Mario Monicelli, 1915-2010

World cinema lost one of its greatest directors last November with the suicide death of Mario Monicelli. Born in Tuscany, Monicelli was part of a generation of remarkable Italian directors who would establish the pre-eminence of Italian cinema after World War II. Although he never achieved the status of contemporaries like Roberto Rosellini, Vittorio de Sica, Federico Fellini, and Michelangelo Antonioni, Monicelli’s contribution to Italian film was considerable. In part, this relative lack of recognition was his role in shaping the commedia all’italiana, a genre that never attained the gravitas of Neo-Realism or the Italian avant-garde. Yet, it was Monicelli and other similar comedic directors who, according to Robert Bondanella’s Italian Cinema, formed the backbone of the Italian film industry in the 1950s. Monicelli worked with Italy’s best comedic actors like Toto, Vittorio Gassman, Alberto Sordi, and even Marcello Mastroianni. Monicelli’s output was prodigious beginning in 1935 right up until 2006. His best period was undoubtedly the late 1950s and early 1960s when he made a series of period pieces mixing serious subject matter (war and socialism) with black comedy. As such he became a master of that quintessentially modern genre: tragicomedy.

Monicelli’s best film, and the one I want to discuss here as it interests me as film buff and historian, was La Grande Guerra (The Great War) released in 1959 and starring Gassman and Sordi as two reluctant soldiers sent to the trenches of the First World War. The film garnered Monicelli a Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and a nomination for best foreign film at the Academy Awards. The film centers on the antics of Busacca (Gassman) and Jacovacci (Sordi), two conscripts who do everything possible to get out of the fighting. The two men are sympathetic bunglers who will stoop to any low in order not to see action. In one scene, the two are sent behind the lines to get supplies. As they are about to return to their unit, they learn that their comrades are being attacked. Rather than rush off to join their comrades—as conventional heroes would do–they decide to stay behind on the pretext that some of the supplies had not yet arrived and therefore it would be wrong to return without them. Before the battle commenced however, they were more than willing to go back without the supplies. The next morning they rejoin their unit only to find it decimated and many of their friends dead. In a moment that represents the absurdity of modern war, a messenger arrives with the “good news” that the unit has been granted 10 days leave as the bodies are being collected. In the next scene, the unit arrives at the town where they will spend their leave. They are greeted by the mayor and a marching band—the music of the band slowly dies down as the men of the unit arrive all bandaged and still bearing the scars of the battle. Busacca and Jacovacci are marching with them, conspicuous in their unsullied uniforms.

The film concludes when the two are captured prisoner—after once again hiding from the fighting–and end up getting shot by their Austrian captors at the end of the film after nearly divulging the location of a planned Italian attack. They are anti-heroes who end up performing a heroic action—not revealing the secrets but only because the Austrian official insulted Busacca- not because of any patriotic sentiment. In a commentary on the futility of heroism in such a war, the Italians—not realizing the heroic action of the two characters—consider them deserters.

The strength of Monicelli’s film is that it doesn’t simply present the First World War as senseless slaughter—as many other films on the subject do–or juxtapose the simple, honest soldier with the abusive officer corps. In his careful reconstruction of the period, reflected in the opening credits which are comprised of a series of close-ups of soldiers doing mundane things like sewing buttons, rolling cigarettes, and stepping through the ever-present mud, Monicelli provides a loving attention to detail that any historian of the period can appreciate. The battle scenes are first rate and stand up well against any Hollywood war epic. Monicelli’s use of Cinemascope allowed him to stage large-scale recreations of the Battles of Caporetto and the Piave. He also shot on location in northeastern Italy where the actual battles took place—a tip of the hat to the Neo-Realist school. Throughout the film Monicelli uses the songs of the period, especially the magnificent and mournful tunes of the elite Alpini regiment which add a touch of sadness and pathos to the film. In the final scene which depicts the successful Italian counterattack on the Piave in June 1918, the strains of Il Leggenda del Piave, the patriotic song composed to commemorate that battle, are used as background. Lest the film end on too patriotic a note—Monicelli shows us the two bodies of the “deserters” their sacrifice completely unknown to the Italian troops who race by. “Once again they managed to avoid the fight,” sneers their former commander.

Monicelli’s attempts to straddle the patriotic and the tragic are successful but the attempt was fraught with potential danger. Made in the 1950s when Italy was attempting to forget the recent past, and enjoy an economic and consumerist revolution, a film depicting the Great War ran the risk of being called either fascist or monarchist—an ideology and an institution that were discredited in the Republic of Italy. Although the war took place before the rise of fascism, Mussolini’s regime had appropriated the memory of the war in a patriotic key. Patriotism was not in vogue in the 1950s, and yet Monicelli was able to remind Italians of that massive sacrifice that had been made only 40 years before. He also managed to show that the war, for all its savagery and slaughter, was a nation building experience for Italians. The two main characters speak the dialects of their respective cities—Rome and Milan. Throughout Monicelli demonstrates the obstinate regionalism which characterized Italy since its unification in 1860. It was only in the crucible of war, where men from different regions served together could this regionalism finally be transcended. Ultimately, the success of the film rested on its two anti-heroes, ordinary Italians caught up in the extraordinary events of the First World War. Monicelli’s achievement is to bring together the macro (the war) and the micro (the two characters) and demonstrate that in these otherwise unheroic men (the last words of Sordi as he faces the Austrian firing squad are “I am a coward”) there lies an essential humanity in an inhumane war. This film alone ranks Monicelli as one of the twentieth century’s great directors.

-Dr. Paul Baxa, History Department

paul.baxa@avemaria.edu