Damon Knight

Mark Damon, now a producer (MONSTER), then a rakishly handsome movie star big in Italy, stars in Vittorio Cottafavi’s last feature, I CENTI CAVALIERI (THE HUNDRED HORSEMEN, 1964), screened in Bologna in Techniscope and Technicolor, looking fantastic.

After an ennervating start (the traditional bickering lovers turned up to eleven, Italian style) this turned out to be really interesting. Cottafavi appears in Richard Roud’s cinema dictionary alongside Bava, suggesting one who presents as an amusing pictorialist, so it was a surprise to find him quoted in the festival programme describing his Brechtian intentions, and almost a bigger surprise to find them carried out in this jaunty peplum-type historical romp.

The Moors ride into a neutral Spanish town and take over, behaving like Nazis (they’re led by Dr. Mabuse, Wolfgang Preiss). Farmmboy Damon becomes a warrior, aided by his militaristic uncle, the mayor’s feisty daughter, a bandit gang led by a comedy dwarf (verfremdungseffekt!), and a wily priest (Gaston Moschin, of whom we needed more).

Well, there’s a lot of dumb comedy and action in this film, but also strange thoughtful moments. As a for-instance: when someone demonstrates a newly invented suit of armour, visor down, a priest speculates that the warrior of the future will be even more unseen, striking at a distance, with civilians, property, whole cities destroyed in this “clean” manner. And before the spirited Robin Hoodery gets going, we pay a visit to a spectacular castle (the scenery in this is Lean-worthy, animated by Cottafavi’s athletic camerawork) populated entirely by amputees, shut away in anticipation of war, lest the sight of their varied mutilations sap the peasants’ martial spirit. This skeptical attitude to war seems forgotten until the climax, another clangorous, Wellesian montage, suddenly plunged into monochrome with chilling effect…

Not as successful overall as DONNE E SOLDATI (the comedy too broad and not often funny — but arguably its true purpose is to disrupt, not amuse) this incredible bargain-bin EL CID is still fascinating and betrays an intellectual ambition utterly lacking in Cinecitta’s usual he-man spectacles.

War & Piece

Not my appalling title, Mel Brooks’, seen on a movie poster in THE PRODUCERS.

I’m reading Inside Mr. Enderby by Anthony Burgess, in which the hapless and flatulent poet of the title finds his latest epic work plagiarized for an Italian horror film — an unlikely occurrence, one might think, but very, very loosely paralleled in my latest Bologna viewing, DONNE E SOLDATI, which employed the poet and film critic Attilio Bertolucci (father of Bernardo), as an ill-defined “artistic advisor.”

Exactly what role AB played is hard to say, but the film, the only one deirected by the team of Antonio Marchi and Luigi Malerba, is fascinating and borderline delightful. Let me enumerate the reasons ~

1. An interesting story of medieval times, portraying the seasons-long seige of a citadel, during which the fraternization between the beseiged women and the beseiging men reaches such a passionate height that the conflict is eventually resolved.
2. A distinctive way of telling the story: two voice-overs, one from each side, neither particularly identified with a character onscreen, both talking retrospectively as if from years later.
3. Fantastic period detail, so convincing that when I saw the injured leader of the invaders (instantly dehorsed in his first battle, elaborate batwinged armour and all) with a leg in traction, I immediately accepted that the filmmakers had done their research and such bonesetting techniques were extant at the time.
4. Convincing conflict: sharp editing makes the dummies dropped from battlements seem unusually convincing, even if we still know they’re dummies. And when the knights and peasants in the fort charge their enemies, we get a prefiguration of Welles’ great Battle of Shrewsbury in CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT — handheld lurch and undercranking and all. It’s a tenth as long and not a hundredth as good but it’s pretty impressive all the same, and one wonders if Welles might have seen it. Still, the shakicam approach to middle-ages warfare goes all the way back to LA VIE DE JEANNE D’ARC in 1929.

We also get a fat man in armour, looking like a tank with legs, peeking fearfully round corners, which is very Falstaffian…

Asides from Bertolucci Sr.’s contribution, the movie was co-written by Marco Ferreri, who also appears (but I didn’t spot him) — some of his cynical wit is transmitted to us, though the movie is also tender and chivalric towards the women — the bitter realities of war are kept somewhat at bay.

This excellent film has seemingly fallen out of the history books altogether — of the extensive cast, the IMDb can only name six, with character names for just half of them. Il Cinema Ritrovato deserves a roast suckling pig as reward for rediscovering it.