About sadness and its poetry

It is a curious experience to see Cronaca Familiare/Family Life after so many years. As it happens with so many films of the sixties, one may think it has lost the painful feeling it had in 1962. It is not the case. The chronicle of these two brothers -Mastronianni and Perrin- is still very enjoyable. That is, you can be delighted if you discover that there is poetry at the chore of sadness.
The novel by Vasco Pratolini is something only and Italian writer can perceive. Nothing to do with the usual image of songs and cries from Naples. Quite the contrary: it is the North, Florence, and Rome. It is the feeling of melancholic streak you will find in people like Cesare Pavese, another outstanding Italian writer.
Valerio Zurlini, the film director who died at 56, chose the long shots to offer the characters in ambiance of loneliness and poverty difficult to bear. The short ones are chosen to give the audience the chance of watching how a relationship between two almost alien brothers may change. And there is the magnificent cinematography of Giuseppe Rotunno to remind us that cinema is a unique experience.
Mastroianni and Perrin, fighting against their handsomeness, give us to magnificent portraits and you never catch them acting. As for that symbol of French cinema, Sylvie, the grandmother, she stole the few scenes she is in.
It is not a moive to watch when you are blue because it is too downbeat but if you can get a degree of objectivity, you will discover how Italian cinema was and the excellence it could reach once upon a time. It is not to be missed by all those who live intimate portraits of a nuclear family.
Perrin would become a producer and as that he would help Zurlini to film his last movie: The Tartar´s desert.
abel posadas