Les Basilischi

Lina Wertmüller's directorial debut from 1963, I Basilischi (The Lizards) is a quietly powerful look at life in Italy's deep south in the 1960s. I assume (film buffs can correct me) that this fits into the Italian Neo Realism film movement that captured the world's attention in the 40s, 50s, and 60s. It is shot in a semi-documentary style and some of the actors are amateurs. The film is in black & white, but it is beautiful, with fabulous shots of a gorgeous medieval town and the the wide open spaces of a nearly treeless countryside, each desolate in their own way. The movie's power really hits home at the end, not for any special effects or momentous events, but because the cumulative message of the film's protagonists finally comes through.

There's a story that Lina Wertmuller tells about herself and Fellini: "He said something that I will never forget: 'If you are not a good storyteller, all the techniques in the world will never save you.' He told me that before I started shooting my first film, 'I basilischi'".

When I watched The Lizards (Basilisks), I could not tell who the narrator was and what was the story. There is a vague story but it is not strong or vivid. You have to consider that here she had the very best crew gathered, the best film music composer Ennio Morricone, the best editor Ruggero Mastroianni and the best cinematographer Gianni di Venanzio. Yet all their magic does not make this potentially great film come alive because the traditional story structure is weak or missing. She was warned but it didn't do any good.

Lina Wertmüller's directorial debut "I Basilischi" (The Basilisks or The Lizards) is a 1963 little known wonderfully written and directed masterwork of Italian Neorealismo. This keenly satiric and galvanizing movie features simplicity in both its story and execution; so unique so special. It sparkles with cinematic magic unlike any other film today. Wertmüller's lean, sharp graffito seduces and functions almost like a parable, in a number of remarkable ironic insightful vignettes, pure motives which alone drive the narrative of the picture forward. Filmed in a detached pictorial black and white, Gianni Di Venanzo, post-war cinematographer, made fundamental contributions to Lina Wertmüller's first success as a filmmaker. The magnificent and beautiful Ennio Morricone scores the scenes.

This is the first film I've watched on the MUBI platform and I'm impressed. Lina Wertmüller's debut, The Basilisks. It's a restoration and it looks gorgeous. I watched it with the lights down low on a 5K screen and blimey it's fantastic. Set in a small Italian village. A small sleepy place where everyone just gets by. It really is a window into another world, another time. Not just the everyday men in everyday suits or the dark glasses or any of the other cultural signifiers. It's the notion of time that gets me. There's tons of it. Time to sleep in the day, time to hang out on stone steps, time to daydream. Nothing much happens and our three young leads Antonio (Antonio Petruzzi), Francesco (Stefano Satta Flores) and Sergio (Sergio Ferranino) are looking for excitement. Hard to come by with no money in your pocket. It's effortlessly stylish. Shot in monochrome every shot draws you in and the small weathered Italian streets are a compositional dream. Several shots take my breath away and I'm tempted to hit pause. The sound too, it's simple as the visuals. No clutter of traffic in this world, every aural note has space. And there's the Morricone score. Subtle but unmistakable. As the trio look for options, for love, I'm falling in love myself. Wanting to reach into the screen a walk the dusty rural streets with them. It's light and funny, but there's a strong patriarchy running through it. Expectations of the young men and of the young women to behave in a regimented decency. Do what your father demands, respect your mother, their choices not entirely their own and the class structure, even in a small village is held firm. The politics are antiquated. These things are a little jarring to modern eyes and none of the characters are in any way progressive. Facist sympathisers, called out when Antonio's visiting aunt and her friend come with their socialist ideas and talk of jobs, freedom and women in Rome. They take Antonio back to Rome, leaving poor Francesco and Sergio stewing in the sticks. Trying to establish a cooperative to help their prospects. It's a tough life, but captured beautifully with a disarming romanticism. In truth there's no real arc to the story, more of a window into regular uneventful lives. People dreaming of something else, but in truth happy to be trapped where they are.

The Basilisks has an unusual narrative structure, broadly following the lives of members of a community in a hilltop town, without much attempt at a narrative arc. The major theme seems to be that most men and women lead lives of silent frustration. It is in a sense a political movie, but in an undogmatic way. The inhabitants are trapped by the attitudes and customs of the time and place, and although they loll in front of panoramas and walk down streets of picturesque buildings there is always a faint sadness in everything. A whole clutch of characters cross the screen, but three male friends get particular attention, Antonio is a good-looking though unambitious student, Francesco an apathetic landowner and tentative lover (in a town where women are comedically unavailable), and Sergio a sad-eyed prematurely balding schoolteacher, who sits out youth without pleasing the eye of any young lady. This film does however have its fleeting joys, a child dancing in a piazza, the synchronised glancing of the "cousins", and certainly the occasional narration from Enrica Chiaromonte, an underemployed actress of the Italian cinema, with a marvellous, conspiratorial yet loving voice, playing the character of Maddalena. Chiaromonte was a philosophy graduate of the University of Pisa and a schoolteacher of history and philosophy, a multitalented lady. In the end Wertmüller's cinema is gentle and inclusive, aided by a sympathetic Morricone score.

The film is worth comparing to I Vitelloni, Fellini's third feature film from a decade before. In Italian that title refers to the calves that are fattened to be turned into veal, and also refers to young slackers from middle class provincial families. That movie also features a group of young men struggling to escape a certain dreary stranglehold. In that sense The Basilisks is not particularly original, but it's certainly beautiful and I prefer it to I Vitelloni overall.