Quelle joie de vivre
1960 Comedy
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Credits
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Summary
Rome, 1921. His military service over, the idealistic young
man Ulisse enlists in the Italian Fascist Party. His first
mission is to track down a print works that has been making anti-fascist pamphlets.
By chance, Ulisse falls upon the offending workshop, but ends up being employed
there as an apprentice, so that he can be close to the woman he has fallen in love with,
Franca. Just as Ulisse’s real identity is about to be revealed
to his employers, the grandfather of the household lets slip that he is in truth a notorious
anarchist who may be of great use to their anti-fascist cause. Ulisse,
understandably, has other ideas…
Review
There is some irony in the fact that René Clément’s only comic film deals
with a subject that would appear to be hard to find humour in, namely the origins of Fascism
in Italy of the early 1920s. Clément is following in
the footsteps of the great Italian filmmakers who, from the 1940s, have endeavoured to
find fun in some very dark subjects, and his style in this film is certainly more redolent
of the Italian school of neo-realist filmmaking than conventional French cinema of the
period. Having made an international star of Alain Delon in
his previous film, Plein
soleil (1960), Clément makes good use of the actor’s talents in this
film. Whilst some of the comedy is clumsy and obscenely “comic
book” in places, there are some marvellous examples of black comedy – most notably the
hilarious (but deadly serious) bomb hunt in the final passage of the film.
© James Travers 2006
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