IT/CH/FR/DE © 2018 Tempesta srl / Amka Films Productions / Ad Vitam Production KNM / Pola Pandora / RSI-Radiotelevisione Svizzera / Arte France Cinéma / ZDF/ARTE. P: Carlo Cresto-Dina, Gregory Gajos, Arthur Hallereau, Alexandre Henochsberg, Pierre-François Piet, Tiziana Soudani, Michael Weber. EX: Martin Scorsese.
D+SC: Alice Rohrwacher. Cin: Hélène Louvart – 16 mm – Super 16 – colour – 1,66:1 – shot on Kodak film – released in D-Cinema. PD: Emita Frigato. Set dec: Barbara Tomada. Cost: Loredana Buscemi. Makeup: Ronald Haldimann. Hair: Daniela Tartari. SFX: Fabio Traversari. VFX: Rodolfo Migliari. S: Christophe Giovannoni, Gianfranco Marongiu. ED: Nelly Quettier. Casting: Chiara Polizzi.
M soundtrack selections: – original theme song for the film: Alberto Casasoli: "Corri Lazzaro" (2018). – Karol Massakovsky: "Organo per Lazzaro". – Vincenzo Bellini: "Casta diva" (from Norma, 1831). – J. S. Bach: Präludium und Fuge es/dis-Moll BWV 853 (Das Wohltemperierte Klavier, I. Teil). – J. S. Bach: die Arie Nr. 47: „Erbarme dich, mein Gott, um meiner Zähren willen“ (Die Matthäus-Passion, BWV 244, 1727).
C: Adriano Tardiolo (Lazzaro),
Agnese Graziani (Antonia bambina), Alba Rohrwacher (Antonia),
Luca Chikovani (Tancredi giovane), Tommaso Ragno (Tancredi adulto),
Sergi López (Ultimo),
Natalino Balasso (Nicola),
Carlo Tarmati (Carletto),
Pasqualina Scuncia (Suora),
Nicoletta Braschi (Marchesa Alfonsina De Luna),
Edoardo Montalto (Pippo bambino), Carlo Massimino (Pippo adulto),
Maddalena Baiocco (Stefania bambina), Gala Othero Winter (Stefania adulta),
Giulia Caccavello (Teresa giovane), Elisabetta Rocchetti (Teresa adulta),
Iris Pulvano (Natalina adulta), Annunziata Capretto (Natalina anziana),
Luciano Vergaro (Catirre adulto), Annibale De Luca (Catirre anziano),
Giuseppe Corsini (Ardito adulto), Marcello Duranti (Ardito anziano),
Alessandro Genovesi (Maresciallo),
Marco Donno (Don Severino),
Nicola Sorci (Giuseppe),
Sofia Stangherlin (Mariagrazia), Daria Pascal Attolini (Mariagrazia adulta),
Silvia Lucarini (Mariù giovane), Cinzia De Luca (Mariù adulta),
Anita Crucitti (Assuntina),
Daria Deflorian (Donna truffata),
David Bennent (ingegnere svizzero).
Loc: La prima parte del film è stata girata nelle campagne della frazione Vetriolo di Civita (Bagnoregio) e sull’altopiano dell’Alfina, nel territorio di Castel Giorgio. Le scene in città sono state girate a Milano, Torino e Civitavecchia.
128 min
Festival premiere: 13 May 2018 Cannes Film Festival.
Italian premiere: 31 May 2018.
Corona lockdown viewings.
Draken Film, viewed with Swedish subtitles at home, Helsinki on a 4K tv set, 3 May 2020.
AA: I'm a big fan of Alice Rohrwacher, and having loved Corpo celeste (2011) and Le meraviglie (2014) I'm very happy to catch her third feature film Lazzaro felice on the Swedish Draken Film streaming platform. I joined as their subscriber today, and Lazzaro felice is my first Draken Film selection.
Remote Italian villages feature prominently in Rohrwacher's films. In Corpo celeste we visit an abandoned mountain village, and Le meraviglie introduces a beekeeper family drawn to a television show called "Village Wonders". The clash between tradition and modernity is a recurrent theme. Rohrwacher's two first films have a Bildungsroman character. A key visual motif is "light in the darkness".
Lazzaro felice introduces a new theme: exploitation. The villagers of Inviolata have been living in almost feudal conditions, in an arrangement of mezzadria (metayage / avrad / Naturalpacht / половничество / in Finland perhaps something partly similar was mäkitupalaiset?) under the aegis of Marchesa Alfonsina De Luna, "la regina delle sigarette" until the 1970s. They have been so entirely isolated that they have not even been registered into the Italian census. The most oppressed is Lazzaro, an orphan, who is given all the hardest tasks. He performs them without complaining.
When Tancredi, the son of the Marchesa, out of greed and boredom stages his own kidnapping, with the help of the gullible Lazzaro, the police is alerted. The state of oppression ends, and so ends also the secluded existence of them all, which has had aspects of Brigadoon.
Meanwhile, Lazzaro has fallen from a steep cliff. He has survived, protecte by an old wolf of the mountains that had been feared by everyone. When Lazzaro wakes up, 30 years have passed, and the world has changed. The movie turns into a fairy-tale, a work of magic realism, or a religious parable, as the name betrays. In the Gospel of Luke we learn the story of the rich man and the poor beggar Lazarus. In the Gospel of John, there is Lazarus of Bethany, San Lazzaro di Betania, who rose from the dead.
This turn of the narrative takes us to the territory of Rip Van Winkle (Washington Irving, 1819) parodied in The Sleeper (Woody Allen, 1973), Demolition Man (1993) and Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002). A similar concept appears in Friedrich Ermler's A Fragment of an Empire (1929).
Rohrwacher's tale is different. All have grown old, the timeless village has disappeared, and a modern society has emerged, no less brutal than the old one. Only Lazzaro has remained the same, but he is battered to death, and his soul escapes back to the mountains in the form of a lone wolf.
Where is the light in the darkness? A recurrent motif is the Moon. Another is the beacon of a radio tower. The main light source, however, is Lazzaro himself, who, like the Moon, may be be shining with reflected light. Lazzaro, despised by the family of the Marchesa, is also the Lazarus of Luke, but "theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven". Free of possessions, they possess everything. The nobility of status is set against the nobility of mind.
The light in the darkness is a major theme in the prologue of the Gospel of John: "In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not. There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe. He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light. That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. He came unto his own, and his own received him not."
This passage is quoted prominently by Leo Tolstoy in War and Peace, and Tolstoy also wrote an unfinished play called The Light Shines in the Darkness which was particularly personal for him. Alice Rohrwacher's enigmatic and spiritual film has profound affinities with Tolstoy and his mystery tales such as "What Men Live By" (1881).
Each feature film by Rohrwacher has been longer than the previous one, and there is a threat of getting languorous. Overlong films are, of course, a pandemic of the cinema of this millennium.
Breathtaking landscapes feature prominently in Lazzaro felice. Like all Rohrwacher's films, Lazzaro felice has been shot on Super 16, with presumably gorgeous results. For some reason on Draken Film a low definition copy is on display.
SYNOPSIS FROM WIKIPEDIA:
SYNOPSIS FROM WIKIPEDIA:
On an estate called Inviolata, isolated since 1977, 54 farmhands work on a tobacco farm in a sharecropping arrangement, where they are constantly in debt and thus unpaid. The farm is run by the notorious Marchioness Alfonsina de Luna, "Queen of Cigarettes". Lazzaro is a worker on the farm who dutifully follows every command given to him by the Marchioness, her son, Tancredi, and the estate manager. Tancredi befriends Lazzaro and decides to fake his own kidnapping to aggravate his mother and get some of her money. Tancredi and Lazzaro set out in the wilderness and ditches, where they write a false ransom note and bond with each other. They imitate a wolf's howl to make contact with a wolf roaming the countryside; Tancredi also warmly suggests they could be half-brothers, since his father was a womanizer. Lazzaro takes the idea of their brotherhood seriously.
The police are called to the estate to search for the missing marquis; they are astonished by what they see, saying sharecropping has long been illegal, and the workers should be earning wages, and that the children should have mandatory education. The police evacuate Inviolata, and Alfonsina is arrested in a scandal that becomes known as the "Great Swindle." Lazzaro falls off a cliff; later a wolf (perhaps real, perhaps symbolic) spots him and identifies him by smell as a good man.
When Lazzaro awakes many years later, he is unaged and wanders into Inviolata, which is long abandoned and being raided by robbers (one of whom was a child at Inviolata). The robbers tell him the estate has moved and they are moving possessions for the De Luna family. They also tell him the city is within walking distance. Lazzaro sets out for the city, which he has never seen before. There, a woman, Antonia, recognizes Lazzaro from the farm. She takes him into a circle of impoverished survivors of Inviolata. They express disbelief as to his lack of aging and tell him of the Great Swindle, but Lazzaro is more concerned with finding Tancredi. Recognizing Tancredi's voice when he is calling for his dog, Lazzaro is reunited with his "half-brother." Tancredi recognizes Lazzaro and is overjoyed.
Lazzaro learns Tancredi has lost his fortune to the bank. He visits a bank, where he sets off an alarm. The staff and clients are terrified Lazzaro has a firearm, and Lazzaro asks for the de Luna fortune to be returned. When the clients realize Lazzaro only has a slingshot, they beat him to death. Lazzaro has another vision of the wolf, which takes off from the bank and runs free.
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