Black soul
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Black soul |
| Original title | Anima nera |
| Country of production | Italy |
| original language | Italian |
| Publishing year | 1962 |
| length | 88 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 18 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Roberto Rossellini |
| script |
Giuseppe Patroni Griffi Roberto Rossellini Alfio Valdamini based on Patroni Griffi 's play of the same name (1960) |
| production | Gianni Hecht Lucari |
| music | Piero Piccioni |
| camera | Luciano Trasatti |
| cut | Daniele Alabiso |
| occupation | |
| |
Black Soul is an Italian feature film from 1962 by Roberto Rossellini with Vittorio Gassman and Nadja Tiller in the leading roles.
action
Rome in the early post-war years. Adriano Zucchelli set it up comfortably during the years of reconstruction. Once he lazed around and lazed through his life shaped by dolce vita, a gambler with a dark past as a stick boy for rich customers. Two women mark his past and present: on the one hand there is the luxury whore with the beautiful name Mimosa, who was once by his side and made sure that he did not fall completely. Yet it is a thing of the past. His present is called Marcella and has recently become his wife. Marcella comes, as they say, from a "middle-class family" and symbolizes the hope of a better future for the climber. But Adriano cannot shake off his past as easily as he thinks, one day it catches up with him. He meets a woman whom he has known from before. Her name is Olga and she demands nothing less from Adriano than the redemption of an old debt. He is said to take on the inheritance of a deceased Turin nobleman, apparently once a paying lover of Adrianos.
This in turn calls the dead man's sister, Alessandra, onto the scene, who is also aiming for the inheritance and wants to prevent a guy like Adriano from snatching it from her eyes. And so she threatens to tell his wife Marcella everything about his past. She keeps her word, and Marcella, disgusted by Adriano's “black soul”, as the title suggests, actually leaves her husband. It threatens to drift back into the old fairway and returns to the arms of Mimosa. But Mimosa turns out to be a "whore with a heart". When Marcella returns to her husband remorseful, she meets Mimosa, who explains to her what she threatens to lose through her behavior. While Marcella then seeks the big discussion with Adriano and agrees to a new beginning, provided that her husband rejects the Turin inheritance, the latter only listens in boredom, nods occasionally and leaves the impression of being completely uninvolved.
Production notes
Black Soul was created in the Dino De Laurentiis Cinematografica Studios (Rome) and was Rossellini's last sole feature film director for many years. The film had its world premiere in Italy on August 12, 1962 and was shown in German cinemas on July 25, 1963. The original for this film was premiered on April 9, 1960 at the Teatro Donizetti in Bergamo .
Reviews
The largely bad reviews meant that Rossellini almost completely withdrew from classic feature film direction after this film. Here are a few examples:
“The war and the post-war period have left their mark. Public order has been restored and private disorder persists. With some. Adriano (Gassmann) goes crooked ways, doesn't find his way around. But finally there are women, pretty, patient, lamb-pious and self-sacrificing. Whore and wife outdo each other in generosity and understanding and bring Adriano back on the mediocre path of virtue. He will have a marriage of purity and a civil existence, good and honest. Roberto Rossellini sees it as simple as that in his not entirely new film. Aside from mistakes that only bloody beginners make, aside from the unbearably exalted Stroyberg, Rossellini's failure is interesting. He shows the impossibility of his neorealistic narrative attitude today. Good and bad are no longer as clearly evident as in the times of a new beginning, the new can no longer be told with the old means. Social stagnation is to be presented differently than the clear passion of new beginnings; above all, the art is required to speak about it. His subject is like Antonioni's, but Rossellini didn't understand anything about him. "
“In this film, director Roberto Rossellini (“ Rome, Open City ”) creates a Roman moral image of today based on a play by his young compatriot Giuseppe Patroni-Griffi. A former stick boy and pimp (Vittorio Gassmann) seeks to establish himself socially. Two women represent his messy past and the possibility of an orderly future: the noble whore (Nadja Tiller), companion of his Sturm und Drang years, and the daughter from a good family (Annette Stroyberg), whom he married. When she runs away from him, frightened by some glimpses of his past, he tries to win the former back, but the wife returns and claims her claims. Resigned, the do-not-good sends itself into the inevitable: an honorable average existence. History, character drawings and dialogues reveal a lot about the shifts in post-war society, but the camera only registers where it should interpret. "
Paimann's film lists summed up: "An act that, in the reverse of the usual constellation, sets cynicism against bourgeoisie, not immediately showing grateful but hauntingly embodied roles."
"The story of a little speculator and living person who - after a joyless childhood and homoerotic seduction by a German officer - strives for money and enjoyment without moral inhibitions. Rossellini's film adaptation of a successful Italian theater piece, which focuses on effects, is limited to a journalistic reportage style of mere photographs: a convincing picture of the time is not created. "
Individual evidence
Web links
- Black soul in the Internet Movie Database (English)