La Commare Secca

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Movie
German title La Commare Secca
Original title La commare secca
Country of production Italy
original language Italian
Publishing year 1962
length 93 minutes
Age rating FSK k. A.
Rod
Director Bernardo Bertolucci
script Bernardo Bertolucci
Sergio Citti based on a story by Pier Paolo Pasolini
production Antonio Cervi
music Piero Piccioni
camera Gianni Narcisi
cut Nino Baragli
occupation

Amateur actors

La Commare Secca is a poetic and formally original social drama and the first film by Italian film director Bernardo Bertolucci , who directed it in 1962 when he was only 21 years old. The plot is based on a story by Pier Paolo Pasolini .

action

A prostitute is found murdered on the bank of the Tiber . A commissioner questions several men who had been near the crime scene in Parco Paolino. They tell of the day before the crime happened and thus of their lives. A pickpocket is after lovers in the woods and is caught by a victim; a debt collector argues with the woman who can stand him; a soldier from the south on official leave admires the big city and the women; two teenagers take a walk with girls, steal from a homosexual in the park and when the police want to question them, one drowns on the run in the Tiber; a man with wooden shoes turns out to be the wanted murderer.

meaning

The original title La commare secca , denotes death in the Roman dialect. Occasionally the German title “Die dürre Gevatterin” is mentioned.

The crime story is of little interest, it serves, similar to the narrative structure in Rashomon , only as a bracket for the individual stories of the witnesses; Bertolucci stated that he did not know Rashomon at the time. Rather, Bertolucci uses the loosely connected people to paint a picture of the poor classes on the outskirts of Rome; Bush thieves and prostitutes, pimps and prostitutes, but also unsuspecting visitors populate the Topos. However, this is actually not Bertolucci's world. Rather, it comes from the biography and stories of Pier Paolo Pasolini , who wrote the story a few years earlier. The producer Antonio Cervi bought the film rights in the hope that Pasolini would also direct it. When he achieved enormous success with Accattone in 1961 , he preferred Mamma Roma as the next project. Bertolucci and Pasolini knew each other through Bertolucci's father Attilio , who, like Pasolini at first, was a poet. The young Bertolucci assisted Pasolini with his first film, Accatone, and learned the cinematic craft from scratch with his mentor Pasolini. At Pasolini's suggestion, Cervi commissioned Bertolucci to write the script and put Sergio Citti at his side, a Pasolini colleague and a connoisseur of Rome and the local dialect, in order to ensure fidelity to Pasolini's original. Satisfied with the result, Cervi entrusted the overwhelmed Bertolucci with the direction. Bertolucci was the youngest member of the film team at the age of 21 and first had to gain recognition from experienced colleagues. “When I think back to the first day of shooting, it runs down my spine. When the cameraman ceremonially asked me where to put the camera, I went through one of the most fearful moments in my life. After the flow of things had taken me, it was like sleepwalking and I let the film carry me away. "

At first sight, the style of La commare secca is similar to neorealism, as amateur actors operate in the lower social milieu. But Bertolucci does not investigate the causes that shape the lives of the characters; nor does he further question their actions. When the inspector asks the witnesses, he does not ask about morality, but about facts. It can only be heard as a voice; Bertolucci did without pictures of him in order to reduce the realism and weight of the crime genre. The music used also removes the characters from realism, each of them is set to music with a different style of music, for example the pimp with a brisk tango .

Since the plot was not his, he tried to put his personal stamp on the work on the formal level. “The (hand) camera creeps along with relish: a long shot under the wall, on the ground through the bushes.” The very static filming of Pasolini didn't like the numerous tracking shots. (The fact that the murderer comes from Friuli has already been interpreted as a point against Pasolini, who comes from the same area.)

The subject that interested Bertolucci and which he pursued was the passage of time, the lapse of a day, that is, "death at work". The phrase goes back to a statement by Jean Cocteau . The choice of such a poetic subject also comes from the fact that Bertolucci, influenced by his poetic father, wrote poems himself as a teenager. In any case, he sees the medium of film closer to the poem than to the novel, because there is no intermediate mediation from the idea to the poem and from the idea to the film. The critics also chose the terms poem and elegy for this film.

Acceptance by critics and the public

La Commare Secca was presented at the Venice Film Festival in 1962 and received nothing at the award ceremony. While the young filmmaker received approval from some critics, the Italians in particular blamed him for the similarity to Pasolini's film. Bertolucci attributed this mainly to the fact that a few days before the festival he had won an important literary prize in the country, the Viareggio Prize in the category “best first work”, with a volume of poetry , and that this was too much of a good thing for many people. It was only a few years later, after Bertolucci's great film successes, that the first work was benevolently rediscovered. Reclam's film dictionary says: “ Bertolucci developed feelings and sensations with astonishing virtuosity. "

literature

Tonetti, Claretta Micheletti: Bernardo Bertolucci. The cinema of ambiguity. Twayne Publishers, New York 1995, ISBN 0-8057-9313-5 , pp. 8-24 (English)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Tonetti, Claretta Micheletti: Bernardo Bertolucci. The cinema of ambiguity. Twayne Publishers, New York 1995, ISBN 0-8057-9313-5 , p. 11
  2. ^ Reclams Filmlexikon, Philipp Reclam jun., Stuttgart 2001
  3. ↑ a b Bernardo Bertolucci in an interview, bonus material of the DVD edition: The Grim Reaper. The Criterion Collection (272), 2005.
  4. ^ Bernardo Bertolucci in Les Lettres Françaises, January 10, 1968, Paris.
  5. ↑ Bernardo Bertolucci in Gili, Jean: Le cinéma italien, Paris, 1978, also in Ungari, Enzo and Ranvaud, D .: Bertolucci par Bertolucci, Calmann-Lévy, 1987, ISBN 2-7021-1305-2 , p. 29
  6. ↑ Bernardo Bertolucci in Les Lettres Françaises , January 10, 1968, printed in: F. Gérard, TJ Kline, B. Sklarew (eds.): Bernardo Bertolucci: Interviews. University Press of Mississippi, Jackson 2000, ISBN 1-57806-204-7 , p. 33
  7. ↑ a b Bernardo Bertolucci in Film Quarterly, Fall 1966, Vol. 20, No. 1
  8. ↑ a b Kuhlbrodt, Dietrich: Bernardo Bertolucci. Film 24 series, Hanser Verlag, Munich 1982, ISBN 3-446-13164-7 , p. 100
  9. ^ Garibaldi, A., Giannarelli, R., Giusti, G .: Qui commincia l'avventura del signor. Dall'anonimato al successo, 23 protagonisti del cinema italiano raccontano, 1984
  10. ↑ Bernardo Bertolucci in Film Quarterly, Fall 1966, Vol. 20, No. 1 and in Gili, Jean: Le cinéma italien, Paris 1978, p. 44
  11. ↑ Ungari / Renvaud p. 30. " Le cinéma est la mort au travail. "
  12. ↑ Bernardo Bertolucci in conversation with the Cahiers du cinéma, March 1965
  13. ↑ Grafe, Frieda in Filmkritik No. 6, 1966, p. 334
  14. ↑ Bernardo Bertolucci in conversation with the Cahiers du cinéma , March 1965. Likewise in Gili, Jean: Le cinéma italien, Paris, 1978 and in Garibaldi, A., Giannarelli, R., Giusti, G .: Qui commincia l'avventura del signor. Dall'anonimato al successo, 23 protagonisti del cinema italiano raccontano, 1984
  15. ^ Tonetti, Claretta Micheletti: Bernardo Bertolucci. The cinema of ambiguity. Twayne Publishers, New York 1995, ISBN 0-8057-9313-5 , pp. 23-24
  16. ^ Reclams Filmlexikon, Philipp Reclam jun., Stuttgart 2001