Bella ciao (2001) - film review

As Italy falls under the control of the Fascists, Orféo Mancini, a life-long supporter of the Communist party, decides to leave his country, with his wife Nella and their two children, Oreste and Bianca.   The family take a ship which they believe is bound for North America but which actually ends up in Marseilles.  Disappointed but not defeated, the young family decides to settle in the lively immigrant district of the French port and Orféo gets a job as a manual labourer – working for a fellow countryman (and one-time rival) who has profited from fascism.  Although life is hard, Orféo is optimistic about his family’s future, little knowing what tragedies lie in store...

In this enchanting visual elegy tracing the lives and loves of three generations of an Italian family, Stéphane Giusti draws on his own personal experiences and offers a film that is both poignant and curiously uplifting.  The seductive beauty of the film’s narrative form – which skilfully weaves images of the hard reality of life in the 1930s with surreal flights of fancy – makes it easy for all but the most puritanical of spectators to overlook its rather obvious failings.  If you can forgive its artistic excesses and some moments of absurd sentimentality, you cannot fail to be moved by this lovingly crafted portrait of one Italian immigrant family’s struggle to survive and hold on to its identity in a rapidly changing world.

The film is most effective in its first half, and this is largely down to the stirring performances from Jacques Gamblin and Yaël Abecassis.  These two actors’ portrayal of a married Italian couple brought to the edge by events over which they have no control is both convincing and sympathetic.   The film, like Gamblin’s character, attempts to put a brave face on things, using comedy rather deliberately to mask the less pleasant sides of life.   After all, when there is nothing else, a sense of humour is all that keeps human beings from descending into abject misery.  These forced attempts at looking at the brighter side merely emphasise the hardship and anxiety experienced by this immigrant family as they attempt to rebuild their lives from nothing.  Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the hugely symbolic scene in which Orféo tries to force his family to eat the soil of their native Tuscany during one grim Christmas evening.  Grotesque in both its concept and its execution, this scene is so loaded with pathos that it is an ordeal to watch, yet it masterfully encapulates the film’s underlying themes of family unity and the need for a racial identity.

Once the Mancini family have settled in France, they are subjected to a series of devastating tragic events, a development which instantly weakens the film’s poetry and send the film in a new direction.  At this point, the film loses its focus and direction, and its appeal begins to wane.  This is partly becomes it attempts to cram too much into the remaining fifty or so minutes, but mainly because the story is less interesting.  With Gamblin hastily bundled out of the picture, the film loses some of its impact and charm – although the acting talent of Jalil Lespert and Océane Mozas somehow manages to keep the film going as it moves onto the next generation.

Towards the end, the film drifts further towards wishy-washy sentimentality which would have been almost risible had it not been for the consistently high quality of the acting and beautiful camerawork.   Bella ciao may not be a faultless piece of cinema but in its candid, albeit idealised, portrait of family life, it contains some powerful images and messages, many of which leave a lasting impression.

© James Travers 2003

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