Quelle joie de vivre (1960) - film review

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…

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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