A Sunday in August
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | A Sunday in August |
| Original title | Domenica d'agosto |
| Country of production | Italy |
| original language | Italian |
| Publishing year | 1950 |
| length | 75 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Luciano Emmer |
| script |
Cesare Zavattini Franco Brusati Giulio Macchi Luciano Emmer based on a story by Sergio Amidei |
| music | Roman Vlad |
| camera |
Leonida Barboni Ubaldo Marelli Domenico Scala |
| cut | Jolanda Benvenuti |
| occupation | |
| |
The Italian film A Sunday in August (original title: Domenica d'agosto ) was made in 1950 and depicts a Sunday that the Romans spend on the beach of Ostia . As an ensemble film, he weaves the experiences of several main characters into a portrait of a social class. In one of his earlier film appearances, Marcello Mastroianni played a small role as a gullible, thoroughly honest man from the people.
action
On a hot August Sunday, the inhabitants of Rome are drawn to the sea. In crowded buses, on bicycles, in old rickety and in newer automobiles, they crowd the road to Ostia, to the beach. Some of these people isolate the narrative from the anonymous crowd.
Luciana wants to escape the rather poor conditions in which she lives. She separates from her unemployed fiancé Roberto and gets into her new admirer's car. This introduces her to aristocratic society, where however a baron pursues her lewdly and she finally runs away. A widower gives his little daughter to a Catholic boarding school because the woman he lives with wants to have more time alone with him. But he realizes the hollowness of his relationship when he meets a nice, single mother on the beach. He leaves his partner and brings the little one back from boarding school. The teenager Marcella came to Ostia with her parents. Disgusted by the vulgar boys on the public beach, she sneaks under the fence onto the beach section of a posh club. There she met the fellow Enrico, with whom she sat down and had an upscale conversation. Both hide from each other that they belong to the working class. They row out to sea together, lose control of their catamaran and come back very late. Not all of these fates take place on the beach: The maid Rosetta, engaged to the traffic policeman Ercole, is pregnant, which is why the gentlemen have given her notice. She needs a place to stay for the time until the marriage because Ercole has to stay in the barracks as a single person. Roberto, Luciana's abandoned fiancé, has been involved in a burglary to raise money while she was away. When she returns from Ostia, she has to watch him being taken away by the police. In return, Marcella discovers on arrival in her residential area that Enrico also lives there; for the lovers, their status no longer matters.
Reviews
The Corriere della Sera wrote in 1950: “The best part of the film is the one in which the action seems very spontaneous, almost as if it had been improvised in front of the camera, without prior rehearsals. It doesn't matter that Emmer remains true to the style and nature of the documentary. On the other hand, it is important that he and the screenwriter Amidei repeatedly achieved an expressiveness that is unusual for today's film. The film also benefits from the fact that for such a new and difficult story, in some cases, no experienced actors, but rather good, unknown actors are used. ”In the Guardian obituary for Emmer in 2009 , the film was described as “ humble and funny, filled with passion, without being vulgar ” . It is said to have been well received in Europe as well as outside of it. The lexicon of international films is differentiated: “The first feature film, Emmers, reveals not only a talent for directing actors but also precise observation and a love of detail and the poetry of everyday life. The individual episodes - partly realistic, partly gently satirical - are not artistically equal and are not always logically intertwined. "
Web links
- One Sunday in August in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Arturo Lanocita in Corriere della sera of July 4, 1950, cited above. in: Claudio G. Fava, Mathilde Hochkofler: Marcello Mastroianni. His films - his life. Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-453-02625-X , p. 91
- ^ John Francis Lane: Obituary: Luciano Emmer: Distinguished Italian director noted for art documentaries . In: The Guardian , December 4, 2009, p: 41
- ^ A Sunday in August. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .