Life is Hard (1961)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Life is hard |
| Original title | Una vita difficile |
| Country of production | Italy |
| original language | Italian |
| Publishing year | 1961 |
| length | 115 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Dino Risi |
| script | Rodolfo Sonego |
| music | Carlo Savina |
| camera | Leonida Barboni |
| cut | Tatiana Casini Morigi |
| occupation | |
unnamed:
| |
Life is difficult (original title: Una vita difficile ) is a feature film from 1961 by Dino Risi , which is one of the outstanding works of the Commedia all'italiana .
action
Silvio is a young Italian partisan during the Second World War who went into hiding on Lake Como in 1943 . A Wehrmacht soldier picks him up and places him against the wall. At the last second, Elena, who happened to be present, knocked the soldier down with her iron. She hides Silvio in an old mill, where they overwinter and become lovers. Months later, a partisan group comes by, which Silvio joins without saying goodbye to Elena. After the country was liberated, he didn't get in touch with her again until his work as a journalist for a communist workers' newspaper led him to the area. She runs off with him to the auspicious Rome, but there she finds that he lives in poverty.
His apartment is cramped, musty and without a kitchen; He is not served in the restaurants because he has been written to and cannot pay his debts. Silvio puts his idealistic struggle for another society above an improvement in its material circumstances and thus disregards Elena's most ardent wishes. Before publishing an article about entrepreneurs who move capital to Switzerland, one of them offers him a horrific sum of money if he chooses not to publish it. Contrary to Elena's opinion, who is expecting a child, he turns down the offer. The article earned him a suspended sentence for defamation. This turns into an unconditional punishment when he takes part in the storming of a radio station in the days after the attack on communist leader Togliatti . After two and a half years back outside, Elena and her mother growl him to a degree because he does not have a diploma due to the war. They live on Elena's dowry. He cuts a fine figure on the exam, fails and gets drunk in a nightclub. The couple split up in an argument in which Silvio hurts her very much and, among other things, accuses her of ignorance. Silvio uses the time to complete an autobiographical novel with the title "Una Vita Difficile", for which no publisher can be found due to the lack of literary quality and which no one dares to film because of the censorship in the Cinecittà . Years later, her child has grown a bit, he tries to win Elena back for himself, for whom an older, wealthy gentleman is now vying. Silvio can prevent this liaison with an embarrassing drunken appearance in a nightclub in Viareggio, without recapturing Elena. Only when he shows up one day at the mother-in-law's funeral in an expensive (but as it turns out "borrowed" car from his new boss) - "I've changed" - she follows him. He is now the private secretary and adlat of a magnate who, however, treats him humiliatingly. Elena is disappointed with his position - whereupon he slaps his employer into a pool of water and proudly walks away with his wife. The film ends there, albeit with a very negative perspective of renewed poverty and humiliation. As a young partisan with a full beard, Silvio was male and a hero (slight outward appearance of Fidel Castro), in the subsequent post-war Italy and the slow economic miracle he is an idealistic, wavering, selfish kid's head, unlucky person and failed.
To the work
The representatives of the film industry to whom Silvio offers his manuscript are the director Alessandro Blasetti and the actors Silvana Mangano and Vittorio Gassman , who portray themselves. The plot has several dramatic strands and is constructed conventionally, broken by satire and comic interludes. The audience recognized their own life, which required moral compromises to be mastered and produced contradictions. The narrative represents the experiences of many Italians, and uses symbolic events from collective history. These include the referendum of June 2, 1946 , in which the Italian people voted for the abolition of the monarchy and the constitution of Italy as a republic, the elections of April 1948 and the unrest after the attempted assassination of the leader of the Communist Party of Italy , Palmiro Togliatti , on July 14, 1948.
On the one hand, Silvio's condition stands for the millions of Italians who feel excluded from the economic upswing, for the struggle for humanity during the reconstruction. On the other hand, he is one of those former partisans who dreamed of realizing a socialist model of society after the end of the war . With the change to an affluent society, they experienced disappointments and the loss of their illusions. Silvio refuses materialistic temptation and is faced with the constant challenge of upholding his moral ideals. He explains to his little son that he is not an unhappy person, but one who refuses to seek "happiness". In one scene, Silvio kicks and spits against passing cars. For him they are a symbol of consumerism through which he feels betrayed by his former comrades-in-arms. When he later drives up to Elena's house in an expensive, open car, the village leads her mother to her grave in procession - it could just as well be the burial of his ideals. The end of the film, at which Silvio slaps his heavily wealthy employer, made him a hero through the revolt, some critics found. This approach can be further developed in such a way that his heroism lies less in the act of slapping the face than in the associated return of Silvio to the adversities of a life in abandonment and despair.
When Life Is Hard first hit Italian cinemas on December 19, 1961, it was badly received by critics. This is not the case with Goffredo Fofi, who in a 1964 article in the film review said, Life is difficult is the clearest of all films on the subject, except for the happy ending. "The subjects of satire are worked out with unusual clarity and the intention to show something like the history of left-wing intellectuals after the war is achieved in every way." As the sixth most visited domestic production, it made 318 million lire at the box office.
Four decades after its creation, the work enjoyed greater popularity. In 2008, in an obituary for Risi in the film magazine Positif , Jean A. Gili, author of books on the Commedia all'italiana, described Life Is Hard as Risi's first masterpiece, as “a startling picture of the development of Italy, of the hopeful struggle of the Resistance to the moral disaster of the economic miracle. ”Fournier Lanzoni (2008) found that the clever use of both public and private concerns gives the story perseverance. It examines the political and moral development of the country in a convincing way. In a necrology on Risi, Gerhard Midding also spoke of a masterpiece. The director checked skeptically whether the values of the resistance in post-war society were still sustainable. Silvio wrestles with his own corruptibility.
Web links
- Life is hard in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ^ Rémi Fournier Lanzoni: Comedy Italian style . Continuum, New York 2008, ISBN 978-0-8264-1822-7 , p. 85.
- ↑ a b Fournier Lanzoni 2008, p. 88.
- ^ A b Goffredo Fofi: Laughter in Italian. In: film review. No. 8/1964, p. 401.
- ↑ a b c Fournier Lanzoni 2008, p. 86.
- ↑ Fournier Lanzoni 2008, pp. 87-88 and 86
- ^ Maggie Günsberg: Italian cinema. Gender and genre . Palgrave, New York 2005, ISBN 0-333-75115-9 , p. 79.
- ↑ Fournier Lanzoni 2008, pp. 88-89.
- ↑ Carlo Celli, Marga Cottino-Jones: A new guide to Italian cinema . Palgrave, New York 2007, ISBN 978-1-4039-7560-7 , p. 175.
- ^ Rémi Fournier Lanzoni: Comedy Italian style. Continuum, New York 2008, ISBN 978-0-8264-1822-7 , p. 255.
- ^ Jean A. Gili: Dino Risi 1916-2008. L'ombre du moraliste. In: Positif . September 2008, pp. 70-71.
- ↑ Fournier Lanzoni 2008, p. 87.
- ^ Gerhard Midding: A hedonist and cynic. Dino Risi, director 1916–2008 . In: epd film . No. 7/2008, pp. 12-13.