AMORE E RABBIA aka LOVE AND ANGER

Carlo Lizzani, Bernardo Bertolucci, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Jean-Luc Godard, Elda Tattoli, Marco Bellocchio, 1969

Starring: Ninetto Davoli, Julian Beck, Nino Castelnuovo, Tom Baker

I just wrote in my review of Capriccio all’italiana, an anthology film from the previous year that Pasolini also contributed to, how sick I am of European art house anthologies, but Amore e rabbia was blissfully the last of these. When these anthology films weren’t completely self-indulgent, like The Witches, they tended to focus on the fraught political situation of the late ‘60s. Marked by protests, strikes, and government-wide shut downs, this period was the closest Europe has come since 18th century France to attaining revolution. 

While the US was home to the Civil Rights Movement and anti-Vietnam demonstrations, French students nearly overthrew their own government, Italy had a major anarchist conference, and Czechoslovakia underwent the Prague Spring, etc. Without understanding the political climate of the period, it’s almost impossible to absorb everything going on in Amore e rabbia, which is made up of five clips from six directors. 

Carlo Lizzani, one of neorealism’s foremost screenwriters and a prolific director in his own right, kicked off the anthology with “L’indifferenza" aka “Indifference,” the most effective segment of the film. In the courtyard of an apartment, a woman is attacked while onlookers ignore the crime to listen to a sporting event (based on the true story of Kitty Genovese, who was raped and stabbed to death just outside her apartment complex), and elsewhere people refuse to help an injured man and woman trying to get from a car accident to the hospital. This latter tale would be more effective if I hadn’t already watched a more comical version in The Witches, which this much more somber retelling closely mirrors. Still, its implications are chilling and there is an almost Cronenbergian feel to the hostility and violence of the city.

Bernardo Bertolucci’s “Agonia” aka “Agony,” on the other hand, is really an acquired taste. A man is passing away and his death is accompanied by a troupe of dancers who form body sculptures (like something you might see at Cirque du Soleil), spout pseudo philosophical nonsense, and otherwise guide the man to his death in the most ‘60s European counterculture way possible. Put together by The Living Theatre and with a performance from the company’s founders Julian Beck and Judith Malina, you really have to know the background to get this one. It might be nice to watch after checking out Fassbinder’s documentary on experimental theater, Theatre in Trance (1981).

Next up is Pasolini’s segment, "La sequenza del fiore di carta” aka “The Sequence of Paper Flowers,” which is surprisingly short and simple. His regularly star from this period, the irresistibly likable Ninetto Davoli plays an innocent young man who wanders the streets in utter harmony with the world, sometimes carrying a large paper flower. These images are contrasted with clips of atrocities and historically important moments and the youth is eventually struck dead, as if the heavens are outraged by his innocence and gaiety. This one would be unlikable if it weren’t for an infectious performance from Davoli, whose sunny personality shines through. It’s easy to see why he become one of Pasolini’s most used comic actors.

The little dialogue in “La sequenza del fiore di carta” is more than made up for with the dialogue-heavy story from the film’s only non-Italian director, Jean-Luc Godard. His “L’Amore” aka “Love” is a fascinating companion piece to some of his films that revolve around relationships — such as Contempt and A Woman in a Woman — as it follows a couple who sit around and argue. Their discussions of love and politics are underlined by the fact that she is Jewish and he is Arabic and they are contrasted with another couple who discuss the actions of the central couple.

Marco Bellocchio and Elda Tattoli segment, "Discutiamo, discutiamo” aka “We Tell, You Tell,” is the last and will probably feel as relevant as the first segment to contemporary viewers. It follows a group of politically-minded students who don’t take any action, but sit around preaching ideas of Marxism and anarchism that they all already agree on. Essentially their discussion is about whether it’s possible to change things from within the system or whether the system should be destroyed and rebuilt. It’s not the best of the short films, but the discussion feels fresh and some of the themes haven’t changed at all.

Overall I can only recommend Amore e rabbia to Pasolini and Godard completists, or to anyone with an interest in or knowledge of ‘60s history. You can surprisingly find the film on DVD, in a nice-looking edition from NoShame. It’s definitely worth watching at least once and I would be fascinated to hear some feedback from viewers totally ignorant to the events of the late ‘60s.

RO.GO.PA.G.

Roberto Rossellini, Jean-Luc Godard, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Ugo Gregoretti, 1963

Starring: Orson Welles, Laura Betti, Rosanna Schiaffino, Gianrico Tedeschi, Ugo Tognazzi, Edmonda Aldini

Also known as RoGoPaG, this art hours anthology film is named after the abbreviated names of its directors: Roberto Rossellini, Jean-Luc Godard, Pasolini, and Ugo Gregoretti. With the catch phrase, “Let’s Wash Our Brains,” this satirical, political exercise combines one established director — Rossellini — with the three newcomers. It’s an interesting slice of the early ‘60s and also has some excellent moments of comedy, even if it is flawed at times and has some troubling sexual politics. Pasolini’s film, one of the longest entries in the anthology, is the crown jewel of the piece and remains the reason that Ro.Go.Pa.G. is still relevant.

Roberto Rossellini’s Illibatezza

Rossellini’s Chastity follows an attractive flight attendant (played by the producer’s wife, Rosanna Schiaffino), who receives some annoying attention from a male passenger when they both land in Bangkok. She makes 8mm videos for her fiancé in her spare time and tries to escape the passenger’s attention, though he follows her everywhere. She gives herself a blonde bimbo makeover and adopts a new, sexually aggressive persona, which gets rid of him in the end. While the sex comedy would become a staple of Italian cinema and many of Rossellini’s earlier films have (at least implied) sexual content, seeing an erotic farce by way of the master of neorealism is jarring at best and flagrantly misogynistic at worst.

It’s standard fare to imagine someone (of course it’s a drunk American here) harassing a beautiful stewardess, Rossellini sort of contradicts himself. The man throws himself at Anna, the stewardess, drunkenly groping her and even trying to rape her. When she wears more provocative clothing, dyes her hair blonde, and comes on to him, he disgustedly calls himself a fool and her a whore and rapidly falls out of love with her. What? Anna’s need to film everything (which she ships to her boyfriend who then watches them back home) could have been a fascinating addition to this tale, but feel like a wasted opportunity.

Jean-Luc Godard’s Il nuovo mondo

Godard’s The New World is the only segment made by a Frenchman and is perhaps fittingly set in Paris. A young married couple tries to adjust to life after the explosion of an atomic bomb over Paris. Though there is no noticeable physical damage, the citizens, including the young wife, Alexandra, begin to act strangely and a riff appears in the once happy marriage. Sort of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) by way of Godard, I really enjoyed this sci-fi twist on the French New Wave, but I’m sure a lot of viewers will find it pretentious. 

The husband (Jean-Marc Bory) spends a lot of time alone in hotel rooms talking to himself, brooding gallicly, and copying down his disturbing observations in a notebook. This is a pleasant reminder of Godard’s dystopian sci-fi triumph Alphaville (1965), which followed a few years later. And like almost all of Godard’s films from that period, the central dramatic tension in Il nuovo mondo is a disintegrating relationship between a man and a woman — a topic he would revisit more profoundly the same year with Le mepris aka Contempt. 

Pier Paolo Pasolini’s La ricotta

Ricotta is easily the centerpiece of this film and was so controversial that Pasolini was taken to court for his troubles. This hilarious, irreverent work is perhaps the culmination of what Pasolini meant when he said that cinema is a language in and of itself. Here he follows a filmmaker (brilliantly played by Orson Welles; I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall for their conversations), who is directing a movie about the crucifixion. Pasolini focuses on one of the bit players, a man playing a thief who will hang on one of the crosses next to Christ, and his struggles with food. He gives his daily rations to his family and steals a second helping. A dog eats this while he’s filming a scene, so he sells the dog to buy himself a huge helping of ricotta cheese and bread. He gorges himself and then dies — while again filming up on the cross.

Pasolini cleverly mocks so many things in such a short amount of time, including himself. He makes fun of his use of classical art as a way to set up shots, and his Marxism; the director calls a reporter a conformist and read from a book version of Pasolini’s Mamma Roma. Deftly capturing both the grotesque and carnivalesque in a way not seen in his previous films (Accattone and Mamma Roma) the film switches back and forth between black and white and color — the latter when the film within a film is in action — and has an almost inappropriately jazzy score. There are some very “Yakkity Sax”-like fast-paced moments that I couldn’t help laughing at where Stracci runs down the road to a sped-up harpsichord ditty. But Pasolini also reminds us that we’re laughing at the expense of a starving man desperate to find food after providing for his family.

As all of Pasolini’s early works, this film examines Italian’s disenfranchised, poor urban and rural populations. Through the character of Stracci (Mario Cipriani), he mocks the exploitative nature of both capitalism and religion. As it would again appear in his later films, food becomes emblematic of humanity — in particular, the ill effects of human suffering and human greed. Stracci basically dies of a stomach ache when he has consumed too much bread and cheese and, like the male protagonists of Accattone and Mamma Roma, he becomes something of a martyr, tied to a literal cross. This is a fascinating bridge between the controversial street drama of Accattone and the mythic, sacred subject matter of one of his immediate follow up films, The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964).

Ugo Gregoretti’s Il pollo ruspante

Ugo Gregoretti’s Free Range Chicken is the least of the shorts, primarily because it’s the least subtle. This too literal satire about the evils of capitalism looks particularly awkward after Pasolini’s masterpiece. It contrasts the spending addiction of a bourgeois family — who are suckered into buying a house, toys, an unnecessarily large meal — while a professor with a robot-like voice lectures about how capitalism is ultimately an exploitative system. After their numerous purchases and silly social posturing meant to make them look impressive to complete strangers, they die in a car crash. 

Director Ugo Gregoretti’s name is almost completely unknown to modern audiences. Though he made a few feature-length films and returned to the anthology medium (with Godard, Claude Chabrol, Roman Polanski, and Hiromichi Horikawa) for The World’s Most Beautiful Swindlers (1964), he primarily directed shorts, documentaries, and TV movies. Though Il pollo ruspante is not an entirely successful effort, it still has it’s interesting moments and I’d like to see some of Gregoretti’s TV work on day.

Ro.Go.Pa.G. remains a curio, something really only of interest to diehard fans of European art house cinema, but I think it’s worth a watch. Pasolini’s segment comes highly recommended and you can find it as an extra on the Criterion Mamma Roma disc. The complete film is available in an average, but kind of disappointing Pasolini box set with some of his other early films and one of his early novels, or in the fantastic Masters of Cinema Blu-ray of Ro.Go.Pa.G.

CONTEMPT aka LE MEPRIS

Jean-Luc Godard, 1963
Starring: Brigitte Bardot, Michael Piccoli, Jack Palance, Giorgia Moll, Fritz Lang

"Perhaps in each of our films you can find our hearts, our desire, everything we love and everything that gives us away." --Fritz Lang

Like Godard himself, Contempt is a divisive film. It's been called "the greatest work of art produced in post-war Europe," but I've also read/heard a lot of hatred lobbed in its direction. It was Godard's biggest studio film and is usually also considered his most accessible. Despite its streamlined plot, it's a movie with rich thematic undertones that tries to cover a lot of groundwork.

Though at its core, Contempt is about a crumbling marriage and the difficulties of love, it's also about making movies, about the appreciation of art and literature, about the contrasting values of art and commerce, and about the intersection between The Odyssey and Godard's personal life. And so on. It concerns Paul (Piccoli), a screenwriter hired to rewrite the script for a difficult new adaptation of The Odyssey, which is being directed by Fritz Lang (as himself!!) and lorded over by the ridiculous American producer, Jeremy Prokosh (Palance). Prokosh is a chauvinistic, infantile force of nature, moving through the film disrupting things as he goes. He seems to have the hots for Camille (the inimitable Bardot, though how could you not?), Paul's wife, and unknowingly stirs up the festering trouble in their relationship.

No matter how much you might love someone or think you do, there are millions of interactions and exchanges that tip the scales of a relationship. I think Contempt's true beauty and tragedy is that it holds a magnifying glass up to the minutiae of that with a stark, scary, and sad honesty. Paul and Camille love each other, or so the beginning of the film posits, but it all unravels in just one day. This illuminates the other, somewhat terrifying problem: simple communication is another powerful force that can corrode and destroy a previously healthy, strong relationship (Godard examined the cheerier side of this with A Woman is a Woman). Paul and Camille both misinterpret and misconstrue one another's actions and statements. These seemingly trivial slights snowball into infidelity, separation, and tragedy.

I love this film, but I also don't believe it's for everyone. Yes, it is snobby and intellectual and I know a few people who find it appallingly boring. Obviously those people are morons, but be forewarned that this is the French New Wave. If you've never seen one of these films before, this might not be the place to start. But if you're patient, open-minded, and you love Fritz Lang as much as I do, it's well worth checking out.

The Criterion release is obviously the only way to go. There are two discs presenting the restored film and a lot of interviews, most of them really worth watching. I particularly love the discussion between Godard and Lang, "The Dinosaur and the Baby." I could watch hours of this. It's fascinating to see such great artistic minds coming together and somewhat clashing against one another, particularly when you know their rich histories and brilliant films. Criterion claims this is out of print, but you can still find it on Amazon.