Industrial D'amour

Delitto D'Amore AKA 'Crime of Love' - 1974 - Luigi Comencini

This is a very good Italian film from the 1970's about two factory co-workers who fall in love. He is a northerner and she is a southerner so you know from the start that they don't match well. He, Nullo - marxist, pragmatic, middle working class; She Carmela - religious, cautious and working lower class. Both live with large families. His rather eccentric and lazy, her's fiery and superstitious.

On the surface the film deals with conflicts that derive in their relationship from region, class, working conditions and social conditions. He wants to marry her right away but she knows her family - headed by a violent brother - won't like the idea so they hide their love.

This is a well observed love story first and foremost. For that reason, it's important that one not know how the story ends or what happens along the way. I saw the movie cold only knowing that it was a 1970's film from Italy that dealt with working class issues. That's all one should know. If you haven't heard of it or seen it I highly recommend you look for the Raro video* edition. And stop reading here because spoilers will now be revealed.

The strength of the film comes from the fact that it develops the characters, the situations they find themselves in and the milieu of both the factory and the industrial region of Milan, in which they live, before it sets upon a plot of any kind.

The plot develops slowly and about three-fourths the way through shifts gears significantly to the point that you realize it is almost a message picture. Fortunately, Comencini - who wrote and directed the film - keeps the message fairly subtle instead continuing to focus on the two characters rather than hitting us over the head over the fate that befalls Carmela. Because of this the ending is much more effective and authentic.

Anyone watching closely will realize that the first scene and the last scene are the same. However, since the characters are not yet developed, it's tough to know exactly what that first scene is telling us. Like a Franceso Rosi film there is a murder at the beginning - but unlike a Rosi film this one presents us with events so quickly the film doesn't feel like a flashback or predetermined as it plays itself out.

The two leads are well cast. Giuliano Gemma has a strength and confidence but remains fair and intelligent while Stefania Sandrelli fits the role well as a young woman who is both guarded and aggressive as she tries to nudge against the familial and religions obligations she thinks is expected of her.

The film reminded me a bit of Antononi's Red Desert in that the polluted industrial environment plays a role not only as scenery but driving the plot. The difference being that the fears become more real for he characters who, in this case, are working class.

* Don't read the synopsis on the Raro page. Gives away too much.

Otto e Mezzo slideshow

Fellini's Otto E Mezzo released 50 years ago. Here's a slideshow.

La Dolce Vita boffo box office

Fellini's La Dolce Vita was acquired by Astor Pictures for release in the U.S. in 1961 for a then astonishing sum of $625,000. It went on to make an equally amazing box office gross of $19.5 million.

Most foreign language films released in The United States today are purchased for anywhere from 50K to $1 million depending on the clout the picture carries [an Almodovar film will usually be acquired for more than a million dollars] and don't make anywhere near $10 million. So making close to 20 million in 1961 dollars means that La Dolce Vita essentially would make well over $100 million in today's dollars.

Considering La Dolce Vita was a three hour movie with subtitles [dubbed in some markets] says something about the state of foreign language distribution 50 years ago versus today.

Bitter Rice

I just saw the movie Bitter Rice, which was one of the big European films to hit the American screens in the 1950's. It combines Italian Neorealism with Hollywood elements and a little sex appeal. At the time it was actually banned in some places due to some of the racy shots of scantily clad women working in the rice fields. But seen today it is rather tepid - not to mention dated.

I dug up the original New York Times review and darn if the critic doesn't make it sound a whole lot better than it is. The review was by Bosley Crowther who seemed to be a fuddy duddy 17 years before he flubbed his infamous negative review of Bonnie and Clyde. Here are some of the highlights of his Bitter Rice review.

>"Passion toils and tumbles through it like the wrestlers in a gas-house free-for-all, and torments of carnal hunger are boldly and rawly exposed.

>[The director's]candid and natural presentation of the robustness and earthiness of life in a camp full of migrant women workers is bulging with vitality, and his episodes of violence and love-making are slices of life in the raw.

>[T]he ultimate seduction of the oddly perverse heroine is a wildly accelerating traffic in mayhem, sadism and reckless lust. And the final resolution of personal conflicts in a white tiled slaughter house, amid blood-dripping beef cadavers, is literalism carried close to the absurd.

>Silvana Mangano, [is] full-bodied and gracefully muscular, with a rich voice and a handsome, pliant face, she handles with vigor and authority the characterization of a tortured libertine. It is not too excessive to describe her as Anna Magnani minus fifteen years, Ingrid Bergman with a Latin disposition and Rita Hayworth plus twenty-five pounds!"

I want to see this movie! I mean, I did see it. But I want to see the one Crowther describes.