Figlia d'arte

Sabrina Capucci a Taormina ( polaroid Mittiga )

Lezioni di CINEMA

André Bazin

1918 - 1958



LEZIONI DI CINEMA:

 Il neorealismo e il post-neorealismo.

Il cinema italiano secondo André Bazin

tratte da Che cos’è il cinema?, Garzanti, trad. Adriano Aprà

Premessa

Si è spesso opposto il realismo dei film italiani attuali all’estetismo della produzione americana e parzialmente di quella francese. Non è innanzitutto per la loro volontà di realismo che i film russi di Eizenstejn, di Pudovkin o di Dovzenko furono rivoluzionari in arte come in politica, opponendosi nello stesso tempo all’estetismo espressionista tedesco e alla insulsa idolatria delle vedette hollywoodiana?

Davanti all’originalità della produzione italiana e nell’entusiasmo della sorpresa, si è forse trascurato di approfondire le cause di questa rinascita, preferendo vedere in essa una qualche generazione spontanea uscita, come uno sciame di api, dai cadaveri imputriditi del fascismo e della guerra. Non c’è dubbio che la Liberazione e le forme sociali, morali ed economiche che essa ha acquisito in Italia hanno avuto un ruolo determinante nella produzione cinematografica. Ma solo l’ignoranza che abbiamo nei confronti del cinema italiano ha potuto farci restare nella seducente illusione del miracolo impreparato.

Macistone

OGGI

Questo è uno di quei film che fecero gioire  Mimmo Addabbo ed il suo pubblico lauretano, specie quello infantile.

Gli americani potevano sfoderare Jack Elam, Strother Martin, Victor Mc Laglen, Slim Pickens; noi esibivamo Piero Lulli, Mimmo Palmara, Nello Pazzafini e … Livio Lorenzon che in questo Maciste diretto da Miche Lupo sono semplicemente inarrivabili.

 A parte il turgido Mark Forest,  è un film di cascatori (stuntman) capeggiati e ammaestrati dal catanese Alfio Caltabiano che da anche  un saggio del suo talento in un duello  con la daga contro il rasatissimo Giuliano Gemma.

Per ritornare a Michele Lupo posso dire che la corsa con le bighe per come e ripresa e tagliata può stare alla pari con quella di Ben Hur * ; del resto molti sono i presenti in entrambi i film, dalle comparse ai tecnici ed il Tecniscope dell’italiano è alla pari con il Cinemascope dello yankee. Aggiungete le trionfanti musiche di Francesco De Masi ed il cinema è servito caldo caldo.

* Quella scena fu diretta e firmata sulla carta da un oscuro tecnico, Andrew Morton,  ma praticamente

c’erano le mani di Sergio Leone Tolstoi

Sogni ed incubi di Joseph K

OGGI

AL CINEFORUM PEPPUCCIO TORNATORE

" Si è detto che la logica di questa storia è la logica dei sogni e degli incubi ": così si pronuncia Orson Welles al termine della parabola introduttiva animata dalle tavole di Alexander Alexeieff.

In un universo senza tempo, dove solo lo spazio conta, Joseph K viene accusato, arrestato, difeso, processato, per un crimine ignoto, egli stesso aiuta gli inquisitori ad aggravare la sua posizione.

E' un film di immagini sapientemente illuminate, costruite usando landscapes naturali, facciate di palazzoni e architetture ricostruite in studio: stanze con i soffitti bassi, lunghi corridoi e vicoli, depositi pieni di scartoffie, riprese in grandangolo, mantenendo sul tutto quella profondità di campo caratteristica dell'opera di Orson.

Tony Perkins si aggira dentro questi spettacoli con la sua figura longilinea e le mani nodose, usando tutte le sfumature di carattere e di espressioni che il malcapitato K richiede.

Rossellini in excelsis

Roberto Rossellini  … non aveva finito … quel che aveva iniziato girando Paisà e Roma città aperta., la nascita del cinema moderno, non era stato ancora concluso. Molti avevano provato a seguire la sua strada, e possiamo dire che tutti i registi che abbiamo amato ( e qui fare dei nomi sarebbe soltanto una civetteria),che lo sapessero o no, non avevano fatto altro che assimilare la sua lezione, sviluppare le sue indicazioni, portare avanti con l’insicurezza e l’irruenza indomita proprie dei più giovani, la tensione morale, la profondità di sguardo e la visione panoramica che riverbera con forza da ogni fotogramma di Viaggio in Italia, abbagliante indicazione dell’unica strada possibile per il cinema d’oggi.

Ma senza dimenticare la grandezza di quell’inizio ( e spesso,  per ragioni tattiche, per dare una risposta ad Aristarco e a tutti gli stalinisti di allora …) bisogna dire che Rossellini è anche, se non soprattutto, l’errore sublime di India, che non si ha diritto di farlo se non si è capito, anche politicamente Europa ’51, se non si ha pianto vedendo Stromboli, se non si è deciso di diventare cineasti davanti alla poesia inesplicabile e solare di Francesco giullare di Dio.

Positif

Michel Ciment critico della rivista francese Positif a Taormina 

 conferenza stampa di Roger Corman

( foto Mittiga)

How were Brando and Nicholson together?

Finally, I wanted to talk about The Missouri Breaks. That's one of my favourite westerns, it's very adult, poetic and surprising. Watching it again, it's astonishing how grown-up the dialogue-intercourse between Jack Nicholson and the woman is. Why do you think that that film has a reputation as being a failure in some ways?

Oh, I think that everybody was expecting, finally, a shoot-out on a western street between Brando and Nicholson, and that was never, never our intention. The odd scenes in that film just dismayed the critics on the first viewing. You know, Brando having a love scene with a horse and a mule; or Brando in the bathtub and Nicholson wanting to kill him, except that he looks like a big fat baby. Those were attempts at trying to disarm expectations. It's a rather savage film, actually, in certain aspects, but it's savage around ignominy. Brando shoots the people in relatively ignominious positions: a man going to the toilet in the outhouse is blown out of the outhouse; another man making love to a woman is shot; they're hounded by him and teased by him. He drops a live grasshopper into Randy Quaid's mouth, you know? It's all designed toward that wonderful close, I think, of Jack Nicholson saying, "You just had yer throat cut." And that was what I think we all fell in love with, that moment. So we knew we had to do a western that was convoluted in other ways away from that, away from the flat-out, face-to-face shoot-out. I have a lot of affection for that film. It had the boldness to be, to change expectations in a western with these two great stars. Well, everybody was disappointed. The studio said, "We said in the beginning it would never work unless they had a shoot-out." And that was it.

And it's the whole beauty of it.

I think it is the beauty of the film.

How had Brando changed since you last worked with him? Or had he?

He hadn't really. We had remained friends through that period. Although I'm not a Hollywood person. I've never lived out there. But we had seen each other from time to time when he came to New York, or when I went out there for a one- or two-day business trip, and we had remained friends through that period. And when we came to make the film, he was in pretty wonderful form. I'll give you a simple example. We were confronted with these things by lawyers, lawyers fighting for this, suddenly I was told, "You have Brando for 20 days and that's all." And I was rather shocked, so, as we were approaching the 20th day, I started to shoot a scene day-for-night, which I loathe, and Marlon came up and said, "Why are we shooting this day-for-night?" And I said, "On account of you, because I have to let you go tomorrow." And he said, "Aw, forget about it. Everybody, go home, we'll come back tonight, and the next night and the next night if we have to." And he was very available. He was living in a wonderfully big mobile home with his son, Christian, the poor young man who is now in jail.

How much of his quite staggering interpretation of that character was scripted?

None. None. We decided it together. Because, when we looked at the character as it was written in the script, he was nobody, he was just this dark eminence who struck like the apocalypse, you know. And I thought, this is going to be just dreadful on the screen. Then, of course, Marlon said, "Lissen, lemme play him as an Indian." And I said, "No. Marlon, no. Not as an Indian." So we sat there talking about it, and essentially we said: this guy's got to be different every time we see him. That's his personality, that he's ephemeral, that he's chameleon like and in permanent disguise. And that's where we went from, so, finally, he ends up dressed as Granny.

It is just amazing. It probably stands as the last time he seemed really super-committed to a role for the entire length of a movie. You mentioned the studio's dismay at the lack of a shoot-out; I think people were also expecting, not a physical shoot-out, but a series of scenes where these two acting giants went face-to-face. But that's another thing you almost go out of your way to avoid as long as you can.

No, we weren't really trying to avoid it; we just found it very difficult. To have them encounter each other, and not have one or the other kill each other right there and then. Because, by then, Nicholson knew that Brando was killing off his band, and Brando knew that Nicholson was the head of it. So we were trapped. So what we dealt with was, instead of the action, the obstacles to the action.

How were Brando and Nicholson together?

Oh, they were great. They live facing each other. Literally they have houses facing each other, so they're very close. And they were very close on the film. But Jack, as a good actor, withdrew from Marlon during the shooting, didn't exercise the friendship. He would go away whenever he had an opportunity, go into his trailer, just to stay away, to stay in hiding really, as a good actor should. You know, too much chatter between the two of them would have ruined what they had.

l'originale è qui:

http://brightlightsfilm.com/65/65arthurpenniv.php