Cinema 128 Fifty Years of Vitellonismo: Fellini

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, Vitaliano Brancati 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 Italy 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.

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