Blog February 2013 – Woody Allen and Rome
Bernardo Piciche’
In my Blog on the movie Lincoln I noticed a certain lack of logical consistency in explaining why
the majority of the Union Congress was willing to sign a peace treaty with the South, even if slavery
would have not been abolished. Was not the abolition of slavery the cause of the war? (So at least the
propaganda has always presented it. We know other reasons moved the events - as I mentioned in my
previous blog.) For lack of editorial space I did not add, however, that the merit of the movie (apart from
the cinematographic skills of Spielberg, the acting, and the beauty of the sets) lied in the rendition of the
psychomachy of a great man facing a great dilemma. I feel that the director and the screenwriter hinted
at Congressional debates of our own time, as a source of inspiration alongside the biographies of
Lincoln. We can also reflect, after watching the movie, if it is an unavoidable necessity that sometimes
good causes need to be defended by bad means (shall we include the usage of drones bombing in this
category?)
Conversely, very disappointing is the recent movie by Woody Allen – To Rome with Love. As a
Roman I exclaim: “Please love Rome less, and know it better”. Certainly, Allen’s view of Paris in Midnight
in Paris was a bit cliché, but at least it was an ennobling one. I lived in Paris for almost three years, thus I
can testify that the majority of Parisians do not hop from one party to another, neither do they wear a
beret while painting along the Seine. Most of them do not even have the time to go downtown, and
certainly cannot afford the affluent life depicted in the movie. Yet at least Allen was able to capture the
essence of the Parisian dream. Even if only wealthy artists and posers can enjoy the leisure lifestyle of
the Parisian cliché, had I been a Parisian, I would have been flattered by the way Allen presents the city
and its cultural landmarks. As a Roman, instead I am quite irritated by how my city appears. Woody
Allen seems to have ignored the most charming corners of the city. I admit that some of the things
portrayed in the movie are great satire. The Italian TV deserves the cruel parody rendered in the episode
with actor Roberto Benigni (Oscar winner for 1998 Life is Beautiful). Allen is right: TV in Italy is tending
toward trash (although still intellectual debates are really intellectual). Certainly TV is changing many
values. It is a process that started almost 40 year ago with the introduction of private TVs. The Italian TV
back then was chaste, rather educational, and ended at 11 PM. The very few commercial aids were
confined in an interval after the evening news and nighttime programs. The interval was called
Carosello, which marked the bedtime for generations of Italian children: “To bed after Carosello”. Then
private channels appeared letting the Italians enjoy their intoxication of money tossing and strip teases.
Silvio Berlusconi, the major TV tycoons brought the Italians to the land of Bengodi with no need of
leaving their armchair. So he started his influence on the Italian way of thinking, an influence that grew
when he could control also the state TV as the Presidente del Consiglio dei Ministri (Prime Minister).
Allen got all that (although, in passing, let me say that paradoxically he acts as a means of propaganda
for Berlusconi. The channel that appears during the interview of Benigni in the movie is the only one
that in real life tries to keep a certain decorum and intellectual content against the Berlusconi style. The
circumstance is easy to explain: the movie is produced by Mediaset, founded and controlled de facto by
the very same Berlusconi.)
The movie is divided into episodes. We have already commented about one. Another episode is
a quite banal remake of the White Sheik by Fellini (one of Allen’s favorite directors. Allen even follows
Fellini’s approach with his actors). Clearly Allen did not mean this to pass unobserved. He is not
plagiarizing, but paying homage to Fellini. Regrettably the main actors are null. The original movie by
Fellini had a rather weak narrative, but it was sublimed by the wonderful interpretations of Alberto Sordi
(the star of fotoromanzi) and Leopoldo Trieste (the groom on honeymoon in Rome). The newlyweds are
insignificant. Although they are supposed to come from a town in the north, they display a heavy Roman
accent. Imagine a movie portraying a couple - say from Alabama - coming to New York showing a strong
Brooklyn accent.
The third episode, the Amarcord (“I reminisce”) of an aging successful professional, is in my
opinion the most convincing. And the one that plays diachronically, following the same pattern of
Midnight in Paris. Nevertheless, the justification for not going on a sightseeing tour with his wife and
friends appears to me rather trivial (“I lived in Rome and I saw all this stuff already”). I lived in Rome for
28 years and have never been tired of its artistic beauty.
The episode that has definitely raised my indignation is the one on opera. The cliché of the
funeral home owner who sings opera can be somehow applicable. Yet the scene of the wife taking the
knife to threaten the American in impetus of possessive love for her husband is soaked in the most
vulgar stereotype. Allen does not catch at all the sense of courtesy and hospitality that permeates the
Italian, southern European, and Mediterranean society. That scene would have not even taken place in
a vaudeville piece. I liked though the surrealistic scene of the shower singer on stage.
The real failure of the movie to me is the lack of Rome. Where is Rome? Not a view of the river
to be seen. The holy city is the only place in the world where three masterpieces of three different
epochs, all expressing styles developed in Rome, stand side by side: a Roman temple, the early medieval
church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin (aka Bocca della verità), and a baroque fountain by Bernini. Rome is
a city that exalts the intellectual sense of history. Did we meet in the movie a Cicero, a Virgil, a
Michelangelo, a Raphael, a Goethe? Rome displays its charms of the former imperial and still present day papal city, for centuries the Mecca of intellectuals and Christian pilgrims from all over the world.
Woody Allen missed the majestic glory of papal Rome that on the contrary the Italian director Nanni
Moretti was able to capture in his recent movie Habemus Papam.