Don Camillo and Peppone

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Don Camillo and “his” church in Brescello
Greetings from Peppone in front of the Brescello Town Hall

Don Camillo and Peppone are the main characters of many stories and several novels by Giovannino Guareschi and some feature films. They sketch rural Italy shortly after the Second World War and into the early 1960s - the dichotomy between traditional values, social optimism and political rivalry in the Cold War climate .

action

The figure of Don Camillo Tarocci is named after Don Camillo Valota , a Catholic priest, partisan and prisoner of the Dachau and Mauthausen concentration camps . The most important role model for Don Camillo's character, however, is Alessandro Parenti , village pastor in Trepalle , with whom Guareschi was often a guest when the stories were written. Don Camillo is a powerful and smart-eared priest in a fictional village called Boscaccio (in the films you can see the backdrop of Brescello ) in the northern Italian Po Valley , who is in constant conflict with the communist (and equally powerful) mayor Giuseppe Bottazzi, called Peppone , lies. Both are linked by their common past as partisans. They compete for the solution of the social questions of their time, in particular for the improvement of the lot of the poor farm workers in the Po Valley. They use different means to do this, but neither are traditional representatives of their group. Peppone, although a communist, is a medium-sized entrepreneur and devout Christian, Don Camillo acts out of Christian charity, which is precisely why he often gets into disputes with the local landowners and lets his fists speak. At the end of their arguments, both often have to realize that they are closer to each other than they want to admit.

Guareschi himself was partly the model for his two protagonists, outwardly he corresponded more to Peppone, his inner conviction, however, was more reflected in Don Camillo. His stories are also understood as a moral appeal to the political camps to jointly shape the reconstruction after the overcoming of the fascist Mussolini dictatorship . He uses a trick to prevent the stories from turning into sentimental propaganda: the crucifix plays an important role in the village church. Whenever Don Camillo has achieved a point victory against his opponent, Jesus speaks to him and criticizes him if necessary. But also in general, Camillo and Jesus often communicate with each other.

The stories about Don Camillo and Peppone first appeared at Christmas 1946 in the satirical magazine Bertoldo , of which Guareschi was editor-in-chief. The great success of the first story led the publisher Angelo Rizzoli to follow it up in series and to publish it as books from 1948 onwards.

The great international popularity of his characters is underlined by an anecdote that Guareschi tells in the preface to Don Camillo and his herd : After the great Po flood in 1951, he received packages from abroad with blankets and clothes "for Don Camillo's and Peppone's people".

Books

Some of the books published were:

  • Don Camillo and Peppone (1948, original title "Mondo piccolo: Don Camillo")
  • Don Camillo and his flock (1953, original title "Don Camillo e il suo gregge")
  • Comrade Don Camillo (1963, original title "Mondo piccolo: Il compagno Don Camillo")
  • Don Camillo and the redhead (posthumously published in 1969, original title "Don Camillo ei giovani d'oggi")
  • ... and then Don Camillo said ... (posthumously 1980, original title "Gente così / Mondo piccolo")
  • ... but Don Camillo does not give up ... (posthumously 1981, original title: "Lo spumarino pallido: Mondo piccolo")
  • ... and Don Camillo in the middle ... (posthumously 1982/1983, original title "Il decimo clandestino / Noi del Boscaccio")
  • Grazie, Don Camillo (posthumously 1985, original title: "L'anno di Don Camillo")
  • Ciao, Don Camillo (posthumously 1996, original title: "Ciao, Don Camillo")

Movies

Brescello Church
Don Camillo and Peppone Museum in Brescello
Brescello city center
Peppone's Moto Guzzi

The best-known film adaptations of the stories were made between 1952 and 1965 with Fernandel as Don Camillo and Gino Cervi as Peppone. The films were shot in Brescello , Italy , a place in the Po Valley in Emilia-Romagna . The Museum Peppone e Don Camillo, inaugurated in 1989, is still a reminder of the film work today .

Six full films were shot in Brescello - but only the first five with Fernandel and Gino Cervi. Fernandel died in 1971 while filming the sixth film, Don Camillo and the Red Haired Girl , which was left unfinished and unperformed. The later film from 1972 is a complete remake with other cast members.

year Movie title Director Playtime
1952 Don Camillo and Peppone
Italian: Don Camillo
French: Le petit monde de Don Camillo
English: The little world of Don Camillo
Julien Duvivier 107 min
1953 Don Camillo's return
Italian: Il ritorno di Don Camillo,
French: Le retour de Don Camillo,
English: The return of Don Camillo
Julien Duvivier 116 min
1955 The great battle of Don Camillo,
Italian: Don Camillo e l'onorevole Peppone,
French: La grande bagarre de Don Camillo,
English: Don Camillo's last round
Carmine gallon 100 min
1961 Reverend Don Camillo
Italian: Don Camillo Monsignore… ma non troppo
French: Don Camillo… Monseigneur!
engl .: Don Camillo: Monsignor!
Carmine gallon 117 min
1965 Comrade Don Camillo
Italian: Il compagno Don Camillo
French: Don Camillo en Russie
English: Don Camillo in Moscow
Luigi Comencini 105 min
1971 Don Camillo and the red-haired girl
Italian: Don Camillo ei giovani d'oggi,
French: Don Camillo et les contestataires
Christian Jaque unfinished
1972 Don Camillo and the red-haired girl
Italian: Don Camillo ei giovani d'oggi,
French: Don Camillo et les contestataires
Mario Camerini 111 min
1983 Nobody skin like Don Camillo
Italian: Don Camillo
Terence Hill 126 min

The score for the first five Don Camillo films was composed by Alessandro Cicognini .

1980/81 was a 13-part British television series Die kleine Welt des Don Camillo ( The little world of Don Camillo ), directed by Peter Hammond , with Mario Adorf as Don Camillo and Brian Blessed as Peppone.

Edits for the stage

  • Gerold Theobalt : Don Camillo and Peppone. Comedy . Ahn & Simrock, Munich 1999 (based on the novel Don Camillo and Peppone ).
  • Riccardo F. Esposito : Don Camillo e Peppone. Cronache cinematografiche dalla Bassa Padana 1951–1965 , Le Mani - Microart's, Recco (Genoa, Liguria, Italy), 2008.
  • Michael Kunze / Dario Farina: Don Camillo & Peppone, musical, premiered in 2015 in St Gallen, to be seen in the Ronacher Theater in Vienna until June 2017

literature

  • Reiner Boller: Don Camillo and Peppone. The films with Fernandel and Gino Cervi (1952–1970). Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-86265-363-8 . (with numerous photos)

Web links

Commons : Don Camillo  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Bernd Stöver , The Cold War (= Beck'sche Reihe. Vol. 2314). Beck, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-406-48014-4 (3rd edition 2008), Chapter: I 3, The Cold War in the Media
  2. ^ Mauthausen Committee Austria
    Morto a Bormio don Camillo Il suo nome ispiro 'Guareschi. In: Corriere della Sera . November 5, 1998, p. 49 , archived from the original on October 5, 2012 ; Retrieved November 18, 2017 (Italian).