CINEMA

FIFTY YEARS OF VITELLONISMO: FELLINI, MONICELLI, MUCCINO

Tu sei la sola al mondo che sa, del mio cuore, Ciò che è stato sempre, prima d ogni altro amore. Per questo devo dirti ciò ch è orrendo conoscere: È dentro la tua grazia che nasce la mia angoscia. Sei insostituibile. Per questo è dannata Alla solitudine la vita che mi hai data. (Pier Paolo Pasolini, Supplica a mia madre )

DANIELA BINI University of Texas, Austin

Abstract:

Italian Film Comedy has dealt for decades with Vitellonismo, an Italian phenomenon that is closely connected with that of familismo and clientelismo. This essay, which is part of a larger study, will discuss only three films and follow the changes of the vitelloni from Fellini s (1953), to Monicelli s in Amici miei of 1975, and conclude with a look at the vitelloni of the Berlusconi s era; those of Gabriele Muccino s L ultimo bacio of 2000.

Key-words:

Vitellonismo, vitelloni, mammoni, familismo, Fellini, Monicelli, Muccino

itellonismo, a Social Phenomenon

Of the two sides of the Mediterranean female dichotomy the mother-Madonna and the erotic-object of desire, undoubtedly the first has had the greater effect on Italian society. In a culture where the Madonna s power has almost surpassed that of the son, her tears have moved more believers than Christ s suffering and death on the cross. This is not mere provocation. The ruling power of the mother, in this writer s opinion, has done great damage to Italian society, a society, granted, that has been and still is ruled by males who have perpetuated this state of affairs1. The Sicilian writer Gesualdo Bufalino called the celebration of the Mater dolorosa, and not the resurrection of Christ, the Sicilian Easter. Though this may be more pertinent to the island, it is also true on the Italian peninsula as 128

FIFTY YEARS OF VITELLONISMO: FELLINI, MONICELLI, MUCCINO a whole. Think of the innumerable art works representing la Pietà (the actual Madonna with the body of Christ in her lap), or the maternal figure depicted as a Mater dolorosa. Two modern examples form different art forms are Carlo Levi s portrait of Giulia, la strega, and her son, and the last scene of Mal di luna , (an episode of the Taviani brothers Kaos) where the male body on the woman s lap is that of her wounded husband. The intense relationship between mother and son must be recreated immediately once the son leaves the mother and marries2. He, in fact, never ceases to be a son, and in the wife he often is searching for another mother. The identity of the woman-mother consists in total abnegation and commitment to the male child. She must live for him alone and thus no sacrifice or gift is ever too big. A symbiotic life that reduces woman to the sole role of mother and son to that of vitellone (vitello being the suckling baby calf, vitellone being the big baby calf that in a way, is still suckling ), an impotent being, unable to grow and become an autonomous adult3. She is not a woman , cries the Father in Pirandello s Six characters in Search of an Author, she is a Mother , a category unto itself, all absorbing, obsessive, that annihilates any possibility of ever developing other roles. The child can never grow up, must remain forever dependent, or the mother s role, her meaning and purpose would cease to be. Speaking of the Sicilian mothers, remarked that they first conceive and deliver their children and then eat them up. To a lesser degree, perhaps, this remark could be extended to the Italian mother in general. In a much more dramatic way the northern Pier Paolo Pasolini denounces this dependence in his poem Supplica a mia madre . His supplica , his intense plea aims at what? to sever the tie, to cut the umbilical cord? The tone of the supplica is ambiguous. The son realizes his dependence on and his adoration for the mother, and recognizes her responsibility for his condition, but cannot and maybe does not even really want to renounce it. È dentro la tua grazia che nasce la mia angoscia il tuo amore è la mia schiavitù (p. 1102). And if against his own adored mother whom Pasolini chose for the role of the Madonna in The Gospel According to Mathew, he could not find the strength to rebel, he certainly finds it in his poem Ballata delle madri where he addresses them as Madri vili , Madri mediocri , Madri servili , Madri feroci (those are the beginning words of each stanza) who create cowardly, mediocre, servile and ferocious children, and who, above all, instill in them il rifiuto profondo a essere diversi , which is to say, conformism (1083-84). They, in the end, are (conveniently) responsible for their children s failure to realize their individuality. The mother of the Catholic tradition often places the child, better if a son, at the center of her life, creating a symbiotic and dependent relationship with him. In she is the reincarnation of the primitive Mediterranean Grande Madre (reborn in the Greek world as Demeter). Jungian psychoanalyst Ernst Bernhard so describes her: Essa vizia per lo più i suoi figli con la massima 129

DANIELA BINI istintività, e i figli di conseguenza sono esigenti. Ma quanto più li vizia, tanto più li rende dipendenti da sé, tanto più naturale le sembra la propria pretesa sui figli, e tanto più questi si sentono ad essa legati e obbligati. A questo punto la buona madre nutrice e protettrice si trasforma nel proprio aspetto negativo, nella cattiva madre, che trattiene, che divora, e che con le sue pretese ormai egoistiche impedisce ai figli il raggiungimento dell indipendenza e li rende infermi e infelici (Mitobiografia, p. 171)4. Many are the sociological studies that show how the mechanics that govern Italian families encourage dependency and discourage sociality5. Anne Parsons studied the southern Italian families her comments can be extended to the Italian family in general and realized that it tends to be centripetal rather than centrifugal , with deleterious social consequences. Parents, or in particular the mother, bring up children in such a way as to strengthen loyalties toward themselves rather than to move increasingly into a wider social context. This latter tendency is in turn associated with a definition of the world outside the family as hostile and threatening and very often as a source of temptations toward sexual or other forms of delinquency and dishonesty (Belief, Magic and Anomie, p. 16). The Catholic culture of forgiveness, which is also intimately connected with the mother-Madonna cult, contributes to the problem. No matter how sinful the supplicant is, Parsons continued, her love and tenderness are always available (p. 17). She intercedes with the father-God for the sinful child that he be forgiven. And so Italians go on sinning, because, eventually, all will be pardoned. Curzio Maltese in a recent booklet that should become compulsory reading in public schools, says it bluntly. La grande madre latina, cattolica e reazionaria, imbattibile nell arte del sacrificio personale, è stata la peggiore delle droghe di massa, la principale causa di quell infantilismo perenne che segna il carattere nazionale (Come ti sei ridotto, p. 60)6. And the young women who try today to rebel against this state of affairs, are alone, abandoned by the state that continues, with the interference and support of the Church, to praise the institution of the Italian family as a social masterpiece . Their men, who remain figli di mamma , do not want to renounce their old privileges. How can a society still ruled by vitelloni function and progress? To do so would mean going against those very privileges. Carlo Tullio-Altan devoted several essays to the study of the phenomenon of familismo and traces its origin back to the historical and social conditions of Italy in the Renaissance. He found it expressed not only in major writers like Alberti, Guicciardini and Machiavelli, but also in the popular proverbs of the lower classes. The Catholic Church, and in particular the Counter- Reformation, contributed to the establishment and reinforcement of this state of affairs by opposing the formation and development of a public spirit. Diffusa asocialità, e cioè mancanza di solidarietà e di partecipazione sociale, al di fuori della ristretta cerchia delle famiglie e parentele, con un rifiuto 130

FIFTY YEARS OF VITELLONISMO: FELLINI, MONICELLI, MUCCINO totale, addirittura rabbioso, di ogni impegno morale o politico nell interesse della collettività ; these are the characteristics of the Italians between the Fifteenth and Eighteenth centuries (p. 25). Support was sought within the family which became the centro esclusivo di interessi e di valori, con il suo corredo di rapporti clientelari, che trovano nell istituto formale del comparatico la loro più tipica manifestazione (p. 25)7. In a country whose regions, cities, counties were taken, exploited, used for property exchanges and marriage dowries by powerful foreign (as well as local) families, this mentality together with the widely held suspicion toward the state and the government, which were always exploiting the people, has endured. The result is that Italy is not a society, but, as Leo Longanesi remarked, un insieme di famiglie 8, where ognuno coltiva il suo orto, e se può scarica l immondizia in quello del vicino (Maltese, p. 86).

Vitellonismo in Cinema

Vitellonismo, which in its passive form is characterized by infantilism, lack of responsibility and inability to part from the protective family environment, in its active form manifests itself in three ways: 1. as flight, escape, intended however as vacation, game, that often ends with a home coming, a return to the origin, and is not accompanied by a growing process; 2. as sexual adventure without consequences, whose aim is to impress the other males with the image of the irresistible Latin lover. (A sexual adventure is in a way an attempt to escape, too). 3. as pranks, practical jokes, at times cruel, against others, especially those who instead have gained a certain autonomy, or those who represent authority. These inept embark in travel or sexual adventures in order to cover up their weakness and impotence with a mask of fake power. Those instead who amuse themselves by playing jokes on others, try to exorcise their own frustrations by appearing cannier and cleverer, in order to feel for a little while superior to the crowd of the naive individuals who fall in their traps. They are similar to characters from the Decameron, by now however, outside the historical conditions that created them. The number of Italian films which in a way or another deal with this very common character is enormous. Italian film comedy, for example, is filled with vitelloni. In this essay for reason of space I will concentrate on three in order to follow the changes that the vitellone undergoes in the fifty years from his appearance in Fellini s masterpiece. After looking at I vitelloni (1953), I will see what happens to them twenty years later by examining Monicelli s Amici miei of 1975, to conclude with a look at the vitelloni of the Berlusconi s era; those of Gabriele Muccino s L ultimo bacio of 20009.

Non sei nessuno. Non siete nessuno tutti. Tutti quanti Ma che vi siete messi in testa?...mi fate schifo (Alberto in s I vitelloni)

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Fellini made his first films in the post-war period of slow reconstruction, when Christian Democrats, in order to stay in power, began their search for political allies first to the right and then to the left, a tactics that was to become a trait of their policy. They succeeded also thanks to the pressure and financial help of the USA and the power of the Catholic Church. In art, and cinema especially, neorealism became almost a prescription , as Bondanella has remarked, and the engaged intellectual was expected to make films rooted in the social problems of the times and present a possible Marxist solution to them. Fellini, instead, took a personal position that not only was criticized from the left as conservative, but considered an ideological betrayal by neorealist filmmakers (The Cinema of Federico Fellini, p. 69). Fellini never pretended, however, to have universal ideas or theories to resolve social problems. If I had found a solution , he said, he would have held political meetings and join[ed] a political party; If I were able to explain it convincingly and in good faith, then of course I should not be a storyteller or a filmmaker (Fellini, pp. 150-51, Bondanella, pp. 95-96). Fellini made this statement to explain why his films, and in particular his first three, do not have final scenes or solutions. It is also extremely enlightening for my discourse on vitellonismo. His characters, he wrote in the same paragraph, do not evolve. They cannot evolve in any way I feel that a film is the more moral if it doesn t offer the audience the solution found by the character whose story is told If films like I vitelloni, La strada, and Il bidone leave the audience with this feeling, mixed with a slight uneasiness, I think they have achieved their object (Bondanella, p. 95). And in the case of I vitelloni it certainly has, because the vitelloni are incapable of evolving. Those characters will probably never find a solution . They will live in a state of perennial adolescence10. None of Fellini s five vitelloni has a job. They pass time sitting at the local café watching people go by and playing pool. Fausto is the womanizer and he is truly despicable. He impregnates Sandra, the local beauty queen, and tries to run away to avoid marrying her. He makes advances to the wife of the man who, as a favor to his father-in-law, had given him a job, and is caught in the act by the husband. To his family and friends he pretends that the shop owner s wife was the offender. Once married to the pregnant Sandra, against his will, betrays her at every opportunity, even under her very eyes. He lacks any redeeming features. But then why is he introduced at the beginning of the film by the voice over as il nostro capo, la nostra guida spirituale ? (Quattro film, p. 7). When we hear this sentence we still do not know Fausto, but we see him right away at work, shamelessly flirting with a girl who can see through him and gets rid of him quickly. What kind of spiritual guide can Fausto be to his friends? Where could he guide them? Clearly to the only territory where he knows he can make conquests: women. For my purpose the most interesting vitellone is certainly Alberto, the real mammone of the group. He lives with his mother and sister who alone works 132

FIFTY YEARS OF VITELLONISMO: FELLINI, MONICELLI, MUCCINO and supports the family. There is no father figure; not even as past memory. If Alberto cannot protect his women financially, he feels he has the right and duty to protect the honor and decorum of the house. His sister Olga s affair with a married man cannot be permitted. It offends family honor, his own personal vanity, and upsets their mother. Her personal happiness, is, in fact, not even considered. Io non voglio mica farmi prendere in giro dagli amici per colpa tua. Sai . Olga must leave her lover because her affair would cause Alberto to become the laughing-stock of his friends. This son who has never done anything for the good of the family assumes the role of his mother s protector. With a threat that he has no courage to carry out (not even in words) he tells his sister: Se fai piangere mamma (Quattro film, p. 48), thus underlining, together with his weakness, his umbilical tie to the mother. In this dramatic scene what emerges besides the unhealthy relationship, is the importance of the appearance, of the figura . Alberto s biggest concern is to maintain the appearance of having an honorable family, not of actually having it. His crying, in fact, is triggered by the fear of ridicule. Studies of this film have rightly underlined the dichotomy illusion/reality at play in it and in particular in the character of Alberto. Our vitelloni play roles, wear masks which cover up their deficiencies in the eyes of the others but also (and especially) in their own. The moments of truth, when the masks at last fall off, are linked for our three friends, as Bondanella pointed out, to the world of make-believe: a beauty pageant, a carnival ball and a variety theater. Only in situations of make believe, of fiction, our friends realize that their lives are nothing but fiction and a constant effort of making others believe they are something they are not. This theme, very dear to Fellini, will remain central throughout his cinematic career. The most significant of the three events is the carnival ball where masks are literally and not only figuratively worn. At the end of the ball a drunken Alberto, wearing woman s clothes, drags an enormous, empty papier-mâché head emblematic of what he and his friends are, through the empty rooms of the dancehall and the streets outside. The question he asks Moraldo under the effects of alcohol and the answer he gives to it are the only brief moments of truth in which his friends but first of all himself are seen for what they truly are. Chi sei tu?...Non sei nessuno. Non siete nessuno tutti. Tutti quanti mi fate schifo (Quattro film, p. 74). Alberto is the very cause of the disgust he feels in this instant. But Alberto s moment of self-consciousness does not last long; it does not even last his entire drunken state. A few minutes later he thinks he has found the solution to their problems: Ah sai, Moraldo? Senti. Ci dobbiamo sposare ci dobbiamo sposare. Hai visto Fausto? Tranquillo si è sistemato, è beato. A casa sua anche noi ci dobbiamo sposare as if marrying would automatically turn them into responsible adults. Or else escape: Sai che facciamo, invece? Ci imbarchiamo. Andiamo in Brasile, eh? Ci pensi in Brasile in Brasile con un bel piroscafo , and just like a little child imita la sirena di una nave (Quattro film, p. 75). Taken home by his friend Moraldo, 133

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Alberto finds his sister leaving with her lover and his mother sobbing in the empty home. Still under the effects of the alcohol, among the tears he utters a truth and a lie: Non piangere mammina Io non me ne andrò mai, starò sempre con te . Vada, vada via! Non ci abbiamo bisogno di nessuno Troverò un lavoro io! (p. 77). Thus the dependence mother and son is sealed forever. But of course, it is the mother who created this unhealthy relationship as appears clearly from her remark: Hai visto è andata via Non me lo sarei mai aspettato da mia figlia Dopo tutti i sacrifici (Riprende a singhiozzare) (p. 77). At this point the good mother, nourishing and protective, as Bernhard had said, is transformed into her own negation . It is tempting to see in the episode of the carnival and the masks the enactment of a Pirandellian philosophy of the one, no one and one hundred thousand. Fellini probably shared with the Sicilian writer a similar philosophy of life, whereby individuals are only the masks they wear and the roles they play. His vitellone, nonetheless, wears a mask that covers specific flaws: weakness, cowardice, insecurity and family dependence, which are the same from beginning to end. His wearing of one mask only makes the vitellone closer to the stock characters of commedia dell arte than to those of Pirandello. He lacks any depth and is condemned to repeat his role over and over. Fausto, that of the Latin lover, Leopoldo, that of the deluded artist, Alberto that of the eternal mammone. Fellini s decision to give three of his vitelloni characters the names of the actors who play them, was perhaps based on his belief that the mask was actually the man, or certainly it invites to ponder the relationship between man and his on-stage identity11. And in the case of Alberto Sordi we could agree. Certainly Moraldo stands apart, but he does because he is the youngest and has not yet chosen his role. During most of the film when asked a question he always answers I don t know . He is a non-character and his departure from his friends and his town at the end of the movie tells us only something about his intentions, certainly not of the outcome. Even as he gets on the train, the answer he gives to the little boy Guido who asks him where is going, is Non lo so (Quattro film, p. 133)12. These friends who are always together and need each other to feel secure, beside being concerned with appearances, find amusement in teasing and making fun of others. They cannot lose face, yet find satisfaction in embarrassing others and in a male goliardic bond that manifests itself in obscene singing, cornering women at night on a sidewalk or insulting manual workers on a highway. These different forms of entertainment are indicative of the insecurities and weakness of the vitelloni. Although it is only Fausto who fits the role of the Latin lover, the concern with sexual conquest and potency is shared by all friends. They acquire strength by being in a group (their conquest of the dancers, for example), and get great pleasure in singing obscene stornelli, le osterie . Stubb is certainly right when he calls their dancing through the streets holding arms, a ritual activity and a dance of 134

FIFTY YEARS OF VITELLONISMO: FELLINI, MONICELLI, MUCCINO camaraderie , but rather than the dance, which actually resembles more a march than a dance, he should have paid attention to their singing (Federico Fellini, p. 100). The song is the real bond, and the bond is obtained by the pleasure of shouting sexual obscenities at night on deserted streets. The most revealing joke, however, comes from Alberto, who often performs the role of the clown to amuse his friends. In his vulgarity it reveals the real essence of our vitelloni, their refusal to grow up, accept responsibilities and respect work. The offensive gesture Alberto directs to the road workers as he passes them in his friend s car, is accompanied by his calling them lavoratori followed by a sonorous pernacchia. The gesture and the Bronx cheer, therefore are directed to the lavoratori as lavoratori (they are mocked precisely because they are working) by someone who, of course, shuns work and has never done anything serious in his life. Not working therefore, becomes a sign of intelligence and superiority that Alberto will never once in the entire film call into question. Nor do the others. The carved and gilded angel that Fausto steals with Moraldo s help and tries to sell unsuccessfully to various religious orders, the complex play that the friends put together in order to convince an older couple to buy a broken down car, are two examples13. Succeeding in life without working, by means of one s intelligence, ingenuity, ability to take advantage of others, trickery and down right dishonesty, is a source of pride14.

Come si sta bene fra noi! Fra uomini! Ma perché non siamo nati tutti finocchi? ( il Melandri in s Amici miei)

Already in I vitelloni pranks are addressed mainly to strangers, individuals who are outside the close circle of family and friends, and are a symptom of that lack of civic and social spirit I mentioned at the beginning, of acute individualism, and desire to outsmart and defeat the other. The vitellone must cover up his own impotence and weakness with an impressive act that will prove to the others his inventiveness and ingenuity. It is in the piazza, that is, with an audience (his friends first of all) that his ability will manifest itself and once again it will be in the form of a contest. Twenty two years later our vitelloni are in their fifties, Italy s economic miracle has been quickly followed by social unrest. Monicelli s Amici miei (1975) and Amici Miei Act II (1982), frame the period called anni di piombo , when more than one hundred people were killed and several hundred wounded by terrorist from the left and the right, and in the stragi di stato . Fear, pessimism, despair became widespread feelings, and the government exploited them. Italy came close to risking a coup from the right. The Italian atavistic mistrust of the government reached its peak after the kidnapping and killing of Aldo Moro in 197815. When Mario Monicelli took over the script of Amici miei from who was too ill to realize the project, and who died, in fact, shortly 135

DANIELA BINI after the beginning of the shooting, the substitute director made some changes, the first of which was moving the story from to Florence. This Tuscan heir of Boccaccio infused the script with the vitriolic humor of the region. These are certainly older vitelloni living in a dark period of Italian history, but their pranks have a definite Tuscan taste. In fact, they would fit perfectly in Boccaccio s stories16. The four old friends from school days are soon joined by a fifth, il Sassaroli , (Adolfo Celi) a head surgeon in the hospital of Pescia (a small town near Florence). Although the definite article is regularly used in northern Italy before proper names, here it also underlines the role as character. The friend who tells the stories we are watching, Il Perozzi , (Philippe Noiret) is appropriately a local news columnist. His is the voice- over in the entire film. His job is to write the local news in a time when dreadful events occurred every day and history and chronicle overlapped. With his friends Perozzi regularly escapes his depressing work into a world of play. He has a very serious son with whom he does not get along, and a wife who left him years ago after becoming tired of living with an eternal, playful child. At one point as his son, scolding him for his continuous jokes, asks: Ma quando cresci, papà? Quando la pianti di fare l imbecille? he reflects: Restai lì a chiedermi se l imbecille ero io che la vita la pigliavo come un gioco, o se invece era lui che la pigliava come una condanna ai lavori forzati ; and although he does not provide an answer to his own question, he concludes that either position in life is equally respectful (p. 46). The penniless count Lello Mascetti (Ugo Tognazzi), the third friend, has squandered his and his wife s estates (or at least so he claims) and now tries to survive by selling encyclopedias. He is the poorest of all but his family pride does not allow him to accept money from his friends, only hospitality, and he often ends up sleeping, sometime with his teenage girlfriend, in one of their homes. His forte is his rhetoric preserved and polished since the days of his childhood. With the straightest face and in the most earnest tones he speaks to strangers absolute gibberish not only in order to get out of difficult situations, but for the sheer fun of it; to prove to others and himself that he is a masterful actor capable of holding his audience s attention with empty sounds, but also to debunk the pomposity and the excessive seriousness of people of authority. Tognazzi s supercazzola prematurata became among Italians in those years a ritual phrase. Count Mascetti s senseless talking is mostly offered as a reply to some representative of the public sphere in a position of power. The total lack of any meaning of those verbal creations is, of course, an apt parody of the incomprehensible official jargon used by public servants to confuse simple people. The tradition is long: from Manzoni s Azzeccagarbugli to the lawyer of Divorzio all italiana (film made by Monicelli s intimate friend, Germi) who, in his closing remark at the trial, conquers his audience only with the sound and cadence of his voice. 136

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And of course, it brings to mind a long series of more tragic instances in which performance and empty rhetoric have conquered the masses. Forse la radice del nostro fascismo perenne writes Giorgio Bocca, è il bisogno di surrogare le nostre qualità civili inesistenti o mediocri e rischiose con la retorica 17. Once again appearance wins over reality, form over content; a very Italian quality that helps them to cope with a dreadful reality by substituting for it a pleasant illusion. It is also a double edged sword that keeps Italians playing on a stage, feeling satisfied with themselves, but removed from real life. The fourth friend who has a regular job is il Melandri ,(Gastone Moschin) the architect who, we soon find out, prefers slow paced and low paid city work to stressful private practice. Only for brief periods or special needs will he accept private commissions: for example, his designing of five family tombs. He is the only bachelor and often falls in love and gets himself in trouble because, I argue, the undercurrent of this film, in which women are relegated to the margins, is an obvious misogyny. With his caustic demeanor Monicelli would probably defuse such criticism, with the same statement he gave Walter Veltroni in an interview. Ho sempre pensato che le donne siano più concrete degli uomini più mature rispetto agli uomini, perché nel corso di una sottomissione durata millenni, hanno imparato a convivere in silenzio con il dolore . Leaving aside the comment that learning to accept and live in silence with the pain caused by an abuse may not be necessarily considered a sign of maturity, I am most disturbed by Monicelli s subsequent comment: [L uomo] ha sempre creduto di essere il padrone della casa, della vita e dell universo. Ed è sempre rimasto bambino, perché ha avuto la strada spianata dalle donne, sia che fossero mamme, mogli, amanti o sorelle (p. 29). Monicelli thus recognizes very well the cause and origin of vitellonismo. Of course, it is mama s fault. Yet he shares with Fellini an obvious attachment to his vitelloni. Since we are dealing with middle-aged men, their mothers are not present in this film, but the wives, though at the margins, are, and they do not score high points. The apparently most positive of them, precisely in the sense mentioned by Monicelli in the interview, is the wife of the fourth friend, il Necchi . Husband and wife in theory run a coffee shop the gathering place of our friends. In fact, it is she with her work who allows her lazy husband to lead a life of leisure. She gets up early in the morning, brings him breakfast in bed and works non stop all day serving costumers. He is the typical man who has had and continues to have la strada spianata dalle donne . This woman falls in the category of the mother-wife-sister-nurse and after all enjoys some respect and can be accepted by the males. She is no threat to their bond; on the contrary, with her protective behavior she allows and encourages it. Then there is Lello Mascetti s wife, una santa as her husband continues to call her, who bears patiently his escapades, and naively believes everything he tells her. In short, she is a parody of the faithful, saintly wife 137

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(and mother), once again one of those, (though in a different way), who allows the husband to remain a perennial vitellone. The surgeon Sassaroli s wife Donatella (the third was the serious and gelid estranged wife of Perotti) does not fit the role at all, and the marriage, in fact, collapses. She is the prototype of the femme fatale, the threatening sgnacchera (a slang word for the woman s sexual organ), the erotic woman. The nick name that our friends use for her could not be more explicit. She is not a person, she is her sexual organs, as the repeated descriptions and comments throughout the movie on breasts, thighs and nipples prove. Pirandello in Six Characters wrote questa non è una donna, è una Madre . So in this film Donatella is not a woman, to put it bluntly, she is a cunt. In the book Amici miei that Benvenuti, De Bernardi and Pinelli derived from the subject and the screenplay, there is a telling discussion among the friends (not included in the film) that sheds light on this theme and that our narrator relates to us indirectly. As the friends are recovering from minor injuries after a car accident in the same hospital room, they pass the time a dissertare sull unico vero, sincero, disinteressato sentimento: l amicizia fra uomini; e a compiangerci per non essere mai capaci di difenderla abbastanza dalle insidie che possono sciuparla, distruggerla. Insidie che poi si riducono sempre ad una sola. La sgnacchera (p. 41). The latent homosexuality that this fear of the erotic woman reveals comes out in the open at the famous station scene, where the five friends go after having rescued Melandri from the hold of the dangerous femme fatale who was destroying his life. But, contrary to what one might think, the station is not the end from which to depart for a new and distant adventure; the station instead is chosen as the stage of one of their most famous games (the coordinate slaps to the faces of the passengers leaning out of the windows of a departing train) that will certainly cheer the deluded friend up. Already in Fellini s I vitelloni homosociality was the main characteristic of vitellonismo. These are men who exclude women from their social life, and relegate them to the house. Though I can agree with Eve Sedgwick, recognizing the connection between homosociality and heterosexuality, I am less convinced when she adds homophobia to this dyad, at least not where Italian vitelloni are involved. In their homosociality, in fact, I see a deep fear of women that causes them to be relegated to the home in the attempt to render them harmless and prevent them from becoming erotic beings18. Thus the praise of their domestic values, of their sanctity that keeps them above and outside life. Melandri s exclamation at the station as the friends are running from one track to another Come si sta bene fra noi! Fra uomini! Ma perché non siamo nati tutti finocchi? though certainly farcical in its hyperbolic quality, reveals, in my view, a real desire that in a society dominated by males can only come up to the surface as a joke (p. 65). Mascetti s discovery of his teenager girl friend s lesbianism is characterized by shock but also admiration and it will not prevent him from continuing his 138

FIFTY YEARS OF VITELLONISMO: FELLINI, MONICELLI, MUCCINO affair with her. The station from which Moraldo had the courage to leave at the end of I vitelloni, is the stage our middle-aged friends use only to make fun of those who depart. None of them will ever go anywhere or change in any way, and only death will take Perozzi away from his life style. But he will depart giving his last and perhaps greatest performance. To the priest whom he calls to his bed and who wants to absolve him of his sins, he whispers with his last breath la supercazzola prematurata con lo scappellamento a destra (p. 137). His estranged wife who has come to the vigil in the company of her son, sarcastically asks Siamo sicuri che non è uno scherzo? Che è morto davvero? and to an incredulous Melandri who is appalled by her coldness and lack of tears, she responds: Si piange quando muore qualcuno. Ma non è morto nessuno. Cos era? Niente. Non era niente (p. 139). We cannot help thinking of our drunken Albertone addressing the same question and giving the same answer to his friends. Though this moment of consciousness is on the part of the wife, Count Mascetti s final question Ma è poi obbligatorio essere qualcuno? is a realization that he and his vitelloni friends know they are nothing. And that is why they continue to create themselves different roles to play.19. In a time of terrorist attacks, of stragi di stato , of threats from the left, the right, the state, of general fear, our friends want to escape in their world of play. Their pranks aim at ridiculing those who take themselves too seriously. It was perhaps not only the great commercial success of this film, despite the accusation from the left of being , that prompted Monicelli to make its sequel in 1982. I would like to see it also as a corollary to s Ecce Bombo (1978), itself a spoof on the young generation of very serious leftists who live at home and whose only activity is talking, talking, talking among themselves, against the system, the family and the state, totally incapable of making a decision or taking on responsibilities the intellectual vitelloni.

O partiamo adesso o non partiamo più! Non abbiamo più vent anni e per fortuna di Dio non ne abbiamo ancora quaranta! /(Paolo) Non ci sarà nessuna via d uscita a parte la fuga (Adriano in Gabriele Muccino s L ultimo bacio)

The vitelloni of Gabriele Muccino s L ultimo bacio belong to the well off bourgeoisie of the year 2000, the age of Berlusconi, of television commercial, or veline , in short, of the period of total disimpegno (disengagement) and superficial gratification20. What interests me most about Muccino s film is, in fact, its incredible success with the public21. It is made of little fragments, that is, unconnected short scenes, that jump from one friend to another. It is centered on shallow characters that are not at all developed, thus for example, the teenager Francesca s heartbreak at the end of the movie does not seem at 139

DANIELA BINI all plausible. The fragmentary style of the film, the brevity of the single scenes, seem to reflect the life style of today s youth, their need of constant movement, instant gratification, and a corresponding inability to wait for, reflect on, and develop a relationship as well as a story. Muccino s vitelloni are five trentenni. Carlo and Adriano are working in an advertising firm and have started a family: Carlo, the protagonist is living with Giulia and is about to become a father, Adriano is already married with a baby. Alberto with an elaborately braided head seems to spend all his time smoking pot, taking a different woman to bed every night and dreaming of exotic travels. The fourth, Paolo, lives at home and has just quit working in the family store (of religious objects, an obvious citation of Fellini s I vitelloni) causing his parents and uncle s disappointment. He is consumed by jealousy and devotes all his energy to calling, stalking and crying to his ex girlfriend. At his father s deathbed, Paolo is overwhelmed by guilt feelings. He is a typical product of that perverse dependency mechanism that functions through moral blackmail ( after all the sacrifices I made for you, you are leaving that we saw in Fellini s I vitelloni). He is thirty years old, lives at home and receives an income from the father s business. His desperation at his father s death can be better explained by his being caught in this implacable and inescapable mechanism of dependence, resentment and guilt. We know less of the fifth friend, Marco, because he seems the least restless and is getting married at the beginning of the movie. A constant theme of the friends conversations is escaping to Africa, Asia, as far as possible from responsibilities and commitments. It is Adriano, already with a child, who paints terrible scenes of fatherhood to Carlo who has just found out he will soon be a father, too. Metter su famiglia seems to be the terror of these young men. One reason is certainly their immaturity and weakness, but couldn t they also be afraid or reproducing the same family they were born into and making the same mistakes made by their parents? After all Curzio Maltese is right when he talks about the Italian society as distrustful of youth and of today s vitelloni who are so loving of the family that they refrain from getting married and having children. Have they finally learned something? Have they realized that they are not capable of taking on heavy responsibilities? Are they refusing to recreate dysfunctional families like those in which they grew up? On a more immediate level, the success of L ultimo bacio could depend on that. The audience, especially of youths, see themselves in those shallow, superficial characters. And here comes the question: but shouldn t they (the males) feel embarrassed then or at least uncomfortable? Only up to a certain point, since the movie has, so to speak, a happy ending, that somehow legitimizes as normal the behavior of our male protagonists, or at least, minimizes its gravity. Carlo, the protagonist, in spite of having lied to his pregnant companion in the most shameless way up to the very end, is forgiven. Moreover, while she is suffering trough a dramatic moment of lost 140

FIFTY YEARS OF VITELLONISMO: FELLINI, MONICELLI, MUCCINO trust, his voice over almost in an ironical way expresses this change of intention and life direction: Eccoti qui. Decidi che la fase dell eterna adolescenza è finita e tutto cambia Avrai una casa più grande col posto auto e il prato sempre curato uno stipendio da direttore creativo, le porte smaltate di bianco, il parquet da due centimetri, le vacanze organizzate sei mesi prima, la salute assicurata, la casa assicurata, la vita assicurata (L ultimo bacio, pp. 170-72). (In the movie, the list goes on; a swimming pool, a flowering patio, a dog named Marx and a boat named Giulia ). This entire scene mimics the content and rhythm of one of the millions publicity spots with which this generation of vitelloni feeds itself. But is Carlo s irony accompanied by self-consciousness that he, too, is enslaved in the consumer society and cannot give up the quality life he has been used to? The images of the happy father playing with the kid that pass on the screen at the end, the superficial behavior he had displayed throughout the story, make us think that Carlo has not changed, will not, and thus will probably lie again to his wife at the first opportunity. The irony of the beginning of the scene, in fact, dies out as images of father and child come on the screen. As Mario Sesti has noted, the character who at the beginning of this scene seems to play with the consumerist mask, becomes progressively that very mask (L ultimo bacio, p. 30). Carlo s mimicking commercials reveals that, as Muccino himself states, noi siamo la pubblcità che vediamo (L ultimo bacio, p. 9). The last image of Giulia jogging in the park, who is joined on her run by an athletic good looking male, besides making us think of the end of Divorzio all italiana, gives the episode its poetic justice22. Now that Carlo has bought into the domestic idyll , she, who has been disenchanted by his exercise of sexual freedom, is now able to exercise hers. After Carlo and Giulia s wedding at the end of the movie, the other three friends will finally depart on the much dreamed and talked about trip. The first will leave his idle life of drugs and women; the second, a wife and a baby; and the third, right after his father s funeral, the family job and home. They, therefore, end up doing what Fellini s Alberto had suggested under the effects of alcohol. Here they do not even need the excuse of the alcohol. They make their decisions in a sober state, as if expecting from those two events, marriage and exotic travel, the resolution of their problems, the answers to their questions. These vitelloni are the same age as Fellini s, but fifty years have elapsed, and they are the product of the consumer society, the television commercials, the Berlusconi era of easy and immediate gratification. The parents who have spoiled them are confused, weak and have themselves no directions. Although they have jobs and professions (we know of two) they are far from the stern fathers of Fellini post war Italy with their rigid work ethic. And what about the women? Have they changed from Fellini s days? Have they succeeded in liberating themselves from the traditional roles of the past? We can hardly say this. Despite a greater sexual freedom, they are still locked 141

DANIELA BINI up in the roles either of the self-sacrificing mother, or of the erotic, disturbing female, disrupting the social order (after all this is the teenager Francesca s role). In fact, they are almost caricatures of these roles. They are still concerned with their physical appearance and consider maternity their only self-realization, living it with an aggressiveness and impetuosity that reveals (or: betrays?) a strong need to assert their own exclusive space, their superiority over men. They are certainly stronger and more responsible than their male counterparts, but they become a parody of responsibility, especially Livia, the new mother. None seems to have a job (the teenager Francesca is, of course, still in school), or if they do, their work is certainly not an important part of their lives, since it is never mentioned. Of the older generation of women we get to know Anna well, Giulia s mother who is going through a middle-age crisis, triggered by the news she will soon be a grandmother. She is constantly concerned with her physical appearance, spends time in front of the mirror where a photograph of her young self smiles ironically at her. She has decided to leave her husband in order to prove to herself that she can make it on her own. Her attempt, however, fails because far from being independent she constantly needs the male s recognition to prove her worth. Not finding it outside the home, she returns to the husband who has always given it to her. We also become acquainted with Paolo s mother whom we only see in tears next to her husband s deathbed (as madre-infermiera), deluded by the son who has quit the family business and wants to leave with his friends, but still fixed also in the role of madre nutrice, ready to offer him always un po di caffellatte (p. 142). From the generation of these contemporary vitelloni, Giulia and Livia are portrayed well enough. They are the young mother figures of the film: the latter with a baby boy, the former pregnant with a girl. They are completely absorbed by their roles, although Giulia, who is not a mother yet, is afraid of becoming less physically attractive as her pregnancy progresses. Their conversations focused all and only on the child who, once it is conceived, becomes central, putting even the love of the mate in second place. This is the lesson that mothers pass to their children, especially, daughters, as Anna tells a distraught Giulia who wants to leave the betrayer, Carlo. Il tuo percorso naturale adesso è stare con lui. Devi recuperare le cose che fino a ieri ti facevano felice e occuparti insieme a lui della vostra bambina in arrivo. Credimi, adesso è questa l unica cosa che conta (p. 165). In the weak, insecure male, this behavior causes stress, fear and desire to flee. He is set aside by the new arrival who becomes the woman s raison d être. Adriano (Livia s husband), in fact, has witnessed the metamorphosis of his companion from a lover into a hysterical mother. The mythology surrounding the role of the mother is, in fact, fetal. The wife transforms herself into the self- sacrificing, dependant and obsessive figure that must approximate the perfection of the mother of all mothers, the Madonna of the Catholic tradition. The renunciations, suffering and sacrifices that she is ready to make 142

FIFTY YEARS OF VITELLONISMO: FELLINI, MONICELLI, MUCCINO for the love of the child will be compensated by his dependence and submission. The perverse mechanism is in place. The husband is excluded because, as Livia says of Adriano, è egoista ed egocentrico. Ha tutti i difetti che aveva mio padre, e io con mio padre non ci sono mai andata d accordo (p. 57). The underlying quality that sets the pace and the tone of the entire movie is its aggressiveness, that conceals frustration, unhappiness, disappointment with the world but above all with oneself. Gestures, verbal expressions are filled with violence, rage and excessive mannerism. The most recurrent expressions, incazzato , and vaffanculo , are repeated and shouted ad nauseam to everyone and everything; often to no one. Undoubtedly the language of contemporary Italians, following, it would seem, a worldwide trend, has become more liberated. The tone and the often gratuitous accumulation of profanity, however, reveal serious psychological and social disturbances that find an easy outlet in verbal expression. Today s vitelloni try to exorcise, cover up their inability to act, and their social impotence with verbal violence (another aspect of the rhetoric Giorgio Bocca was referring to earlier). Even in their anger, Italians do not cease being lovers of words, big words, hyperboles. Today s vitelloni, raised, on television Grande Fratello and commercials, have unfortunately lost the ingenuity, fantasy and humor of Count Mascetti with his supercazzola prematurata . More importantly they have lost the ability to laugh at themselves. L ultimo bacio, in fact, totally lacks humor. No trace is left in it of the commedia all italiana. The repeated ritual of the champagne bottles shaken and popped open by the male friends at night at the edge of the fountain (a modern substitute of the male game of billiard played by Fellini s and Monicelli s vitelloni), in a sad imitation of a masturbation orgy, accompanied by shouting of vaffanculo, is the pathetic climax of their self-realization. How could we expect those incazzatissimi vitelloni , brought up by reality shows and by weak and confused parents to overcome the Italian problems of familism, transformism and corruption if they are their very products? They cannot even enjoy the champagne anymore. They can only waste it.

Although the profile of vitellonismo has varied through time adapting to Italy s social and economic changes, the phenomenon is still present, reinforced by the difficulty of finding jobs with decent pay and affordable living places23. Moreover, , the leading force of the present, makes everyone feel entitled to everything. Today s vitellone does not want to renounce his fancy car, fast bike, eating at good restaurants, and la settimana bianca . Even with a job and a salary, by staying home, he will be able to have a quality life, since his basic needs are taken care of by mama. And she does not encourage him to leave. For Mother s Day 2008, Sixty Minutes ran a special on mammoni (the vitelloni seen form mama s perspective). Tele-journalist Leslie Stahl had 143

DANIELA BINI traveled to Italy to investigate the phenomenon. Although listening to the interviews, I, as an Italian, detected a playful attitude toward the journalist on the part of the interviewed vitelloni they were actually overplaying the expected role it seemed that the phenomenon of vitellonismo is not perceived by them as a problem. Those vitelloni, at least, did not feel ashamed of having mama wash, iron and cook for them. Mothers and even fathers find it perfectly logical and natural that their children stay home if they do not marry. And distinguished sociologist Franco Ferrarotti, interviewed by Stahl, appeared to agree when he said that it would be unnatural for a mother to encourage her son to leave the home . Without realizing it , he continued with a nostalgic tone, Italians are still living in the past, in an agrarian society 24. Any hope for a change? It may come from the young generation of women! Having finally acquired freedom and independence, will they marry these vitelloni and have children? (God forbid!). We will have to wait and see. Giulia and Livia, in fact, fell back into the old role. And who knows, it may also come from the immigrants who continue to arrive by the thousand and in a few generations will have altered the traditional Italian mentality or be co-opted?

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NOTES

1 Various cultural and historical elements are at play in this relationship. The century old occupation by foreigners has certainly contributed to give a great deal of importance to the family nucleus which was perceived, and still is, as a source of strength and protection against the threat coming from outside. 2 Millicent Marcus had already commented on this similarity in her brilliant essay The Taviani s Kaos. The Poetics of Adaptation , in her Filmmaking by the Book. Italian Cinema and Literary Adaptation 3 This author s intention is not too generalize and label all Italian males as vitelloni. It is, of course, possible to be a loyal son and not a vitellone. Moreover there are various degrees of vitellonismo, and the phenomenon has acquired different shades and connotations throughout the years, as I will try to show in this essay. 4 The essay entitled Il complesso della grande madre. Problemi e possibilità della psicologia analitica in Italia , was first published in the journal Tempo presente, December 1961. An interesting footnote: Fellini was a friend of Bernhard who with his study on the dream life made a big impact on the director (Fellini on Fellini, p. 178). See also Is the Oedipus Complex Universal? in A. Parson s Belief, Magic and Anomie, pp. 3-66. This essay was first published in Warner Muensterberger and Sidney Axelrad (eds.), The Psychoanalytic Study of Society, III (New York: International University 144

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Press, 1964). See Ginsborg for further bibliography, note 61 p. 386 5 Laura Balbo, quoted by Ginsborg in Italy and Its Discontent, pp. 81, 388. Just few brief statistics to confirm such dependency: According to an ISTAT research of 1993-4, one third of married Italian men still saw their mothers everyday, while another 27.5 per cent saw them more than once a week . Seven out of ten unmarried men over the age of thirty-five lived with their parents, as did one in four of those who had divorced (Ginsborg, p. 79). And the statistics do not tell us how many of those see their mothers so often because they expect to be taken care of through meals, laundry and the ironing of their clothes. The number is recently increased. In the Rapporto Italia 2005 by the Eurispes, the increase of the males between age 18 and 34 leaving with a parent went from 62% in 1993 to 67,9% in 2001. The number of males between thirty and forty year of age who have not left the family is double that of the females (36,5% against 18,1%). Francoise Sand s recent I trentenni, la generazione del labirinto (2006) speaks of the 83% of Italian single living at home, against the European average of 48%. http://www.teatronaturale.it/articolo/1234.html 6 Curzio Maltese discusses many of the problems facing Italian youth. Examining that of the long permanence in their parents home, he criticizes the fact that this phenomenon has never triggered a debate on the right to a home. Comicamente è considerato una prova di attaccamento alla famiglia and ironically he concludes: E i giovani italiani amano la famiglia al punto che si guardano bene dal farsene una (p. 18). 7 The institution of Comparatico is the one that binds the godfather or godmother to the child and vice versa for life. They can be of Baptism or Confirmation, but it is a tie that reinforces the family relation through the stamp of the Church. Thus it is considered sacred. 8 Quoted in Tullio-Altan s La nostra Italia, p. 25. Fifty years ago Edward C. Banfield in The Moral Basis of a Backward Society, started the debate on Italian familismo. He called its negative aspect amoral familism (p. 10), which entails a behavior non-community oriented, mistrust in collectivity, lack of cooperation with others, in short, a lack of civic sense. Writing about the difference between the northern and southern Italian regions, the American political scientist Robert D. Putnam sees its cause precisely in the lack of civic community in which socio-political commitment and are combined. He sees this sense of civic community stronger in the North than in the South. (Making Democracy Work: Civic Tradition in Modern Italy, p. 87). Among Italian scholars, of course, there are several who do not agree with this negative view of Italian familismo. In her brief study Italiani. Stereotipi di casa nostra, Loredana Sciolla rebukes Putnam s and Tullio-Altan s criticism with the argument that Italian familismo is also a source of positive social behaviors, and that civic sense is not absent from the peninsula, but isolated. Although I can certainly agree in finding some positive aspects in familism and although I refrain from taking an extreme 145

DANIELA BINI position, I tend to align myself with a more critical view of it. 9 In order to concentrate only on three films and to attempt to discuss fifty years of vitelloni (this essay is part of a larger project), I tried to choose movies made between more or less the same interval of time. The choice of Monicelli s Amici miei, rather than of the later films of the 80 s, for example, Salvatores Mediterraneo or Marrakesh Express, depended, on the higher quality (in my view) of the former, and on the fact that it is less known in this country. I could also have chosen Nanni Moretti s Ecce Bombo, rather than Amici miei, but the types of Fellini s are more similar to Monicelli s. 10 There is, however, for Fellini, also a positive side of vitellonismo: the desire to continue to play, imagine, invent, and postpone, hopefully forever, the entrance in the boring and often alienating routine of adult life. In his latest study Federico Fellini as Auteur. Seven Aspects of His films John C. Stubbs underlines precisely this aspect of Fellini s work. Authobiography, Childhood and Adolescence is, in fact, one of the seven aspects, that in one form or another will be present in all his oeuvre. 11 In addition to Alberto Sordi, the other two actors who play the vitelloni character maintaining their real names, are Leopoldo Trieste and Riccardo Fellini. 12 Another pertinent observation is that those friends never talk about any serious topics. Parodoxically the only aborted talks of some substance take place between Moraldo, the only friend with doubts who seems to ask questions, and the boy Guido, who is also the only one who has a real job. Once at night Moraldo points to him some stars in the sky and talks about their distance. Guido, the most mature of the male characters in the film will lend his name to Fellini s other autobiographical character in La dolce vita. 13 The only poetical moment in the entire film occurs with the beautiful statue of the angel that the friends during the night entrust to Giudizio, the porter who had carried it on his little cart during the unsuccessful attempts to sell it. The simple, old man is in awe before the statue, places it on a sand dune facing the sea, and seats next to it caressing it, demonstrating more giudizio than the vitelloni who stole it. 14 Fellini, as Bondanella remarked, represents the flaws of his characters without presuming to present a moral judgment of either his characters or the society in which they live , and (we could add) which has created them. His attitude is that of an accomplice . (The Cinema of Federico Fellini, p. 75) I find this statement particularly relevant to my broader discourse. If Italian society is so slow to change, if bad habits persist through centuries, it is also because in the Italians there is a certain compiacimento (self- indulgence) with their own weaknesses, defects, which after all are linked to the positive elements of the stereotype: warmth, understanding, forgiveness. There is in the Italians in general, perhaps in a milder form, some of the fatalism and pride of the Sicilians, of being survivors of centuries of occupation and exploitation, a disbelief in change and perhaps also a feeling 146

FIFTY YEARS OF VITELLONISMO: FELLINI, MONICELLI, MUCCINO of their own superiority because all of this. 15 Amici miei, Act II was made in 1982. This second episode is very similar to the first one. The actors playing the five friends are the same with the exception of Duilio del Prete (il Necchi) who was substituted by Renzo Montagnani, their life style does not change. It is just another series of pranks and jokes played on others. 16 Boccaccio would have loved the film s scatological jokes. The song la cacarella longa longa longa vuol la padella dalla sorella is improvised by our friends in the hospital. The next one is an exclusive invention of Necchi, the most creative of the group. After entering with his friends uninvited a rich house during a party, and having a strong need to relieve his bowls, he finds a bathroom with a toddler sitting on a potty. He removes the child from the potty for a few seconds and takes his place discharging the content of his bowls in it. He then proceeds to place the child back on his potty and leaves the bathroom. 17 Giorgio Bocca, Preface to Curzio Maltese s Come ti sei ridotto. 18 See especially the Introduction. 19 The movie is a mine of amusing sketches form which I only chose the most relevant for my discourse. I would like, however, to add at least a few words about the long sequence of jokes against the pensionato where our friends play gang war with the Marsigliesi and where no element is missing: fake guns, rubber syringes filled with tomato juice and ox s blood, fake money, sirens and fireworks that simulate hand grenades, and the final scene la notte di San Valentino is played in an abandoned building yard. Finally at Perozzi s funeral our friends tell the pensionato who ignores the cause of their friend s death: Abbiamo dovuto eliminarlo. Era un traditore , thus giving to their old companion, the most appropriate adieu (Amici miei, p. 141). 20 The term velina comes from the early history of the press. Veline were the dispatches that the fascist Ministry of Popular Culture would send to the press with news and information that were to be transmitted to the public. In the television satirical show Striscia la notizia that began in 1988, the name veline was given to very young, beautiful girls who would appear on stage half naked pretending to bring some printed news to be read by the conductor of the show, but with the real purpose of waving their hips and tits without ever opening their mouths. The term is now used in a derogatory way for all those young women seeking easy success in the world of show business, since to be a velina you do not need to know how to sing, dance or talk and there are thousands! Certainly an incredible metaphor of today s society, completely reduced to appearance without substance. 21 Muccino s movie had great success also in the United States. A remake of the movie with the same title, The Last Kiss, came out in September 2006. Paul Haggis (and Muccino s) screen play was realized by director Tony Goldwyn. Although the movie is closely modeled on the Italian original as 147

DANIELA BINI the credits state, it is interesting to note that the connection mother-son that is essential in the formation of the real vitellone, does not exist in the American version. The mother figure (as mother) has no central role in it. Vitellonismo is an Italian, or at least, a Mediterranean phenomenon. 22 Giulia s mother is played by Stefania Sandrelli who was also the protagonist of Divorzio all italiana and of the final scene mentioned in the text. She, too, in fact, underlined this similarity. I cannot help thinking that Muccino in creating this scene, wanted to pay homage to the actress who is here interpreting the role of a middle aged woman suffering for having lost her youth, with a citation from the movie where a sensual fifteen year old Stefania Sandrelli, portrayed in the photograph on the mirror, debuted as protagonist. And of course, to Pietro Germi who directed her. 23 In defense of the vitelloni, it must be said that two (perhaps related) are the serious problems facing the young generation today. Il precariato , or temporary work, with no assurance to become permanent, a semi-normal condition for their American counterpart (not only youth), but a foreign concept to the Italians used to il posto sicuro . Such temporary quality, moreover, is not accompanied by a decent salary that will allow at least temporary independence from the family. The second major problem is the age of the people with the posto sicuro , especially those with positions of power. They are old, attached to their privileges and with no intention to relinquish them. Italy has one of the oldest bodies of government officials in Europe. Presidents and prime ministers in their seventies and eights seem almost de riguer. Let alone academics, the so called baroni , whose assistants are often in their fifties. A vicious mechanism is thus created: merit and accomplishment that naturally come from young people who learn new technologies and are open to change, are not compensated; positions, jobs are given through a system of favors exchanged between the old and the powerful. And many bright and honest youth leave the country. I would like to thank my friend Millicent Marcus and my nephew and friend Andrea Bini for their invaluable comments and suggestions. 24 (http://60minutes.yahoo.com/segment/170/mammoni). In his recent satirical book Mamma mia! publicist Fabrizio Blini makes a long list of all types of mamma. What they all have in common, however, is their obsessive, unrelenting hold of the territory the son.

WORKS CITED

Banfield, Edward C. The Moral Basis of a Backward Society, Chicago: Free Press, University of Chicago, 1958. Benvenuti, L., P. De Bernardi, T. Pinelli. Amici miei, : Rizzoli, 1976. Blini, Fabrizio. Mamma mia!, Milan: Baldini Castoldi Dalai, 2007. Bondanella, Peter. The Cinema of Federico Fellini, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992. 148

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