France - “Commedia all’italiana” by the Centro Cinema Cesena
The exhibition “Commedia all’italiana - Masterpieces and some epigons” has been realized for Cinemed - Festival International du Cinéma Méditerranéen de Montpellier 2018 that presents, amongst others, a section dedicated to Italian-style comedy movies.
All images come from the Centro Cinema Città di Cesena archives and the exhibition is curated by the director Antonio Maraldi.
It has not been easy to condense in about thirty images the season of one of the most vital and lively period in the history of Italian cinema. Italian-style comedy was the result of the working in tune -a not programmatic tune- by a group of directors (Monicelli, Comencini, Risi, Scola, Pietrangeli, to name a few), screenwriters (Age and Scarpelli, Maccari and Scola, Sonego), and actors (Gassman, Manfredi, Mastroianni, Sordi and Tognazzi) who was able to depict the Italian economic boom and its improvements and contradictions.
A mega-genre which could, between light smiles and savage irony, and almost always getting in tune with the public - not only look at the present but also face salient moments in the history of Italy as World Wars I and II, Fascism and Resistance.
Beside the “classic” of the genre, as Divorzio all’italiana (Divorce Italian Style) by Pietro Germi (1961) in the photos by Divo Cavicchioli or Gli anni ruggenti (Roaring Years) by Luigi Zampa (1962) in the shots by Vittorugo Contino, the exhibit proposes some example of authors nearer to us -as Verdone and Virzì- whose films try to update that lesson with intelligence.
Cinemed - Festival International du Cinéma Méditerranéen de Montpellier