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We
must back exactly to July 14th 1936: this day, July 14th, usually one
thinks about the Bastille assault in 1789 and the French public holiday.
In the case at matter, July 14th 1936 means, much more modestly, far
something alse: the birth of the most famous Italian humoristic newspaper,
the "Bertoldo".In the front page of thar forst issue, there was a strip
entitled "The adventires of the R.28 spy". The strip was undersigned
by the by then unknown Giovanni Guareschi (1908-1968), in search of
job, surely far from imaging that, a in little more than ten years,
he would become a writer read by million people and translated all over
the world.Why are we interested to Guareschi? The answer is simple:
because in Milan it has been summoned a conference about him, a sort
of resit exams offered to the Left and those critics that have always
ignored him or brought him forwardLet's try to remember together as
the "Mondo piccolo" of Guareschi uotlined itself in 1948. His reign
had as a limit the banks of a river, with the background of poplars
and bell towers racing in height. Over there, in the middle, there's
the tavern, the pergola, the froth of the lambrusco wine. There's in
Guareschi the cold thrill of fogs, the majestic idea of the Po and the
convinction that in a few thousand inhabitants village policy is a mix
of slaps on shoulders and tombstones to cover with flowers.And here
it is his instalment novel concerning a priest and a communist town
major playing a rascal comedy of dust-ups and secret agreement, as if
Po, the floods, the mud, the personages and the "popular house" were
a kind of new Arcadia to be pointed out to the turbulent divided world.
Guareschi had soon a spreading success, later fostered by the movie.
In so deeply different historical conditions, what doeas it remain to
share with Guareschi's personages?It doeas not concern a question for
which it is expected a negative answer. Some evenings ago, on television,
I've watch the two pictures the great French director Julien Duvivier
(1896-1967), author of works belonging to the history of the cinema
as "Carnet de bal" (1937), directed in 1952 and 1953, starring Fernandel
(1903-71) and Gino Cervi (1901-74), correspondently in the roles of
the rough priest and the town major, irresolute between Stalin and tagliatelle.On
the other side, provided that revivals are ever in fashion, I do not
see why it must not emerge again also the Padania village of Guareschi
along with all the comic ambiguities of his advanced "historic compromise"
between communists and Catholics. Duvivier's pictures were shot at Brescello,
in the province of Reggio Emilia, the village where Guareschi set his
tales. Even if the two protagonists, Fernandel and Gino Cervi, starred
also in other pictures inspired to the priest and the major personages,
but with other directors (as Carmine Galloni and Luigi Comencini), it
was not reached anymore the 'state of grace' of the first two. Takings
were always very high, but quality was less.The race between these two
protagonists was very absorbing for their out of common cleverness.
The horsy face of Fernandel, his waving walking and with legs wide apart
and the big feet ever out, the talks with the crecified Christ of the
high altar, who sometimes recalls the priest to behaviour less aggressively:
all that makes of Don Camillo an unforgettable stock character.As regard
to Gino Cervi, of Bolognese origin, he put in the personage of Peppone
a charge of Emilian directness, a caricature emphasis with irresistible
comic effects, a thundering rhetoric turning any speech into a meeting.
A great peppone, as he starred too, some years later, the role of the
personage of the superintendent Maigret. This purpose, I remember that,
during an interview given me by Georges Simenon on May 1985, the writer
said that Cervi was the best player of the superintendent figure. Don't
forget that, among the Maigret personages of the movie, there was also
the mythical figure of the cinema, Jean Gabin.The memory of Giovannino
Guareschi could cover other books and other events of his life. But
if his name is still alive everywhere in the world, it is due, beyond
dispute, to the "thrashing storms" uniting a cassock and a red neckerchief.
And if tomorrow evening, or in a month, I will read in the television
billboard that, even at an impossible time, it will be broadcast a picture
od Don Camillo and Peppone, I'll be there, a silent spectator, to watch
at the Po, the banks, the bell tower, "the people house", the tables
in the tavern, the glasses of Lambrusco wine.I'll be ready, once more,
to smile and to welcome the "father" Fernandel and the "comrade" Gino
Cervi.
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