(Download) "Are the Children Watching Us? the Roman Films of Francesca Archibugi (Critical Essay)" by Annali d'Italianistica " eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Are the Children Watching Us? the Roman Films of Francesca Archibugi (Critical Essay)
- Author : Annali d'Italianistica
- Release Date : January 01, 1999
- Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines,Books,Professional & Technical,Education,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 214 KB
Description
Massimo Sebastiani suggested some years ago that the films of Francesca Archibugi might be collectively titled "The children are watching us" (18). Archibugi has at this juncture made five features: Mignon e partita (1988), Verso sera (1991), Il grande cocomero (1993), Con gli occhi chiusi (1994), and L'albero delle pere (1998), all based on screenplays that she authored either collaboratively or alone. Although characterizing the director's work only in thematic terms, Sebastiani's suggested title still seems apt. His historical reference is to Vittorio De Sica's I bambini ci guardano (1943), in which a young boy, overwhelmed by the breakdown of his parents' marriage and his father's eventual suicide, ultimately rejects the affection of his "transgressive" mother. The depiction of adult weakness in this film made near the end of the fascist period has subsequently been interpreted as a moral critique of Italian society at the time. (1) De Sica's strategic deployment of a child character to provoke a reflection on the shortcomings of adult behavior within a broader social context is not unique to this early film, however, and may also be found in his neorealist classics Sciucia (1946) and Ladri di biciclette (1948). The child has a similar function in some of Roberto Rossellini's work, particularly in Germania anno zero (1947) and the Neapolitan episode of Paisa (1946). A recurrent trope in the national cinema during the postwar years, the image of the child as observer of a society that is out of control has been revived during the past decade in the work of several Italian filmmakers, suggesting an implicit homage to the legacy of neorealism. Nowhere, however, is the figure of the child more consistently constructed as witness of adult weakness or ineptitude than in the work of Archibugi. Four of Archibugi's films, Mignon e partita, Verso sera, Il grande cocomero, and L'albero delle pere, are set in Rome in the present or recent past, with characters drawn from various strata of the middle classes. In each of these films at least one young character is positioned as both victim and judge of adult behavior. Archibugi's remaining feature--an adaptation of Federigo Tozzi's novel Con gli occhi chiusi--is, by contrast, a story of lost innocence set in the Tuscan countryside at the turn of the century. Despite differences in tone and setting, Con gli occhi chiusi is linked thematically with Archibugi's oeuvre as a whole in its emphasis on the difficult coming of age of its two principal characters.