibilità del personaggio maschile a spogliarsi del fallo». Iscrivendo in tal modo «il desiderio di una sorta di grado zero della soggettività, una soggettività che sfugge alla piena strutturazione simbolica e così facendo sfugge alle strettoie del genere»59. Ma forse
56 L. Cavani, cit. in P. Tallarigo e L. Gasparini (a cura di), Lo sguardo libero. Il cinema di Liliana Cavani, Firenze, La Casa Usher, 1990, p. 54. 57 K. Silverman, The Acoustic Mirror. The Female Voice in Psychoanalysis and Cinema, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1988, pp. 219-220. 58 Antigone e Tiresia indossano abiti talari e militari per sfuggire alla polizia, «parodie dell’a- bito patriarcale», G. Marrone, The Gaze and the Labyrinth. The Cinema of Liliana Cavani, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2000, p. 73. 59 Ivi, p. 224.
240
ciaomaschio_interni.indb 240 23/01/20 14:20 politiche del corpo e corpo politico
ancora più rivelatrice è la sequenza in cui i due ragazzi, inseguiti dai cani e dai militari, corrono nudi dopo essersi nascosti in una sauna: ripresi di spalle, i corpi esili e i lunghi capelli cancellano ogni diffe- renza e affermano, scrive ancora Silverman, «il sogno dell’androginia». ome non pensare alla cele re otografa di ohn ennon e o Ono contro la guerra che sarà poi copertina dell’album Two Virgins del 1968? Se per enunciare la propria autorialità Cavani, come sostiene la studiosa, deve “rifare” l’uomo nell’immagine della donna, quale corpo poteva essere più duttile che quello di Clémenti? Si potrebbe ri ettere s lla scelta del nostro attore da parte di registi come a ani Visconti, Pasolini interrogandoci sulle conseguenze sul piano stilistico di na frma eer na domanda per esempio a an ata da ere ncan che al tempo stesso coglie t tte le di fcolt di o rire na risposta che non può peraltro prescindere dalle considerazioni sul contesto repressivo in cui essi si trovavano ad operare60. 1970. «Così si fa la rivoluzione nel cinema»61. Ribelli, vampiri, utopie L’anno 1970 è uno dei più intensi per Pierre: da I cannibali a Teste tagliate (Cabezas Cortadas, G. Rocha), Il conformista, Necropolis (F. Bro- cani), Ninì Tirabusciò, la donna che inventò la mossa (M. Fondato) – dove ha un piccolo ruolo, del tutto confacente, dai costumi alle battute, come artista futurista –, Marie pleine de gr ce J. Varela , La pacifsta (M. Jancsó). Roma rimane il suo punto di riferimento ed è qui che Glauber Rocha lo intervista insieme a quelle che considera alcune tra le fg re pi importanti del cinema contemporaneo ertol cci Straub, Jancsó62. Presentando i suoi interlocutori, nota a proposito del nostro come egli rappresenti nell’Europa attuale quello che Brando aveva rappresentato in America. La conversazione mira a un cine- ma contro oll ood n cinema li ero non pornografco p ro e come vorrebbe Clémenti e come il super8 sembra rendere possibile, rivoluzionario e alla portata di tutti.
60 D. Duncan, The Queerness of Italian Cinema, in F. Burke (a cura di), A Companion to Italian Cinema, Malden-Oxford-Chichester, Wiley, 2017, p. 476. 61 Titolo dell’intervista che Rocha realizza nel 1970 a casa di Gianni Barcelloni – regista e produttore, tra l’altro, di Porcile, Vento dell’ st, Capricci, Claro –, casa in cui alloggia e dove «circola obbligatoriamente il giovane cinema mondiale che passa per Roma», in Id., Revolução do cinema novo io lham ra m raflme pp. . 62 Ibidem.
241
ciaomaschio_interni.indb 241 23/01/20 14:20 giulia fanara
In La pacifsta-Smetti di piovere, l’attore sembra riprendere il suo aspetto sadico e noir solo per rivelarsi un amante romantico e vota- to alla morte. In una Milano rarefatta, moderna e industriale dove i giovani scendono in piazza gridando potere operaio sulle note di Contessa i l s ancs in n flm ol to da onica itti e scritto con io anna agliardo sceglie di interrogarsi s lla genera ione dei fgli del benessere, sulle ragioni dei movimenti extraparlamentari e sul nascente terrorismo nero, mettendo in luce le dinamiche violente e omoerotiche che hanno fno a esto momento legato ichele l m- enti ai s oi compagni d a ent ra. a il gio ane rif ta di compiere il delitto che gli è stato commissionato scegliendo la non violenza e l’amore per Barbara-Monica Vitti, single confortata da un “invertito” e presa di mira dai neofascisti per la sua inchiesta giornalistica sui movimenti giovanili. Anche qui l’attore, tenebroso ed euforico, sembra abitato da una pulsione di morte che lo conduce a lasciarsi uccidere. E ancora una volta, come affermava Clémenti nel suo diario, è «la differenza a essere giudicata, a essere rimessa in riga»63. Il suo abban- dono dei valori di una virilità fascista fatta di violenza e prevaricazione, che non ha nulla a che vedere con un corpo – braccia e piedi spesso nudi, pantaloni a zampa viola, capelli sulle spalle – distante anni luce dal look da bravo ragazzo che Giusva Fioravanti aveva reso popola- re nel suo ruolo di Andrea nella serie Rai La famiglia Benvenuti (A. Giannetti, 1968-1969), ne segnerà irrevocabilmente il destino. Sarà Barbara, invertendo i ruoli, a rendergli giustizia credendo di salvarlo ma attraverso quella stessa violenza che entrambi avevano condanna- to, in un movimento che passa dai toni della commedia e dell’ironia, ampiamente sperimentati da Vitti che a tratti sembra ironizzare sul suo passato antonioniano sognando di fuggire con Michele in un’isola deserta, a quelli del dramma e del disincanto. All’interno del commis- sariato, dove il suo racconto è accolto come quello di una mitomane, e impadronitasi di una pistola, dicendo a se stessa di essere Calamity Jane, Monica, che da Modesty Blaise al flm di onicelli ha imparato a maneggiare le pistole, decide di sparare. Uscito nella primavera del 1971, La vittima designata sembra antici- pare nel titolo il ruolo di capro espiatorio che Clémenti dovrà suo mal- grado indossare fnendo tra le m ra di egina oeli. imaneggiando l’intreccio dell’hitchcockiano Delitto per delitto (Delitto per delitto – L’altro
63 P. Clémenti, Pensieri dal carcere, cit., p. 59.
242
ciaomaschio_interni.indb 242 23/01/20 14:20 politiche del corpo e corpo politico
uomo, Strangers on a Train a ri io cidi torna alla fg ra del doppio, dove il conte Tiepolo impersonato da Clémenti millanta come oggetto di scambio dell’assassinio della moglie del protagonista l omicidio di n gemello cr dele che nel fnale scopriremo essere nes- sun altro che se stesso. Ma il doppio allaccia entrambi i protagonisti, il conte e il giovane pubblicitario, interpretato da un Tomas Milian non meno popolare tra il pubblico più giovane, cui la moglie ricca e glaciale fa da ostacolo a un’immaginaria carriera e al rapporto con la modella con la quale intrattiene una relazione. Aristocratico l’uno, ormai borghese l’altro appaiono abitati da una medesima irrequietezza, pavida, ipocrita e conformista nel caso di Stefano Augenti, sfacciata e cinica in Matteo Tiepolo, le cui vesti colorate e barocche dialogano, nei momenti chiave della pellicola, con i bianchi e il nero di un mantello che fa di lui al tempo stesso un vampiro e una donna fatale. In un flm che en ncia fn dalle prime att te asi na dichiara ione di poetica, la centralità dello stile e delle donne, sono i due personaggi maschili invece a rubare la scena in quella che è, da parte di Matteo, na sfda di sed ione na sed ione che come a erma a drillard «spezza la sessualizzazione distintiva dei corpi e l’ineluttabile econo- mia fallica che ne deriva»64 con ermando la fg ra del doppio ale «veicolo privilegiato per esprimere contenuti oggetto di repressione secolare, come la pulsione narcisistica o l’attrazione omosessuale»65. Alla stregua di un vampiro, Matteo invade lo spazio dell’altro, capace di apparire in ogni dove esercitando il suo contagio. Come quella di ogni doppio, la sua presenza, a tratti diabolica, è metafora «dell’in- quietante estraneità» della pulsione di morte66. Il primo incontro tra i due, apparentemente casuale ma segnato dall’acquisto di un pendente con l’alchemico numero dodici, un numero sacrale per Matteo come l’ora da prestabilita della sua morte, accade in una Venezia da gothic romance, dove l’acqua dei canali e il motoscafo del conte sul quale Stefano e Fábiane sono invitati a salire, molto lontani dalla Milano della p licit e dei aci er gina sem rano da ero il f me dell de e la barca di Caronte. In questo giallo capace di oscillare con ammirevole disinvoltura tra horror e noir, il successo e il denaro sono il moderno
64 J. Baudrillard, Della seduzione, tr. it. P. Lalli, Milano, SE, 1997, p. 19 (ed. or. De la séduction, Parigi, Éditions Galilée, 1979). 65 M. Fusillo, L’altro e lo stesso. Teoria e storia del doppio, Firenze, La Nuova Italia, 1998, p. 28. 66 S. Kofman, Le double e(s)t le diable: l’inquiétante étrangeté de “L’homme au sable” (“Der Sandmann”), “Revue Française de Psychanalyse”, XXXVIII, 1, 1974, p. 56.
243
ciaomaschio_interni.indb 243 23/01/20 14:20 giulia fanara
sostituto dell’oro, merce di scambio in molte storie romantiche del doppio. Se Stefano riuscirà a concretizzare il desiderio di liberarsi della moglie progettando di fuggire con Fábiane, la bellezza di quest’ultima sembra svanire ed essere funzionale, come nei noir (basti pensare a La famma del peccato, Double Indemnity, B. Wilder, 1944), a un’attrazione più o meno mascherata tra i due protagonisti67. li sforamenti gli abbracci, il torso nudo, glabro e ferito di Matteo (che ne attribuisce la responsabilità all’inesistente gemello) sono molto più che indizi di un gender trouble: come scrive Fusillo, «la dissociazione fra modelli comportamentali positivi e negativi (e quindi repressi), che incrina la fssit delle identit sociali e sess ali p essere considerata na delle costanti «di tutto il macrotesto sul doppio»68. Pochi mesi prima, Pierre aveva partecipato a quell’happening col- lettivo che era stato Necropolis. Creazione di un regista “alieno” come ranco rocani il flm regala il ritratto pi m lti orme e complesso del mondo di cui Clémenti, come gli altri protagonisti, da Carmelo Bene, a Tina Aumont, Paul Jabara, Bruno Corazzari e Viva Auder, era parte. Brocani aveva conosciuto Pierre attraverso Schifano, e, come ricorda, «su Schifano gravitava tutto questo mondo e Viva, Nico tutte quelle donne erano venute in Italia per Pierre»69. In quest’opera colorata e notturna, trasandata e visionaria, preziosa nel suo 35 mm, la Roma città eterna, della vita e della morte, si fa ventre che riconsegna per accumulo, dalla letteratura al mito, tutta la crudeltà della storia. In questa galleria di diavoli, streghe, Frankenstein, contesse Báthory, Dionisi, Montezuma, turisti americani, in questo «canto mortuario», come scrive Luca Verrelli, fatto «di frammenti e residui, di scorie e di macerie c lt rali cinematografche artistiche politiche 70, Pierre diviene Attila, cavalcando a torso nudo nelle profondità sotterranee per abbracciare i suoi fratelli e liberare i popoli dall’ignominia. Un’im- magine destinata a tornare in quel nuovo happening, in quel mondo
67 Come racconta Milian, si erano conosciuti sul set di I cannibali e ne era nata un’amicizia, e, a proposito di La Vittima designata la storia di est ltimo flm pre ede a na orte attra ione tra il mio personaggio e il suo e, dato il mio modo di interpretare, quest’attrazione si trasferì un po’ anche nei confronti di Pierre. Fra di noi non ci fu un vero e proprio “corpo a corpo”, ma di certo non perché non ci piacessimo», T. Milian, M. Gomarasca, Monnezza amore mio, Milano, Rizzoli, 2014. 68 M. Fusillo, L’altro e lo stesso, cit., p. 40. 69 Intervista a Franco Brocani, in Associazione Vi(s)ta Nova (a cura di), Lucca Film Festival 2008, cit., p. 81. 70 L. Verrelli, Necropolis, in Distorsioni, 2013, http://www.distorsioni.net/canali/cinema/necropolis, [ultima consultazione 13 maggio 2019].
244
ciaomaschio_interni.indb 244 23/01/20 14:20 politiche del corpo e corpo politico
prima del mondo, in quella genesi o liturgia dei corpi e delle loro posture che è in funzione di un cominciamento del visibile stesso71 che sarà La cicatrice intérieure dell’amico Garrel (1972), ma lontano dall’Italia e da un’esperienza che l’ha segnato per sempre. In una lettera dal carcere a Brocani, ch’egli ricorda come “imbarazzante”72, Pierre aveva scritto: i con l isolamento la presen a del passato si fssa in n eterno presente e la tua immagine si presenta spesso ai miei occhi. Penso a Attila, alle s e orde di ar ari animati dal so fo di ino. enso alla fne certa e alla morte dell’imperialista americano. Penso al mondo nuovo che sorgerà da questa liberazione. Penso alle nuove generazioni che saranno liberate da esto agello. enso al come a na erra romessa. enso al nostro flm. Penso alla felicità dell’Umanità. Penso all’Anarchia dei nostri pensieri. Penso all’Amore. Penso alla gioia di essere qui. Penso… penso… penso… alla Libertà. Vi abbraccio, Pierre.73
71 G. Deleuze, L’immagine-tempo. Cinema 2, tr. it. L. Rampello, Milano, Ubulibri, 1989, pp. 220- 223 (ed. or. L’image-temps. Cinéma 2, Parigi, Les Éditions de Minuit, 1985). 72 Intervista a Franco Brocani, cit., p. 83. 73 Lettere dal carcere. Pierre Clémenti, Associazione Vi(s)ta Nova (a cura di), Lucca Film Festival 2008, cit., p. 77.
245
ciaomaschio_interni.indb 245 23/01/20 14:20 Finito di stampare nel mese di gennaio 2020 presso Printbee, Noventa Padovana (PD)
ciaomaschio_interni.indb 384 23/01/20 14:20 Differenzedifferences Una ragazza piuttosto complicata Paola Pitagora e I pugni in tasca di Marco Bellocchio
Giulia Fanara
A Complicated Girl: Paola Pitagora and Marco Bellocchio’s Fists in the Pocket Scholarly understanding of Bellocchio’s debut film has given emphatic importance to his main male protagonist; this essay intends instead to point out that Giulia, the embryonic figure of Bellocchian women, plays an equally important role in relation to gender dynamics that, in this fatherless family, unfold in a disruptive way. A weaver of stories, alliances, destinies, and with a fatal power as the antagonist of the world of the Law, the words used by Maurizio Grande to ap- proach the female figures of tragedy relate her to the Orestean Electra, to the darkness of the bond with maternal involved in the choice of matricide. She also embodies genre uncertainty, through her virile conduct and in her love for the brother, as feminist scholars as Irigaray, Jacobs, Scott have sought in different ways to comment. However, she also embodies the desires, behaviours, and contradictions of the next generation of women and actresses, among them Pitagora, who only at the end of the sixties will be able to find a more complete expression.
Keywords: Women, Agency, Matricide, Electra, Gender
ELETTRA Abbracciami, petto contro petto, fratello carissimo: l’insanguinata maledizione di nostra madre ci separa dalle case paterne. ORESTE Vieni e stringimi al tuo petto, e piangi, come sulla tomba di un morto. (Euripide, Elettra)
Tutto comincia con una lettera... È il primo fotogramma di I pugni in tasca (M. Bellocchio, 1965) dopo i titoli di testa, a caratteri bianchi su sfondo nero come
Giulia Fanara, Dipartimento di Storia dell’Arte e Spettacolo, Sapienza Università di Roma, Via dei Volsci 122, 00185 Roma, [email protected]
L’Avventura 2/2017 ISSN 2421-6496 International Journal of Italian Film and Media Landscapes © Società editrice il Mulino 220 Giulia Fanara la notte e l’inquietudine di un Dies Irae che sembra una ninna nanna sinistra ed estrema, destinata a riapparire come motivo quando il matricidio è compiuto e a tornare a chiusura del cerchio dopo la morte di Ale, sigillata dall’acuto finale, irreale e «fantasmatico» di Violetta in Sempre libera degg’io/folleggiare di gioia in gioia (Scandola 2015, 161). Una voce maschile, che scopriamo appartenere al fratello maggiore, Augusto, colui che ha preso il posto del padre, legge la lettera anonima che la sorella Giulia, com’egli subito indovina, ha scritto a Lucia, la sua fidanzata, per ostacolare i loro progetti di matrimonio. Questa azione sintomatica da parte di Giulia, se da un lato introduce alla complessità delle relazioni familiari sulle quali il film è incentrato, dall’altro induce a riflettere sull’importanza della figura interpretata da Paola Pitagora, misurata e apprezzata dai critici del tempo soprattutto in termini di performance piuttosto che in rapporto al suo ruolo nelle dinamiche di genere che, in questa famiglia senza padre, si dispiegano in modo dirompente. Non per nulla Bellocchio dirà molti anni dopo: «In fondo, guardando indietro, c’è sì una grande sensualità nella Paola Pitagora de I pugni in tasca, lei è sicuramente molto bella, però è come se fosse un personaggio a parte (non a caso è l’unica che sopravvive), ed è come se io non me ne fossi reso conto facendo il film» (Bellocchio in Dottorini e Roberti 2011, 9). Il regista individua invece in Diavolo in corpo (1986) una sorta di cesura nella sua filmografia che lo porterebbe, a partire appunto dal lavoro con Maruschka Detmers, una Giulia che ritorna e non solo attraverso il nome, a una scoperta di un’«immagine femminile» che «fino a quel momento aveva abitato in dei personaggi certamente non finti, ma riferiti più in profondità ad un’esperienza che riguardava in parte il mio rapporto con il passato. Erano sorelle, erano amanti, erano prostitute, erano disperate» (Bellocchio in Dottorini e Roberti 2011, 9); e a vedere nelle sue personagge una sorta di guida, una «potenza produttiva» dotata di un senso nuovo e capace di mutare le forme delle sue opere. Interrogandosi su tale senso, sulla messa in sce- na di questa potenza da parte delle figure femminili nella filmografia del regista, Alessia Cervini ne individua due modalità, potremmo dire entrambe sovversive: l’una in cui essa si manifesta quale «risposta e opposizione alle forme consolida- te e istituzionalizzate del potere», l’altra «in termini aristotelici […], in quanto termine opposto al dato, al necessario, all’attuale» (Cervini 2011, 102). Figure, dunque, capaci di «scardinare dall’interno i meccanismi di potere (impersonati, non a caso, in molte occasioni, da figure maschili repressive e autoritarie), così come di proporre un’alternativa, non data ma immaginabile, a una condizione cui saremmo heideggerianamente assegnati» (Cervini 2011, 102). Se il riferimento di Cervini sono soprattutto gli ultimi film del regista, questo «personaggio a parte» che è la Giulia dell’opera prima bellocchiana, variamente etichettata come nevrotica, fredda, cinica, diabolica, silenziosa, che il regista sem- bra tenere a distanza, relegandola non poche volte al ruolo di spettatrice, sottoli- neandone nelle molteplici inquadrature a lei riservate mutevolezza, smarrimento, euforia, gelosia, ingenuità, è in realtà anche una tessitrice di storie, di alleanze, di Paola Pitagora e I pugni in tasca di Marco Bellocchio 221 destini: è colei che, appunto, sopravvive non solo ai fratelli − incarnazione (sia pure maldestra) il maggiore della legge paterna, vittima del proprio delirio narcisistico il secondo, figura liminale il terzo, Leone −, ma anche colei che, pur rendendosi complice dell’assassinio della madre, finisce con il rafforzarne il legato. Come tale, rimanda alla tragedia, che, nelle parole di Maurizio Grande, è, a differenza del tragico, «fenditura del corpo sociale» attraverso la quale si esplica il potere dell’Altro di dare la morte (Grande 2010, 45, 47). Nei ritratti che lo studioso ha dedicato a dodici donne «figure del destino», ha ben messo in luce, da uomo e da lacaniano, la potenza fatale della donna quale irriducibile antagonista al mon- do della Legge. E, nelle pagine dedicate a Elettra, egli scorge nel suo assegnare la morte alla madre la possibilità di «pensare la propria morte», di «entrare nel nulla attraversando il corpo della madre, risalendo il cunicolo della generazione» (Grande 2010, 51), in una «costellazione purezza-odio-bellezza» che «rende bella e intoccabile la sua pulsione», che si pone fuori dalla natura, fuori dal femminile e dalla vita, da quanto, cioè, appartiene al «materno, al cruento, all’erinnico» (Grande 2010, 55), da quell’oggetto impossibile da possedere che è la madre, al di là dell’amore per il padre o dell’alleanza con il nuovo ordine patriarcale, dove la morte diviene necessaria come «unica possibilità del senso» al di qua del linguaggio (Grande 2010, 72). Tanto la cornice più propriamente filosofica di un tragico femminile che aprirebbe la via a un nulla destinato a pervadere il pensiero occidentale, tanto quella lacaniana di una dialettica godimento-sapere che vedrebbe Elettra schierarsi dalla parte del potere-sapere maschile sembrano, dunque, a Grande non esaustive rispetto a una fatalità che appare impossibil- mente «esterna a un regime del senso», «inaccessibile al linguaggio e all’ordine simbolico» (Grande 2010, 66). Tale esternità, che spinge la sua figura «al di là, o al di qua, dei segni che cercano il patteggiamento con la natura» (Grande 2010, 72), nel sancire il passaggio all’ordine simbolico e alla legge paterna solo secon- dariamente assolverebbe a quest’ultimo compito, svelando sotto la maschera che le rivisitazioni moderne del mito hanno iniziato a sollevare la pulsione di morte, alimento di un odio «assoluto quanto la sua castità» (Grande 201, 72) e di una mancanza di un oblio che cancelli, prima dell’assassinio del padre, una madre che le ha dato la vita e il cui potere di vita le è insopportabile. Tale esternità de- bordante, più che liminale, coincide con l’eccesso che è Elettra, premendo sulla stessa scrittura dello studioso nel compimento di un medesimo viaggio a ritroso che ci riporta all’origine, al grembo materno (o, come diremo più avanti, all’om- bra della madre), dove soltanto, forse, l’enigma sembra sciogliersi attraverso le parole di chiusura del saggio, che tracciano in questo estremo «mettere al mondo la morte» un gesto altrettanto estremo di negazione della «figura umana: immagine di una immagine (la madre) che deve sprofondare nella tenebra perché contiene l’immagine non-madre: la figlia» (Grande 2010, 72). Se anche nella lettura di Irigaray il mito di Elettra segna lo scacco del diritto materno di fronte all’imporsi dell’ordine patriarcale («Oreste uccide la madre 222 Giulia Fanara perché lo esige l’impero del Dio Padre e lo esige il suo appropriarsi delle potenze arcaiche della madre terra» [Irigaray 1989 (1980), 22]), dove ad Elettra non resta che l’emarginazione e il seppellimento nella follia del matricidio − «Ma dove si trova, per noi, l’immaginario e la simbolica della vita intrauterina e del primo corpo a corpo con la madre? In quale notte, in quale follia vengono lasciati?», domanda Irigaray (1989 [1980], 25) −, è proprio questo corpo a corpo madre-figlia che il patriarcato interdice − e che Grande sembra intuire nel suo aspetto di negazione senza però rilanciarne le potenzialità sovversive −, a rimarcare la necessità, per non farci complici di questa uccisione, di «trovare, ritrovare, inventare le parole, le frasi che dicono il rapporto più arcaico e più attuale con il corpo della madre, con il nostro corpo, le frasi che traducono il legame con il suo corpo, il nostro, quello delle nostre figlie» (Irigaray 1989 [1980], 29), di riaffermare una genealogia femminile. Giulia sopravvive e, a differenza di Elettra, lascia morire il fratello nel quale si è specchiata, come lei donna e uomo al tempo stesso, in uno scambio dei generi che, se ci lascia confusi e ignari del suo destino, ci interroga sulle potenze del femminile, sull’«impensato che è l’ombra della madre» (Zamboni Robotti e Muraro Brunello 2007, 2), su un negativo la cui «magica forza» fa esplodere o implodere il desiderio o aprire all’essere se solo si sappia «soffermarsi presso di lui» (Hegel in Muraro 2005, 4). È a partire da tale necessità che vorrei pensare questa ragazza degli anni Sessanta, un po’ sbandata, misteriosa, innocente, folle e anche strega − «chi non ricorda infatti il lampo di malvagità e di follia che illuminava i suoi occhi in I pugni in tasca?», scriverà di lei Grand Hotel qualche anno dopo (Anonimo 1969) −, una «ragazza piuttosto complicata» come Damiani definisce la sua ben più crudele e determinata Claudia-Catherine Spaak nell’omonimo film del ’69: rinchiusa come un’eroina del gotico tra le pareti, ritornanti nella filmografia del regista, della casa di Bobbio, Giulia, figura pupale delle donne a venire bellocchiane, scopre la sua sessualità nel seguitare di un triangolo edipico in cui è Augusto, primo oggetto delle sue attenzioni, ad aver preso il posto del padre, e dove Ale, preda della sua irrefrenabile energia, consunto da pulsioni che affiorano nel balbettio semiotico della lingua e in un corpo elettrificato da marionetta, tra delirio di onnipotenza e bisogno disperato di conferme per cui l’altro non è che un’incarnazione di una parte di se stesso, vede in lei il suo oggetto, il sostituto materno che riuscirà a conquistare prendendo nel suo cuore il posto del fratello maggiore (il momento cruciale è la complicità silenziosa durante la partita a carte truccata, poi rinsal- data dalla «partita» di parole tra Ale e Giulia davanti la bara della madre) (Figg. 1-2-3); almeno finché Giulia non verrà privata anche di Leone, il «suo» bambi- no, l’ultimo legame con un materno che qui mostra tutto il suo volto abietto e crudele: Giulia e Sandro non a caso, coppia genitoriale surrettizia, soccorrono Leone in preda a una crisi e lo distendono sul tavolo in una posa che ne anticipa (come la falsa chiamata al dottore) la trasfigurazione in cadavere (Fig. 4); nella parte iniziale della sequenza della soffitta, quella nel corso della quale non solo Paola Pitagora e I pugni in tasca di Marco Bellocchio 223 l’uccisione di Leone ma anche il rapporto sessuale verranno consumati (come si evince più chiaramente dalle immagini del bacio reintegrate nella versione restau- rata), Giulia si offre, scherzando, di trasportare Leone in una vecchia carrozzina, cimelio di un’infanzia non poi così lontana. Ma Leone appartiene alla madre, lo sappiamo da subito, quando le parole fuori campo della donna che lo interroga sulle voci degli animali introducono il primo pranzo di famiglia cui ci è dato di assistere all’insegna dell’abiezione: in questo riaffiorare del semiotico, in questa perdita di confini che è di chora, cogliamo come la mediazione materna si tenga lontana dal simbolico, dove sono le pulsioni del fonico a «invadere il linguaggio e sconvolgerlo con il tumulto dei loro ritmi» (Cavarero 2003, 148). Così Leone designa il materno, l’abietto dal quale occorre staccarsi per non essere inghiottiti nella relazione duale, il confine oscillante tra proprio e improprio, infanzia ed età adulta, umano e animale (Augusto, dopo la morte della madre, lo rimprovera per aver dormito nella stalla e il ragazzo esprime il desiderio di cambiare casa, ma anche Ale, all’inizio del film, si lancia da un albero ed è in competizione con Leone per la cura dei conigli). Il gatto bianco, alleato delle streghe non meno del nero, che non a caso mangia dal piatto della genitrice, serve a ricordarcelo, come la sua riapparizione dal camino sotto il quale Ale e Giulia, come Hansel e Gretel, hanno trovato riparo da una cattiva madre (e dalla strega cieca, sua proiezione, che è finita nel forno) e alle loro parole (Figg. 5-6), poco prima dell’uccisione di Leone − un camino dal quale Lou Castel, Giovanni e Pippo di Gli occhi, la bocca (M. Bellocchio, 1982) riemergerà molti anni dopo, quando l’ombra materna può essere finalmente appressata sia pure vestendo i panni del doppio e del cadavere. Un confine al di là del quale la malattia, l’imperfezione, l’Altro rischiano di farci cadere, cadaveri «al di là del limite», «un limite che ha invaso tutto», dove «“io” è espulso », dove non c’è più soggetto né oggetto, ma, appunto, abiezione (Kristeva 1981 [1980], 5-6). «C’è una via delle madri in tutta la mia opera e tanti omicidi e suicidi. In I pugni in tasca lui uccide la madre, in Il gabbiano c’è un suicidio, in Gli occhi, la bocca ancora un suicidio, quello del gemello. Le morti dei figli e delle madri e il rapporto tra figli e madri costituisce il nucleo principale della nostra vita» (Bellocchio 2016). Ale ha espulso la madre abietta attraverso quello stesso movimento di caduta dal quale sarà avvolto nel delirio finale, quando il limite tra orrendo e sublime svapora nelle spire del canto, quando il sublime, appunto, è «bordato di abiezione» e l’ombra della madre è ritornata attraverso la linea femminile della sua discendenza (Kristeva 1981 [1980], 14). Nel cinema italiano di questa seconda metà degli anni Sessanta, scrive Ca- nova che non per nulla cita il film di Bellocchio, non ci sono parricidi (la figura paterna è sottoposta all’eclisse o diviene fantasma) ma matricidi e fratricidi. «Il padre è già morto e tanti film lavorano a partire dalla sua assenza, dal suo lutto. O dalla messa a fuoco di figure di figli che si trovano a dover gestire tout court una condizione − reale o simbolica, ideologica o emotiva, patrimoniale o affettiva − di improvvisa “orfanità”» (Canova 2003, 6-7). In questo «ritrarsi dei padri» 224 Giulia Fanara che è anche uno «sciopero del capitale» starebbe la causa del mancato compi- mento del processo di transizione alla modernità che anche il cinema non cessa di raccontare attraverso strategie di deflessione dello sguardo quali «la fuga, il mascheramento, l’irrisione» (Canova 2003, 10) che in alcuni casi, e il nostro film è una delle eccezioni, lasciano affiorare le lacerazioni del presente (Canova 2003, 20). Nel microcosmo simbolico che è la famiglia bellocchiana, in una provincia che non sembra toccata da un miracolo economico ormai andato (il ’64 è l’anno della congiuntura) se non fosse per l’automobile e per le rare visite in città, Giulia rappresenta la parte oscura del femminile, il suo mistero. Non le appartengono i «dolci inganni» della quasi coetanea Spaak, come lei ragazza di quella «prima generazione» (Piccone Stella 1993) per cui l’età assume una «funzione nuova nella configurazione identitaria» (Capussotti 2004), un «ruolo di rottura» che apre spazio, soprattutto per le donne, a nuovi modelli e a nuovi desideri (Capussotti 2002, 418); non le appartengono la disinvoltura nel ballare il twist o nell’indossare il bikini, la noncuranza, la strumentalizzazione o lo sberleffo nei confronti dei maschi adulti e della loro smania di possesso, le illusioni, i capricci, ma anche la ribellione e l’insofferenza di Sassard. Non a caso il cinema italiano negli anni in cui il miracolo economico bussava alle porte aveva scelto attrici e attori stranieri, come appunto Spaak, Sassard o Elke Sommer, e corpi di adolescenti (Detassis 1982) per negoziare in modo più indolore l’emergere di soggettività inedite che sfidano comportamenti sociali e sessuali consolidati e mettono in discussione i confini di genere inaugurando al tempo stesso nuovi e promettenti ambiti di consumo (Maina e Zecca 2014). Il nostro primo incontro con Giulia avviene sulla strada. Un montaggio serrato ce la presenta dal punto di vista dei due ragazzi in vespa che le girano intorno cantando una nota filastrocca goliardica sulla verginità. Giulia è infastidita e non può fare a meno di ridere quando finiscono a gambe all’aria in uno scivolone non previsto in sceneggiatura (Figg. 7-8). «Sarà mezz’ora che quei due mi girano attorno», dirà ad Augusto che l’ha fatta montare in macchina rimproverandola del suo andare sola per strada. Era quello che voleva, le piace andare in macchina con lui. «Lo sai, Ale mi ha lasciato una poesia, una poesia per me... D’amore», dice al fratello con un intento evidentemente seduttivo; non appena a casa, Ale si fa loro incontro: «Giulia ti ha detto qualcosa su di me, non le crederai mica», e, rivolgendosi a Giulia, «Cosa gli hai detto?». Lei gli risponde cantando le strofe di La spagnola, canzone delle sciantose «regine dell’amore». Queste prime sequenze non solo hanno disegnato i rapporti tra i fratelli, dove Leone è immediatamente relegato alla sfera della malattia e dell’animalità (malgrado mostri in più occasioni di essere il solo «puro» della famiglia), ma anche le dinamiche di genere che li governano e la sessualità repressa di Giulia, presentata sulla strada come una donna promiscua nella scena che trova eco più avanti nel film, quando Ale, dopo essere stato con la prostituta con cui Augusto si accompagna settimanalmente, mostra la ragazza a Giulia dall’auto (che fa intorno al suo corpo un movimento Paola Pitagora e I pugni in tasca di Marco Bellocchio 225 simile a quello dei motociclisti) per farsi bello ed avere la sua approvazione, con- sumando simbolicamente il rapporto con la sorella che qui, come nella richiamata sequenza, diviene protagonista dello sguardo (Fig. 9). Nel primo pranzo che vede riunita tutta la famiglia, questa tensione sessuale si era evidenziata attraverso il tentativo di Ale, respinto da Giulia, di toccarle le gambe, e il tentativo di Giulia di suscitare l’interesse di Augusto attraverso la poesia di Ale, la cui spalla si tro- verà a mordere sensualmente poco dopo (Fig. 10), quando entrambi sono gelosi della telefonata dal tono intimo tra Augusto e Lucia, in una sorta di riattivazione della scena primaria sottolineata a inizio sequenza dallo sguardo di Ale che spia fratello e sorella attraverso la smerigliatura della porta chiusa dello studio. «Qui nessuno è malato d’occhi», dirà Sandro esultando mentre si accinge a distrug- gere quanto appartenuto alla madre, quasi che il suo voyeurismo, replicato per interposta persona quando impone al piccolo allievo di osservare e descrivere in un tema la sorella che prende il sole in terrazza, potesse finalmente liberarsi insieme alla pulsione che lo origina (Fig. 11). Ma la ragazza ha indossato intanto, come nella sequenza della partita a carte, e come Ellen-Gene Tierney in Femmina folle (Leave Her to Heaven, 1945) di John Stahl quando lascia annegare il fratel- lino del marito del quale è gelosa, gli occhiali da sole, un cliché e un’immagine, scrive Doane, che agiscono come «condensazione fortemente marcata di motivi riguardanti sessualità repressa, conoscenza, visibilità e visione, intellettualità e desiderio», segno di una minaccia di appropriazione dello sguardo da parte della donna, indicando «non solo una deficienza nel vedere, ma anche uno sguardo attivo, o anche semplicemente il fatto di vedere come opposto all’essere visti» (Doane 1991, 26-27). Una duplicità che marca il posizionamento stesso della protagonista all’interno del film. Come Elettra, infatti, Giulia è rimasta nell’ombra (nel film, nella critica), come Elettra, è esclusa dalla vita sociale e da una sessualità che rimprovera a quanti la circondano, un’esclusione suggellata dal mancato invito alla festa di compleanno di Lucia, banco di prova dell’impotenza di Ale, unica eco di una modernità che resta fuori dalle mura della villa, insieme all’automobile e alla gita in città, altra occasione in cui si manifesterà la gelosia verso Lucia, quando lei e Sandro siedono pensierosi al tavolino del bar mentre a quello accanto a loro il fratello scherza con la fidanzata e con gli amici e Ale tenta di assumere un ruolo maschile all’interno della «coppia» lasciata in disparte (Fig. 12). Se la festa è un momento cruciale e rivelatore rispetto a Sandro, manifestazione estrema della fragilità sottesa al suo narcisismo, sarà il falò degli averi materni la vera festa sua e di Giulia (Fig. 13), entrambi coinvolti da una furia e da una gioia distruttiva che, non meno della sessualità, sono nel mistero stesso del fuoco e che, ancora una volta, cancellano i confini di genere e il limite tra abietto e sublime: Sandro ha indossato la pelliccia della madre e, insieme, lanciano nel cortile mobili e oggetti per poi darsi − no- nostante il «solido» Augusto abbia tentato di fermarli suggerendo un possibile valore della collezione di Pro Familia, rivista nata nel 1900 e raccomandata alle 226 Giulia Fanara famiglie cattoliche (Fig. 14) − a una sorta di danza selvaggia intorno alle fiamme, in quel «folle abbandono» che spesso coglie i due attori durante le riprese (Pita- gora 2001, 115) (Fig. 15). Il cadavere della madre che sembra dividerli, stando in mezzo a loro, nella scena del funerale, dove la casa già claustrofobica si trasforma in una cripta, in realtà li ha uniti nella comune consapevolezza del matricidio e confermati nel loro appartenere a una stessa progenie che nega la nascita (Figg. 16-17). Esso è destinato a tornare nei film del regista, come le case e le bare e le madri perché al materno, come scrive Diana Sartori, «si può solamente ritorna- re, perché è qualcosa che è sempre già stato, dato da prima» e perché è quella del ritornare la forma «in cui si manifesta l’oscuro materno» (Sartori 2007, 33). Forse nel romanzo di Gramellini, e in un commiato tragico eppure affidato alla parola tenera di un Fai bei sogni (2016), Bellocchio trova infine la semplicità per raccontare per intero di questo movimento, di un legame non recidibile e di una minaccia al tempo stesso, dell’amore, della delusione e della perdita di fronte a un corpo ancora in caduta contro il cielo stellato di un presepe. A Bobbio, il cadavere materno non è, come direbbe Blanchot, che «la sua propria immagine» (Blanchot 1967, 225), non è più degli specchi, dei ritratti e delle fotografie, di madri e padri e parenti, che riempiono le stanze accanto ai Marlon Brando o agli almanacchi di Topolino (tracce di una modernità che comunque scalfisce gli antichi equilibri patriarcali di questa famiglia borghese di provincia), oggetti di rispecchiamento dei protagonisti, che letteralmente vi si specchiano o vengono sovrapposti ad essi nelle inquadrature e che divengono oggetto della furia distruttrice di Ale (Fig. 18). Per lui esso non è che la risultante della sua narcisistica onnipotenza, di un’iperattività che lo spinge, in questa che è l’ultima scena ad essere girata, a volteggiare intorno al feretro sul quale non esiterebbe a sdraiarsi, come in effetti Lou fa nel corso delle prove mettendo in crisi Paola (Pitagora 2001, 115). Ma la potenza materna non cessa di abitare col suo perturbante la casa: «l’abietto», scrive Kristeva, «è la violenza del lutto di un “oggetto” sempre già perduto. [...] Riporta l’io agli abominevoli limiti da cui si è staccato per essere e lo riporta al non io, alla pulsione, alla morte» (Kristeva 1981 [1980], 17). La ninna nanna, dicevamo, torna sul nero dopo che Ale ha esalato l’ultimo respiro, e, forse, questo requiem non è altro che l’intraducibile voce di chora. Secondo Amber Jacobs, riconsiderare la questione del matricidio in una prospettiva psicanalitica che vada oltre il simbolico lacaniano, per cui la donna è limite, altro, mancanza, significa ripensare alle «leggi della madre» (di contro alla Legge paterna), a un simbolico non riducibile all’Edipo, a un secondo ma- tricidio, quello di una Metis letteralmente incorporata nella Legge del padre, cui l’Orestea fa cenno quando Atena rimarca il suo essere nata solo da padre (Jacobs 2007). L’interesse delle studiose nei confronti della figura di Elettra sta nel suo allontanarsi, come scrive Jill Scott, «dall’universale e dal maschile, dalla logica della psiche verso i domini della finzione e dell’immaginazione» (Scott 2005, 10), Paola Pitagora e I pugni in tasca di Marco Bellocchio 227 nel suo eccesso dirompente che «sfida le strutture gerarchiche e il fallocentrismo di Argo» (Scott 2005, 59). Una lettura queer, pur tenendo conto dell’impossi- bilità greca di far compiere la vendetta da mani femminili, ha evidenziato come in Eschilo e Sofocle, in una tragedia in cui la confusione di genere si evidenzia attraverso tutti i personaggi, Elettra non sia sposata, come la sua sia una condi- zione liminale e come il suo lutto si consumi nell’attesa del ritorno del fratello. Ma anche nella versione euripidea, malgrado Egisto l’abbia data in sposa, ella ha mantenuto la condizione di vergine, ponendosi «in contrasto», scrive Rabinowitz, «con la femminilità e l’eterosessualità tradizionali; odia patologicamente le donne della famiglia (la madre e la sorella). E al tempo stesso appare mascolinizzata e apertamente legata al maschile», al punto da rivendicare per sé, in assenza di Oreste, il ruolo maschile di tirannicida (Rabinowitz 2015, 220). Se in Sofocle Elettra è «tra i generi e priva di una sessualità riconosciuta» (Rabinowitz 2015, 221), in Euripide il suo somigliare al fratello (come scrive Schwab, «alienata dagli altri membri della famiglia, vivi o morti, Elettra si è totalmente identificata con il fratello» [2010, 82]), il desiderio di giacere nella tomba con lui esprimono un desiderio incestuoso nei suoi confronti oltre che in quelli del padre, desiderio che Euripide rende esplicito nel momento in cui Oreste al cimitero le si avvicina in incognito facendola temere per la propria integrità. E al tempo stesso assistiamo a una femminilizzazione di Oreste, che si copre gli occhi col mantello mentre sta per infliggere alla madre il colpo mortale portato a segno dalla mano della sorella (come affermano alcune esegesi del testo). È intorno al rito della visita al cimitero (Fig. 19) che si coagula il progetto delittuoso di Ale ed è al cimitero, al cospetto di Giulia, dopo che insieme hanno provato l’ebbrezza della corsa in auto che lo ha distratto momentaneamente dai suoi propositi, che egli matura, come afferma, la sua definitiva decisione. Mi sembra rilevante allora che nel 2013 Bellocchio metta in scena l’Oreste quasi cin- quant’anni dopo I pugni in tasca, allacciando i personaggi della sua opera prima a quelli di Euripide, benché affermi di non aver letto fino a poco prima il testo della tragedia. Sottolineando le differenze tra Oreste e Ale in un matricidio la cui spinta è etica per il primo, patologica per il secondo, il regista individua anche il loro corrispondere: «Alcune scene dell’Oreste, soprattutto quelle della follia, con la sorella che lo assiste, rimandano ad Ale». E conclude: «per l’eroe greco la fine è una sorta di riabilitazione, mentre nel mio film il protagonista soccombe ai propri delitti» (Bellocchio in Ulivi 2013). Elettra ed Oreste, Giulia ed Ale, due ragazzi, afferma Filippo Gili nelle sue Note di regia, «cui un matricidio, l’inizia- zione erotica ed un twist, non bastano ad annullare il volto, la voce, la tragica bellezza di una madre che non conosce notte» (Gili 2013). Ed Elettra, come la madre, non cessa di tornare come in Pagliacci (M. Bellocchio, 2016), gridando tutto il suo odio per Clitemnestra. Se la morte di Ale è l’immagine che chiude il film, la sequenza della sua crisi letale è un montaggio alternato tra le immagini del suo delirio euforico e poi della 228 Giulia Fanara sua agonia e quelle di Giulia che più volte sta per alzarsi dal letto per rispondere alle invocazioni di aiuto e che infine decide che il destino si compia (Figg. 20- 21), doppiando l’immobilità, e diremmo, il genere di Ale che rimane in soffitta mentre lei urla e poi precipita per le scale − luogo di despecularizzazione in quello che Doane (1987, 136) chiama gothic paranoid film−, dopo aver scoperto la morte di Leone, un Leone restituito al fluido materno, l’acqua della vasca da bagno nella quale Ale ha inutilmente tentato di rigenerarsi. Giulia sopravviverà, dice Bellocchio, forse guarirà, ha detto il dottore, e forse per questo Ale non l’ha uccisa malgrado abbia tentato di farlo, quando il film vira decisamente verso il gotico, quando la trama incestuosa della madre e del figlio abbraccia adesso fratello e sorella e «dietro il castello infestato si trova la segreta: il grembo dalla cui oscurità l’io è emerso in origine, la tomba a cui sa di dovere infine tornare» (Fiedler 1963 [1960], 132). Ma l’identità di genere di Giulia è ancora incerta. Ella scompare alla nostra vista prima che, come scrive Žižek a proposito della Karin di Stromboli, il soggetto abbia «preso posto in una nuova identità simbolica (o che abbia riassunto la precedente)», in questo momento dell’eccesso che è «l’incontro con il Reale, con l’abisso della “libertà astratta”» (Žižek 2001, 51- 52); Giulia scompare appunto al momento dell’atto in senso lacaniano, un atto che il soggetto attraversa piuttosto che agire, in una sorta di eclissi temporanea, un crimine o trasgressione che lo pone al limite della comunità simbolica e dove la donna diviene protagonista «rompendo» con la natura. Forse scivolerà nella follia, o forse si sposerà, come sta per fare Lucia, Crisotemi della tragedia, che se fossimo in un noir starebbe per la good girl che sa fare il caffè e tiene alla sua illibatezza, ma che è una ragazza di città e, malgrado voglia questo matrimonio fino a sognare, come le dice Augusto, la morte di tutti, non è disposta a rinun- ciare a una casa, a un’auto e a un comportamento come si deve. Forse prenderà il posto della madre onnipotente e castratrice, della Regina madre − «ma c’è la regina», risponde la madre ad Ale che ha finto di leggerle la notizia della morte del re d’Inghilterra −, della madre mostruosa, custode di un regno animale qui evocato dal suo rapporto con Leone, dalla presenza del gatto e da tutto quanto gira intorno a topi, conigli e cincillà. Se il film gioca tra i registri del noir, dell’horror e del gotico, regno, quest’ultimo, come la magione, degli specchi e delle «madri morte o dislocate» (Kahane 1985, 335), lo fa, come notava Moravia (1966, 23), connotando in modo del tutto nuovo il protagonista, che non si sforza di na- scondere i suoi delitti «dietro la facciata di un contegno corretto e normale bensì dietro una sistematica e ironica stravaganza» e mostrando tutto il suo distacco da quei valori che vorrebbe dissacrare; così uno stesso filo allaccia in questa storia di adolescenti le figure della tragedia a quelle della fiaba, questa casa infestata e la stessa casa che tornerà, come il regista afferma, ormai sgombra di fantasmi, in Sorelle Mai (2010) e dove tuttavia essi provano a ritornare nel solo modo possi- bile nell’epoca della tecnica: immagini «sopravviventi» (Didi-Huberman 2006) e intermediali (bianco e nero e colore) (Montani 2010), prelievi dello stesso I pugni Paola Pitagora e I pugni in tasca di Marco Bellocchio 229 in tasca, perché il cinema non è che «l’arte di lasciar ritornare i fantasmi», come afferma Jacques Derrida nel film Ghost Dance (K. McMullen, 1983). Giulia non si spenderà per la salvezza del fratello, come invece Gretel, che al pari di Elettra progetta per entrambi l’uccisione della strega-madre cattiva e divorante. Se il gotico femminile, come scrive Kahane, «spesso indulge sulle componenti più masochiste della fantasia femminile, rappresentando il piacere della sottomissione, incoraggia anche un’esplorazione attiva dei confini dell’identità» (Kahane 1985, 342). Giulia, allora, torna come Giulia in Il diavolo in corpo, «versione moderna», scrive Vighi, «dell’antica, diabolica, strega, privata dei suoi immensi poteri e tuttavia capace di risvegliare, anche se in una sola persona, una messe di desideri inconsci sovversivi», un sacro che, per Fagioli e Bellocchio, sopravvivrebbe in questo mondo «attraverso il femminile» (Vighi 2006, 149); per poi divenire Sara Mai, una donna che cerca la sua strada sia pure tra incertezze, sia pure nella difficoltà di costruire una genealogia con la piccola Elena, sua figlia, e che, a differenza del fratello Giorgio, che vi farà ritorno, riuscirà a lasciare la casa (e le zie che ne sono custodi), il fiume, Bobbio. Una giovane donna, parte di quelle nuove soggette delle quali le straniere Sassard e Spaak erano state le antesignane e che, tra la fine degli anni Cinquanta e per tutti i Sessanta, metteranno in scena bisogni, aspirazioni, desideri sempre più in conflitto con una società che nella sua corsa verso la modernizzazione pretende di tenere in sella i valori patriarcali. Forse solo le donne di Pietrangeli sono un passo più in là, pronte a pagare in prima persona il prezzo delle loro scelte. In questo senso l’Adriana di Stefania Sandrelli in Io la conoscevo bene (1965) segna una cesura definitiva all’interno del cinema del decennio. Se solo con gli anni Settanta arriveranno le leggi sul divorzio e sull’aborto – Paola Pitagora sarà protagonista di uno dei fotoromanzi di De Marchi sulla contraccezione (Il segreto, 1975) −, sono gli anni Sessanta a vedere i cambiamenti sociali e culturali che apriranno la via alle riforme e al movimento femminista della seconda ondata. Nel suo Fiato d’artista (Pitagora 2001), Paola evoca con molta intelligenza e partecipazione le sue, di allora, aspirazioni di gio- vane attrice, compagna di Mambor, attore e pittore di quell’avanguardia romana con cui condivideva serate e speranze e, tra le altre cose, i suoi ricordi di I pugni in tasca (prima di allora aveva coperto solo piccoli ruoli in film di genere) e la lapidaria frase di Bellocchio «non farai mai più una cosa così bella». In chiusura, vorrei ricordare un brano che propone dei punti di domanda ai quali, almeno in piccola parte, spero di avere provato a dare una risposta:
L’incapacità di adeguamento, l’egocentrismo, l’ambizione dell’adolescente protago- nista del film erano affini alle furie della nostra giovinezza, si voleva fare piazza pulita di qualcosa, in questo vi era analogia tra il regista piacentino e i pittori romani. E io fra di loro? Quanto conta un’attrice in un film d’autore? Gli allori erano tanti per Bellocchio e per Lou Castel [...], ma potevo dirmi ugualmente soddisfatta. Attrice, dunque, finalmente. Già, ma quale attrice? (Pitagora 2001, 125). 230 Giulia Fanara
Le parole che seguono sono parole di solitudine e intanto Paola volava sulle copertine delle riviste prima di diventare, due anni dopo, la «fidanzata d’Italia» con I promessi sposi (S. Bolchi, 1967).
Riferimenti bibliografici Anonimo. 13-3-1969. «Ha dato un colpo di timone alla sua vita». Grand Hotel. Dottorini, Daniele, e Bruno Roberti. 2011. «Il femminile o della potenza creativa del cinema. Conversazione con Marco Bellocchio». Fata Morgana 13: 7-16. Bellocchio, Marco. 2016. «Alla ricerca della madre.» http://www.ansa.it/sito/notizie/cultura/ cinema/2016/11/07/bellocchio-ecco-la-mia-via-delle-madri_35e7cc98-477a-4539-ae33- f4592f10d3ab.html. Blanchot, Maurice. 1967. Lo spazio letterario. Torino: Einaudi. Canova, Gianni. 2002. «La perdita della trasparenza. Cinema e società nell’Italia della seconda metà degli anni ‘60». In Storia del cinema italiano, vol. XI, 1965/1969, a cura di Gianni Canova, 3-29. Roma-Venezia: Fondazione Scuola Nazionale di Cinema-Marsilio. Capussotti, Enrica. 2002. «Modelli femminili e giovani spettatrici: donne e cinema in Italia durante gli anni cinquanta». In Corpi e storia. Donne e uomini dal mondo antico all’età contemporanea, a cura di Nadia Maria Filippini, Tiziana Plebani, e Anna Scattino, 417- 434. Roma: Viella. Capussotti, Enrica. 2004. Gioventù perduta. Gli anni cinquanta dei giovani e del cinema in Italia. Firenze: Giunti. Cavarero, Adriana. 2003. A più voci. Filosofia dell’espressione vocale. Milano: Feltrinelli. Cervini, Alessia. 2011. «La potenza del femminile nel cinema di Marco Bellocchio». Fata Morgana 13: 101-108. Maina, Giovanna, e Federico Zecca (a cura di). 2014. «Sessualità nel cinema italiano degli anni Sessanta. Forme, figure e temi». Cinergie (www.cinergie.it) 5. Detassis, Piera. 1982. «Corpi recuperati per il proprio sguardo. Cinema e immaginario negli anni ‘50». Memoria 6: 24-31. Didi-Huberman, Georges. 2006. L’immagine insepolta. Aby Warburg, la memoria dei fantasmi e la storia dell’arte. Torino: Bollati Boringhieri. Doane, Mary Ann. 1987. The Desire to Desire. The Woman’s Film of the 1940s. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Doane, Mary Ann. 1995 [1991]. Donne fatali. Cinema, femminismo, psicoanalisi. Parma: Pratiche. Fiedler, Leslie A. 1963 [1960]. Amore e morte nel romanzo americano. Milano: Longanesi. Gili, Filippo. 2013. «Note di regia». https://www.teatrovascello.it/2012_13/schede/oreste.htm. Grande, Maurizio. 2010. Dodici donne. Figure del destino nella letteratura drammatica. Roma: Bulzoni. Irigaray, Luce. 1989 (1980). «Il corpo a corpo con la madre». In Sessi e genealogie, 17-32. Milano: La Tartaruga. Kahane, Claire. 1985. «The Gothic Mirror». In The (M)Other Tongue: Essays in Feminist Psychoanalytic Interpretation, a cura di Shirley Nelson Garner, Claire Kahane, e Madelon Sprengnether, 334-351. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Kristeva, Julia. 1981 (1980). Poteri dell’orrore. Saggio sull’abiezione. Milano: Spirali. Jacobs, Amber. 2007. On Matricide: Myth, Psychoanalysis, and the Law of the Mother. New York: Columbia University Press. Paola Pitagora e I pugni in tasca di Marco Bellocchio 231
Montani, Pietro. 2010. L’immaginazione intermediale. Perlustrare, rifigurare, testimoniare il mondo visibile. Bari: Laterza. Moravia, Alberto. 2-1-1966. «Il mite giustiziere dell’Appennino». L’Espresso. Muraro, Luisa. 2005. «Introduzione». In La magica forza del negativo, a cura di Diotima, 1-8. Napoli: Liguori. Piccone Stella, Simonetta. 1993. La prima generazione. Ragazzi e ragazze nel miracolo economico. Milano: Franco Angeli. Pitagora, Paola. 2001. Fiato d’artista. Dieci anni a Piazza del Popolo. Palermo: Sellerio. Sartori Ghirardini, Diana. 2007. «Con lo spirito materno». In L’ombra della madre, a cura di Diotima, 33-46. Napoli: Liguori. Scandola, Alberto. 2015. «Violetta sullo schermo: dialettica tra canto e performance in tre adattamenti audiovisivi di Traviata». In Attori all’opera, a cura di Nicola Pasqualicchio e Simona Brunetti, 159-173. Bari: Edizioni di Pagina. Schwab, Gail M. 2010. «Mothers, Sisters, and Daughters. Luce Irigaray and the Female Genealogical Line in the Stories of the Greeks». In Rewriting Difference: Luce Irigaray and ‘the Greeks’, a cura di Elena Tzelepis e Athena Athanasiou, 79-92. New York: State University of New York. Scott, Jill. 2005. Electra After Freud: Myth and Culture. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Rabinowitz, Nancy. 2015. «Melancholy Becomes Electra». In Sex in Antiquity. Exploring Gender and Sexuality in the Ancient World, a cura di Nancy Rabinowitz, Mark Masterson, e James Robson, 214-230. New York: Routledge. Ulivi, Stefania. 12-3-2013. «Bellocchio: nel mio Oreste le famiglie distrutte dall’odio. L’eroe greco come il protagonista de I pugni in tasca». Corriere della Sera. Vighi, Fabio. 2006. Traumatic Encounters in Italian Film. Locating the Cinematic Inconscious. Bristol: Intellect Books. Zamboni Robotti, Chiara, e Luisa Muraro Brunello. 2007. «Prefazione». In L’ombra della madre, a cura di Diotima, 1-4. Napoli: Liguori. Žižek, Slavoj. 2001. Enjoy Your Symptom!: Jacques Lacan in Hollywood and Out. New York: Routledge.
Paola Pitagora e I pugni in tasca di Marco Bellocchio 233
Fig. 1.
Fig. 2.
Tutte le immagini di corredo sono fotogrammi del filmI pugni in tasca (1965) di Marco Bellocchio. 234 Giulia Fanara
Fig. 3.
Fig. 4. Paola Pitagora e I pugni in tasca di Marco Bellocchio 235
Fig. 5.
Fig. 6. 236 Giulia Fanara
Fig. 7.
Fig. 8. Paola Pitagora e I pugni in tasca di Marco Bellocchio 237
Fig. 9.
Fig. 10. 238 Giulia Fanara
Fig. 11.
Fig. 12. Paola Pitagora e I pugni in tasca di Marco Bellocchio 239
Fig. 13.
Fig. 14. 240 Giulia Fanara
Fig. 15.
Fig. 16. Paola Pitagora e I pugni in tasca di Marco Bellocchio 241
Fig. 17.
Fig. 18. 242 Giulia Fanara
Fig. 19.
Fig. 20. Paola Pitagora e I pugni in tasca di Marco Bellocchio 243
Fig. 21.
Il Mulino - Rivisteweb
Giacomo Manzoli Tradizione letteraria e modernit`a televisiva: ricezione e fandom del Sandokan di Sollima (doi: 10.7371/71283)
Bianco e nero (ISSN 0394-008X) Fascicolo 1, gennaio-aprile 2012
Ente di afferenza: Universit`ala Sapienza di Roma (Uniroma1)
Copyright c by Societ`aeditrice il Mulino, Bologna. Tutti i diritti sono riservati. Per altre informazioni si veda https://www.rivisteweb.it
Licenza d’uso L’articolo `emesso a disposizione dell’utente in licenza per uso esclusivamente privato e personale, senza scopo di lucro e senza fini direttamente o indirettamente commerciali. Salvo quanto espressamente previsto dalla licenza d’uso Rivisteweb, `efatto divieto di riprodurre, trasmettere, distribuire o altrimenti utilizzare l’articolo, per qualsiasi scopo o fine. Tutti i diritti sono riservati. 572A:Layout 1 11-07-2012 14:02 Pagina 71
Tradizione letteraria e modernità televisiva: ricezione e fandom del «Sandokan» di Sollima Giacomo Manzoli
Il giorno 22 gennaio 1976, sulle pagine di «Il Mondo», celebre rivista fondata da Mario Pannunzio che Rizzoli cercava di rilanciare, esce un articolo di Mario Soldati che, sin dal titolo, non lascia molti mar- gini di dubbio sul giudizio riservato a un nuovo sceneggiato trasmesso dalla Rai. Pollice verso per Sandokan è un intervento durissimo nei toni e nella sostanza, con cui il celebre scrittore, regista e sce- neggiatore stronca la trasposizione televisiva delle gesta dell’eroe salgariano «senza attenuanti. A che servono infatti gli splendidi costumi ed esterni se poi racconto e dialoghi annoiano senza fine?». Pur apprezzandone, appunto, alcuni elementi spettacolari, Soldati lo critica sulla base di due elementi. Primo: Sandokan sarebbe un ennesimo esempio «dell’estrema lentezza di cui invariabilmente tutti i critici e tutti i telespettatori hanno sempre accusato i nostri sceneggiati». Lentezza dovuta a una logica di «risparmio», stigmatizzata con la perizia di un tecnico. Secondo: il protagonista Kabir Bedi sarebbe un «kolossal miscasting, una madornale marronata. Altissimo, magrissimo, flessuoso, bello, bravo, con occhi magne- tici, stupendo Jesus Christ Superstar. Ma che cosa c’entra con Sandokan?». Sarebbe fin troppo facile, a posteriori, confrontare le dichiarazioni di Soldati con i fatti. I fatti rac- contano di uno sceneggiato che, nel corso delle sei puntate trasmesse fra il 6 gennaio e l’8 febbraio 1976, supera ogni record in termini di audience per la fiction, oltrepassando (secondo i pur rudimen- tali strumenti di rilevazione del Servizio Opinioni della Rai) i ventisette milioni di spettatori, calco- lati escludendo i minori di quindici anni1. A conti fatti, quasi due italiani su tre si suppone abbiano guardato il telefilm girato da Sergio Sollima, attivando uno dei principali fenomeni di merchandi- sing e di fandom televisivi – in gran parte incentrati proprio sull’attore indiano detestato da Soldati – e un caso di costume sul quale sociologi e intellettuali continueranno a interrogarsi a lungo, nel tentativo di spiegare un evento tanto ovvio quanto imprevedibile. Il compito che questo saggio si propone, pertanto, è quello di indagare, attraverso una ricognizione di alcune fra le principali testate giornalistiche dell’epoca2, le coordinate e le dimensioni del feno- meno, per arrivare a dimostrare una tesi che pensiamo richieda un approfondimento. Lo sceneggia- to diretto da Sollima, infatti, sarebbe il segnale di un mutamento sostanziale nei gusti di un pubbli- co popolare (l’audience televisiva indistinta). Capitato al posto giusto e al momento giusto, il tele- film appare il catalizzatore di una serie di fermenti che stavano agitando il sistema mediale del perio- do (nonché l’industria culturale nel suo insieme) e rende particolarmente evidenti gli anacronismi insiti nell’assetto televisivo, percepito come insoddisfacente e arretrato. Attribuire a quest’opera ulteriori meriti sarebbe certamente arbitrario, tuttavia proveremo a fornire elementi utili a inquadrarla nella circolazione dei discorsi sociali del periodo, lasciando ulteriori approfondimenti, specie per quanto concerne l’analisi del testo in quanto tale, ad altri momenti.
71 572A:Layout 1 11-07-2012 14:02 Pagina 72
biancoenero 572 gennaio-aprile 2012
Un kolossal televisivo Vale la pena spendere due parole sulla genesi e il lancio pubblicitario dello sceneggiato, anche per offrire elementi utili alla contestualizzazione dell’opera e della sua fruizione, specializzata o meno che essa sia. Poiché a metà degli anni Sessanta vi era stata una rinnovata attenzione per i romanzi salgariani e la saga di Mompracem in particolare, che aveva condotto Lenzi e Capuano a realizzare quasi una decina di film3, Sergio Sollima aveva maturato l’idea di realizzare un film su Sandokan che uscisse dai soliti codici rappresentativi (manierati e naïf) del genere avventuroso europeo, per adottare un maggiore realismo e sfruttarne appieno le potenzialità spettacolari. Il suo Sandokan idea- le – forse in omaggio al circuito «leoniano» dal quale egli stesso proveniva – sarebbe stato Toshiro Mifune, volto emblematico del «Far East» che si proponeva di mettere in scena. I casi della vita, tuttavia, vogliono che il progetto si renda realizzabile solo parecchi anni dopo, gra- zie alla Titanus che ottiene dalla Rai la commissione, ingente per l’epoca, relativa alla realizzazione di uno sceneggiato di sei puntate. Nel 1974, mentre si trasmette un apprezzato film Tv salgariano di Ugo Gregoretti e interpretato da Gigi Proietti, Sollima è in Malesia, Thailandia, India, dove gestirà, per sei mesi, una troupe internazionale, per conto anche dei tedeschi della Bavaria Film e dei fran- cesi di ORTF, secondo uno schema di coproduzione internazionale in auge fin dagli anni Cinquanta. Ebbene, la cifra investita dalla Rai ammontava a circa un miliardo di lire, ovvero un budget tutt’al- tro che trascurabile, ma la Titanus, obbligata per contratto a consegnare entro il 31 agosto 1975, si rifiuterà di consegnare le copie del film (girato in 16 millimetri a colori), richiedendo lo stanziamen- to ulteriore da parte della Rai di duecento milioni, resi necessari dall’aumento dei costi. Inizia così una vertenza che ha un iter tormentato e una rocambolesca soluzione. Il 23 dicembre, infatti, si riu- nisce il CdA della Rai e decide di richiedere al Pretore la consegna coatta del telefilm, richiesta che viene accordata dal Magistrato Michele Aiello in data 29 dicembre 1975, in considerazione del «carattere di servizio pubblico dell’azienda televisiva di Stato», la quale è però a sua volta obbligata a versare a titolo cautelativo trecento milioni, la cui destinazione verrà decisa dal medesimo Pretore successivamente. La storia è interessante perché dimostra come sia i funzionari Rai sia la Titanus avessero in qualche modo intuito il valore «commerciale» del prodotto realizzato da Sollima (eviden- temente a seguito di test screening) e si fossero impegnati in una sorta di battaglia per ricavare il massimo del profitto da quello che si profilava come un prodotto di punta nella programmazione. Sicché, pur di inaugurare il nuovo sceneggiato in un momento propizio (il giorno dell’Epifania del 1976), si decide di rivoluzionare il palinsesto nel giro di una sola settimana, spostando il previsto telefilm La contessa di Castiglione in data da destinarsi. Allo stesso tempo, però, l’incertezza sulla possibilità di trasmettere il serial di Sollima in una data certa, impedisce alla Rai un sostegno pubblicitario adeguato. Il lancio del nuovo prodotto, pertanto, si limita a una conferenza stampa4 e in uno speciale di venti minuti (un «prossimamente» corposo) andato in onda domenica 4 gennaio 1976 nei programmi di informazione. In altri termini, il succes- so dello sceneggiato può essere attribuito a molti fattori ma non certo a una strategia promoziona- le particolarmente aggressiva o azzeccata.
Favorevoli e contrari Le considerazioni di Soldati da cui siamo partiti rientrano fra i commenti relativi allo sceneggiato in quanto tale, laddove a partire dalla seconda puntata si avvierà un altro tipo di dibattito, riguardan- te il «fenomeno Sandokan», la vera e propria «Sandokan-mania» o «Sandokanite» che dilagherà rapi- damente nella società italiana prima e nell’industria culturale subito dopo. Entrambi questi dibattiti – letti a posteriori – riflettono una straordinaria tendenza alla polarizzazione dei punti di vista. Fra i recensori contrari allo sceneggiato, le argomentazioni sono fondamentalmente di due tipi, spes- so intrecciate, legate cioè a difetti strutturali e/o al peccato ontologico del tradimento salgariano. Così, per Ugo Buzzolan di «La Stampa», «il bilancio dello sceneggiato è completamente negativo. La
72 572A:Layout 1 11-07-2012 14:02 Pagina 73
tradizione letteraria e modernità televisiva: ricezione e fandom del «sandokan» di sollima
«Questo Bedi è bello, ci piace, meglio lui del modello televisivo di eroe romantico impersonato dai non proprio avvenenti Grassilli o Pagliai» (da «l’Unità», 24 gennaio 1976). Foto di scena tratta da xjuggler.de.
sua colpa fondamentale è d’avere attirato con il nome di Salgari milioni e milioni di spettatori e di avergli dato un qualcosa che con Salgari non aveva niente a che fare»5. Buzzolan offre un esempio formidabile di ciò che Fausto Colombo definisce «sindrome del grillo parlante», attitudine ad accet- tare i media solo se corrispondono alla propria idea di funzione pedagogica, laddove afferma che:
La Tv ci verrà a parlare di successo perché 20 milioni e più di spettatori si sono accalcati davan- ti ai teleschermi la domenica sera. Ma un indice di ascolto così alto era largamente prevedibile. È logico e giusto che la gente accorra a un romanzo d’avventure trasmesso di domenica, specie se questo romanzo porta la firma favolosa e prestigiosa di Salgari: quel che non è giusto è ripa- gare l’entusiasmo di un’immensa platea con un prodotto che tradiva Salgari nello spirito, nella fantasia, nell’azione6.
Sulla stessa lunghezza d’onda Giovanni Mariotti, su «la Repubblica», secondo il quale «mandando una troupe in Malesia, la Rai Tv ha commesso un gravissimo errore culturale: quello di considerare l’orientalismo (che è occidentale) con l’Oriente (che è orientale, naturalmente). Questa scelta realisti- ca ha portato con sé la distruzione di tutto l’elemento delirante, così forte in Salgari»7. Gli fa eco Felice Laudadio su «l’Unità», che parla di sospensione del ritmo del racconto per «banali e forzate lezioni di tipo etnologico», o di «attualizzazione mistificante in chiave terzomondista»8. Trasparente, nella prudenza, è la posizione per così dire «intermedia» assunta dal critico televisivo di «Avvenire», Cesare Cavalleri, che stigmatizza lo sceneggiato proprio in quanto ripropone la stes- sa violenza dei romanzi salgariani, ma ne apprezza la componente narrativa e la capacità di avvin- cere lo spettatore («Tutti col fiato sospeso per vivere con Sandokan. Tuttavia bisogna avere alcune riserve sulla violenza degli eroi»9). Le stesse doti che vengono riconosciute al telefilm da altri
73 572A:Layout 1 11-07-2012 14:02 Pagina 74
biancoenero 572 gennaio-aprile 2012
recensori, fra i quali spicca Morando Morandini che è, a più riprese, fra i più accorti e lucidi ana- listi del programma, del quale cerca di isolare alcune direttrici; tre in particolare, riconducibili alla sua natura di narrazione popolare, da feuilleton: l’avventura, il folklore, l’ideologia. Dunque la capacità di Sollima nel tenere alta la suspense e l’identificazione («l’espediente dei serpenti che spa- ventano i cavalli [...] come devono aver palpitato milioni di cuori televisivi d’ambo i sessi e di tutte le età, tutti schierati dalla parte di Marianna, tutti contrari, in una mistura di odio e irritazione, a quel razzista, a quel bamba britannico di Fitzgerald…»10) e la sua abilità nel veicolare «con discre- zione, l’aggiornamento storico-politico in chiave antimperialistica», pur «nel rispetto per l’ingenua e visionaria energia di Salgari, lo stile sentenzioso dei dialoghi, la retorica efficacia di certi attac- chi di montaggio»11. Così, Morandini non esita a prendere apertamente le difese del programma con argomentazioni che scavalcano completamente le accuse dei detrattori:
Che senso ha, nel 1976, porre l’angosciosa domanda: la televisione distruggerà il mondo di Emilio Salgari? Che senso ha, nel 1976, dissotterrare il barbogio, stucchevole, falso problema del rapporto fra letteratura e cinema (o televisione) e indignarsi per i veri o presunti tradimenti ai danni della prima?12
E per collocarsi sulla stessa posizione si scomoda persino Natalia Ginzburg, che interviene sul «Corriere della Sera» per rispondere proprio al «collega» Soldati, al quale «il film non è piaciuto affat- to: forse egli è stato lettore di Salgari più appassionato di me e quindi più suscettibile. Di solito mi trovo d’accordo con ciò che scrive Soldati, a proposito della televisione e in genere: ma questa volta non ero d’accordo con lui». Ciò che Ginzburg difende è proprio la vocazione popolare del prodotto e il tipo di risposta richiesta allo spettatore:
La trasmissione ha avuto un’immensa popolarità, l’hanno amato moltissimo i bambini, e di que- sto molti si sono sdegnati, come di un puro frutto d’una pubblicità caduta a segno. [...] A me sembra che di una simile popolarità sia stupido sdegnarsi, stupido disprezzarla [...]. Non c’è nien- te di strano se la gente ama le avventure eroiche [...]. La televisione non usa darci spesso simili immagini, e quando succede che ce le dia siamo colti da emozioni rudimentali ma insolite: la parte più scadente di noi stessi è preda della pubblicità e della moda, ma la parte migliore desi- dera, e cerca ovunque, il coraggio e l’avventura; perché dunque sentirsi insofferenti e irritati se questo Sandokan ha tanta risonanza, se ne parlano per la strada?13
L’articolo riprende la linea tenuta nei confronti della trasmissione fin dal principio dal medesimo14 e da altri quotidiani15. E non c’è dubbio che per strada se ne parlasse parecchio.
E chi teme la moda è immerso in essa comunque… Fa quasi tenerezza, a posteriori, confrontare la fragilità delle argomentazioni dei critici televisivi (giuste o sbagliate, favorevoli o contrarie) di fronte all’escalation di popolarità del fenomeno, regi- strato e rilanciato dagli stessi quotidiani che ospitano le recensioni con modalità che sembrano dav- vero dare al medium lo statuto di messaggio. Mentre il povero Buzzolan si affanna a condannare il telefilm, proprio sotto la sua feroce stroncatu- ra, i redattori di «La Stampa» ritengono sia giusto informare i lettori su Come si salta sotto la tigre: i trucchi di Sandokan e gli affari di Kabir Bedi, e spiegano con dovizia di particolari che la sconvol- gente uccisione del felino è stata ripresa per metà in India e per metà a Londra («potenza del blue back!»16), e non è che un minimo esempio dell’attenzione spasmodica riservata dai giornali a questo strano e indecifrabile «caso» televisivo. Che non fosse uno sceneggiato come gli altri, infatti, lo si era già osservato riportando i dati dell’au- dience rilasciati dal Servizio Opinioni che sottolineava il netto superamento del «record» preceden-
74 572A:Layout 1 11-07-2012 14:02 Pagina 75
tradizione letteraria e modernità televisiva: ricezione e fandom del «sandokan» di sollima
temente registrato dal Mosè (24,5 milioni) di Gianfranco De Bosio nel dicembre 1974. Ma il fenome- no esplode quando i giornalisti assistono alle reazioni del pubblico e dell’industria culturale. Così, per rendere conto della «febbre di Mompracem» che pervade il Paese nel periodo delle trasmissioni (e per lungo tempo a seguire), può essere utile suddividere le cronache in base all’aspetto specifico su cui si focalizzano.
Divismo Dato lo straordinario successo dello sceneggiato, a metà gennaio la Rai decide di organizzare un tour promozionale per il cast, a partire ovviamente dal protagonista, il cui arrivo viene annunciato con gli onori dovuti a un capo di Stato straniero particolarmente esotico. Sandokan dagli occhi cangian- ti arriva in Jumbo a Fiumicino titola «Il Giorno»17, e subito viene registrata e riportata la nascita di un culto di massa nei confronti di questo nuovo divo. Sandokan ferma il traffico, avvisa «Il Messaggero»18, che nuovamente riferisce – in data 23 gennaio 1976 – di una «folla scatenata in una sala di via Montezebio dove si proiettavano le ultime tre puntate dello sceneggiato Tv». E perfino nella sede Rai l’arrivo dell’attore provoca disordini e reazioni incontrollabili, come avvisa «La Stampa»19, che pochi giorni dopo mette Kabir Bedi addirittura in prima pagina20, presentando con una fotografia papale (benevolo saluto alla folla da un balcone) la sua visita a Torino per vedere la casa di Salgari, evento al quale verrà dedicato ampio spazio altrove. E in prima pagina il tour trion- fale finisce anche sul «Corriere», dove Giulio Nascimbeni si interroga sulle ragioni di questa esplo- sione divistica, descritta nelle sue manifestazioni più estreme, ponendo domande dal vago sapore surreale: «Sarebbe accaduto quanto abbiamo visto e sentito se Sandokan fosse nato in una borgata romana o alla periferia di Milano?»21. Ma uno spazio significativo, fra incontri con eredi salgariani, bagni di folla, comparsate circensi e televisive, viene riservato anche agli altri protagonisti, da Carole André, di cui è raccontata l’intricata vicenda biografica e prospettato un futuro che oscilla tra una carriera da attrice «impegnata»22 e un futuro pruriginoso23, a Adolfo Celi, presentato come bizzarro dandy, motociclista playboy e padre amorevole24, fino a Philippe Leroy, che assume una posizione controcorrente del tutto conforme con la natura anticonformista del suo personaggio («Io credo che l’impostazione dello sceneggiato era sbagliata…»25).
Merchandising Fra le cose che maggiormente colpiscono gli organi di informazione c’è la potenzialità commerciale diffusa del «brand Sandokan» che, nel periodo delle trasmissioni e per lungo tempo a seguire, diven- ta una specie di parola d’ordine capace di trasformare le sorti di qualunque prodotto. Se, in coincidenza con la prima puntata, Rizzoli avanzava timidamente sui rotocalchi la pubblicità della propria collana salgariana, con i volumi da richiedersi in abbonamento (Rizzoli Mailing: edi- zioni vendute con la formidabile formula di «fuori commercio») e presentati come «Fantasie di un uomo qualunque», a metà febbraio (dunque già a una certa distanza dalla fine della serie) si comin- ciano a fare bilanci. Si parla allora della colonna sonora di Guido e Maurizio De Angelis stabilmen- te al primo posto dell’hit parade («Se avessimo in magazzino trecentomila dischi saremmo sicuri di piazzarli», commenta Giacomo Peroni della RCA26), dei quindici milioni di bustine di figurine ade- sive della Panini (vendute a venticinque lire a bustina), della battaglia editoriale che porta a vende- re – in un solo mese – duecentoventimila volumi firmati da Salgari, ma assai di più se si aggiungo- no i testi dedicati specificatamente allo sceneggiato, a cominciare dai due libri fotografici che Giunti manda nei negozi subito dopo la trasmissione della prima puntata27. Proliferano, ovviamente, i gio- cattoli ispirati alla tigre della Malesia, per bambini ma anche per adulti, se «La Domenica del Corriere» arriva a regalare in allegato il gioco di Sandokan con il tabellone e le pedine, mentre «Playmen», mensile soft erotico, mette in copertina un barbuto con turbante che abbraccia la solita
75 572A:Layout 1 11-07-2012 14:02 Pagina 76
biancoenero 572 gennaio-aprile 2012
Philippe Leroy e Kabir Bedi, rispettivamente Yanez de Gomera e Sandokan nello sceneggiato diretto da Sollima e prodotto dalla Titanus per la Rai nel 1976.
pin-up seminuda sotto a un titolo perfettamente sincretico: Ultimo tango a Mompracem. Intanto si pubblicano nuovi e vecchi fumetti, in albi autonomi e in strisce sui giornali (per esempio le strisce disegnate da Guido Moroni Celsi nel 1937) e, mentre vengono alla luce i primi neonati che dovran- no scontare un nome ispirato allo sceneggiato (Si chiamerà Sandokan, titola allarmato il «Corriere» del 18 febbraio 1976), è naturalmente la moda propriamente detta a cercare di sfruttare al massimo quell’immaginario esotico che il film di Sollima aveva diffuso a livello di massa. A testimoniarlo, un’infinità di articoli e reportage che parlano di come le collezioni ’76/’77 dei principali stilisti (Zingone, Rocco Barocco, Kenzo, Scavia, Mila Schön, Lancetti, Fiorucci e così via) fossero spudora- tamente influenzate dal telefilm28.
Sociologia Non abbiamo a disposizione lo spazio per dar conto dell’enorme dibattito che viene svolto sui gior- nali – in singoli interventi, botta e risposta, tavole rotonde, interviste, inchieste e quant’altro – a pro- posito di questo strano evento, dai contorni indecifrabili sia per ampiezza sia per modalità. C’è chi si preoccupa di stabilire se la «sandokanite» sia di destra o di sinistra, come fanno Nico Orengo, il pedagogista Graziano Cavallini e il giornalista Carlo Casalegno in un interminabile dibat- tito riportato da «Panorama»29. Altri lo vedono come una degenerazione di alcuni miti politici di sini- stra: «Il successo di Sandokan rinnova i fasti dell’eroe nazionale costretto a vivere alla macchia.
76 572A:Layout 1 11-07-2012 14:02 Pagina 77
tradizione letteraria e modernità televisiva: ricezione e fandom del «sandokan» di sollima
Segno che è tempo nasca un nuovo Che Guevara»30. Ancora, chi pensa si sia nettamente esagerato e chiama in causa Umberto Eco, la questione del «superuomo di massa» e il problema del kitsch e del midcult, nel quale lo sceneggiato avrebbe trasportato le pagine salgariane: «Ai protagonisti (e ai let- tori) di Salgari il mondo dice ogni istante qualcosa di nuovo, d’imprevisto, ossia produce energia: mentre la civiltà, come ricorda Lévi-Strauss, finisce per essere una fabbrica di entropia, ossia di iner- zia»31. E l’inerzia porta a discutere – molto seriamente – se Kabir Bedi non sia in realtà una nuova specie di «uomo-oggetto»32 o se, piuttosto, non sia l’emblema di un maschio tradizionale che garan- tisce alle donne italiane il soddisfacimento della fantasia regressiva di essere ridotte a «donne-ogget- to». Anna Maria Mori intervista stuoli di femministe storiche, esponenti del movimento di liberazio- ne della donna, del collettivo della rivista «Effe», della libreria delle donne di Roma, del collettivo Anabasi, della collana “Dalla parte delle bambine” e molte altre realtà analoghe, per trovarsi di fron- te al più ampio e frastagliato ventaglio di opinioni: da chi ritiene che «il femminismo ha ben altre cose di cui occuparsi» a chi pensa si tratti di un riflesso del fatto che «le donne italiane sono sessual- mente ancora molto represse», fino a coloro che – per nulla nascostamente – apprezzano e fanno dell’estetica un punto di emancipazione: «Questo Bedi è bello, ci piace, meglio lui del modello tele- visivo di eroe romantico impersonato dai non proprio avvenenti Grassilli o Pagliai»33. Gli esempi potrebbero continuare all’infinito, ed è evidente che ciascuno dei partecipanti ha le sue buone ragioni, a partire dal proprio specifico punto di vista, ma difficilmente potrebbe avere la luci- dità necessaria per osservare il quadro di insieme. Azzardando una stringata conclusione per questa rapida panoramica che abbiamo cercato di compiere, potremmo dire che Sandokan è molto di più e molto meno di ciò che vi viene visto all’epoca dei fatti. È uno sceneggiato di avventure di stampo tradizionale, che giustamente utilizza i libri di Salgari come un puro catalogo di personaggi e situazioni per adattarli e modificarli in funzione del proprio contesto di riferimento. Il ritmo del racconto è in gran parte ancora legato alla concezione della nar- rativa televisiva dell’epoca34, pertanto soggetto a rallentamenti impensabili e con una netta distin- zione fra momenti d’azione (con conseguenti accelerazioni) e momenti riflessivi e recitativi. Alle figure salgariane vengono applicati sovraccarichi romantici e ideologici, che da un lato danno spes- sore eroico ai personaggi di contorno (si pensi in particolare a Brooke e Yanez) e dall’altro aiutano a inserirli nel quadro di un conflitto politico di più ampia portata: esattamente come fanno – per dire – Gillo Pontecorvo e Franco Solinas con Queimada (1969), Sollima retrocede strumentalmente la lotta anti-imperialista e i conflitti per la decolonizzazione fino al periodo storico in questione, ste- reotipando i protagonisti fino a ricalcarli su figure contemporanee care alla cronaca e di larghissi- ma notorietà. Pertanto, non è arbitrario sostenere che Sandokan e Yanez replicano (nei modi naïf del feuilleton, ovviamente) le figure di Fidel Castro e Che Guevara, così come James Brooke è una spe- cie di versione archetipale di Henry Kissinger, così come il ruolo svolto dalla Compagnia delle Indie coincide con quello che – si suppone – la CIA svolgeva in Oriente e Sudamerica dalla Guerra Fredda in poi. Questo non per affermare che lo sceneggiato fosse portatore di valori politici particolarmen- te eversivi. Al contrario, lo sceneggiato non faceva che affidare l’efficacia della propria presa narra- tiva (identificazione) sulla trasposizione mitica di figure esistenti, secondo una linea interpretativa già ampiamente risaputa e condivisa (una «doxa»). Le ragioni del suo impatto, allora, possono esse- re capite con la componente esotica ed erotica che ne rappresenta il «valore aggiunto», nella corni- ce di uno specifico contesto e di un periodo particolare. Pertanto, il fenomeno Sandokan può essere spiegato solo guardando al di fuori di esso, ai palinsesti striminziti e polverosi, alla autodisciplina paternalistica, pedagogica e protettiva che traspare dalla lettura della proposta televisiva (monopo- listica) del tempo. Due dichiarazioni programmatiche ci aiutano a chiarire il concetto. Più volte, nel presentare lo sceneggiato, Sergio Sollima si lamenta del fatto che il film era girato a colori per un pubblico che si troverà costretto a guardarlo in bianco e nero. Dentro a questa discrasia, tra un pro- dotto già predisposto per un pubblico desideroso di vederlo nel pieno delle sue potenzialità spetta-
77 572A:Layout 1 11-07-2012 14:02 Pagina 78
biancoenero 572 gennaio-aprile 2012
colari e costretto, invece, a fruirlo in una modalità anacronistica per via di carenze infrastrutturali, nello scarto di questa distanza fra il «Paese reale» e la gabbia istituzionale (di cui le tecnologie erano un riflesso) nel quale era trattenuto, crediamo siano le principali ragioni del trionfo dello sceneggia- to. Un telefilm che, proprio in funzione della sua natura popolare e di massa, parlava al pubblico di modernità, scenari diversi e meno angusti, alternative possibili, per quanto evasive. Turismo, roman- ticismo, avventura, altri valori, religioni, razze, usi e costumi, il tutto a uso e consumo di un vero pubblico di massa che avvertiva finalmente accessibili stili di vita un tempo riservati a élite privile- giate o outcasts. Mentre il cinema propriamente detto si era già riposizionato e arroccato in difesa della propria cultura e aveva adottato una logica di campo autonomo (come ampiamente dimostra- to, per esempio, da Claudio Bisoni35), la televisione – il core del sistema mediale del periodo – era letteralmente prigioniera di un palinsesto che sarebbe esploso di lì a poco36 e che nulla aveva a che vedere con il ritratto che la stampa implicitamente fornisce di una società in totale fermento. Niente di strano. Se è vero, come sostiene Fausto Colombo, che il successo di Salgari aveva segnato la nascita dell’industria culturale in Italia, proponendo trame ondivaghe e melodrammatiche come «puro intrattenimento» a un target che era il medesimo delle riviste di viaggio37, potremmo dire che Sollima non fa che tornare alle origini per marcare il completamento di quella fase di «seconda modernizzazione» descritta abilmente da Forgacs e Gundle38, che le istituzioni politiche e culturali italiane hanno a lungo cercato di trattenere e che non si oppone affatto, ma semmai accompagna i fermenti controculturali e la produzione di una autentica cultura underground e partecipativa39. Il regista è laconico ed esplicito quando afferma: «Se questo Sandokan lo avessi fatto per il cinema, non ne parlerebbe nessuno»40. Appunto.
1. Mario Soldati, Pollice verso per Sandokan, in «Il Mondo», 22 gennaio 1976. 2. Anche per Aldo Grasso lo sceneggiato è nettamente il campione dell’audience della stagione con i ventisette milioni di spettatori presunti. Storia della televisione. La Tv italiana dalle origini, Garzanti, Milano 1998, p. 353. 3. La nostra ricognizione è in gran parte basata sullo spoglio sistematico di un campione random della stampa italiana. Segnatamente i seguenti quotidiani e riviste nel periodo compreso fra il 1° gennaio e il 1° marzo 1976: «Avvenire», «Corriere della Sera», «l’Unità», «Il Giorno», «la Repubblica», «Il Messaggero», «Oggi», «Panorama», «Il Mondo». 4. Si veda, al riguardo, Giacomo Manzoli, Roy Menarini, Avventure, mélo, farse, in Giorgio De Vincenti (a cura di), Storia del cinema italiano. 1960/1964, vol. X, Marsilio-Edizioni di Bianco & Nero, Venezia-Roma 2001, pp. 331-343. 5. Controverso Sandokan (redazionale, in «l’Unità», 6 gennaio 1976); Metti un tigrotto nel tuo video (Mario Galdieri, in «Il Messaggero», 6 gennaio 1976); Il Sandokan da un miliardo (Ernesto Baldo, in «La Stampa», 6 gennaio 1976), questo il tenore dei titoli che annunciano l’uscita del telefilm. Sempre su «La Stampa», nello stesso giorno, è riportato un com- mento firmato C.C. e intitolato Creatura della fantasia, nel quale si chiosa in modo tutt’altro che benevolo il lancio pub- blicitario del prodotto: «La realtà documentaria dell’ambiente, l’autenticità anagrafica del protagonista non bastano a garantire che ritroveremo il nostro Sandokan. Tanta verità può essere, anzi, la premessa o l’alibi per un tradimento». 6. Ugo Buzzolan, Sandokan tra i marines, in «La Stampa», 10 febbraio 1976. 7. Ugo Buzzolan, Un Sandokan al rallentatore, in «La Stampa», 7 gennaio 1976. 8. Giovanni Mariotti, Questa Malesia è troppo vera, in «la Repubblica», 8 febbraio 1976. 9. Felice Laudadio, Sandokan se n’è andato con un contratto in tasca, in «l’Unità», 10 febbraio 1976. 10. Cesare Cavalleri, in «La Stampa», 8 gennaio 1976. 11. Morando Morandini, Il folklore di Mompracem, in «Il Giorno», 2 febbraio 1976. 12. Morando Morandini, Una bella scena all’arrembaggio, in «Il Giorno», 7 gennaio 1976. 13. Morando Morandini, Il Sandokan innamorato, in «Il Giorno», 12 gennaio 1976. 14. Natalia Ginzburg, Fascino del coraggio e dell’avventura, in «Corriere della Sera», 9 febbraio 1976. 15. Si vedano al riguardo le cronache firmate G.G.C. che accompagnano l’intera trasmissione dello sceneggiato, a par- tire da: Suona giusta la Malesia di Sandokan, in «Corriere della Sera», 7 gennaio 1976.
78 572A:Layout 1 11-07-2012 14:02 Pagina 79
tradizione letteraria e modernità televisiva: ricezione e fandom del «sandokan» di sollima
16. Ad esempio «Il Messaggero», dove Angelo Gangarossa segue fedelmente lo sceneggiato per i lettori e lo saluta affet- tuosamente così: Sandokan: un arrivederci a presto, in «Il Messaggero», 9 febbraio 1976. 17. E.B., Come si salta sotto la tigre, in «La Stampa», 10 febbraio 1976. 18. 18 gennaio 1976. 19. 18 gennaio 1976. 20. L’arrivo di Sandokan alla RAI blocca il lavoro delle impiegate, in «La Stampa», 21 gennaio 1976. 21. Sandokan a Torino, 4 febbraio 1976. 22. Giulio Nascimbeni, Sandokan resuscita il divismo, in «Corriere della Sera», 3 febbraio 1976. 23. Renato Barneschi, Il mio ultimo grande amore è Sandokan, in «Oggi Illustrato», 5, 2 febbraio 1976. 24. Mario Galdieri, Carole André: mai senza veli, in «Il Messaggero», 11 gennaio 1976. 25. Edgarda Ferri, Buon nemico di Sandokan, in «La Stampa», 31 gennaio 1976. 26. Ettore Mo, Yanez: «Salgari è stato tradito», in «Corriere della Sera», 23 gennaio 1976. 27. Myriam De Cesco, A cavallo della tigre, in «Panorama», 17 febbraio 1976. 28. Valeria Sacchi, Sandokan alla riscossa anche nelle librerie, in «Il Mondo», 19 febbraio 1976. 29. Ad esempio, fra gli altri, Graziella Carrera, Sandokan in sedicesimo, in «Avvenire», 29 febbraio 1976; Lucia Sollazzo, L’India di Sandokan ora influenza la moda, in «La Stampa» 22 gennaio 1976; Ead., Sandokan e i tigrotti all’assalto della moda, in «La Stampa», 21 febbraio 1976; Maria Pezzi, Sandokan ha lanciato la cortigiana malese, in «Il Giorno», 23 gen- naio 1976. 30. Carlo Rossella, Enrico Regazzoni, in «Panorama», La tigre di carta, 20 gennaio 1976. 31. Elena Doni, Caro Sandokan, in «Il Messaggero», 2 febbraio 1976. 32. Giuliano Gramigna, Sandokan? È quel tale che strangola le tigri, in «Il Giorno», 6 gennaio 1976. 33. Redazionale, Sandokan, uomo-oggetto, in «l’Unità», 24 gennaio 1976. 34. Anna Maria Mori, A Sandokan piace la donna-oggetto, 24 gennaio 1976. 35. Al riguardo, si veda Mario Sesti, Il grande freddo. Lo sceneggiato televisivo, in G. De Vincenti (a cura di), Storia del cinema italiano. 1960/1964, cit., pp. 358-370. 36. Claudio Bisoni, Gli anni affollati. La cultura cinematografica italiana (1970-1979), Carocci, Roma 2009. 37. E che esso contribuisce a far esplodere, se è vero quanto afferma Franco Monteleone: «Siamo di fronte a un nuovo itinerario produttivo che colloca la Rai in una posizione di centralità sullo scenario internazionale. Un itinerario che aveva avuto origine nel 1976 con la realizzazione del Sandokan di Sergio Sollima, in cui la figura del principe malese viene descritta attraverso il fascino irresistibile del suo interprete e delle sue valorose imprese, compiute entro scenari di stra- ordinaria spettacolarità esotica. Un balzo in avanti poderoso per la struttura produttiva della Rai, che smussa e rimuove l’ostilità preconcetta di coloro che continuano a vagheggiare una linea politica fondata sul contenimento degli investi- menti e sul ritorno a una sostanziale condizione di autarchia». Il cinema come genere televisivo, in Vito Zagarrio (a cura di), Storia del cinema italiano. 1977/1985, vol. XIII, Marsilio-Edizioni di Bianco & Nero, Venezia-Roma 2005, p. 84. 38. Fausto Colombo, La cultura sottile. Media e industria culturale in Italia dall’Ottocento agli anni Novanta, Bompiani, Milano 1991, pp. 74 e ss. Colombo è altresì curatore del fondamentale numero monografico di «Comunicazioni sociali», Gli anni delle cose, XXIII, 1, gennaio-aprile 2001, dedicato all’industria culturale degli anni Settanta. 39. David Forgacs, Stephen Gundle, Cultura di massa e società italiana. 1936-1954, Il Mulino, Bologna 2007. 40. Al riguardo si veda Guglielmo Pescatore, La cultura popolare negli anni Settanta tra cinema, televisione, radio e fumetto, in Alberto De Bernardi, Valerio Romitelli, Chiara Cretella (a cura di), Gli anni Settanta. Tra crisi mondiale e movi- menti collettivi, Archetipolibri, Bologna 2009, pp. 153-164. 41. Sergio Sollima, intervista con I.T., La verità sul nuovo Sandokan televisivo, in «Corriere della sera», 13 gennaio 1976.
79