This evening, at 9.29pm on Rete 4, the 1965 feature film will be broadcast Comrade Don Camillo. Directed by Luigi Comencini, the film represents the fifth (and final) chapter of the saga dedicated to the character played by the French actor Fernandel and based on the stories by Giovanni Guareschi.
Comrade Don Camillo, the plot
In the small town of Brescello things seem to have returned (inexplicably) to normal. After the Roman (mis)adventures of the previous chapter, Don Camillo (Fernandel) has returned to take on the role of parish priest of Brescello, while Peppone (Gino Cervi) has resumed his duties as mayor. Everything, however, changes when the twinning proposal with Brezwyscewski, a small town in the Russian countryside, is accepted. Don Camillo does not agree with this “merger” and hires two Italian layabouts to pass them off as Russians and use them to guide public opinion. Once the scam is revealed, Peppone creates a team of “companions” to go to Russia and celebrate the twinning. Don Camillo, however, does not want to stay at home and be excluded: so he threatens his friend/enemy to make known certain sentimental vicissitudes that are not exactly appropriate if Peppone does not take him with him undercover. However, the priest’s priestly obligations will put his anonymity at risk several times, giving rise to the usual whirlwind of adventures, encounters and obstacles.
All the mistakes in the film
Before the advent of social media and “internet courts”, a film was enjoyed above all for its entertainment function. A film that had no authorial ambitions or relevance for the historiography of cinema was nothing more than an excuse to spend a nice evening, have fun and maybe have a laugh. The films dedicated to the character of Don Camillo have always had this ambition: they are not feature films designed to change the axis of cinema history, nor films with who knows what artistic ambitions. Which is also demonstrated by the fact that each film in the saga is made almost slavishly following the same narrative structure, precisely because the public, by paying for a ticket, knew exactly what they wanted to find on the big screen.
Despite this propensity to satisfy above all the tastes of the spectators, the film Comrade Don Camillo is guilty of having within it some continuity errors and anachronisms which, analyzed under today’s magnifying glass, are more evident. The site gathered the main ones Bloopers.it (not by chance bloopers is the English term used for “ducks”, errors and gaffes). It must be said that in the list of errors reported there are some that are not strictly errors. For example, the scene when Don Camillo enters the small Russian church and tries to gain light by lighting a match is highlighted. The light that reverberates from the match is very broad and diffused: a light that is too artificial and with too broad a spectrum to believe that it is really that projected by a freshly lit match. However, this is not a real mistake: it is instead one of those examples in which cinema asks for the suspension of disbelief to the public. The spectator knows perfectly well that that is not the light of a match, but pretends to believe it, because he understands, for example, that cinema needs a certain type of lighting that a single match could not support, unless he leaves the scene in complete darkness.
Others errors, instead, they are definitely so. Upon closer inspection, the position in which the two protagonists find themselves represents a small inconsistency. In the previous film, in fact, Don Camillo and Peppone had both made careers: the first had become Monsignor, the second Senator and in this film, however, they have returned to the starting point without a plausible explanation. At the end of the previous film, in fact, we saw them return to Rome to resume their roles in the capital. Why do they now appear “downgraded”? What happened? Why did they go back to being “just” a parish priest and a mayor? According to some, Comrade Don Camillo it is a film that, despite being made after, is chronologically placed before Don Camillo monsignor…but not too much. The facts narrated in this film, therefore, would be prior to those narrated in the previous film. An interpretation that could make sense if necessary Comrade Don Camillo no reference was made to Khrushchev’s resignation, which occurred in 1964, while the previous chapter is set in 1960. This explanation, therefore, would not make sense. Just as it makes no sense to see the two protagonists resume their initial positions.
A historical/geographical error of Comrade Don Camillo, instead, it concerns the scene in which Don Camillo and Brusco (Saro Urzi) go away to look for the tomb of the latter, who died during the Christmas battle which took place in 1941. A battle which was actually fought near Moscow, therefore in an area very distant from that in which the two protagonists of the scene. There are also “geographic errors” when the stewardess tells the characters that the plane they are on is flying over the sky of Moscow. The landing, however, takes place in an airport in Don, a town located much further south than Moscow, to the point that the route taken by the airplane is not at all credible. But these “inattentions” are not the only errors present in the film. For example, as you write The Subsidiary, when Peppone has to get back on the bus to leave Brezwyscewski behind, his ability to remain upright is jeopardized by the alcohol coursing through his veins. Drunk and unsteady, the mayor of Brescello needs the help of his companions to get on the bus, into which he is almost pushed by force. In the next scene, however, in which not too much time has passed, the man gets off the means of transport completely in himself, calm, confident on his feet and without even the shadow of any residue of the hangover. This is a classic example of continuity error.
As in the case of Don Camillo, who first is targeted by a quintal of smelly fertilizer and in the following scene he returns to the hotel as if he had passed through a shower.
