Le grand embouteillage

"Traffic Jam" is a grandiose black comedy which is a little bit of Fellini's "Roma", Godard's "Weekend, and Bunuel's "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie." Along a Roman highway there is a monumental traffic jam that lasts 36 hours. We get to witness the dramas, personal and public, of a group of people in this pile-up of vehicles, an image no doubt to be taken as a microcosm of an aggressively cut-throat world. It is a movie that is in turn tongue-in-cheek, riotous, clever, and just plain funny. Extended cameo roles are provided by Alberto Sordi, Marcello Mastroianni, Ugo Tognazzi, Annie Girardot, and Angela Molina. It is a good example of "commedia all'italiana", a genre that combined rib-tickling humor with savage satire.

I haven’t been aware of this film for very long, one which I mentioned fairly recently while discussing Jean-Luc Godard’s WEEK-END (1967) with Michael Elliott in this very thread; I’ve now acquired it on DivX in a slightly trimmed version (113 minutes against the official 121), having learnt of the mixed reception to its DVD release in Italy (due to said length issues and dirt-riddled video).

It features a remarkable cast of international stars: (in alphabetical order) Gerard Depardieu, Patrick Dewaere, Annie Girardot, Ciccio Ingrassia, Marcello Mastroianni, Miou-Miou, Angela Molina, Fernando Rey, Stefania Sandrelli, Alberto Sordi and Ugo Tognazzi, plus a host of other interesting supporting characters (including Pupi Avati regular Gianni Cavina). Luigi Comencini is an underrated Italian director, of whose work I’ve seen – not too long ago – EVERYBODY GO HOME (1960), Italian SECRET SERVICE (1968) and THE CAT (1977); I’ve also just acquired his BEBO’S GIRL (1963) which, at the time of release, counted Jean-Luc Godard among its admirers! Anyway, this savage black comedy (on which Bernardino Zapponi, Fellini’s regular screen writing partner around this time, had a hand) could perhaps have hit its satirical targets better – and it would have been even funnier with a greater director (say, Luis Bunuel) at its helm but it’s nevertheless well enough done; incidentally, Bunuel’s own son Juan Luis did actually serve as a second-unit assistant director on this Italo-Franco-German production!

Several good (and a few memorable) vignettes abound: arrogant lawyer Sordi, accompanied by his long suffering assistant Orazio Orlandi, looking for an uninhabited place to take a crap among the car wreckages; poor man Cavina knowingly bartering his sexy wife Sandrelli for a night with stranded actor Mastroianni in return for a job as chauffeur to the stars at Cinecitta' and even intimating at blackmail due to the actor’s eventual non-performance in bed; Molina’s three-way rape in a delivery van caught in the traffic jam is witnessed by four aging and passive would-be vigilantes; Rey and Girardot, as a couple on their Silver Wedding Anniversary holiday quarreling bitterly (and bringing up their infidelities out into the open) about lost keys to their front door which were in Rey’s possession all along (although he slips them back into her handbag when she’s not looking); Dewaere’s chain-smoking manic depressive perennially hung up on his girl; a bald-headed man’s foul-mouthed aggression on his car is ‘silenced’ by a meek driver (by the end of the film, then, their positions are virtually reversed); Depardieu forever threatening to throw himself under the stationary(!) cars when he finds out that his wife (Miou-Miou) is Professor Tognazzi’s lover; still, the funniest bit is perhaps Rey’s insults traded with a reckless driver two cars away from him which is ‘passed on’ by a mild-mannered middle-man. Fiorenzo Carpi contributes the simple and sparse, yet highly effective, brooding music score.

So few comments for the great Luigi Comencini!One of the best Italian directors in the heyday (sixties and seventies) of Italian cinema!

"Ingorgo",like "lo scopone scientifico" ,is a modern fable.But whereas the former dealt with the power of money,the poor wops against the high and the mighty,the later involves the whole society,including the social worries.

At first sight,it looks like an unspectacular disaster movie:the traffic jam acts reveals the deep malaise of the Italian (???) consumer society .The car,what a symbol!Long before Cronenberg("crash")and infinitely better than him,Comencini heralds the dead end of our era ,poisoned by selfishness,hypocrisy,wickedness and the God named car that man created...As Pollack a decade earlier had shown in "They shoot horses,don't they" an America going round in circles,Comencini shows here the end of the road.

As in a disaster movie,there are a lot of subplots (no plot,no main character),but Comencini is too clever to follow the rules:except for Sordi and Mastroianni,the stars (Depardieu,Annie Girardot,Ugo Tognazzi,Miou Miou,et al) take a back seat to less familiar faces.

A road movie,it is for sure.Everything happens on the road.And anything can happen.A desolate landscape,cars on the road,and along the wayside,wrecks of cars .And inside this apocalyptic world,the milk of human meanness,everyman for himself and God against us all!The movie reaches paroxysms of horror during a rape scene in a van during the night :the doors remains open:four bourgeois,in the car behind ,put on their headlights and relish with the girl's screams.(She might like that,one of the peeping toms says!They pay for such a show in town,another one replies)

If there is a hope,as such is often the case in Comencini's world,it can be found in children's eyes.A little ray of light illuminates the darkness when a girl (sadly the one who will be assaulted)takes her guitar and sing a lovely tune for little boys and girls with cherubic faces.Another hope can be found in the reverend's words when he prays over the body of the man in the ambulance (stuck in the traffic jam too).Comencini's words indeed.

"Ingorgo" is an absolute pessimistic work.And the last pictures,displaying the populace ingurgitating jars of baby food comes as another symbol.Either man will be born again with a child's wisdom,or he will be doomed for eternity.Children are fathers to the man and so much more in Comencini's work:in "lo scopone scientifico" it's the daughter who's the most sensible;in "incompreso", a child suffers from the adults' indifference;in "cuore" the children who were carefully taught are sent to the war and lose all their illusions.

Like most of Comencini 's works,it is a black comedy that cries to be seen.Comedy is a wrong word anyway when you verge constantly on human dumbness tragedy.