Lucy Di Rosa 320 MANUELA GIERI CONTEMPORARY ITALIAN FILMMAKING: STRATEGIES OF SUBVERSION. PIRANDELLO, FELLINI, SCOLA, AND THE DIRECTORS OF THE NEW GENERATION Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995. 301 pp. Manuela Gieri's Contemporary Italian Filmmaking is an important contribution to the corpus of criticism on Italian cinema, touching on topics that have, until now, been largely ignored in English-language publications in North America. Dealing both with literature as well as cinema, the book identifies what the author refers to as a Pirandellian mode in Italian cinema, one which is defined by a particular type of comedy that can be traced back to the notion of humour defined in Luigi Pirandello's watershed essay, L'umorismo (1908). The book is comprised of an introduction and six chapters. For the purposes at hand, however, I would like to divide the work into four distinct units. The first unit is made up of the Introduction, Chapter 1 and Chapter 2; here, Gieri deals primarily with Pirandello. Her position is that the spirit of Pirandello informs Italian cinema in a way that is more pervasive and complex than is generally admitted when one thinks of the influence of literature on cinema. She maintains that not only are Pirandellian themes and motifs present in the cinema of the past fifty years, but that, more important, Pirandello's very specific notion of humour helped to create a "countertradition" found not only in Federico Fellini but throughout Italian cinema. Cleverly entitled "He Lost It at the Movies: A Love-Hate Relationship of Over Thirty Years," Chapter 1 provides a summary of Pirandello's direct contact with the cinematic medium. Gieri dispels the notion held by many critics that Pirandello held a predominantly negative stance towards the medium. It is clear from reading the evidence assembled in the book that Pirandello had a complex and ambivalent relationship with cinema; he had, in fact, an undeniable
Lucy Di Rosa 321_ enthusiasm and respect towards it. Taking cues from other influential artists of the time such as Gabriele D'Annunzio, Pirandello was drawn to the new medium and collaborated on many cinematic projects. As well, it must be remembered that Pirandello wrote a number of essays on cinema, including "Se il film parlante abolirà il teatro" (1929). Gieri points out that many critics have dismissed this essay as a "mere rant against the cinema" (22), but that, in reality, the piece marks Pirandello's alignment with notable opponents of talking films such as Charles Chaplin and René Clair, and that it also stands as a solid attempt to define an aesthetic of the cinema. Finally, Gieri points out that from early on in his career as a novelist, Pirandello was so intrigued by cinema that he even dedicated one of his works of fiction, Si gira! (1915-16) (later re-elaborated into Quaderni di Serafino Gubbio operatore, 1925), to the medium. Although it is undeniable that Pirandello's work makes a pessimistic statement on the human condition in the machine age, Gieri points out that in order to make his statement Pirandello makes use of the world of cinema and also of certain cinematic techniques of his time, thereby appropriating both the form and the content of cinema in order to make a wider statement about the times in which he lived. In fact, Gieri writes of "cross-cuts," of the different "shots" outlined in a particular "scene," and of how the use of language such as the insistence on the present tense allows the comparison of the novel to a script. Chapter 2, "Pirandello and the Theory of Cinema," elaborates upon some of the most important points introduced in Chapter 1. After establishing an extensive ideological framework, it is here that Pirandello's theory of humour is defined as it will relate to works of the filmmakers analyzed in the remainder of the book. Gieri begins by illustrating how Pirandello's concept of the specifico filmico, the uniqueness of cinematic language, was very much in sync with the contemporary critical debate on cinema. Juxtaposing Pirandello's ideas against those of filmmakers and critics who have been crucial to the development of film theory such as Sergei Eisenstein, Alexandre Astruc, and Christian Metz (to name but three), Gieri demonstrates Pirandello's high degree of understanding of the potential of film as a legitimate artistic form, and his awareness of the necessity of the development of a theory of film. It may be said, in fact, that Pirandello was ahead of his time in his theorizing on the cinematic medium. For instance, she points out that Alexandre Astruc's watershed essay, "The Birth of a
Lucy Di Rosa 322 New Avant-Garde: La Caméra-Stylo" (1948), with its idea that "the fundamental problem of cinema is how to express thought" (77), had been anticipated two decades earlier by Pirandello's statement that film was not only a means of artistic expression, but also a means of representing thought. In short, these opening chapters provide readers with a comprehensive summary of Pirandello's direct influence on the cinema of his time. Chapters 3 to 7 are dedicated to demonstrating the ways in which Pirandello's notion of humour has permeated the work of prominent directors for the past fifty years. Chapters 3 and 4, which deal with the connection between Pirandello and Fellini, constitute what I would define as the second unit of the book. Although Fellini was notorious for denying that he had ever read Pirandello, the influence of the latter on his work, whether direct or indirect, is undeniable. Gieri's work outlines the parallels between the works of Pirandello and those of Fellini: At different times, both Pirandello and Fellini provided a similar critique of existing interpretations of realism, and then participated in the creation of self-reflexive and metadiscoursive artistic statements. Both artists then experienced controversial critical response, as they constantly stood [...] at the edge and outside of mainstream artistic and cultural discourse. (84) Gieri underscores the fact that historically Pirandello and Fellini were situated in analogous positions in relation to the artistic trends taking place. She develops a so-called "poetics of islanders" to explain the similarities between the sensibilities of the two artists. Gieri cleverly juxtaposes the developmental and formative "spaces" of the Sicilian author and the romagnolo director, both of whom grew up on what she defines as "psychic as well as intellectual islands' in terms of an imaginary geography that has far more important intellectual consequences than their actual locations have" (92). In both artists, creative evolution occured in part because of the existential isolation of the provincial places where they grew up, and also in part because of the influence of Rome, a centre of culture and art, which was antithetical to their place of origin. Many insightful observations are made throughout the lengthy comparative analysis of the two artists and of their expressions of very similar notions of humour. Gieri's references to Fellini's filmography and to Pirandello's literary works are
Lucy Di Rosa 323 too numerous to mention here, but are undeniably effective. She traces the development of the Fellinian notion of humour and illustrates the ways in which it closely resembles Pirandello's. Also intertwined within Chapter 3 is Gieri's theory that Italian cinema escaped the "trap," so to speak, of a cinema based on genre, but that instead developed around two predominant trends, one relying on comedy and one on melodrama, a "comic (or humouristic) imagination" and a "melodramatic imagination." Fellini, with his use of a Pirandellian humour, is primarily responsible for the development of the comic imagination, that Pirandellian mode alluded to earlier, that has dominated Italian cinema throughout the past five decades. The comparative analysis of Pirandello and Fellini continues in Chapter 4, "Character and Discourse from Pirandello to Fellini: Defining a Countertradition in an Italian Context," as Gieri shows how both artists developed a humouristic art form. Along with her assertion that the work of the two helped to form an artistic "countertradition [...] variously defined as serio-comic, carnivalistic, and most importantly, 'umoristica'" (120), she also emphasizes that the two lived and worked in a space between modernity and postmodernity, "as they both address[ed] the questions raised by the interruption of the pacified relationship between Man and Nature, and by the fracture in synthesis between Subject and Object that characterized former artistic expressions" (120). Gieri thus concludes that, as a result of this socalled fracture between Subject and Object, the preferred and most logical linguistic expression of the humouristic countertradition begun by Pirandello and perpetuated by Fellini is one that is highly selfreflexive and self-referential. Therefore, to use one of her examples, subjects such as 8 1/2's Guido and Uno, nessuno e centomila's Vitangelo Moscarda, both "humourists," exist in constant awareness of the dichotomy between tragedy and comedy that defines their condition. The final two chapters of Contemporary Italian Filmmaking both constitute self-contained units. Chapter 5, "Ettore Scola A Cinematic and Social Metadiscourse," proposes a fascinating theory: that Scola appropriates the topoi of neorealism but then transforms them, utilizing them in an ironic manner. In other words, he uses neorealism in a humouristic way. This chapter is a must-read for anyone interested in Scola, and is, all on its own, a welcome contribution to the field of film studies in North America. The movement towards a more widespread humouristic and self-conscious mode in Italian cinema is explored
Lucy Di Rosa 324 through the artistic development of Ettore Scola, who worked for many years as a screenwriter and then director of many films in the comic mode. Gieri illustrates the ways in which Scola uses facets of neorealism ironically, such as in the parody of the Zavattinian pedinamento in Riusciranno i nostri eroi a ritrovare l'amico misteriosamente scomparso in Africa? (1968). Although the mode is comic, Riusciranno according to Gieri, depicts characters who are very similar to Guido in 8 1/2 (and therefore to Vitangelo Moscarda in Uno, nessuno e centomila), similar in their increasing awareness that they are just characters faced with the dilemma of making existential choices. Other notable analyses here are: that of the classic 1974 film C'eravamo tanto amati, an extremely self-conscious and bittersweet film that falls perfectly within the confines of the humouristic imagination defined by Gieri, and that of The Terrace (1979), in which the author shows the readers the ways in which the film is definitely Pirandellian. In the book's final chapter, "The New Italian Cinema: Restoration or Subversion?", Gieri deals with the works of Italy's most prominent and influential contemporary directors. She traces the different ways in which these directors of the New Italian Cinema, labelled by Lino Micciché as the "eredi del nulla," have chosen to make their brand of Italian cinema. Gieri outlines the different directions these filmmakers have taken. Many of these directors continue a dialectic with realism that began many decades ago. She identifies more "conservative" trends, such as Gianni Amelio's attempt at the retrieval of cinematic realism, and Giuseppe Tornatore's quasi-nostalgic re-reading of earlier innovative trends in cinema. On the other hand, Gieri points out a more subversive, ironic and parodic trend in films by Daniele Luchetti, Sergio Rubini, Pappi Corsicati, and especially Maurizio Nichetti, directors who explore parody and therefore continue in the "countertradition" begun by Fellini. She also places Gabriele Salvatores and Nanni Moretti in the category of "subversives," seeing the former as someone who humoristically exploits the paradigms of the tradition of the commedia all italiana in a manner not unlike that of Ettore Scola, and the latter as a filmmaker whose critical and self-reflexive films are based on a comedy of "irony and distance" (226). Like Chapter 5, this final chapter constitutes a much-needed contribution to Italian film studies in North America, a field which has shown a lack of criticism on contemporary filmmakers. Overall, Contemporary Italian Cinema marshals arguments that are
Lucy Di Rosa 325 solid and convincing. Gieri's argumentation strategies, combining poststructuralism, postmodernism, and psychoanalysis, are thorough and methodical. Readers are provided with a wealth of background information and criticism that gives the chapters continuity and provides insight into the larger context of the history of Italian cinema. The work is enriched by an extensive bibliography. Gieri has also included an impressive array of photographic stills to complement her work. The photographs have been taken on the sets of films by Fellini, Rossellini, Antonioni, De Sica, Monicelli, Risi, Scola, Base, Tornatore, Nichetti, Salvatores, Soldini, and Moretti. All of these elements combine to make Contemporary Italian Filmmaking an eminently useful and enjoyable book. University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario LUCY DI ROSA