The most beautiful soirée of my life
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | The most beautiful soirée of my life |
| Original title | La più bella serata della mia vita |
 | |
| Country of production | Italy , France |
| original language | Italian |
| Publishing year | 1972 |
| length | 106 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Ettore Scola |
| script | Sergio Amidei , Ettore Scola |
| production | Dino De Laurentiis |
| music | Armando Trovajoli |
| camera | Claudio Cirillo |
| cut | Raimondo Crociani |
| occupation | |
| |
The most beautiful soirée of my life ( La più bella serata della mia vita ) is a comedy and grotesque film by the Italian director Ettore Scola from 1972 . It was created as an Italian-French co-production and is a free interpretation of Friedrich Dürrenmatt's story Die Panne . Scola staged a "fake" trial against a representative of the greedy bourgeoisie who are not aware of any guilt. In addition to the Italian Alberto Sordi, the French old actors Michel Simon , Charles Vanel and, in his last role, Pierre Brasseur took part. Besides Chiasso and Lugano , the main part of the action is set in the Swiss Alps, but it was shot in the South Tyrolean town of Bruneck .
action
The Italian businessman Rossi arrives late in Lugano . Since the bank has already closed, he drives on with a bag of black money. He chases after a mysterious beautiful motorcyclist with his Maserati until the car breaks down on a remote alpine road. He is driven to the castle of Count De La Brunetière by the coachman Pilet who appears. There he got into the company of the count and the retired judge Lutz and public prosecutor Zorn; the driver turns out to be a pilet, a former executioner. To pass the time, they replay old cases and invite Rossi as the accused to dinner. The maid Simonetta brings the dishes and Pilet pours them.
Before the round, the talkative Rossi spreads his life, for which his "defender", the count, rebukes him as a difficult client. Because with that he has provided the "prosecutor" Zorn with information that he uses against him. Rossi regards his actions, with which he rose from a humble background to a higher position, than is socially customary in Italy and therefore not immoral. The "prosecutor" develops a daring theory, according to which Rossi deliberately seduced the wife of his former superior, whose death was provoked by a heart attack and intrigued within the company. In Rossi's defense, the count tries to portray him as an uneducated petty bourgeois, but Rossi rejects this view and admits that the prosecutor is largely correct in his theory. After the judge has read out the death sentence, the final hearing is toasted with champagne, and Rossi is extremely amused by the successful evening. When he was put to bed, his expectation for a “last night” with Simonetta was not fulfilled. Instead, he has a terrible dream in which the motorcyclist leads him to the scaffold and the sentence is carried out in the presence of everyone. In the morning, the clerk, who identifies himself as the hotel's receptionist, presents him with an invoice for the food, the wines, the trial and borrowed costumes. The scroll with the death sentence is handed over to him and a Swiss costume association plays in the castle courtyard to say goodbye. On his way back in the Maserati over the Alpine road, the motorcyclist reappears and steers him to an unfinished bridge. The scroll slips under the brake pedal, causing him to fall. The fall takes place in slow motion: the motorcyclist takes off her helmet and he recognizes Simonetta. He bursts into long laughter until he hits.
subjects
The most beautiful soirée of my life introduced a new tone to Scola's work, "darker and more serious" than before. The comedy form took on grotesque features, the comedy became “extremely bitter” as a result of “disillusionment with the promises of the economic miracle”. As a communist, Scola was disappointed that the social utopias of earlier years had evaporated and that “materialism and greed” prevailed in Italian society. Scola explained that in this film, the bourgeois climber who is collecting privileges wants to go to trial. “This is a selfish person, a conservative, an exploiter, a tax evader, greedy, corruptible and bribing”. Due to the historical determinism in Marxist theory, which predicted a decline of the bourgeoisie, Scola named as a further failure of the protagonist that he was sure of his eternity, although his historical role was drawing to a close. In the final scene he dies "cheerful, laughing and mocking, still proud of his" immortality "". According to Cornand (1979), he owes his rise to "lies, cynicism, egoism" and is thus one of the "new monsters" that Scola spoke about again five years later in I nuovi mostri . Even if Rossi were convicted of a crime he did not commit, he could face a number of other offenses in a moral tribunal. The film contains a rebuke to a society that gives someone like Rossi so much self-assurance that he can win over others with irony, cheerfulness and joviality. Arrogant are also his accusers and judges, who, thanks to their social and verbal superiority, have assumed the right to judge incorrectly.
Contemporary reviews
For Corriere della Sera it was a “well constructed film, entertaining from start to finish”, in which Scola skillfully combined all of Dürrenmatt's grotesque motifs and satirical tips and adapted it to Alberto Sordi's meanwhile classic figure of the philistine, flatterer and liar. Without prejudice to some weaker moments, the narrative holds tightly together the long process, which is done in a theatrical style, but adorned with delicious dialogues.
According to the Revue de Cinéma , the structure of Dürrenmatt's Panne offers an excellent framework in which to embed the protagonist's confessions. There is a lot of humor, malice and irony, often moments of astonishingly dramatic density, which however fall off in places. The film turns out to be particularly funny when it scratches the image of Switzerland. Often Rossi and the audience are left in the dark where the limits of the game are, and one can be tempted to question oneself, because “we all have corpses in the cellar”, as the prosecutor put it in the film. "The film itself is a fierce and bitter indictment, and its power comes from the mix of pitches and genres." Positif called Scola's film "indispensable for everyone who loves the cinema for its actors." But that is the only reason to recommend this film, which was made in a dusty style and boring.
In the Zoom it was said that Scola conveyed the quintessence of the literary original: In Dürrenmatt the protagonist experiences an inner change so that he punishes himself, in the film he does not gain insight and is punished by the tribunal. If the judges acted as “instances of conscience” in the story, they now appeared “as senseless schemes of an absurd theater”. But it is precisely in the "heavy, dramaturgically in no way resolved middle section" that Scola adheres precisely to the literary text. Unfortunately, Scola did not succeed in creating a convincing new creation, but rather the film adaptation "thoroughly failed".
Later reviews
In the cinema it was said that the "multi-layered staging" went beyond a chamber play, it was "a refined, well-played mix of drama, comedy, psychological thriller and crime."
Web links
- The Most Wonderful Evening of My Life in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Thomas Koebner , Fabienne Liptay (Ed.): Film Concepts 23. Ettore Scola . Edition text + kritik, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-86916-135-8 , p. 97.
- ↑ Ettore Scola in conversation in: Jean A. Gili: Ettore Scola. Une pensée graphique . Isthme éditions, Paris 2007, ISBN 978-2-35409-015-9 , p. 77.
- ↑ André Cornand: La Plus belle soirée de ma vie. In: Image et Son / Revue de Cinéma. May 1979, pp. 114-115.
- ↑ G. Grazzini in Corriere della Sera of December 22, 1972, cited above. in: Roberto Poppi, Mario Pecorari: Dizionario del cinema italiano: I film . Volume IV A / L, Tutti i film italiani dal 1970 al 1979 . Gremese Editore, Rome 2009, ISBN 978-88-8440-507-4 .
- ↑ André Cornand: La Plus belle soirée de ma vie. In: Image et Son / Revue de Cinéma. May 1979, pp. 114-116.
- ^ Paul-Louis Thirard: La Plus belle soirée de ma vie. In: Positif. June 1979, p. 75.
- ↑ Gerhart Waeger: La più bella serata della mia vita (The most beautiful evening of my life). In: Zoom. No. 13/1977, pp. 19-20.
- ↑ Undated entry on cinema.de , accessed on May 30, 2014.