Don Giovanni

Italy

1970

74 Min

Color

Italian, English, Spanish

Currently 4.2/5 Stars.
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SCR Carmelo Bene, Jules-Amédée Barbey d'Aurevilly

CAST Carmelo Bene, Lydia Mancinelli, Vittorio Bodini, Gea Marotta, John Francis Lane, Salvatore Vendittelli

PROD DES Salvatore Vendittelli

Cannes (Quinzaine des Réalisateurs), CPH PIX (Retro)

Synopsis

Don Giovanni, a baroque and claustrophobic take on the incest episode of Mozart’s opera, features Bene as the eponymous Don, who spends much of the 72-minute running time crawling through a twisted heap of barbed wire. It follows the non-linear contours set by the earlier films, but new elements are introduced: a deliberately artificial stage-bound setting and a simultaneously eye-pleasing and off-putting color scheme utilizing splashes of red amidst near-bilious shades of orange. Don Giovanni is ultimately most significant as the jumping-off point for its creator’s drift away from the real-life settings and concerns of his previous films toward a hermetic arena of pure expressionism, a tendency that reached its apex in Bene’s next and most astonishing film.

Director

Carmelo Bene

Carmelo Bene is certainly the last great artist of our 20th century literary world: the publication of his complete works by Bompiani in 1995 – allowing him to proudly call himself “a living classic” – can be considered proof that even the official culture accepts this fact as a clear and and unquestionable truth.

Born at Campi Salentina (Lecce) in 1937, he made his debut in ‘59 with Caligola by Camus, directed by Alberto Ruggiero; however, the following year he offered a work entirely in the first person with Spettacolo Majakovskij, and background music by Bussotti.

In the following decade, the great talent of the actor-director had the chance to fully unfold in legendary shows: his virulent, aggressive and disrespectful – to the point of outrage – rereadings of Pinocchio by Collodi (1961), Shakespeare’s Hamlet (1961), Edward II by Marlowe (1963), Salomè by Oscar Wilde (1964), Manon by Prévost (1964), read more

Carmelo Bene is certainly the last great artist of our 20th century literary world: the publication of his complete works by Bompiani in 1995 – allowing him to proudly call himself “a living classic” – can be considered proof that even the official culture accepts this fact as a clear and and unquestionable truth.

Born at Campi Salentina (Lecce) in 1937, he made his debut in ‘59 with Caligola by Camus, directed by Alberto Ruggiero; however, the following year he offered a work entirely in the first person with Spettacolo Majakovskij, and background music by Bussotti.

In the following decade, the great talent of the actor-director had the chance to fully unfold in legendary shows: his virulent, aggressive and disrespectful – to the point of outrage – rereadings of Pinocchio by Collodi (1961), Shakespeare’s Hamlet (1961), Edward II by Marlowe (1963), Salomè by Oscar Wilde (1964), Manon by Prévost (1964), Hamlet by Shakespeare-Laforgue (1967) caused a real uproar, and almost unanimous slating from the critics – except the discerning Ennio Flaiano – and shocked reactions from the public.

His coming out of the basement dimension and the very happy approach to cinema (beginning in ‘68 with Nostra Signora dei Turchi, subsequently followed up with another 6 feature films) contributed to boosting his popularity: in the ’70s, with the superb La cena delle beffe by Sem Benelli (1974), Shakepeare’s Romeo and Juliet (1976), S.A.D.E. (1977), Manfred by Byron (1979) he had a big success and received wide acclaim.

Carmelo Bene has spent the last 20 years under the banner of experimentation: in particular, his work on the voice pushes the acting dimension towards new bounds, and places him in the forefront on the contemporary world scene.

If the direction of the Theatre Biennial, for which he was called in 1988, ended up a failure, memorable works still remain – the readings of Majakovskij, Leopardi, the Canti orfici by Dino Campana – as a testimonial to his unending creativity: in addition to that Hamlet Suite produced in ‘94, where he added his own music to Laforgue’s text, with effects of extraordinary, bewildering and heart-rending lyricism. A definitive performance, a milestone in home-grown theatre at any time. —italica.rai.it

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