Life and Art, Art and Life, Combine the Two and You Get Lart

I think if there was ever a film that proved in some way that life imitated art it would be Gomorrah. The film doesn’t follow any simple plot structure which can be nice, but also hard to follow and without even knowing the background events of the Commora you seem to realize that somehow you’re dealing with the simplicity of a gangster movie, this is the real deal.

            We follow the gangsters, the Gomorra, we follow the women and children in the neighborhood, and that’s all the film does, it follows. It doesn’t try to impose some theme of violence because although the violence is shown, repeatedly, it’s just there as simple as the air we breathe. In fact, it seems to be more like the fact that the films influence the gangsters than the gangsters influence the film. When shooting men shout something along the lines of “I’m Tony Montana!” (from Scarface) and I did hear someone in the film mention the classic woman with a gun film, La Femme Nikkita.

So as they always say people seem to identify themselves by what they see in films does Gomorrah and it’s characters seem to likely to model themselves or find themselves in these classic mobster or gangster stories? I’m saying this more as a question because I’m honestly not sure. Try finding an American gangster film that would show more around the men of the mob who instead of focusing and idealizing one new hero (see Goodfellas, The Godfather, White Heat, etc.) focuses on a wide scope of people in this world from their day to day lives. In The Godfather it’s one strong plot-driven business but in Gomorrah I had a hard time following what exactly they’re entire plot was or if it was just the fact that they had their fingers in a lot of pies. I don’t know. Do you?

Spots Deconstructed: The Leopard Part 2

I ended the last blog post with the simple hope that somehow I would be able to make sense of the three hour epic that is The Leopard. If you haven’t been able to guess by now I haven’t and I feel bad for that because I tried, I really did. But it’s just so…hard. I guess sometime throughout the film the Burt Lancaster character becomes the uncle of the prince and then something happens that…I don’t even know. Maybe it’s the fact that the film featured some characters speaking in English out of sync or maybe it was the fact that watching it in the native Italian tongue would’ve made the film more engrossing and although for the most part I’ve liked the films that we have watched in class, The Leopard seems like one that is just unbearable for me to watch. Maybe I’ll get it when I’m older…

Deconstructing Spots: The Leopard Part 1

Deconstructing Spots: The Leopard Part 1

I want to start off this post by saying that I like epic films. Films that take place over a large span of time with great impact on it’s characters can make some of the greatest characters of all time (just ask The Godfather or Gone with the Wind), but The Leopard has, from the first half I’ve seen, not been one of those films. Instead the movie is…boring. I found it difficult to follow the plot, but knew it had to took place sometime during the Italian revolution and from there to be perfectly honest...I’m not sure. It’s amazing how you can sit and focus on a film and have absolutely no clue what it’s about or feel as if you have ADD and simply just can’t watch the movie. I’m going to end this blog post short of the usual length and see if I can try to make a little more understanding in my next as I’ve still got an hour and a half to go.

Bread and Tulips

1. Read the "Rascaroli passage" inside this folder which gives a definition of European road movies.  To what extent, and why, does the film Bread and Tulips fall within this genre? Are you able to discern in this film "the European reality of a mosaic of nations, cultures, languages and roads which are separated by geographical, political, and economic boundaries and customs"?

To the extent Bread and Tulips finds falls with the European road movie is that the character is finding herself taken from a shifting cultural shift, in Rosalba's case from being a woman who is in a relationship, a partnership, to being a woman who is liberated by the constraints of her husband and is capable of doing anything she likes. As far as the quote goes I do not believe there is not as much a cultural or political mosaic so much as a journey into Rosalba's own self, her wants, fears, and desires so that she can be liberated, which is a strong American theme that can be seen in such films as Easy Rider or Badlands.

2.Compare how the film/camera portrays the city of Venice (destination) and the city of Pescara (from which the main character has left and returns)?  What are the differences and similarities?



The differences between the two cities seem to be a matter of mood. The city of Pescara is almost like a dirty mid-country town where there are not so much areas built for beauty as there as areas built for function, if you know what I mean. Venice, on the other hand seems like a city where there are infinite possibilities as well as it feels a little more open and free then a suburb through the use of tall buildings and bright lights as well as there being a sense of the city being both extremely large such as the scene when Constantino first comes into the city and there is a line a mile long waiting for hotel rooms as well as the city seeming very intimate such as the scene where Rosalba first meets Constantino and they are alone. A similarity is how much brighter Pescara seems to be, like Venice when Rosalba comes back. That's just what it seemed like to me.


3.What discoveries does Rosalba make in the film, about her own identity and about her culture?


I think the main discovery that Rosalba makes in the film is that she can be alone, which is a hugely liberating concept for her. She wanted to test the boundaries and explore a life outside of the one that she has been making with her husband for so many years and try to feel something fresh, new, and exciting so that if and when (and I always thought that Rosalba secretly wanted to go back, she left too easily) Rosalba decides to come back she could at least have thought that she lived another life, for however brief of time. Naturally events and people, such as Fernando, that she experienced complicated the matters but that's another subject entirely.

Caterina in the Big City: She's Got Growing Up To Do

I would like to start this blog entry by saying I very much enjoyed Caterina in the Big City and thought it was a very lovely coming-of-age story.
The film seems to move like a very tight gear. It moves very slowly at first and seems to be stuck but once the gears seem to come out unstuck the gears start moving at a rapid pace. What at first becomes a very interesting, yet slow character study where we are introduced to the character of Caterina, as well as her mother and father starts to quickly turn into a very plot driven film where Caterina's world continues to changed at a rapid pace from her father leaving her to he not choosing to pursue to go to technical school to her mother finding a new lover, everything in the film shows of a sort of adolescence that is actually not that uncommon amongst any films about teenagers yet alone Italian ones.

Caterina almost seems like a teenager who's life is taking place at an earlier decade instead of the new millenium. The people around her write and talk about political problems that seem to be almost a transparent view of American problems in the 1960's and 70's. Her liking to finding new things she's not comfortable with and going around graveyards listening to punk music and her father's leaving and her mother quickly finding a new male figure in the household seems almost like something that would have happened more than half a century ago in America. Although it is discussed that she lived in a hillybilly country did she not have a phone or some way to communicate with the Australian boy to whom she offers to be his girlfriend? So, Caterina is obviously a coming of age film, but of which age is Caterina coming along in?

Beauty in the Breakdown: Fellini's La Dolce Vita

Beauty in the Breakdown

At the moment there's a lot I can say about Fellini's La Dolce Vita. I could talk about the characters, specifically Marcello's womanizing (a theme I also saw in Fellini's 8 1/2) or I could talk about the the plot and how/why Fellini would choose to break the plot of the film over the course of the hero's week, but instead I'm going to go intro a little depth over the visual imagery of the film and what that says about Rome. Unlike other films about Rome I have seen such as The Bicycle Thieves or Rome, Open City, La Dolce Vita chooses to be a film not meshed at all in neorealism or even with characters that are in somewhat possible circumstances, but rather takes us into Marcello, the newspaperman's mind of the world rather than what the world actually is. Scenes such as the one in the church or in the fountain are in perfect juxtaposition with one another because they break down two essential parts of the human experience: what is and what isn't. On one hand, you're dealing with themes that could easily be apart of anyone's lifestyle such as the mass or living in a decaying city, but on the other there's all this life, all these beautiful women that are throwing themselves into your world that when you take it into account you can't help but notice that even though there's a decaying city and you're obviously going through some sort of haze in your life there is the beautiful woman!


And another!


And another!

And in the mind of the male fantasy that is the beauty. That is why men build cities like Rome and create art and news to impress the women and even when you literally follow Christ there are the bikini-clad women. What does Marcello offer his father, his male role model? Is it a story or a picture or something made of construct creative or otherwise?

That is the art. The surrealist part is that that is not life. It's glitz and glamour and in contrast to Open City or Thieves the visual imagery stems not in the architecture, there is architecture that follows the previously mentioned films it's about the extra beauty of the blonde woman bathing in the glow of the city. Chaos surrounding her, she is still a beautiful women and with those around who needs news or cities?

Do you agree with me? Am I completely daft? Did I miss some other point of La Dolce Vita? Let the comments commence!

Benjamin Lewis Italy Through Film Blog Entry #1

Hey Everyone,

My name is Benjamin (Ben) Lewis and here is my first blog entry for my Italy Through Film Class at Fitchburg State University.

1. The source of my interest in Italy is the fact that I love world cinema. Countries that to me are very interesting in terms of the cinema they produce are Japan, Spain, Mexico, France, and of course Italy. Italian films have always seemed to be such a great reflection of the country and when I saw that there was a course dedicated to Italian cinema I jumped to take it (literally, I jumped and reserved it).

2. Unfortunately my knowledge regarding Italy is very small in nature. From what I am aware of it is a country with rich culture that we fought in World War II but has since become a friend to the United States. Everything else I know about the Italy are a few world like "ciao" (hello, goodbye), "bellissima" (woman), and "Quanto per l'elefante mancini?" (How much for the left handed elephant?).

3. Most of my knowledge about Italy comes from a world history class I took in eighth grade and the few Italian films that I have seen.

4. What I would like to learn most about Italy is the inspiration that Italian directors such as Fellini and Antiolini get and develop in their cinema. What are the themes that drive these men to make these films?

5. The few Italian films I have seen are Rome Open City, The Bicycle Thieves, 8 1/2, and Cinema Paradiso.

6. One example of one Italian film I have seen and what impressed me about it was The Bicycle Thieves. The Bicycle Thieves is one of my all time favorite films and what I love about it is the simplicity of the story. I love how through the course of less than a couple of hours we become witness to the desperation the main character, Antonio embraces with his son in order to find the bicycle, which has become the symbol of their very livelihood and how in a final act of desperation Antonio has to resort to becoming a bicycle thief himself.

So that was my first blog entry (of many). Stay tuned as you and I explore Italian cinema together, ciao!