Italian Film Amore

[Giorgio Aguilar]

LAmore ('Love') is a 1948 Italian drama anthology film directed by Roberto Rossellini starring Anna Magnani and Federico Fellini.[1][4] It consists of two parts, The Human Voice (Una voce umana), based on Jean Cocteau's 1929 play of the same title, and The Miracle (Il miracolo), based on Ramn del Valle-Incln's 1904 novel Flor de santidad.[1][5] The second part was banned in the United States until it was cleared in 1952 by the Supreme Court's decision upholding the right to freedom of speech.

An unnamed woman, desperate and alone in her apartment, is having one last conversation with her former lover over the telephone. He asks her to return their letters to him. During their conversation, which is repeatedly interrupted, it is revealed that the man left her for another woman, and that she has just attempted suicide out of grief. As a last favour, she begs him not to take her successor to the same hotel in Marseilles where she and he had once stayed.

Nannina, a simple-minded and obsessively religious woman, tends goats at the Amalfi coast. When a handsome bearded wanderer passes, she takes him to be Saint Joseph. Offering his flask of wine, he gets her drunk and she falls asleep. When she awakens, he is gone and she is convinced that his appearance was a miracle. A few months later, when she faints in an orchard, the women who help her discover that she is pregnant. Nannina believes this is another miracle, but to the townspeople she becomes a figure of ridicule, so she flees into the mountains. A single goat leads her to an empty church, where she gives birth to her child.

While Rossellini was preparing his next film, Germany, Year Zero, Anna Magnani suggested to the director to adapt Cocteau's play The Human Voice which she had already performed on stage in 1942.[2] Rossellini agreed and, because he and Magnani were staying in Paris at the time, filmed the first episode in a studio in Paris with a French crew.[2] In order to enable the short film a regular release, Rossellini had Federico Fellini script a second piece for Magnani, based on Valle-Incln's novel Flor de santidad,[2] which Rossellini turned into a screenplay with Tullio Pinelli.[1]

L'Amore premiered at the Venice Film Festival on 21 August 1948 and was released in cinemas in Rome on 2 November the same year.[1] Reactions to the film were mostly negative; even French critic Andr Bazin, usually supportive of Rossellini's work, accused the first episode of "cinematic laziness".[2]

For the 1950 New York premiere, The Miracle was removed from L'amore and placed in a three-part anthology film called The Ways of Love with two other short films, Jean Renoir's A Day in the Country (1936) and Marcel Pagnol's Jofroi (1933).[4] While Rossellini's film had passed Italian censors without complaints, its New York screening was condemned by the National Legion of Decency and Catholic authorities for blasphemy.[2] As a result, the city authorities revoked the license for the film's screening.[2] Distributor Joseph Burstyn appealed the revocation in a lawsuit "Joseph Burstyn, Inc. v. Wilson", which was finally heard at the U.S. Supreme Court.[2] In its May 1952 decision, the Court upheld Burstyn's appeal, declaring that the film was a form of artistic expression protected by the freedom of speech guarantee in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.[6][7]

Neorealism was the first postwar film movement to reject past conventions and studio production techniques, and had enormous influence on subsequent movements such as British Social Realism, Brazilian Cinema Nvo, and French and Czech New Wave. It also created the practices of shooting on location using natural lighting and postsynchronizing sound that later became standard in the film industry. Despite its influence, in the 1950s Neorealism disappeared as a distinct movement. Italian cinema nevertheless remained prominent through the works of highly talented directors who began their careers as Neorealists and went on to produce their major work during the 1960s and 1970s.

These were the years of Michelangelo Antonioni, Federico Fellini, Luchino Visconti: each of these directors possessed personal characteristics that could not be found in their colleagues. Their daily bread was the dynamics of existence, the human drama, but they always paid attention to history and the context in which their stories took place.

In parallel, a new genre flourished during the 1950s that had widespread popular success. This cinema did not criticise reality, but simply provided fun and distraction, while still keeping in mind the neorealist legacy: realistic settings and popular characters continued to be proposed. The so-called pink neorealism offered sentimental comedy plots and happy endings: films such as Pane, amore e fantasia (1953), directed by Mario Comencini, or heartbreaking, tearful stories such as Catene (1949), directed by Raffaello Matarazzo. In this context, an important role was played by Tot's films, which were often based almost exclusively on the huge professional skills of the great comedian, directed by Steno, Mastrocinque, Bragaglia, and even by Pasolini in his last great performance as leading actor. Later on, other major directors of Italian comedy films were undoubtedly Mario Monicelli, Ettore Scola, Dino Risi, and Mario Comencini.

The films made by these directors contributed to the birth of "stars", the leading actors that were so popular with the public at the time: Alberto Sordi, Vittorio Gassman, Marcello Mastroianni, Ugo Tognazzi, Nino Manfredi, Monica Vitti, and many others. These great actors are still part of the culture and collective imagination of our country, a sort of common heritage, with which many of us still identify.

IN MEMORIAM: JERRY VALE (1930-2014) : While readying the following article for publication, we learned of the passing of Jerry Vale on May 18, 2014 at the age of 83. Jerry was one of the last great gentlemen of song, and a mainstay of the Columbia Records roster for many years. He notched 18 singles on the Hot 10o between 1953 and 1967, and 27 on the Adult Contemporary chart through 1971, including the AC chart-topper "Have You Looked Into Your Heart" in 1964. Though best-known for his Italian-themed songs like "Innamorata" and "Al di l," Vale weathered the changing trends in popular music and embraced contemporary material on LPs including This Guy's in Love with You, Where's the Playground Susie, Let It Be and We've Only Just Begun. He was also a frequent visitor to Yankee Stadium as performer of the national anthem. Martin Scorsese featured Vale in his films Casino and Goodfellas, and his presence added verisimilitude to those acclaimed pictures. Jerry Vale will be remembered for his smooth croon, his effortless charm and his elegance of an era gone by. Ciao, Genaro. Riposi in pace.

Coffee giant Starbucks is saying Arrivederci, Italy with a new compilation disc that aims to "capture the abundant flavor and expressive bravado of Italia and some of its greatest performers." The repertoire, however, goes beyond the music one might hear at the local Italian restaurant with soundtrack cuts and Italian-language pop classics alongside more familiar fare by American bel canto practitioners like Dean Martin and Jerry Vale.

Alongside music, one of Italy's greatest contributions to international popular culture is film, and Arrivederci Italy includes themes from Ennio Morricone and Nino Rota. Morricone, the versatile 85-year old composer of more than 500 film and television scores in every genre imaginable, is perhaps best known stateside for his "spaghetti western" scores for Sergio Leone. "Carillon (Watch Chimes - The Musical Pocket Watch)" has been included from the second film in Leone's Man with No Name trilogy, 1965's For a Few Dollars More. The late Nino Rota, a favorite composer of Franco Zeffirelli, Francis Ford Coppola and Federico Fellini, is represented with cues from two of the legendary Fellini's films. "Amarcord" is the title theme from Fellini's 1973 picture of the same name, and "La Bella Malinconica" ("The Beautiful Melancholy") is derived from Rota's score to 1960's groundbreaking La Dolce Vita. Sophia Loren, Italy's most celebrated actress and sex symbol, found time in between her film work to embark on a recording career. Her 1957 chart-topper "Che m' 'mparato a fa'," less familiar to American listeners than her amusing duets with Peter Sellers, has been included here.

On the pop front, the compilation includes a neat bit of cross-cultural exchange with Italian singer Carla Boni's 1956 rendition of "Mambo Italiano," an Italian pastiche composed by American Bob Merrill (lyricist of Broadway's Carnival and Funny Girl). Teenage starlet Rita Pavone, subject of a recent reissue from Real Gone Music, topped the Italian charts for nine weeks in 1963 with "Cuore," an Italian adaptation of Brill Building stalwarts Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil's "Heart." Francesco Migliacci and Domenico Modugno's "Volare" remains one of the most famous Italian popular songs. The Italian entry to the 1958 Eurovision song contest, "Volare" hit big around the world, with Modugno's own recording becoming a U.S. No. 1 in mid-1958 and winning the first ever Grammys for Record of the Year and Song of the Year. Subsequent versions arrived from Bobby Rydell, Dean Martin, Al Martino, Sergio Franchi and others, but Arrivederci selects a more recent, lesser-known version from English tenor and crossover star Russell Watson.

Genaro Louis Vitaliano was born in the Bronx, and found great success once he changed his name to Jerry Vale. Vale's 1962 "Mala Femmina" comes from his long tenure at Columbia Records. Sergio Franchi, though born in Italy, became an American citizen later in life. One of RCA Victor's most popular recording artists, a favorite of Ed Sullivan and the star of Broadway's Do I Hear a Waltz?, Franchi is represented here with the nominal title track "Arrivederci Roma," first introduced by another great tenor of Italian heritage, the Philadelphia-born Mario Lanza. Along with his pal and Rat Pack brother Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin has long been one of the most famous faces of Italian-American song. No Italy-centric compilation would be complete without a performance from Dino; his 1962 "Senza Fine," with a Neal Hefti arrangement, has been selected for inclusion here.

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