A Camp Romance--Interestin g,Stylish,Quite Seducing,Seasoned And Spicy,..

Aesthetically ,Avati has a very high place in the Italian cinema;as regards the level of continuous quality ,only Fellini,Antonioni and Visconti are his superiors—in the sense that they did not alternate masterpieces and mediocre movies,but have a kept a level of mastership that allows them to be called authors, and not occasional authors (--even for a longer phase of their career,or for a logically placed one …--) of astounding films—be they masterpieces (the case of many—from Rossellini,De Sica,Pasolini,Bertolucci and many others …to Brass …). Along his career, Avati maintained a very high artistic position. These being said, The Best Man is not one of his best movies.Yet it is extremely interesting and exciting and charming; what I want to say is that,while not a bad movie, The Best Man is a flawed and misconceived one.It is not bad,on the contrary—it is amusing,interesting and exciting.But it is flawed.In the early part of The Best Man,after having read the stupid epigraph that opens the film,then after having now seen the Sandokanesque lead, his bovine air of a perplexed rural latin lover,the provincial antics of “Francesca”,I hoped it was only a farcical device and I began eagerly waiting for the denouement;well,that thing did not come. The Best Man is a provincial,rural romance ,very conventional, sermonizing and melting,of an unpredictable (in an Avati movie) sentimentalism. For me,the whole movie was very unpredictable,because I did not think Avati able of such a piece of sentimental crap.The film is interesting and pleasing despite the script’s.This script is so non-Avatian for many reasons;it also tries to dwell on too many themes.”The BM” is Avati’s camp romance.There are lots of things to be enjoyed in it,but its place it is that of a camp romance.
This extremely awkward contrast between the camp note and Avati’s sarcasm and deftness undermines the film’s tone and makes it an ultimately unsatisfying experience.The dose of camp romance exposes not so much Avati’s inability in treating satisfactory this kind of stuff,but rather his basically very bad choice of a script.Everything that is interesting is something that could be added: striking endocrine—ailing physiognomies, satirical approach,etc..But with its main theme Avati did not find what to do.The best thing that “ITDS” can do is give one a new appreciation of Avati’s other films –by simply proving that worse is possible—and in what way.We should not be upset on Avati for this movie;because if he deserves blame for this one,then he cartainly also merits praise for the others that are better—and much better.”ITDS” should normally enhance the respect for the better Avati films.
There are enchanting Avatian touches:dreamy images;an interesting gallery of women (almost all the women in The Best Man are interesting—minus Francesca,unfortunately;but her aunt,her mother, other women present at the wedding party are fine …);an eerie salon of grotesque faces and physiognomies ,and several charges against provincial stupidity; atypical for Avati’s movies is the multiplicity of themes (the love vs. marriage without love,of course;but also the end of the XIX century, occasion for mocking the hideous rural versions of the scientism current then …;many satirical sketches of the turpitude, ugliness,etc.; many peculiar wedding habits,like the bride sprinkling her body with a liquid prepared by the older women in the house and brought to her by her very loving and fancy aunt;then the quest for virgin people to dress the bride with her lingerie and to prepare the nuptial bed;then the shortness of a wedding party (particularly, of course,when it is a dreadful one,like that in The Best Man …);finally,the creepy fact that the wedding guests take back their gifts at the end.
Let us draw rapidly a short synopsis.First we witness the final preparations for a marriage; the bride does not really want to marry,but her father almost implores her,explaining her again that this wedding is vital for his business—the girl,”Francesca”,being practically bought from her father. Her groom is the son of a local potentate. Then, we see the wedding in the church,the priest telling some gross licentious jokes,etc..Here arrives a man just returned from America;he comes back in Italy rich and respected and courted.At the wedding,he is guest of honor.From the instant she sees him,before the altar, Francesca has a crush for this silent mysterious reserved Italoamerican. Just when asked by the priest if she wants to marry, Francesca runs off and hides in the sacristy;again her embarrassed family has now to appease her.The parishioners suppose that Francesca is pregnant.Finally,the priest marries the couple,and they go to the churchyard, then at the wedding party.Francesca’s family notices the exchanges of looks between her and Angelo.He and Francesca’s husband take a walk,they talk about women,etc..Angelo then visits some places.It is known that he had a mistress, and everybody is curious about how will their meeting be like. At the party,Francesca’s aunt gets drunk,she dances with Angelo,etc..A meeting betwin him and his former girlfriend is arranged by the groom.Between Francesca and her husband quarrels occur,she does not,of course, want to be his,he is a cynical vulgar profligate,etc..The idyll of Angelo and Francesca is not interesting, and I will not further spoil what happens next.
There is a fine sequence when the servants throw bed-sheets from a higher level, over a balustrade. The execution of the film is Avatian, the quirks are his.Too bad he chose this romance,or too bad he did not succeed in making it his.The motto at the beginning of “ITDS” already gives away the film,and makes a very bad impression.It is below the Avati standards.It is less than we expect from him.And this idyll—it is so insipid and trite ….It is of the worse Romanesque provincial taste.And the too campy characters—Angelo and Francesca—very disappointing choices.
Movie of a great visual beauty, The Best Man features two rather insipid and banal leads,as “Francesca” and a Sandokan-like uncouth bum named “Angelo”.I guess Avati considered him poetic;I found this “Angelo” annoying.Francesca’s aunt is delightful.
The action is very rapid;the bulk of the film consists of the wedding.A short epilogue gives the final, or rather the insipid fulfillment of the romance.
But the fact that it lacks the sunlit joyousness and idealism asked by the script makes it seem not only sarcastic,but also gnashed,peevish and covetous.
The script obviously does not suit Avati.This was a theme for a poetic and lyrical feel-good movie,not for a sarcastic and mocking moralist like Avati,that underlines and chooses and culls the bitter aspects,making a camp romance with nihilistic involuntary undertones--like this,the drama of Francesca's charming aunt is more striking than the girl's own love story.
The scene of Angelo's encounter with his former mistress is a fine exercise.
It is interesting and intriguing that in the cinematographic ambient the question of the national schools,the thinking in terms of nationality and of a national indelible specific,the primate of the national identity were much present,and in a far more explicit form,than in most of the other arts. The nationality appeared as the natural reference in cinema. This notion of national schools seemed more obvious and immediate than in any other art. None really questioned this national determinism that conceives the national schools in cinema as obvious entities to be considered as such.Everyone understands that a certain form of diverting cinema practiced by a few French directors in the ‘50s belonged to the strictest national patrimony and was practically a privilege unconceivable outside the boundaries of the French nation ,and of the French country. It was a thing of belonging fully to a culture, rather than of simply working in a certain place; moreover, there were several terms to be simultaneously taken into account ,such as the artist, his cultural, human and social environment, his literary source:the script,etc.. That is why the transplantations failed and proved impossible. The Czech, Polish, Russian, French and Japanese working abroad are very striking examples ,though many people will tell them the contrary, in the most convincing way. I do not believe in Polish directors leaving their country and then making a great career abroad. A director may,of course,shot abroad, but this will lead to something valuable only if his film is thought within the context and specific of his national cinema;and here I think of Renoir shooting in India.—But then he made an entirely French and Renoirian film, with an Indian subject.And,more important,he was not moving to Bollywood. He was not becoming some Bollywoodian hack.One may very well work abroad,when and if he keeps working within the context and the intuited coherence of his national individuality. Maybe some directors even flatter themselves that they will make it abroad;yes.But they will not. I think that this intuition was a healthy corrective to a widespread and void fashionable cosmopolitanism, or rather a dissolving globalization, that proceeds by diluting the realities that it tries to corrode.This reality of the determined specific of a culture has something that satisfies the mind.There are certain factors, and a national specific, that generate the (various) national school(s),usually several between the boundaries of a single large country,and that prevent the products of art from floating into the vague. On the contrary, the positive and concrete determinations that result this way will replace a void and meaningless freedom with a positively determined, specified and differentiated one. The artistic freedom will be saved from loosing itself in the vague of the lack of determinations, and will take shape within a context that precedes it and genetically specifies it.Rather than a prejudice, it appears as an obviousness.