Italian Cinema 3

7/27/2019 Italian Cinema 3

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remembers his history, his place of origin and talk about his dreams. This scene is really

important because of its lack of importance, of its triviality within the context of the war. In

fact, his soldiers-friends have gone away to do the important things; he is only there,

quite reluctantly, to avoid the runaway of Carmela.

In this scene, one space (Certeau) of translation is opened. In the Fascist cinema and

its fixed cinematographic genre, there were no space to hear the interiority, the subjectivity,

of the characters because they had to fit within the system of Fascist values and aesthetics.

However, in this scene, we only hear the deep and spontaneous thoughts of a soldier. He

tries, once again, too make himself understood. He has a moment of freedom, apart from

the other soldiers. It is interesting to notice the erotic atmosphere of these two strangers;

they are alone, during the night and they start to understand each other in an eccentric

way when a German shoots Joe.

From the beginning of the film, the necessity of understanding is present. Both Joe

and Carmela show the intention of the film: depicting to the world an Italian people striving

to fight against a painful past that is still present and still fighting in their soil: the Fascist

forces. However, the end of this translation is not successful. Although Carmela remains

loyal to Joes cause and dies as consequence of her defense of him, when the American

soldiers come back, they believe that she has betrayed him. So any attempt to find an ideal

translation between both of them is dead and is confined to the intimate and spontaneous

chat of two strangers.

Second translation: publicity and love story

In the third episode, we are not in a far and small town as in the first. We are in a

public and well-known city, the center of Fascist Italy which has been penetrated by

American and British soldiers. They are heroes. And we see and hear the voices of the

people and, among them, women who are really impressed with all what an American

soldier might represent historically, politically, economically and aesthetically. (It is a

historical fact that the American influence after the liberation was really intense in the post-

war Italy. It reminds me ofTu vuo fa lamericano, 1956 song of Renato Carosone.) In the

first scene, we see the victorious American army entering into Rome.


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However, here the film does a temporal leap to six months after the first encounter

of Francesco and Fred. We can see the first signs of the Americanization of Rome: we are

in the Moka Abdul, a place where American soldiers and Italian girls meet for something

more than just talk, and we hear the rhythm of In the mood, famous American jazz song,

Glen Millers 1940 hit. When Francesca runs into Fred, after leaving Moka Abdul, she

takes him to her place and tries to kiss him; there we discover that she is a prostitute. (The

unemployment and poverty have force many girls to find any kind of job to survive.) Then,

Fred, drunk, tells her that Rome is full of girl like you. Fred, felling tired of his 6 months

life in Rome, remembers when he knew Francesca.

In the flashback, we see the encounter of Fred, and American soldier, and

Francesca, probably a petit bourgeois Roman girl. What I want to emphasize here is the

publicity of the translation. They are in Rome. It has been said that this scene is the most

weak of all the film because it reminds a melodramatic love story of the previous cinema.

However, if we follow the idea of translation as metaphor of the film, we see in this episode

a second attempt to understand each other, not as casual and spontaneous as the first one,

but one encounter long-waited- for as Francesca said to Fred.

Fred needs water to wash his hands and face. However, Francesca misunderstands

the message and thinks he wants to drink water (she apologizes because the water is not so

fresh). When he enters to the bathroom to wash himself, she starts to read out loud English

expressions from a grammar book (it can be also a dictionary). So she tries to make herself

understood. Surprised, Fred also knows some Italian and they read together happily in both

languages in front of the grammar book. They seem happy. It seems a traditional love story.

However, when we are in the climax of romanticism, his friend soldiers call him and tell

him they must leave immediately. They say good bye to each other showing us an uncertain

feature. I want to emphasize the distance of this episode with the first one. In the latter, they

do not know the language of each other but they try to translate themselves as much as they

can, death is their end; in the third episode, the translators count with more tools to

understand each other and their future is uncertain.

Then, we discover that she is Francesca. She has not recognized her, so she lets her

address to the house housekeeper and tells her to give the note-address to Fred. In the next


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scene we see, Fred leaving with the soldiers (following his duty) and Francesca waiting for

him under the rain. He will not come back. He has to be a soldier.

Once again, we have here an unsuccessful translation. They want to be together, but

something prevents this to happen. The story of Fred and Francesca is depicted as the long-

ago-waited-for understanding of Italy with America (with the Allied cause); however, love

and birth (and happinees) cannot be obtained unless the war is finished. The successful

translation has, inPais, a specific space, that is, war of liberation. Personal love cannot be

securely obtained if the war is not completely won by the Allied. In the fifth episode, we see

also the Christian chaplain and the friars understanding each other, but disagreeing because

of religious matters. Once again, here we have the sharing of a same language; however,

comprehension and union is not possible because the monastery is outside history. The film

claims for a radical inside history. At the end of the fifth scene, the Christian chaplain

invokes peace as the ultimate refuge for humanity. In fact, peace is the goal of the war;

however, it has to be obtained within history, in the world and not in isolation.

Consequently, the space of successful translation towards peace, despite the unfavorable

circumstances, is the last episode.

Third translation: partisans and soldiers speak a same language in different languages

In the last episode, Dale and Cigolani communicate very well, they worked together

and they act in a common landscape (boats scenes). Moreover, they understand each

others English and accented Italian perfectly and they are bound by a fraternity of

common action (Haaland 114) with soldiers, partisans and common people. This episode

shows that translation is successful when it has to do with winning the war and gaining

peace; in this sense,Pais depicts a space where personal love and happiness has to be put

in a second place after the war necessities. Casual encounters (first episode) and love

stories (third episodes) have to wait. However, these unsuccessful translations are indeed as

important as the successful translation of the final scene; because they depict the

contradictions of the 1944-1945 Italy and they show also the voices of these characters in

spontaneous and painful ways.

Historical circumstances are so intense that they flood every personal situation. The

film depicts the unavoidable of historicity; within this circumstances, it is not possible a


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cinema of evasion. Fascist melodrama, through the attempts of realism in films like Quattri

passi, has disappeared from the scene: what we have now is cinema as a historical

document but also as an artistic and choral testimony of Italy who, like Paiss characters,

is trying to understand, translate itself within the background of the end of the war. Despite

the fact that the partisans and American soldiers are captured by the Germans, the

successful translation that Dale and Cigolani have reached is a prefiguration of the

fraternity that will finally win the war. The future horizon of the last scene and the voices

gives thefiducia that the war will be finished in few months. In Rossellinis Pais, we see

and hear Italys own path of re-finding (re-founding) itself through a self-collective and

complex process of translation.

Documents

Italian Cinema 3