I mostri

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Movie
Original title I mostri
Country of production Italy
original language Italian
Publishing year 1963
length 120 minutes
Rod
Director Dino Risi
script Agenore Incrocci
Furio Scarpelli
Dino Risi
Elio Petri
Ettore Scola
Ruggero Maccari
production Mario Cecchi Gori
music Armando Trovajoli
camera Alfio Contini
cut Maurizio Lucidi
occupation
chronology

Successor  →
I nuovi mostri

I mostri (literally "The Monsters") is a 1963 episode film by Dino Risi , which satirically targeting Italian society. It belongs to the genre of Commedia all'italiana .

Social satire

A first version of the screenplay, directed by Elio Petri , was initially intended for the actor Alberto Sordi and was intended to combine his well-known range of characters in a feature film. After Sordi refused, the screenwriters Age & Scapelli and Ettore Scola took on the material and rewrote the stories and dialogues. Dino Risi was added as the new director.

Risi continued to pursue the topics he had taken up a year earlier in In Love with Sharp Bends . He designed a social satire that traces the urbanization of Italy and its change to a consumer society, which among other things enables easy, convenient shopping in self-service shops. Depending on the episode, the result is scenes, sketches, anecdotes, sometimes a single gag. Ultimately, Risi wanted to achieve more than the sum of its parts. With the genre of the episode film he intended a social criticism beyond the conventional narrative form. The collection of raw, heartless protagonists should result in the image of the typical contemporary Italian. The monstrous thing about these irresponsible, vicious characters lay in their resemblance to the norm and everyday life.

There are men and women who avoid monogamy, bachelors who skillfully do everything to avoid the "trap" of marriage. The car becomes the decisive means of escaping the common household and social pressures. For the protagonists it means bisogna farsi furbi , you have to be cunning. The first episode takes this principle to extremes. In it, Ugo Tognazzi teaches his little son, portrayed by his actual son Ricky , not to trust anyone, to be cunning and to calmly break the law.

Among the domestic productions, I mostri was the sixth-highest grossing film on the domestic market in 1963, totaling 377 million lire. In the Federal Republic it was not shown in the cinemas. In 1977 the episode film I nuovi mostri followed , with 14 episodes directed by Dino Risi, Ettore Scola and Mario Monicelli . In contrast to the Mostri of 1963, the satirical focus shifted from the individual to society as a whole.

The episodes

I mostri consists of twenty episodes of different lengths. All of them are directed by Dino Risi. Ugo Tognazzi (UT) and Vittorio Gassman (VG) take on a wide variety of roles, in the article La musa Gassman even plays a woman. The episodes are separated from each other by a text panel on which the title of the following article is written.

In addition to the original Italian titles, the table contains an approximately literal German translation.

No. title subject actor length
1 L'educazione sentimental
education of the heart 		Father teaches son cunning UT medium
2 Il mostro
The Monter 		Photo after arrest UT, VG short
3 La raccomandazione
The recommendation 		Actor placement in the theater VG long
4th Come un padre
like a father 		Jealous husband seeking advice UT medium
5 Presa dalla vita Taken
from life 		Kidnapping a grandma VG short
6th Il povero soldato
The poor soldier 		Soldier mourns murdered sister UT long
7th Testimonio volontario
The voluntary witness 		Enter a witness in the murder trial UT, VG long
8th I due orfanelli
Two orphans 		Blind and lame beggars VG medium
9 L'agguato
The ambush 		Policeman distributes parking busses UT short
10 Che vitaccia!
What a dog's life! 		Family in poverty VG medium
11 La giornata dell 'onorevole
The day of the MP 		Parliamentarians and corruption UT long
12 Latin lovers
Southern lovers 		Free time on the beach UT, VG short
13 Il sacrificato
The one willing to sacrifice 		End of a relationship VG long
14th Vernissage
exhibition 		Buying a Fiat 600 UT medium
15th La musa
The muse 		Jury of a literary competition VG medium
16 Scenda l'oblio
Everything sinks into oblivion 		Couple watches war film UT short
17th La strada è di tutti
The street belongs to everyone 		Pedestrian crosses street short
18th La nobile arte
Fine art 		Broker in boxing UT, VG long
19th Il testamento di Francesco
The testament of St. Francis 		Make-up before the performance VG short
20th L'oppio dei popoli
The opium of the people 		Husband is watching tv UT long

In the episode Scenda l'oblio , a couple watches a war film in the cinema. On the screen there is a scene in which a troop of the Wehrmacht shoots a family on a wall. The man asks the woman if a wall similar to this could not be built for her new house. This episode alludes to the limited influence of neorealist films on the mass audience, whose cravings for consumer goods were limitless. In the 19th and 20th episodes, and, in the opinion of Fournier Lanzoni (2008), I mostri reinforced the myth and the importance that television had in the lives of Italians. The part L'oppio dei popoli testifies to the advance of television into families and their destruction.

For Fournier Lanzoni, La giornata dell'onorevole was "perhaps the masterpiece" of the episodes because it gives the entire film a moral dimension without ever imposing a moralistic conclusion. The presented MP, who does everything possible to avoid being notified of a corruption scandal, which he then has to stop, is a caricature of the Democrazia Cristiana and its well-known representative Amintore Fanfani . The focus is on the party's “motivation” to pursue corruption. This episode could be one reason the original producer Dino De Laurentiis refused to fund the project in the end.

reviews

The Italian film critic Goffredo Fofi described in an overview article (1963) on Italian comedy the stories in I mostri as "cases of" alienation "in the affluent society. The satire hits the bull's eye again and again without having to forego the cheapest and grossest effects. ”The film never came into cinemas in Germany. In 2008, Gerhard Midding called in his obituary for Dino Risi I mostri "an almost encyclopedic world theater of wickedness"

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Rémi Fournier Lanzoni: Comedy Italian style . Continuum, New York 2008, ISBN 978-0-8264-1822-7 , pp. 93-94
  2. ↑ Fournier Lanzoni 2008, pp. 93, 3, 98 and 54.
  3. ↑ Fournier Lanzoni 2008, p. 95.
  4. ^ Maggie Günsberg: Italian cinema. Gender and genre . Palgrave, New York 2005, ISBN 0-333-75115-9 , p. 93.
  5. ↑ Fournier Lanzoni 2008, p. 96.
  6. ↑ Fournier Lanzoni 2008, pp. 71-72.
  7. ↑ Carlo Celli, Marga Cottino-Jones: A new guide to Italian cinema . Palgrave, New York 2007, ISBN 978-1-403-97560-7 , p. 176.
  8. ↑ Fournier Lanzoni 2008, p. 54
  9. ↑ Fourier Lanzoni 2008, pp. 164-165.
  10. ↑ Fourier Lanzoni 2008, p. 97
  11. ↑ Fournier Lanzoni 2008, pp. 55–56 and p. 98
  12. ↑ Fournier Lanzoni 2008, pp. 96-97.
  13. ^ Goffredo Fofi: Laughter in Italian . In: Filmkritik , No. 49/1963, p. 399.
  14. ^ Gerhard Midding: A hedonist and cynic. Dino Risi, director 1916–2008 . In: epd Film No. 7/2008, pp. 12-13.