Monday 8 April 2013

Mini-Review: Violent Summer (1959)

From http://www.movieposterstudio.com/pimg/ViolentSummer_US1.jpg


Dir. Valerio Zurlini
France-Italy

From http://wondersinthedark.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/violent-summer-2.jpg

Melodrama deserves to be reviewed on here as much as horror and action cinema is. To ignore the genres I’ve missed so far would be hypocritical as a film fan who claims to watch “everything”. It is a genre that amplifies real life situations in ways that seem over elaborate, in a reality when these problems are frequent for many people, but they have enough a semblance of real life that draws us to them. Set at the dawn of the end of World War II in Italy, Violent Summer pushes the melodrama into a more contemplative area. A young man (Jean-Louis Trintignant) and an older widow (Eleonora Rossi Drago), who’s lost her husband to the war, develop of a romantic relationship, divided by the hostility it creates from her family and his friends, and the falling apart of Fascist Italy, close to home as the man’s father is a high ranking member of the Fascist party as it is being decimated. It is fascinating to think, at least for two films including The Conformist (1970), that Trintignant has played two characters placed near the end, or aftermath, of Benito Mussolini’s rule of Italy and the end of the Fascist state, both of them – one a noble, charming man stuck in his fate, the other a void, both admitting to wanting to be part of the crowd despite being opposites – liable to encounter each other within the cinematic depiction of this era face-to-face. The use of the historical background clearly shows how the lives of the populous (the characters and their fellow ordinary people) were punctured by the chaos of the war, a fighter plane flying so low at a beach, lost, that it frightens the people on it, showing the lack of boundary between the war front and home.

From http://img1.bdbphotos.com/images/orig/i/3/i316ruepjwwgwwe.jpg

It is an elegantly made film, beautiful in cinematography with one sequence, of fireworks and a night of celebration set to an American song, which stands out as well as pushes a key emotional thrust forward. As a drama, it stands well, Trintignant and Drago making compelling leads, Trintignant’s distinct, handsome face, from another era of masculinity, and Drago’s natural and graceful beauty shining through. The divisive element of the film, which prevents it from being a great work, is whether it is actually satisfactory as a dramatic work by its end or not. As a melodrama with lush orchestra music and scenes of heightened emotion, you have to be able to suspend your disbelief to be emotionally connected to the characters, which applies here still despite the obvious political undertones. The divided and antagonised relationships between the lovers and everyone around them has a sense of the completely believable, the horrible awkwardness when a friend becomes hostile to someone they know having passions for someone they believe they shouldn’t. There is however an issue though to whether certain turns in the characters actions and story shifts, especially in the last scene, feel perfectly considered or too abrupt. That will be up to you to decide if you go and look for Violent Summer for yourself to see. 

From http://www.berkeleyside.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/VIOLENT-SUMMER-INTEXT702.jpg

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