La chica con la maleta

Valerio Zurlini (1926 - 1982) is a somewhat forgotten director with a small oeuvre (8 films).

In "Girl with a suitcase" the 16 years old Lorenzo Fainardi (Jacques Perrin) falls madly in love with Aida Zepponi (Claudia Cardinale) who has been dumped by his older brother. This older brother has started a brief affaire with Aida by promising her a film career.

During most of the film Lorenzo seems to be the victim of the opportunistic Aida, who gladly accepts his gifts and monetary donations. In a key scene a priest, as a sort of oral conscience, reproaches her for this behaviour.

The real tragic character however is Aida herself, who is using but also being used by men and therefore very dependent on them. We see this very clearly in the beautiful final scene.

The film starts very slow and only gets underway in the second half. Claudia Cardinale, who was at the peak of her career ("Rocco and his brothers", 1960, Luchino Visconti / "8,5", 1963, Federico Fellini / "Il gattopardo", 1963, Luchino Visconti), really makes this film.

There are moments in this film when you feel your feet lift of the ground and you enter a pure state of movie nirvana. Only the Italians could bring together style, elegance, poise, wit, sensitivity and irony like this, and play it out in the real world with real characters. The amour fou seems original: the sensitive ingenue is nobility (Jacques Perrin), while the girl (Claudia Cardinale) - his older brother's cast-off - is an impoverished drifter. It's not so much the obvious contrast in their backgrounds that provides the tension so much as the directions their yearnings take, that flash across each others' paths like ungainly swordsmanship. The fresh faces of the leads are a delight. It's really the quiet dignity of Perrin that carries the film while Cardinale is the sudden whirlwind that blows into his life. Technique is employed to brilliant effect: the waist-level camera, Zurlini's signature artistic shadows on the walls, and, most tellingly, the way distant characters gradually draw close to our position, a trick established with the first shot of the film. There's no finer kind of cinema.

This may not be a very intuitive observation, and it's even partially stolen from Pauline Kael (at least the Walken part is), but I think Claudia Cardinale has the same thing Christopher Walken has, where you're never sure if there isn't some part of the character you didn't see coming lurking somewhere, ready to jump out and surprise you, just the feminine version of it.

I assume it's (in both cases) not really a method thing, but that they're both actors who are able to bust out all kinds of moves, moods and vibes with ease, confidence and competence alike. Not necessarily coming from training, but raw talent.

I watched this together with Eastwood's "Million Dollar Baby." I knew I would be challenged by that film (you can read my comment), and I wanted something that I knew would be a safe island after the offenses therein.

I chose this. Its between "Million" and "Nights of Cabiria" and more perfect than both in my view. The spine of this film is a story of a prostitute/dancer, an adventuress with few skills for the job. We see some encounters that provide insights, not into her character so much, but what limits her, and that matters because we discover many of those same limits in us.

Its a good film, largely forgotten today because its merely competent and not showy or overtly experimental as so many from that block were. But if you want an antidote to those bad films of good men, come here.

It has the economy of Eastwood, in fact this very tradition is where he learned his directorial craft. But its economy directed toward conveying the environment, the context in which our two characters find themselves. It's geared to the context not the actors, who after all can only tell you what is in themselves, not is what is in their world.

It has the depressing rootlessness of those early Fellini films, but it emerges from the real world we see instead of being an overt essay on what we know is Fellini's perspective that starts from the very beginning. This emerges.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

... the one where Lorenzo watches Aida dancing with that older man. She was supposed to go to the movies with him but she chose to have dinner with a group of other guests at the hotel, and after dinner they start partying and dancing. At one point there is a close-up of Lorenzo that lasts for at least one minute. He looks at them dancing, looks away, takes a sip from his drink, fidgets, with all these different expressions on his face: jealousy, frustration, anger, discomfort, despair. No dialogue. Wonderfully acted and directed. That scene is worth more than all car chase sequences since the beginning of Cinema put together.