Le Mari de la femme à barbe.
IT/FR 1964. PC: Compagnia Cinematografica Champion (Roma) / Les Films Marceau (Parigi). P: Carlo Ponti. D: Marco Ferreri. SC: Rafael Azcona, Marco Ferreri. DP: Aldo Tonti – b&w – 1,37:1. AD: Mario Garbuglia. Cost: Piero Tosi. M: Teo Usuelli. S: Primiano Muratori – mono. ED: Mario Serandrei.
C: Ugo Tognazzi (Antonio Focaccia), Annie Girardot (Maria), Achille Majeroni (impresario teatrale Majeroni), Filippo Pompa Marcelli (Bruno), Ermelinda De Felica (Sister Furgonicino), Antonio Altoviti (professor), Elvira Paolini (chambermaid), Ugo Rossi (Ponszoner).
Runtime according to the IMDb: 93 min, 92 min (US), 100 min (FR), 84 min (IT).
Based on the true story of Julia Pastrana (1834–1860) and her manager Theodore Lent.
Il film è stato selezionato tra i 100 film italiani da salvare.
Restauré en 2017, ce film devenu introuvable est proposé avec trois fins, une italienne censurée où le film se termine par la mort de la femme et de son bébé, une italienne non censurée où le mari récupère les cadavres embaumés de la mère et de l'enfant pour poursuivre son commerce de foire aux monstres, une française, où la femme redevient normale suite à l'accouchement, et où le mari se plaint du manque à gagner. Le médecin accoucheur finit par lui procurer une place de docker au port.
The film was not released in Finland.
35 mm print with e-surtitles in English by XX viewed at Viva Erotica (WHS Union), 27 April 2018.
I saw for the first time La donna scimmia, a story of itinerant variety show performers who hit the big time and become a cabaret attraction at Montmartre.
The struggling male protagonist Antonio Focaccia [focaccia means Italian flat bread] discovers a hairy nun, Maria, and creates a touring spectacle around her as "an ape woman", performing himself as an African explorer who has captured her in the jungle. Maria is chaste and does not want spectators to touch her. They meet a professor, but Maria refuses to undress for him, and she also refuses the professor's offer to stay for three days "for study" at a compensation of 100 000 Lire.
The mother superior condemns Antonio who would like to adopt Maria. "How many old men come to adopt girls of 14, 15... " The condition for releasing Maria is that Focaccia must marry her.
The tale of a ruthless small-time showman and an inexperienced, exploited woman shares its basic concept with Federico Fellini's La strada but is otherwise completely different.
La donna scimmia is a story of abuse and exploitation, but is also a story of mutual affection, and perhaps love. The wedding sequence is moving and spectacular: the wedding procession attracts a huge crowd of spectators on the street.
Zampanò in La strada was a sexual brute but Focaccia has little interest in sex ("I love you like a brother loves a sister"). In fact, it is Maria who seduces him and wants to have a baby with him. By the time they reach Montmartre they present quite an erotic show with sensual dancing and see-through nudity, but this seems to happen on Maria's terms.
The pregnancy is calamitous, and despite doctors' warnings Maria refuses an abortion. Antonio is shattered when both mother and baby die at the maternity ward.
At first Antonio deposits the corpses with the Natural History Museum, but he returns to retrieve the mummies to continue his La donna scimmia tour with them.
Although Ferreri's approach is original, he shares with La strada a neorealistic inspiration combined with a taste for the extraordinary in a spectacle. The location shooting is powerful, and the movie is full of juicy and wonderful characters down to bit parts. There is still a sense of spontaneity, impulsiveness and vitality in the way of life on display.
Wonderful scenes include one at the zoo which Antonio and Maria visit to observe and imitate a chimpanzee. They are evicted when the chimpanzee becomes irritated by them.
For me, La donna scimmia represents Marco Ferreri at his best. I learned to know him by his big international hit period (La grande bouffe, Touche pas à la femme blanche, La dernière femme, Storie di ordinaria follia); those films are impressive, yet also slightly shallow. I have also seen Ferreri's early Spanish films: the remarkable El pisito and also Los chicos and El cochecito, which are admirable, but inevitably Franco era censorship was constraining for the wild talents of Ferreri and his screenwriter Rafael Azcona.
Watching La donna scimmia I feel like for the first time seeing the true Ferreri, and look forward to seeing his other Italian films of the 1960s, from L'ape regina (Queen Bee) to Dillinger è morto which was a favourite of Peter von Bagh.
Ferreri's key collaborator, also in La donna scimmia, was his screenwriter Rafael Azcona with whom he made 14 films in all periods of his career (Spanish, Italian, international). They shared a taste for the absurd and an approach of satire. El pisito was their mutual breakthrough film.
This is a solid production by Carlo Ponti who was also a co-producer in La strada. There is also a special Luchino Visconti connection in the production team which includes Visconti's art director Mario Garbuglia, his costume designer Piero Tosi, and his editor Mario Serandrei. Another formidable veteran is the brilliant cinematographer Aldo Tonti whose CV includes collaborations from Rossellini to Huston, not forgetting Fellini's Le notti di Cabiria.
Among the veterans is also the actor Achille Majeroni who had started his film career before WWI and whose last film La donna scimmia was. He is best remembered from Fellini's I vitelloni.
The composer is Teo Usuelli who started his film career in Ferreri's L'ape regina and composed seven films for him. There is an affinity with Nino Rota in the circus ambience that launches the film, but Usuelli has a sound world of his own, covering everything from the sacred to the mundane.
La Girardot. A key Visconti connection is the performer of the ape woman herself: Annie Girardot, who is at first almost unrecognizable here. I last saw Girardot in Mourir d'aimer (1971) and it took me a while to accept that this is the same actress. Girardot had, in fact, started her career as a performer in the cabarets of Montmartre. She progressed to La Comédie-Française, and Luchino Visconti cast her in a theatre role and then in Rocco e i suoi fratelli. During its filming Girardot fell in love with Renato Salvatori whom she married and with whom she had a baby. Thus started the Italian current in Girardot's work, including three films for Ferreri, of which La donna scimmia was the first. Girardot's performance as Maria is unique and deeply moving. The implications are deep and relevant to philosophical questions of appearance and essence. And humanity and otherness.
Ugo Tognazzi became a Marco Ferreri regular starting with Ferreri's first Italian film, L'ape regina; they did ten films together. Tognazzi, a mainstay of commedia all'italiana, is usually a satirical genius, an incarnation of insincerity. Also La donna scimmia builds on this very basis, but Tognazzi creates a complex and unpredictable performance on it.
On display was the uncensored Italian version which ran 92 minutes. A used print which breathed and conveyed a sense of the original visual health of the movie. A print struck from the original negative or not too far removed from it.
BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: DATA FROM THE ITALIAN WIKIPEDIA:
BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: DATA FROM THE ITALIAN WIKIPEDIA:
La donna scimmia
Da Wikipedia, l'enciclopedia libera.
La donna scimmia è un film del 1964 diretto da Marco Ferreri, interpretato da Ugo Tognazzi e Annie Girardot, presentato in concorso al 17º Festival di Cannes.
Trama
Napoli. Antonio Focaccia è un imbroglione da quattro soldi che vive di espedienti nella zona della Duchesca.
Capitato per caso in un convento di monache per vendere la sua merce, si accorge di una giovane orfana completamente ricoperta di peli, Maria, che vive lì da sempre. L'idea di Focaccia è di persuaderla e portarla in giro come un fenomeno da baraccone per ricavarne soldi: da allora in poi per il pubblico sarà la donna scimmia, leggendario essere metà donna e metà scimmia, scoperto da esploratori nelle foreste africane. Dopo un tentativo di raggiro ai danni di uno zoologo che però fa solo indignare Maria, Antonio si reca di nuovo al convento per parlarle e decide di sposarla. I due finiscono per innamorarsi, vanno in tournée a Parigi e concepiscono un figlio che poi muore, con Maria, al momento del parto.
Produzione
Prodotto da Carlo Ponti per la C.C.P. di Roma, il film fu girato negli stabilimenti di Tirrenia
Il film è stato selezionato tra i 100 film italiani da salvare.
Il produttore Carlo Ponti impose inizialmente un finale diverso al film, nel quale il bambino dato alla luce da Maria sopravvive (non solo, ma il parto fa cadere tutti i peli alla donna-scimmia, costringendo quindi Tognazzi a lavorare onestamente): questo finale zuccheroso e familistico, del tutto lontano dal cinismo di Ferreri, è rimasto nella versione francese del film.
Il finale girato dal regista proseguiva dopo questo tragico avvenimento mostrando il protagonista che, imbalsamati madre e bambino, continuerà a portare, da morti, i suoi fenomeni da baraccone in giro per l'Europa.
Esiste anche un terzo finale, proposto nella versione francese, in cui Maria, guarita del tutto, e il bambino sopravvivono. Antonio, non avendo più i suoi fenomeni, si trova costretto a redimersi e accetta un onesto lavoro al porto, assolvendo il suo ruolo di padre di famiglia.
La trama s'ispira alla storia vera di Julia Pastrana, donna ipertricotica realmente vissuta nell'Ottocento, nata in Messico e sfruttata come fenomeno da baraccone da Theodore Lent. Lent arrivò davvero a fare imbalsamare la donna insieme al figlio neonato, quando entrambi morirono a Mosca, durante la loro tournée. Le mummie della donna e del figlio hanno ricevuto sepoltura, in Messico, solo nel 2013.
Critica
Tullio Kezich nella Settimana Incom del 1º marzo 1964 " La donna scimmia assomiglia alla Strada di Fellini, più che a qualsiasi film. Tognazzi, che i più hanno trovato un po' debole in questo film, ci sembra invece esemplare nella sua ambiguità di uomo qualsiasi , legato al carro di un sistema dal quale non può assolutamente sciogliersi, non meno convincente di un'Annie Girardot patetica e coraggiosa".
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