The number of people who went to a movie theater decreased significantly compared to the previous year. The majority of the audience belongs to the age group between 11 and 34 years old, the favorite genre is comedy, followed byaction. In the last 25 years, occasional spectators have increased compared to regular ones.
Furthermore, during the recent Venice Film Festival in September, data was presented, provided by Anica and Anec, on the general trend of Italian cinema in 2017. The essential numbers show that in the past year 536 films were distributed in cinemas (-18 compared to 2016) and the number of spectators decreased considerably: from 105 to 93 (equal to – 12,3%) and reduced overall takings, down by approximately 11%. Merciless numbers that photograph a complex situation, in the midst of an ongoing genetic mutation in the mechanisms of conception, production, distribution and use by the public of cinematographic products.
In this context, it is very probable that 2018 will not enter the annals of cinema either, at least as regards the national market, both in terms of production and in terms of box office results. If we refer to the new proposals of Italian cinema, there were no particular surprises or titles that will remain engraved in the memory (with a partial exception for the film by Luca Guadagnino, Call me by your name). Similar consideration for the international proposals: some interesting titles but always in the wake of an appreciable "normality" (see Three posters in Ebbing, Missouri). Simply put, no new camera geniuses have emerged, let alone seen masterpieces. It has been a year, in some respects, still of transition from a world, from a way, of conceiving, producing and distributing cinematographic products in the traditional sense and one which instead looks with great interest at new technologies referring, in particular, to new methods of fruition, of vision, of the films by the spectators. We are referring to the new streaming distribution (and now also production) platforms that leave the usual circuits in theaters and enter directly on the sofa at home. In this way, we are not yet aware of how perverse or virtuous an intertwining is taking place between the small and big screens, generating a "contamination" of genres, of languages, with very blurred boundaries.
As far as our country is concerned, 2018 saw, for the first time, the landing in the production of an original film by Netflix with Forgive our debts, released last April. With this title, the dust of a conflict destined to expand was set on fire. At the Cannes Film Festival, the French declared their open hostility towards anything that doesn't first pass through cinemas and did not admit any title to the competition that did not meet this requirement. The position of the Venice Film Festival is completely opposite, where, instead, not only have Netflix titles been admitted to the competition, but they have also won prestigious awards.
first online has carefully followed these two important appointments that we propose again:
Cinema: what we will and will not see at Cannes
As for Italy, after the non-participation of our films in competition last year, this time two are participating for the Palme d'Or: Dogman, by Matteo Garrore and Happy as Lazzaro by Alice Rohrwacher. The first is loosely based on a true story that took place in the 80s in Rome, in the midst of the atrocities of the Banda della Magliana where the protagonist seeks a kind of social human redemption through his own personal revenge. A murky, gloomy and violent story, just as they happened in that period in the capital and in a neighborhood that gives its name to one of the most brutal criminal sagas in the history of the city. Garrone cut his teeth with this kind of film inspired by the world of the more or less organized underworld: his Gomorrah of 2008, taken from the book by Giorgio Saviano, marked a turning point in style, in language, which will subsequently be taken up in many respects in the successful TV series aired on Sky starting from 2014 and now in its third edition. The director is sensitive to the world of television and he made a good product in 2012: Reality, which also received recognition at Cannes.
The second film in competition refers to a simple, essential story, as was in part the previous film, The Wonders of 2014, signed by the Tuscan director. The environment is the healthy campaign of strong and primitive values where the good are good to the end and, in this case the young protagonist lives a story of sincere and simple friendship with a contemporary. At stake are feelings and Rohwacher seems to be very capable of handling a very delicate matter, where it is easy to fall into clichés that are easy to catch on the general public. So far she has proved to be successful and she too has received legitimate recognition in previous editions in Cannes.
In the team proposed by Rai Cinema, Euphoria also appears in the Un certain regard section with the directorial signature of Valeria Golino. The story refers to two brothers, Riccardo Scamarcio and Valerio Mastandrea, who life puts one in front of the other in their substantial diversity of life choices, social and cultural environment. An established, successful, unscrupulous and rampant entrepreneur as we often see, and the other teacher in a provincial middle school, small and simple like his world. Even Golino, in 2013 in the same section, received awards with Miele, her first cinematographic work.
Italian cinema is completed in Cannes, in the Quinzaine des Réalisateurs, with a work by Gianni Zanasi, Too much grace, which will close the review. Then participates La strada dei Samouni by Stefano Savona with animations by Simone Massi. Finally, the established name of Marco Bellocchio with La lotta.
In truth, we don't complete the team correctly with our colors. In fact, at the moment and barring last-minute second thoughts, Loro, the long-awaited work by Paolo Sorrentino, freely inspired by the public and private life of Silvio Berlusconi, is missing. Rivers of ink will flow about why and how this decision was made and we too will participate in the debate as soon as it will be possible to see it in theaters. We can certainly say that the cinema market is not insensitive to political events, national and beyond, and it is no surprise that this choice was made. Unless you want to think that it could be a mere marketing operation: good or bad as long as we talk about it. We wait.
The real, great absence, however, concerns a pillar, an icon of world cinema, a fundamental chapter in its now over 1970-year history: Orson Welles. And it represents another piece of the ongoing battle between Cannes on one side and the giant Netflix on the other. The title that we will not see on the big screen is The other side of the wind, filmed between 1976 and 20. However, it is likely that it will be able to be seen on the small television screen once the rights holders, Netflix, decide to make it available for streaming. This is the last, perhaps fundamental, work of one of the most important cinema artists of the contemporary era, a kind of unfinished testament, which tells the story of a director at the end of his career. Seeing such a film on the big screen can make all the difference. As we have written on the subject, this story represents a strong signal of the ongoing clash between the worlds of cinema and the production/diffusion of audiovisuals through television. Difficult to side with one side or the other. The suggestion of the big screen is strong, the possibility of seeing films where and when possible is no less. (released on April 2018, XNUMX).
The second article was published on May 9:
The 71st edition of the Cannes Film Festival began yesterday evening with some significant innovations. The selfies were not seen on the red carpet (we'll get over it) and the participants were given a card with an invitation to be corrected (it was really necessary!) under penalty of severe legal sanctions while there are no press conferences to present the film in competition (power of online reviews!).
There will be a lot of talk, we hope, of the post-cinema, that is to say how much the new productions will be more or less destined for theaters rather than for streaming distribution as the various Netflix, Sky, Amazon, etc. have been doing for some time. with great public success. Finally, it should be noted that appointments of this kind are increasingly oriented towards global marketing rather than product quality: we are moving towards the end of the season and US productions seem more attracted to participate in the autumn competitions – Venice – as well as with the eye to the Oscars, very far from Cannes.
In the meantime, a crime, a criminal act, has been committed in Rome, with a vast media echo. In truth, the fact has been taking place for over a month but only in recent days has news of it been received with the publication (or rather with the inclusion on the net) of a video taken by surveillance cameras of an attack by a well-known clan criminal Roman, the Casamonicas, against a disabled woman and the waiter of a bar where they claimed to want to be served first and better than the other customers. An act of pure barbarism, a display of criminal force.
What links the two facts? What is the connection between Cannes and Rome? The common thread is the theme of violence which, in this case, takes place in Rome, but could take place anywhere, in Italy or in any other part of the world (see London in these days). Hard, strong violence, at the limits of endurance, is spoken of in the Italian film in competition at the Croisette: Dogman, by Matteo Garrone. A story is brought to mind that caused a lot of uproar at the end of the 80s, when Pietro De Negri, known as the "canaro della Magliana" literally tore the body of his torturer into pieces. From the sequences in the trailers that we have seen of Garrone's film, we can imagine that we will be spared nothing (it will be in theaters on May 17th) not only on the particular climate of that story, but also on the more general topic of the representation of violence on the big screen .
The news footage, on the other hand, easily brought to mind years of television and cinema productions all concentrated on this theme: countless episodes of Gomorra, of Romanzo criminale, of Suburra, as well as in the cinema just recently the film on the Mexican criminal had a moderate success Pablo Escobar. The vision of that world has been re-proposed from all possible angles and questions have often been asked about how much, in what way, they may have influenced behavior patterns, languages, then taken up as an example by young people, great fans of the genre.
The question is simple and resembles the chicken and the egg dilemma. Do television and cinema reflect reality, take their cue from it, faithfully reproduce the temporal scans, the depth of the characters, or do they anticipate it, synthesize it and re-propose it metabolized? The cauldron in which this dimension mixes and answers are sought is made up of a formidable mix of power: television, cinema and the Internet.
It is difficult to find convincing and comprehensive answers. It often happens, even when discussing a film, that it can be argued that the purpose of visual storytelling can also consist in revealing the (apparently infinite) limits to which human nature is capable of exercising violence towards itself, with the hope of being able to then develop the necessary antidotes. In the same way, the problem arises when the question of the "right/duty" of news reporting is being debated in wanting to show bloody images, in information broadcasts or when they enter social networks.
According to an Audiweb survey for Il Sole 24 Ore "they indicate 128 minutes spent online by surfers aged between 4-7 and 214 for 8-14 years, while 97% of Italian children aged between 4 and At the age of 14, he followed television programming in 2016 and dedicated 208 minutes a day, every day of the year”.
In ancient China, when children went to school for the first time, they received The Book of Three Characters as a manual and the first combination of ideograms they had to learn meant: man's nature is originally good.
Despite this vision, more or less acceptable, it must instead be noted that, in the history of humanity, the land of violent and aggressive behavior has always been plowed and sown well and poisoned plants still grow in those furrows and continue to make victims. However, cinema and television appear innocent: however much the subject has been studied and studied in depth, human beings always seem to be the best screenwriters of serial television productions or highly successful films.
As for the 75th edition of the Venice Film Festival, it was released on August 25th
Fifty years have passed since 1968. Let's review some of the main images of that year: the war in Vietnam is raging and, in Europe and the United States, the season of protest begins; Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy are assassinated; Olympics, with massacre of civilians, in Mexico City; Warsaw Pact troops invade Czechoslovakia; Richard Nixon is elected and NASA completes the Apollo mission. The following year, between July 20 and 21, a man set foot on the moon for the first time.
All this to commemorate an important cinematic anniversary which, moreover, introduces us to the theme of this beginning of the season: in 1968 Stanley Kubrick's 2001 A Space Odyssey was released in theaters. There are many who consider this film a milestone, among the absolute masterpieces in the history of the big screen. The story, inspired by a story by Arthur C. Clarke, takes us into science fiction, into the worlds of artificial intelligence (a rich literature has flourished on the on-board computer, Hal). Let us mention a little curiosity revealed by a cryptographer: the letters that make up this name are the precedents of IBM, the well-known IT giant that will play such a large part in space missions), in philosophy, in religion, in technological innovations as never before in the same film. The international success that the film immediately met was fully inserted in the context of the tension that in that period the whole world was experiencing on the eve of the beginning of the great human adventure on the Earth's satellite. Kubrick has been able to collect and dramatically amplify visions, imaginative expectations, and for some even hopes, for the future of man in space. Screenplay, special effects, post-production and editing certainly make it a film to watch again and again (the recently restored version presented at Cannes and with unreleased sequences is available on DVD or Blu Ray) with a notepad next to it for taking notes.
Still on the subject of anniversaries, let us mention two films: the remake, or rather a tribute as the director declared, of Suspiria by Dario Argento, released in Italian cinemas in 1977 and now re-proposed at the Venice Film Festival (from 29 August to 8 September ) directed by Luca Guadagnino. At that time, the film was met with conflicting opinions from the critics: some appreciated its great merits (Grazzini) while others panned it mercilessly (Kezich). We'll see if the director of Call Me By Your Name, who has also been so successful, will be able to replicate his qualities.
The second film that will also be presented in Venice as part of the special screenings is The Other Side of the Wind, an unfinished work by Orson Welles. It is a work signed by the great American director in his late life (he managed to complete the shooting but not the editing) together with other friends of him such as John Huston, Peter Bogdanovich, Norman Foster. It is a film that resembles Federico Fellini's 8 ½ in many respects, where the professional and human decline of a director at the end of his existence is told. It is interesting to note that this title, and the work that was necessary to re-propose it, was financed by Netflix which will have the exclusive distribution rights.
Let's go back to Venice, the oldest film festival, and to space adventures: the 2018 festival will open with a film that takes us back to the moon landing: First man directed by Damien Chazelle with Ryan Gosling as main protagonist. Three Italian directors in the competition: Luca Martone with Capri-Revolution, What you gonna do when the world's on fire? by Roberto Minervini and the aforementioned Luca Guadagnino with Suspiria. The complete program of films, both in competition and in the special sections, seems to encompass a vast panorama of highly topical subjects and proposals. All the big issues in the public eye today in terms of civil rights, politics, the environment as well as simple entertainment and big show are embraced.
Our judgment for the best films of 2018 (updated on October 15th) is limited to two titles:
The Post by Steven Spielberg e Dogman by Matteo Garrone. 2018 is 2018 was also the year of great titles of the past restored or completed: this is the case of Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece, 2001 A Space Odyssey, as well as Orson Welles' latest work, The Other Side of the Wind. Also worth mentioning is the restoration of The night of San Lorenzo, by the brothers Paolo and Vittorio Taviani, created in collaboration between the Experimental Center of Cinematography - National Film Library and the Istituto Luce - Cinecittà. A separate mention, as far as documentaries are concerned, is the title by Wim Wenders on Pope Francis, published on 6 October.
The Post, Spielberg's new masterpiece: it's the press, beauty
There are great events in history about which it has not yet been written and clarified enough. Furthermore, as is known, it happens that those same events can repeat themselves as a tragedy or as a farce. In the international scene and in the modern era, one of them is the war in Vietnam. A conflict unleashed with complex and not always shared motivations and reasons, starting from the discussed episode in the Gulf of Tonkin which was the formal pretext (which later turned out to be fake news, as it would be defined today). Was a war necessary? Did the United States really need to raise hell in Southeast Asia where hundreds of thousands of people have lost their lives? For many Americans the answer is yes, for many others it is not. Among the supporters of the conflict we find equal responsibility for both Democrats and Republicans, from John Fitzgerald Kennedy to Richard Nixon.
This last week's film, Steven Spielberg's The Post, talks about the latter and the war in Vietnam. It is a long-awaited but absolutely contemporary film due to the innumerable similarities with what is happening with the presidency of Donald Trump and with what happened with the recent wars in the Middle East. Fortunately for all of humanity, the essential difference is that there is no war going on, even if it is difficult to forget the threats of apocalypse advanced to face the atomic threat of North Korea.
To introduce this film, it would be useful to be able to review two milestones in the history of journalistic cinema that are very useful for understanding the story and its context. The first is Fourth power, by Orson Welles from 1941, the second is All the President's Men by Alan J. Pakula from 1972. The first deals with the story of a publishing magnate intent on shaping public opinion as he pleases, the second concerns precisely the circumstances that led to the resignation of Richard Nixon in 1974, following the Watergate scandal.
The Post reconstructs the facts that dealt the first blow to his presidency in 1971 and refers to the publication in the Washington Post of secret dossiers held by the Pentagon capable of demolishing all the justificationist rhetoric and revealing all the lies told by the various administrations on the Vietnamese conflict. Steven Spielberg, in the films he directed and produced, has always highlighted his democratic spirit and attentive to the values of civil rights. In this case, the director seems to have felt the urgency of addressing the issue of the US presidency due to all the implications he poses on the front of his domestic and international politics.
The film takes place on two tracks: the first concerns what actually happened from the moment in which the newspaper begins to face the problem of whether or not to publish the secret documents on the Vietnam War (which will essentially end with the evacuation of the US embassy of Saigon in 1975) and the second concerns the role, weight and responsibility of the press towards the institutions. The first aspect refers to a glorious and fundamental tradition of the profession of journalist: the investigation, the search for facts distinct from opinions, the investigation based on the verification and control of sources. In a nutshell, these are the fundamental principles of a job that is indispensable for the social, political and cultural growth of a country. As far as the second strand is concerned, the film also tells us about a system of relations between the press, economic and political powers that are not always transparent.
The emphasis of the film story is on the courage of the two protagonists, Meryl Streep in a state of grace and Tom Hanks in one of his best performances (Oscar candidates), in deciding to publish the top secret documents that nail down all the political and US military in the conduct of the war "... 70% useful only to safeguard the reputation". The absolute value of freedom of expression, guaranteed in the Constitutions of most democratic countries, should by itself be sufficient to confront the power of those who govern with respect to those who are governed and, in this key, the story of the Pentagon Papers finds its solution. But the story continues in another form and the film ends where, precisely, Nixon's parable begins its decline.
The Post deserves attention not only for the qualities that come from Steven Spielberg's proven and always highly effective direction, but also because it leads us to reflect deeply on our time, on the delicacy and fragility of political and social systems where the truth is not always at the center of the attention of those who govern. Anyone who has been, even if only marginally, close to or familiar with the profession of journalist can well understand how professionally rewarding it can be to write an article primarily useful for readers to understand the facts, know how things actually are and, finally, decide what the own opinion. This film, in some respects, tells this lesson. Too bad, however, that it is often easily forgotten.
(Posted February 3, 2018)
Dogman, the canary of Magliana according to Garrone
In the cinema, the barrel of violence has never been scraped to the bottom. We were spared nothing: atrocities and wickedness of all kinds, rivers of blood, torture as refined as it was cruel. And yet, at the end of each viewing, we always came out a little relieved thinking that everything we saw on the screen doesn't belong to us because it was too far away in time, in physical and mental space. Or simply because all the evil we have seen is not part of us, because we are different, we are substantially good. We thought we were vaccinated, cinematically speaking, but no, this time it's not like that.
Let's talk about Dogman, Matteo Garrone's latest work, awarded at the Cannes Film Festival. The film freely draws inspiration from a true story that happened in Rome in 1988. A dog shearer, victim of physical and psychological oppression and abuse by an amateur boxer, the bully of the neighborhood, after the umpteenth violence he reacts and takes justice alone. The narrative cue works perfectly in reconstructing and describing human events, the environment and the urban and degraded social context where these take place. First of all the people, the actors: Marcello Fonte and Edoardo Pesce. The first in the guise of Marcello, and the second in those of Simone, the executioner. Fonte, awarded as best actor at the Cannes Film Festival, is two hands above average: the final sequence alone, when he remains silent in front of the camera for a few minutes, is a test of acting ability as rarely seen on national screens.
Pesce is no less and manages to propose the one and its double of his own character. One would be wrong not to mention everyone, including the extras and extras, who together make up a fresco of humanity that remains impressed. The photograph, signed by Nicolaj Brüel, deserves a special mention. The shots and the chromatic range, although they fully and correctly render the drama of the story, appear in many respects as already seen. You can hear and see years of Gomorrah, of Romanzo criminale, of the various suburra, not only in Rome, that have dotted cinema and television in recent years. After all, the drama rarely takes place in the light of the sun (at least on the big screen) and therefore in Dogman everything unfolds in the dark grays of the night, of the rain, of dilapidated environments.
It's a non-film that leaves no one indifferent, it hits hard and straight to the heart of so much do-goodism that often masks fiction and hypocrisy. Garrone knows how to do cinema and, in this case, he does it very well by choosing to dose all the ingredients in a correct and balanced way. The moral sense of the story itself appears to be set up correctly. Marcello sought justice and not revenge and, albeit in his own way, he found it and, perhaps when this was achieved, he no longer seemed even so convinced that he had done the right thing. He only sought his own form of social redemption from an environment where he was now cut off.
The real story went in a completely different way: Pietro De Negri, the true "canaro" of Magliana, as he declared after his arrest, never regretted what he did. The director, in many respects, has lightened the load of brutality, of heinous violence that emerged in those circumstances. He has done well, for what we have seen, it is enough for us. The film amply deserves legitimate recognition not only at Cannes: with the current times for Italian cinema it seems the best we can offer on the international scene as well.
