A day of culture
I've had a day of quite prolonged cultural enrichment, so I thought I'd share my forays into cinema and art here...
Over the last few weeks, I've been joining Clover in watching various films she needs to be aware of for the Italian Cinema section of her degree, and today we planned a double bill.
We started off our cultural odyssey by watching Roberto Rossellini's "Un Pilota Ritorna". It was great fun, a 1940's war film of the sort that BBC2 always seem to show on Saturday afternoons made completely fascinating by the simple fact that it was made by the wrong side. It was set around the Balkan campaigns of 1941 and saw an Italian bomber pilot shot down over Yugoslavia, only to be taken prisoner by the British and interned in a series of progressively more unpleasant prison camps.
Eventually he escapes, steals a plane and flies back to Italy- romancing an interned Italian girl in the process of course!
Visually, the film was nothing special and was practically interchangeable with similar British films of the period- but the fact that it glorified the other side made it great fun. Instead of RAF pilots with handlebar mustaches we had clean-shaven and immaculately-dressed Italian officers, and the Prussian Camp Commandants ("For you, ze war is over!") were replaced by sneering upper-class British aristocrats and brutish Australian guards. The smiling heroic SS troopers we were looking forward to never materialised sadly, in fact the Germans were hardly acknowledged as being in the war at all. Nonetheless, it was rather entertaining to see a war film with the usual goodies and baddies reversed- and not an American in sight, which was also refreshing.
Heading back to college, Clover got a phone call from Nathan wondering if we fancied coffee, so we decided to try somewhere new and go to the coffee shop in the Fitzwilliam museum. After some rather good (albeit pretty expensive) smoothies the four of us had a look around the museum itself, something that amongst us only Clover had done before. It was an interesting hour- the exhibits themselves were almost secondary to the internal architecture, especially in the extremely grand entrance hall.
We particularly enjoyed the Roman artifacts on display, which included some beautiful rings and an extremely intricately designed 'Roman Army Knife'.
After dinner, Clover and I rounded off our day of culture by sitting down to watch Pasolini's infamous masterwork, "Salo, or the 120 days of Sodom". It's an extremely difficult film, unflinching in its depiction of incredible brutality and perversion. Set in the dying days of the Second World War in northern Italy, it's a pretty faithful reworking of De Sade's work, and as such is pretty disturbing stuff. While voyeurism is an important theme (and one constantly reinforced by the furtive camera angles that are used, as well as the use of binoculars in the climactic mass-torture scene) Pasolini never allows the viewer to find enjoyment in what they are seeing, and the result is something that is often extremely uncomfortable.
We both felt glad that we weren't watching the film on our own, as that would inculcate a certain complicity in the events shown on screen- between us we were also able to spot a large amount of the symbolism that the work groans under the weight of. Costume, lighting, camera angle and even the different languages spoken are all calculated to reference themes as diverse as Dante's Inferno, globalised culture, and the dehumanising aspects of Fascism. Pasolini's decision to shift the setting from 18th century France to Northern Italy in 1945 is also a masterstroke- not only does it give the film a biting political edge that would otherwise be lacking, but it adds an element of verisimilitude- it's disturbingly plausible that such insanity could, and did take place in the final days of WW2.
"Salo" is exactly the sort of film that many people would try to ban, indeed it is still illegal in Australia and only became available in Britain in the last few years. It's easy to see why- it's difficult to think of a single moment after the first five minutes that would fail to cause a Daily Mail critic to froth at the mouth in outrage. Such a facile interpretation has no appreciation of the issues that the film tries to address, the artistry and intellect that went into its production or the mass of conflicting emotions that it raises. It's a perfect example of why context and tone must be taken into account with these sorts of things. And, as is probably obvious, it's left an extremely deep impression on me.
Tomorrow we hope to continue the whole cultural/fascist theme by seeing Riefensthal's classic "Triumph of the Will"- hopefully the odd looks we received when we requested it the other day won't be repeated. I get the distinct impression that our names have now been put on a list somewhere...
(Originally posted by Ed)
Over the last few weeks, I've been joining Clover in watching various films she needs to be aware of for the Italian Cinema section of her degree, and today we planned a double bill.
We started off our cultural odyssey by watching Roberto Rossellini's "Un Pilota Ritorna". It was great fun, a 1940's war film of the sort that BBC2 always seem to show on Saturday afternoons made completely fascinating by the simple fact that it was made by the wrong side. It was set around the Balkan campaigns of 1941 and saw an Italian bomber pilot shot down over Yugoslavia, only to be taken prisoner by the British and interned in a series of progressively more unpleasant prison camps.Eventually he escapes, steals a plane and flies back to Italy- romancing an interned Italian girl in the process of course!
Visually, the film was nothing special and was practically interchangeable with similar British films of the period- but the fact that it glorified the other side made it great fun. Instead of RAF pilots with handlebar mustaches we had clean-shaven and immaculately-dressed Italian officers, and the Prussian Camp Commandants ("For you, ze war is over!") were replaced by sneering upper-class British aristocrats and brutish Australian guards. The smiling heroic SS troopers we were looking forward to never materialised sadly, in fact the Germans were hardly acknowledged as being in the war at all. Nonetheless, it was rather entertaining to see a war film with the usual goodies and baddies reversed- and not an American in sight, which was also refreshing.
Heading back to college, Clover got a phone call from Nathan wondering if we fancied coffee, so we decided to try somewhere new and go to the coffee shop in the Fitzwilliam museum. After some rather good (albeit pretty expensive) smoothies the four of us had a look around the museum itself, something that amongst us only Clover had done before. It was an interesting hour- the exhibits themselves were almost secondary to the internal architecture, especially in the extremely grand entrance hall.We particularly enjoyed the Roman artifacts on display, which included some beautiful rings and an extremely intricately designed 'Roman Army Knife'.
After dinner, Clover and I rounded off our day of culture by sitting down to watch Pasolini's infamous masterwork, "Salo, or the 120 days of Sodom". It's an extremely difficult film, unflinching in its depiction of incredible brutality and perversion. Set in the dying days of the Second World War in northern Italy, it's a pretty faithful reworking of De Sade's work, and as such is pretty disturbing stuff. While voyeurism is an important theme (and one constantly reinforced by the furtive camera angles that are used, as well as the use of binoculars in the climactic mass-torture scene) Pasolini never allows the viewer to find enjoyment in what they are seeing, and the result is something that is often extremely uncomfortable.We both felt glad that we weren't watching the film on our own, as that would inculcate a certain complicity in the events shown on screen- between us we were also able to spot a large amount of the symbolism that the work groans under the weight of. Costume, lighting, camera angle and even the different languages spoken are all calculated to reference themes as diverse as Dante's Inferno, globalised culture, and the dehumanising aspects of Fascism. Pasolini's decision to shift the setting from 18th century France to Northern Italy in 1945 is also a masterstroke- not only does it give the film a biting political edge that would otherwise be lacking, but it adds an element of verisimilitude- it's disturbingly plausible that such insanity could, and did take place in the final days of WW2.
"Salo" is exactly the sort of film that many people would try to ban, indeed it is still illegal in Australia and only became available in Britain in the last few years. It's easy to see why- it's difficult to think of a single moment after the first five minutes that would fail to cause a Daily Mail critic to froth at the mouth in outrage. Such a facile interpretation has no appreciation of the issues that the film tries to address, the artistry and intellect that went into its production or the mass of conflicting emotions that it raises. It's a perfect example of why context and tone must be taken into account with these sorts of things. And, as is probably obvious, it's left an extremely deep impression on me.
Tomorrow we hope to continue the whole cultural/fascist theme by seeing Riefensthal's classic "Triumph of the Will"- hopefully the odd looks we received when we requested it the other day won't be repeated. I get the distinct impression that our names have now been put on a list somewhere...
(Originally posted by Ed)
posted by Mark at
12:44 pm
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