Comedy Italian Style: The Golden Age of Italian Film Comedies

by Rémi Fournier Lanzoni

This book explores the work of Dino Risi with The Easy Life (1962), The Monsters (1963), The New Monsters (1977), and Scent of a Woman (1974), Mario Monicelli with Big Deal on Madonna Street (1958), The Great War (1959), and Amici miei (1975), also Pietro Germi with Divorce Italian Style (1961), as well as filmmakers as disparate as Federico Fellini with Amarcord (1973), Ettore Scola with Down and Dirty (1976), Lina Wertmüller with Swept Away (1974), Luigi Comencini with The Scientific Cardplayer (1972) and many others. In addition the volume explains how the genre was able to reveal during two decades (1960s and 1970s) many acting talents and confirmed the future legacy of picturesque icons such as Alberto Sordi, Nino Manfredi, Vittorio Gassman, Stefania Sandrelli, Claudia Cardinale, Monica Vitti, Giancarlo Giannini and Ugo Tognazzi, all of whom depicted the Italian resilience in the utmost idiosyncratic manner.

288 pages, Paperback

First published October 15, 2008

Reviews

[briz · Rating 2 out of 5]

Oh, bummer. I really wanted to like this book. I wanted to learn from it. I mean, how many books are out there about this most wonderful (and relatively unknown) genres of Italian film, the commedia all'italiana of the 1960s-1970s? How many books try to weave together Italian political history with the works of filmmakers like Dino Risi, Ettore Scola and Lina Wertmuller? Okay, maybe there are indeed others. But this was the first one I, for one, have ever seen. And that was pretty exciting.

Unfortunately, I could only get through about 2/3 of it - I had to skim the remaining third. It was just too bogged down with bad writing (adjective noun adjective noun, etc). I kind of can't blame the author - English seems to be his second language, and much of his English felt like literal translations of Italian (including idioms!). e.g. "before everything" instead of "above all" ("prima di tutto"). This sounds petulant, but it really starts to wear on the reader. I had to constantly translate back and forth between English, this-book's-English, and Italian; having to exert that extra brain energy to figure out what, exactly, he was trying to say. Even more unfortunately, the thesis of the book is slim to nonexistent - much of it feels like an unenlightening taxonomy of a number of Italian films. I didn't really learn anything mind-blowing about the ones I had seen, and I didn't get very interested in the ones that were new to me. There didn't seem to be any grand thesis to hang it all together. Instead, it just felt like a lot of aimless hot air (a very Italian sin, admittedly).

Sigh! Who will honor the comedies all'italiana? Someone must!

[Louis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Best book available in English on this great genre, making it essential, despite some clumsily translated sentences. If you can read Italian, look for Enrico Giacovelli’s book on this topic!