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Jean-Antoine Watteau, Harlequin and Columbine, 1718, oil on oak panel, Wallace Collection |
Well it's fifty-three years to this day that Anna Magnani died, and I noticed that someone uploaded Jean Renoir's 1952 Cinecittà-produced farce The Golden Coach, the first Italian film in Technicolor, in which she plays Camilla, cast as Columbine in an eighteenth century Italian commedia dell'arte troupe that has arrived in Peru to revive a rural theater. Intro:
"The 'open Sesame' of all Renoir's work. The two customary poles of his work - art and nature, acting and life - take shape in two facing mirrors, which reflect each other's images back and forth until it is impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins. The critical question of all the films which precede and follow - that of sincerity - here finds its most elegant answer and in turn a new formulation, as in a dialogue.. It is an exquisite jewel box which had the good fortune to contain the priceless gems known as commedia dell'arte, Vivaldi and Magnani. If an author can claim to transfer the essence of his message into aesthetic form, it is because this message is so compatible with the art in which he practices.
"All this concerns not only Renoir but the entire cinema, for both of them have the same unique and profound object: spectacle, or if you prefer, appearance." (Eric Rohmer)
"An American critic compared The Golden Coach to those boxes which you open to find another, smaller box inside, which in turn contains another box, and so on. Renoir tells us: 'This critic pleased me so much by saying that. He thought it was a flaw and that a film should not be made that way. Personally I find this box game very interesting.'..
"Renoir himself has given us the message of The Golden Coach; 'The desire for civilization was a force that drove me during the making of The Coach.'..
"The Golden Coach was a commercial and even critical failure. Jean Renoir went for two years without shooting.. (François Truffaut)
(tr. W.W. Halsey and William Simon)
+ 1962's Mamma Roma, Pasolini's follow up to his directorial debut Accattone the previous year, "Mamma Roma now stands as an unequivocal critique of neorealism from both an ideological and formal point of view." (Maurizio Viano)
