Adua e le compagne

Here is a wonderful example of Italian realism from 1960 that I'd never heard of until this week--and I'm 65 years old and a big fan of this genre. It was shown in San Francisco as the only "classic" film in a festival of recent Italian cinema. It deserves a wider audience. How can a film that stars Simone Signoret and Marcello Mastroianni remain so obscure? This story of four prostitutes forced to fend for themselves when a new law closes the bordellos of Rome reminds one of "Bicycle Thief" or "The Organizer," in its gritty social realism, but there are scenes of happiness and humor too. They pool their savings to open a trattoria, but find they cannot get a license. A prominent fixer with connections obtains the license for them, on condition that they conduct their old business upstairs and pay him an exorbitant monthly fee. The women are not anxious to turn tricks for a living any longer and find joy in running the restaurant. The women long to settle down--one has a child, another meets a man who loves her. Only one is tempted to return to her old life. Signoret, the major character here and as wonderful as ever, falls for Mastroianni, a glib car salesman, hustler and womanizer. While the trattoria is a success, it does not bring in the kind of money demanded by their "patron," which leads to conflict. The resolutions of their individual stories develop alongside that of their collective story. In this genre, happy endings are not a staple. Grim reality is, however. We can feel great sympathy for these women, but we know that such people are too often bound by destiny, given the realities of power--who has it and who hasn't--and the attitudes of society. All this drama is accompanied by a terrific jazz soundtrack, which is unfortunately not credited. The black-and-white cinematography is first rate. The closing scene in the rain ranks among the all-time unforgettable film endings.

I will never be tired of seeing "Adua e le compagne", this black and white film is a jewel of Italian cinematography with a plot easy to understand, and excellent acting of four women, French star Simone Signoret, then-young Sandra Milo, Gina Rovere and Emmanuelle Riva, all playing the role of prostitutes who wanted to incorporate themselves honestly to the society. Their acting was seconded by the experienced and charismatic Marcello Mastroianni in the role of a typical Italian tricky pigeon and lover. Italy of the 50s had the problem of prostitution, and mafia was around it together with some "gentlemen" of the corrupted local administration always looking for licenses, permits and other documents in a tricky way to facilitate the work of the prostitutes who at the same time had to pay heavy sum of money to the above-mentioned gentlemen. The director Antonio Pietrangeli was able to show clearly where the problem was and who were promoting the dirty business of prostitution. In addition, youth does not last forever and the same happened with the beauty of the prostitutes. The film also shows this fact convincingly. The DVD of this film exists but only in Italian, and it would be good to have it in other languages (English, Spanish and French at least).

Very fine, gloriously black and white, very well acted drama involving four girls who decide to pool their resources and run a restaurant together when their brothel is closed down. There are so many moments where this could easily have become sentimental and doesn't and is much to the director's credit that this looks so good throughout. The jazz soundtrack is a great help as are the snatches or 'real life' - the steam trains rushing below car dealer Mastroianni's window, the fine moment in the main street when he passes off Signoret's failing car to another whilst slipping her into one more. But the best of all such sequences is the final shot upon the cobblestoned street in the pouring rain and without a cloying close-up, we all know exactly what the facial expression is. As I say all the acting is good but Signoret particularly puts in another excellent performance where she ranges from sexy to sad and energetic to dejected, but perhaps best of all her verbal onslaught upon 'the landlord'.

The city is closing down the disorderly houses, but Simone Signoret and her fellow working girls have a plan. They'll open a restaurant in the suburbs and and take men upstairs. Yet, as they work hard to get the restaurant up and working, they find themselves changing.

The 1960s saw the Italians produce some serious movies about working girls, but director Antonio Pietrangeli has directed a fine one here, one that shows the women as individuals, and gotten some fine actresses in the roles; not only Signoret, but Sandra Milo, Emanuelle Riva, and Gina Rovere. They do a fine job, and the script but Pietrangelo with Ettore Scola and Ruggero Maccari makes it clear that the problem is not just with the women, but with the corrupt and venal attitudes of the men around them.

At first I thought this was too long a movie -- it's more than two hours from start to finish -- but there's not a wasted moment.

When a brothel closes because of new laws, four of the prostitutes decide to go into business running a restaurant. They discover they cannot escape their past.

European films (particularly French and Italian) seem to have some strange preoccupation with brothels and prostitution, often glamorizing it. Here is more of that, with these four ladies coming across as fiercely independent. Not impossible, but probably not the most common sort of folks who worked the trade.

What makes this film interesting, at least historically, is that it was made in response to an actual law that shut down brothels. And, indeed, it does raise that question: where are prostitutes to go? They have an unusual skill set, odd references... and respectability is limited.