I recently saw this film for the first time. A recent poster said this movie leans "against" social issues....I tend to see the film as capturing a dialectic between the personal and the political... it is political in at least 2 ways that I can see....1) it shows the outrageous inadequacy of bourgeois "democracy" to defend the interests of working people...the Mafia and its candidates who echo the ideology of fascism in the film represent capitalism as both the fulfillment and the negation of the democratic "facade"... (the lead character's descent into crass opportunism as well as his sexual aggression, it is to be noted, are NOT rewarded in the film...at the conclusion, he is profoundly alienated in a scene reminiscent of the final cut of Fellini's La Strada- probably some homage here).... 2) and this is probably the more dominant politically significant theme---this film attempts a radical critique of the institution of bourgeois marriage, through the destructive and artificial role that marriage plays in the film...not only in terms of the patriarchal double-standards, but in the institution's incapacity to most fully satisfy human strivings- female OR male.
Whatever one can say about this film, I think anyone who sees it in anyway as a criticism of Communism is misreading the film....Certainly, a member of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) might understandably cringe at a Party supporter's (Mimi) sexual aggressiveness....but Mimi is apparently a Party "supporter" in the narrowest sense- only in the sense of voting for the Reds (remember PCI has long been a sizeable and popular Party in Italy), and by the end of the film he has DESCENDED to campaigning for a fascistic-Mafia-backed candidate....and the attitude of the PCI towards such a character as Mimi is symbolized by his comrades abandoning him in their red sickle-and- hammer-displaying wagon, disgusted at his sexism and misogyny, with his
opportunistic supporting of rightist candidates obviously the final straw....interestingly in La Strada, the lead character is much worse in terms of violence and maliciousness, and yet Wertmuller leaves us with LESS sympathy for Mimi than does Fellini for the lead role in La Strada, she thankfully spared us gratuitous "pitying" close-ups of Mimi bawling his eyes out.
His girlfriend in Turin is NOT a Communist, i.e. a member of the PCI, as she makes clear, but apparently a former-Trotskyite-turned-quasi-Maoist who defensively emphasizes her "independence" from the Party (Trot to Maoist is an unlikely
transformation, btw, since Trots and Maoists are notoriously antipathic to each other-- the only thing uniting them being their dislike of the regular Communist Party)...
anyway, if this is kind of ranty it's because I've only seen it once, and I have a lot of thoughts....if a movie gets me thinking like this one, it is on some level a success, I suppose. I enjoyed this film, and particularly felt the ending tied it all together well, and was more satisfying than I would have anticipated.
Whatever one can say about this film, I think anyone who sees it in anyway as a criticism of Communism is misreading the film....Certainly, a member of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) might understandably cringe at a Party supporter's (Mimi) sexual aggressiveness....but Mimi is apparently a Party "supporter" in the narrowest sense- only in the sense of voting for the Reds (remember PCI has long been a sizeable and popular Party in Italy), and by the end of the film he has DESCENDED to campaigning for a fascistic-Mafia-backed candidate....and the attitude of the PCI towards such a character as Mimi is symbolized by his comrades abandoning him in their red sickle-and- hammer-displaying wagon, disgusted at his sexism and misogyny, with his
opportunistic supporting of rightist candidates obviously the final straw....interestingly in La Strada, the lead character is much worse in terms of violence and maliciousness, and yet Wertmuller leaves us with LESS sympathy for Mimi than does Fellini for the lead role in La Strada, she thankfully spared us gratuitous "pitying" close-ups of Mimi bawling his eyes out.
His girlfriend in Turin is NOT a Communist, i.e. a member of the PCI, as she makes clear, but apparently a former-Trotskyite-turned-quasi-Maoist who defensively emphasizes her "independence" from the Party (Trot to Maoist is an unlikely
transformation, btw, since Trots and Maoists are notoriously antipathic to each other-- the only thing uniting them being their dislike of the regular Communist Party)...
anyway, if this is kind of ranty it's because I've only seen it once, and I have a lot of thoughts....if a movie gets me thinking like this one, it is on some level a success, I suppose. I enjoyed this film, and particularly felt the ending tied it all together well, and was more satisfying than I would have anticipated.