1977 - Drammatico/Commedia - 1h 35m
Regia: Giuseppe Bertolucci
Cast: Roberto Benigni, Alida Valli, Carlo Monni, Mario Pachi, Maresco Fratini, Donatella Valmaggia, Rossana Benvenuto, Giovanni Nannini, Donato Sannini, Annalisa Foà, Walter Fantini, Sergio Forconi, Paolo Pieri, Patrizia Mauro, Chiara Moretti
Mario Cioni is a twenty-five-year-old Tuscan with the myth of the famous politician Enrico Berlinguer, so much so that he mentions it several times. He spends most of his time with his usual friends, joking, playing cards, and going to the movies several times to see mostly pornographic films. But the guy for his way of living life, is also targeted by his own friends who will decide to make them a very heavy joke.
Debut in the cinema for Roberto Benigni, who before then had worked mostly in the theater and that thanks to his comedy as a true Tuscan, he was having a lot of success. The great Roberto had understood that now exceeded the threshold of 20 years, the time had come to enter in the cinema, bringing his acting in a spontaneous manner, even within the screen, and not always on a stage, only making his debut at the cinema would have been able to fill his already well-known career, but that still was not the Benign known that we will see this film next.
Roberto Benigni e Giuseppe Bertolucci
This is also the first film as a director of Giuseppe Bertolucci, brother of the best known Bernardo, who had already had the opportunity to work with his brother before, but in particular with Benigni with whom he had worked in the theater and over the years they had become great friends also in private life. A very young director who, having lived in the shadow of his brother who was becoming a primary director of Italian cinema, and we all know the great director he was, was an excellent testing ground to testify that he too could do his part. Certainly young G. Bertolucci, wanted to describe a very poor Tuscany, of the subproletariat as is our protagonist and the other characters, it was a right element to bring even the peasant people or who lived on little money and not in the best conditions to be noticed.
A young Benigni here at the debut in the cinema
In seeing his way of representing the underprolership, I saw a director who wanted to start from the bottom and then aim high knowing that many viewers could expect a lot from him given the well-started career of his older brother Bernardo. A different way of seeing cinema for the young director from Parma, who, having had the opportunity to work a lot in the theater, would have had his film debut much easier. But if the peasant world was a good element, the same can be said of the way of life of the Tuscan boys who used the so-called "gypsies" passed the time, taking up the model without making comparisons with the film Amici Miei by Mario Monicelli, where the protagonists have fun with various pranks.
What I was very curious to see was the debut of Roberto Benigni, who had not followed him much in his theatrical work, but his success is self-made, I was curious if his way of doing could have made the success he was already having on a stage. I was not very impressed by his character (which according to sources is taken from his show the year before or Cioni Mario Di Gaspare was Giulia who had been successful, reprising the same character). A character that is of the gab to his success, but using too much foul language has me bored on many aspects, because it always returns to the same subjects namely, sex, and masturbation, or masturbation to understand, that it's funny, up to a certain point and then become tired; I can only see a young Benigni, who tries to make people laugh and is not yet matured to such a point that he still had a long way to go to become the actor know that from then on.
Mario Cioni in the center with his friends
The guy often talks to himself and the same scurrilous friends like him, they sometimes make fun of him, probably about his way of being in addition to his childish way of living, even in the sexual life where he is very stuck, it made me more SORRY than laughing and I feel sorry for such an actor. The jokes are the basis of the whole film but also heavy as the one in which our protagonist is told that his mother died causing him to fall into a chasm and then understand the next day that she is still alive and well. A character with that of the mother that we do not know the name, but that's a legend, Italian actress Alida Valli tries to interpret with the typical comedy tuscany dedicated to bad language, that of a mother, I would not expect, and that's mean sometimes the poor Cioni, if I had a mother so I would be ashamed, what made me fall, causing the phrase on one of the many themes centred on the sex between her and the husband, now dead for years; an interpretation not by her.
Alida Valli is the mother of Mario Cioni
The rest of the characters do not make them laugh or try, of course I love the Tuscan dialect and the way they have to make the Tuscans laugh, making them unique indeed, but they are in this film characters who have gone too far from their role because it is not enough to speak scurrilously to make them laugh or at least not always; all the company of the protagonist would be to talk about but what we have to say more about is Bozzone (Carlo Monni, long-time friend of Benigni), who has given proof of a stupid as comic character, who will establish a relationship with Mario's mother after a bet won in cards right against him, his language brings the arrogant but funny character of the film. The peasant and working-class environments make the film a huge source of the plot, which also give the basis of our characters that are workers but also teasing and sometimes lazy.
The soundtrack composed by Pier Luigi Farri and frank Coletta tells the whole story, sometimes funny, but repetitive, with ballads jolly and typical of the films of the 70's, with the goal to make you feel at ease, even if not involved me a lot, maybe because everything in the film has convinced me and you save so few parts of the movie that I have a hard time giving a positive vote also on the soundtrack. A film that probably aspired to something else that sometimes bored me for many things mentioned and needed to be better organized.
by Giacomo Fantini rating: 2,10
8 June 2021
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