Last December 6th, in the presence of political personalities and many protagonists of Italian cinema, the Chamber paid homage to Ugo Tognazzi and his 50th anniversary My friendsa cult comedy released in 1975.
The idea for the film was Piero Germi’s, but it was written by three experienced and corrosive pens: Tullio Pinelli, Leonardo Benvenuti and Piero De Bernardi. Finally, the person who shot the first two episodes was Mario Monicelli, Germi’s heir, who with great respect wanted the words “a film by Pietro Germi” to appear in the opening credits.
Upon the film’s release, critics were particularly lukewarm, but soon the power of word of mouth transformed My friends in the most watched film of the ’75-’76 season: more than seven billion in box office receipts, leaving behind both The shark of Spielberg and Jack Nicholson of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. My friends he also had another “first”: he approved the Tuscan dialect, which was then almost never used on the big screen. Roberto Benigni, the “melancholic” Francesco Nuti, his follower Pieraccioni: from then on it became common practice to make people laugh “in Tuscan”.
“My Friends” and Gen Z
Se My friends It can perhaps be called a modern work, but it certainly cannot be called contemporary. He explained it well on the Sheet Andrea Munezwriter and professor of cinema history at Sapienza University:
«Not long ago I showed My friends in class to university students (almost no one had seen it): “It’s sad”, “it’s not funny”, “white males who sexualize women”, or “it justifies violence” (due to the slaps at the station). In short, the usual repertoire of Generation Z. […] Technically impeccable, humanly unbearable”
In fact, it is not obvious that kids “seized” by their algorithms will be able to cheer for the gypsies of five middle-aged, irremediably boomer, gypsies, even if they are inspired by real stories of characters from the Florentine underground. These are, it goes without saying, the architect Rambaldo Melandri (Gastone Moschin), the journalist Giorgio Perozzi (Philippe Noiret), the bartender Guido Necchi (Duilio Del Prete), the professor Alfeo Sassaroli (Adolfo Celi) and finally the indispensable Count Lello Mascetti, a Ugo Tognazzi in amazing form.
Yet after 50 years the film still continues to tell a lot about Italy and Italians, having influenced the way of speaking not only of parliamentarians in the mood for criticism, but also of those who were not even born at the time. But nothing is as it seems My friendsand even the vexed question of the “supercazzola” cannot be easily archived. Andrea Ballarini, journalist who passed away too soon (here is a nice memory of Piero Vietti for Radio Radicale), recalled the original script in hand that the fifty-year media use of the film’s metasemantic neologisms was not only an abuse, but was also philologically unfounded. Obviously the author of “Instruction Manual”, the tasty column that the journalist kept on Sheet, he told it in his own way:
«Open a fierce debate on spelling. Consider whether to side with the philological party, which prefers the “supercazzora” to the common “supercazzola”. After having warmed up the audience, fire them up to decide whether you should say “brematurata” or “prematurata”. Then unleash the end of the world weapon, quoting the book by Leo Benvenuti, Piero De Bernardi and Tullio Pinelli, taken from the original screenplay, which unequivocally attests to the “supercazzora” and “brematurata” lessons. So, take it very hard.”
The class struggle closed by a supercazzola
We were saying that nothing is as it seems in this highly impactful comedy, so capable of instantly shattering a sadly crystallized cultural climate. In 1975, while Pier Paolo Pasolini was dying and terrorism was bloodying the country, Monicelli’s film sounded like a tempting invitation to break with ideologies, class struggles with associated superstructures, and focus on genius, on pure, poetic and liberating messing around. A revolution.
The very human gaze of the playful Florentine quintet – perfectly framed in what many have dubbed the “Perozzi philosophy” (“May it be for this reason, in order not to feel the weight of all this that I continue to take nothing seriously”) – seems to be that of the anonymous author of Qoeleta mysterious book of the Bible in which we read passages that seem to be the theological legitimation of Tognazzi & C.’s mockery: «The wise man has eyes on his forehead, but the fool walks in the dark. But I also know that a single fate is reserved for both of us. Then I thought: “I too will be the fate of the fool! So why did I try to be wise? Where is the advantage?”. And I concluded: “This too is vanity”».
The «underlying melancholy» of the film
In the room of the Chamber where the half century of My friendsthe film critic and television author Enrico Magrelli, in the presence of the president of the Culture commission Federico Mollicone, Michele Placido, Dino Risi, the brothers Ricky and Gianfranco Tognazzi, recalled that behind the «playful mask of the My friendsthere is an underlying melancholy that makes the film profoundly existentialist.” A valuable indication, but one that seems to open up to something else.
In fact, if it is true that laughter is the other side of pain, if we look closely at the true theme that imposes itself in the cruel humor of My friends it’s all summarized in “sister death”. Everything leads there. The title of the film, first of all; a tribute to the last words of Pietro Germi, who shortly before his death confided: «My friends, we’ll see each other, I’m leaving». Then Monicelli’s “exit”, another piece – the most desperate but also the least faithful – of an interpretative path which, however, is mainly supported by the protagonists of the film themselves. Very clearly. Witty, easy-going, cultured men, but headed inexorably towards an old age that feels like an endgame; perpetually balanced between defeats, human miseries and illnesses, aware that time has become short, and that death is approaching with rapid steps, like a thief in the night.
“My friends” between banter and nothingness
Count Mascetti and his friends are intimately aware of all this (and clearly distressed). The famous gypsies – a term that Monicelli didn’t love at all, considering it, in his words, “too romantic” – are nothing other than clear signs of the awareness that the five have of the dizzying drama of life.
«The aim is to overcome the sense of loneliness and desperation», thus writes Gian Piero Brunetta, professor of history and criticism of cinema at the University of Padua, who in the essay Laterza Contemporary Italian cinema adds:
«These lifelong friends, aimless and without a tomorrow, are looking for a diversion, a distraction, an attempt to hide their own ruin. […] Upon closer inspection, the film is not about freedom, but about an escape towards nowhere; a group of friends who oscillate between banter and the realization of their own nothingness.”
And then the mocking and stubborn joke of the protagonists – whether it is knocking an unfortunate traffic policeman to avoid fines; crashing a party to gorge on UFOs (but not only); terrorize a village by posing as iconoclastic engineers; straightening the Tower of Pisa – is perhaps what it doesn’t seem: the attempt, hilarious but at the same time dramatic and very serious, to give meaning to the entire existence.
