La chronique des pauvres amants

Marcello Mastroianni and Antonella Lualdi are sticking out in this very interesting and almost documentary account of the rise of fascism in Italy in 1925 by sheer criminality. The story is mainly about lovers. Antonella Lualdi gets her husband murdered by fascists in a very vicious way, giving him internal wounds that keep him hospitalized in a slow dying condition until the end. The highlight of the film is the dramatic scene in the middle of the film, "the night of the apocalypse", when the Fascists go on a rampage tour to murder opponents, one of them being Marcello Mastroianni's best friend and the hero of the block where all this is happening, a back street in Florence. The film is well made, the acting is excellent throughout, but this is mainly a film for Italians too show the mentality of the fascists. Others north of Italy were forced to get used to much worse by nazis and communists.

Portrait of a working class community in Florence in the 1920s as the Fascists tighten their grip on society. It's set in a narrow street populated by market traders, cobblers, gossips, unfaithful wives, gangsters, with an old matriarch overseeing things from her window and the local Fascist on patrol down below. Mainly it follows the fortunes of three marriagable young women and their lovers, with, at the centre of the film, a brutal night of assassinations which changes the community forever.

It's quite dialogue-heavy - there's barely a moment without subtitles on the screen - and there's little humour, but it's well made and is suffused with a non-judgemental humanism that prevents things getting too morose. Mastroianni stands out among the cast, which includes an Olympic gold medalist discus thrower as a blacksmith. Particularly interesting to see a non-touristic side of Florence, when the place had a real lived-in feel.

This movie could probably have been a successful production, if it was realized in a different way, but the emphasis in which nearly all characters are over-stating themselves throughout its length makes it somewhat slow and uninteresting.

As it often happens with adaptation of literary works for the silver screen, the style of this movie is rather different from that of the novel from which is taken, but the atmosphere of the working-class neighborhood in the Florence of mid-1920s is quite well rendered.

The cast too is full of very good players, both famous or soon-to-be famous, like Mastroianni, Ferrero, Lualdi and Greco, and remarkable features by some lesser known but noteworthy presences such as Giuliano Montaldo (which later will acquire his own fame as movie director), and Wanda Capodaglio, unrivaled queen of the Italian stage for nearly 50 years, who plays the unnamed "Lady Loanshark".

Adolfo Consolini, a famous Italian athlete, twice world record holder and 1948 Olympic champion of discus throw, very appropriately lends his well-built body to the character of Maciste.

The only action sequence of this movie, with Ugo and Maciste trying to reach the houses of some anti-fascists and warn them before the violent mob gets there first, is very nailing and well made. Too bad the rest of the movie is not as entertaining as it could have been.

If you are interested in the history of Italian movies and contemporary literature, try watching this one, but only after reading the novel.