Inflintare

Francesco De Robertis is an important predecessor of neorealism whose modest but very real contribution is maddeningly ignored. He was 'disappeared' from the history books due to a couple kinds of inconvenience. He was a patriotic naval officer who followed Mussolini into the Salo regime. He was an important mentor of Roberto Rossellini whose tutelage of and collaboration with the more familiar name created potential embarrassment after the war, as well as some possible demystification as to who really established many of the hallmarks of his student's style.

A pity, but if you really want to know more, De Robertis'es officially 'lost films' are actually largely in circulation via the Italian newsstand route on video and DVD or on TV reruns.

A VHS tape from a magazine series was how I found this title. It's nothing mindblowing, but a very proficiently made movie about a couple of true to life non-actor delinquent kids with a longing for the sea, pleasing as low key naturalistic naive kitchen sink drama in the first half, a good documentary about life on military-shipboard once they stow away amongst much bigger people they look up to and hide from, a moderately thrilling action film in the clinch with a nice rousing, sentimental conclusion, a very good, basic, honest humble entertainment.

I had access to a print of this back in highschool days, and would steal away with friends to screen it whenever possible.

Great document.

But it's not the only film on the subject that should be listed at IMDb.

Someone's neglected to enter the 12-22 minute (depending on the version) "Andy Warhol's Exploding Plastic Inevitable with The Velvet Underground" mini-featurette ...if I've tagged it right! What I've recently seen is a fragment of live 'performance' footage... as in dancer-performers against lightshow and bits and pieces of Velvets' soundtrack further edited into stroboscopic oblivion. The "look" is that of the stills from the show reproduced on the band's first LP.

It's very much a "Morrisey with Warhol" product of the times, a real film in itself, and explains a LOT about how the band worked as an extension of the Warhol Trip in the great man's own fantasizing Svengali imagination. Heard this way (which means heard only but seen 'enacted' with fractured clips of dancers and ecstatics whippers and whippees), the onslaught is a sensual barrage of drugged out cool, Heroin on Speed.

Vocal roles go to Cale doing the one about "boots of shiny, shiny leather", Venus in Furs, and just possibly European Son (where was Lou that night?), and Nico in the middle on a snatch of It Was a Pleasure Then. Gerard and Inga fling themselves around with abandon. Great stuff!