Film as an act of resistance: film Directors from different eras of Italian film to rebel against the conditions. Three examples from the years 1946, 1968 and 2017 are now to rediscover.
“The Private is political” was the slogan of the Berlin film festival to 2019. This is the Motto of three Italian films together, which are now on DVD again accessible, and have all dared the balancing act between the Private and the Political.
“If we see that today in Italy and elsewhere, again, nationalists and populists with hollow phrases and approaches salon are capable of, or even the majority of capable of, then a view can be had back in those days, in which to get rid of your successfully, do no harm”, writes the Swiss film journalist in the booklet accompanying the DVD Edition with the films of the Italian Directors Paolo and Vittorio Taviani.
They wrote and staged their films almost symbiotically
Paolo and Vittorio Taviani are considered to be the most famous pair of brothers in film history. In her films, she looked often in the past, but also a commentary on current Italian politics in the eye.
Her Work has received many awards, they won the Palme d’or at Cannes (for “Padre Padrone), a Golden lion in Venice for her life’s work and in 2012, the Golden bear at the Berlinale for her unusual Shakespeare adaptation of “Caesar must die”.
Paolo Tavioani (*1931, R) and in 2018 of deceased brother Vittorio (b. 1929 – 2018)
The Tavianis have been dedicated in their films again and again the history of their country, in particular, the Italy under fascist rule. In their last Film together, they devoted themselves again to this theme: “Una questione privata” (“A private matter”, 2017). The shooting, they started together, but Paolo had to bring the Film alone to the end, because his older brother was injured in a car accident. 2018 Vittorio died. The world premiere of the film had taken place a few months earlier at the film festival in Toronto, Canada.
Paolo Taviani: “The anti-fascism has returned as a topical issue”
You can look at “Una questione privata”, the legacy of the Tavianis. For the German viewers of the DVD Edition of four films of the two authors and the cash is not came to your now of particular interest, because “Una questione privata” in this country, even in the cinemas.
Milton (Luca Marinelli, r.) observed Fulvia (Valentina Bellè) and his friend Georgio (Lorenzo Richelmy)
“The anti-fascism is back as a topic of great timeliness,” said Paolo Taviani, given the existing political conditions in his homeland, Italy’s interior Minister Matteo Salvini adjusted the political coordinates, just a sharp right turn. Actually, you would not have expected to have in the cinema once more in the fight against the Right to dedicate, Paolo Taviani: “But now my brother felt Vittorio’s and I urgency to tell the inside of the partisans and the resistance.”
Political and Private mix in the Tavianis
“Una questione privata” tells the story of the young Milton, the fights in the last years of the war in the Alps against the Italian fascists. The partisan groups are fragmented, the terrain is impassable, no one knows how the situation develops. Add to this the Liebesnot of the young man. Milton’s memories are dominated by the young Fulvia, a girl, in which he, shortly before the outbreak of fighting in love.
The Film also plays with the memories of Milton’s: “Una questione privata”
But Fulvia had obviously also with Milton’s friend, Giorgio troops during what crashes Milton in a feeling of chaos. Also Giorgio is fighting against the fascists, in another partisan group: The Private is political – both spheres cannot be separated in this beautiful, unspectacular Film directed.
“Shoeshine” by Vittorio of Sica
To the cinema, the Tavianis have found, after they had seen of 1946, Roberto Rossellini’s groundbreaking neorealist masterpiece “Paisà”, in German-occupied Italy and plays as one of the first films of neo-realism after the end of the Second world war, the world of cinema, changed. From Italy, a kind of cinematic exemption was at the time, who knew to shake off the shackles of national film propaganda with a view to unvarnished realities.
One of the young Shoe shiners on the streets of Rome: Vittorio the Sica’s “shoeshine man”
In addition to Roberto Rossellini, and Luchino Visconti, the Italian Director Vittorio de Sica was one of the main representatives of neo-realism. His Film “Bicycle thieves” is still regarded as one of the best movies of all time, won an Oscar and the Golden Globe and was honored at the film festival in Locarno.
Critical views of harsh post-war reality in Italy
The Film, de Sica directed, directly in front of “The Bicycle thieves”, is today less well known, although he also won an Oscar. “Shoeshine” (1946) is now also on DVD available. It is the touching story of the brother pair of Giuseppe and Franco, the life in Rome after the liberation by the Americans from the Work on the road – you brush mainly American soldiers, the shoes.
In a huge youth prison, the majority of the action takes place. The two are harassed by sadistic guards. “Shoeshine boy” is a poignant story of Hardship, oppression and arbitrariness. A realistic view of the world far removed from the Italian film the reality of the populist and fascist cinema.
Bertolucci lets his protagonists (and the audience) in the dark: “partners”
A very different approach to the film resistance, the recently deceased Italian film Director Bernardo Bertolucci chose in the break of the year in 1968 for his work “Partner”. Bertolucci, the most of the cinema enthusiasts as the Creator of the great epics such as “1900” and “The last Emperor”, as well as the scandal-success of “last Tango in Paris”, was taken in the early phase of his career, aesthetically, first of all, a very different way.
The self-confessed Marxist and brought in such films as a world image on the canvas, that had nothing to do with the bacchanal epics of his later great successes.
With “Partner” wanted to Bertolucci violate popular viewing habits
The most radical of the 1968 happened in “partners”. The Film can today be seen as an expression of the cinema of that time conceived that the want to escape any kind of audience identification. Based on Dostoevsky’s novel “The double” and strongly reminiscent of his cinematic role model, Jean-Luc Godard-oriented, “telling” Bertolucci of a young man who murders commits as a vampire gives birth to and political slogans widely used.
Of a comprehensible storyline can be a “Partner”. The Director distanced himself later from his Film: “Partner’ was a disease through lived experience, a completely neurotic Film, is sick and schizophrenic.”
“Partners” is impressive today, especially with its many magical images
Also if you actually bother, the content and formal traces of a “Partner” to follow, the Film is a typical document of the time: radical in its Thinking and story-telling, confusing in its structure, but always with surprising and intoxicating images. It is the early work of a Director who should be tackling later other cinematic Universes, but in spite of the concessions to the commercial cinema of a never populist.
The Taviani Box with the movie “Padre Padrone,” “The night of San Lorenzo”, “Kaos” and “And questiona privata” is also published by the provider “Trigon-Film” as the Film “Partner” by Bernardo Bertolucci. “Shoeshine” by Vittorio de Sica is the provider “Pidax Film” on DVD.