Miracle of Marcellino
Picture: C- Sound:
C Extras: C- Film: C+
Perhaps to best consider what Luigi Comencini achieves
with this 1991 reinterpretation, a certain familiarity with Ladislao Vajda’s 1955 version Marcelino pan
y vino might be thought necessary. But to automatically consider a film based
on the same material a remake especially when the material is religious in
nature is about as absurd as considering Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of
Christ a remake of Nicholas Ray’s King of Kings -- but maybe this isn’t a fair metaphor,
since Last Temptation was based on a novel. But regardless, I am neither familiar with Vajda’s film nor the
folklore of that which contextualizes young Marcellino’s fascinating and, at
times, surprisingly touching tale as presented on this recently released disc
featuring the 1991 film.
Wisely, Comencini begins his account of the
boy, Marcellino – played with sensitivity and thoughtfulness by Nicolo’
Paolucci – in the present day – which at the time of the production was the
early 90’s. But the grain resulting
from a combination of both the original film transfer and Franco Di Giacomo’s
original choice of film stock might give an American viewer –- for whom, in
addition to certain Canadians, this English-subtitled disc is intended – the
idea that the film has been mistakenly misplaced with a cheesy documentary for
elementary school kids. But this is
deliberate, of course – not the seeming cheesiness, but the look, I mean. And like the children who have come to visit
the monastery where Marcellino once lived at the very beginning of the film,
the viewer too is now lent a certain “threshold” that must be crossed in order
to engage the, in places, fantastic diegesis of Comencini’s film – to borrow a
term from Dudley Andrew. But this
prologue works in much the same way that other prologues have worked for
religious films – just think of Cecil B. DeMille’s address to the audience at
the beginning of the 1956 The Ten Commandments, which is a film that can properly be called a
remake. By drawing attention to the
fact that Marcellino is an actual story that is being told, and not a
reality whose verisimilitude the audience has been privileged enough to gain
access to, a viewer can take delight in the way this story is told, perhaps
even to a greater degree than what actually happens in the film.
But unfortunately, in terms of how the story
is told, I am not speaking necessarily of cinematicity or formalism, Comencini
is no Quentin Tarantino. But he doesn’t
have to be. From the first frame to the
end, it is very clear that he is interested in a conservative telling of this
fantasy about a young boy, discovered mysteriously by friars as an infant and
subsequently raised by them; this alone is enough to keep me interested in the
story. The idea of monkish friars
clamoring and competitively fighting for the affection of Marcellino is
heartfelt and engrossing – perhaps redefining the notion of “father” for the
senior abbot, who almost has a scene stolen from him by Claudia Desideri, the
lovely baby girl who plays Marcellino as an infant in one memorable scene where
the monk attempts to pray and seek guidance as to whether or not Marcellino
should stay in the monastery.
In terms of plot, Marcellino moves
rather slowly from being a story about a boy and his adjustment to monastic
living to a more classic 16th-century custody battle between the
classes, as a Count, played by Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu arrives at the
monastery of the poverty-sworn monks to claim Marcellino as his own son. But in an unexpected twist, it is not the
Count’s paternity that Marcellino finds off-putting, but rather the cruel
treatment of a deer the boy observes while out on a hunt with his newfound
royal family. But as the narration
suggests, this is not just a film about what happens to Marcellino, but about
his psychology. And so the last few
moments of the film, foreshadowed by a relationship with an “imaginary friend”
earlier on in the story and a slightly touching vision of his biological mother
when he is christened, makes Marcellino far more complex and noteworthy
than your typical religious film, because of its attempt not only to narrate a
religious experience, but also the psychology behind the experience. And the fact that our frame of reference
comes from a child makes the potential of the story that much more
compelling. Though I don’t think
Comencini takes full advantage of the tapestry his story provides. Aesthetically, I can only suspect, based on
my research, that Vajda does a much better job.
Nonetheless, there are several amusing moments
in the film, and while the film does take place during wartime, it is
refreshing to see a portrait of a Catholic tradition in the Middle Ages not
vilified – while at the same time not centering around a protagonist whose
saintliness is so unrelatable that there’s no life lessons for the modern
viewer. And while, for the most part,
Comencini offers what is unmistakably a family film, one scene, while humorous,
features a brief moment of a young and, not to mention, very attractive woman’s
exposed breast and nipple. While the
fact that the woman is breastfeeding may make this nudity justifiable for some,
both her attractiveness and the fact that the exposure occurs, for all intents
and purposes, not once but twice may challenge more conservative American
viewers desiring to watch the film with their children and not expecting
nudity, as brief as it may be. But this
too may stem from America’s repressed treatment of natural sexuality, as
opposed to Europe, who in turn, seem much more sensitive to depicted violence
than Americans.
The most interesting part of the story,
though, is the point of view, since it is narrated by Niccolo’ Paolucci who
provides the voice-over, even during the infant scenes. At times, this technique offers both humor
and irony, to a film that would have suffered greatly without it. But this is the dilemma of both the disc and
the dubbing. I can honestly only attest
to the performance of the boy who provides the English voice-over performance,
and not to Niccolo’ Paolucci’s performance as a narrator. However, I would have rather had an English
dubbing for the curiously unnamed making-of documentary that, at times, is so
full of technical information, titles, and references, that the fact that it is
not dubbed, in relation to the film on the very same disc, makes an accidental
aesthetic point – that it is more important to hear Claudio G. Fava as he expounds on Comencini’s brilliance with
child actors, then to hear the voice-over of the very child actor that might
prove his point. If Paolucci’s
voice-over is dubbed out of convenience to the viewer, then why not the
documentary?
But, of course, I ask this facetiously since
the expected lack of extras on this more obscure title, at least amongst
American circles, made me grateful that there even was a making-of documentary
– which is not bad, in fact. Apart from
the excessive amount of subtitle reading necessary to understand the documentary,
it does make some attempt to contextualize Comencini’s film against that of
Vajda. Yet, the intermittent interview
of Niccolo’ Paolucci throughout Vajda’s film clips, accompanied in places by a
generically-framed Claudio G. Fava, is the real gem. Not only because of how unexpected, shrewd, and clever many of
Paolucci’s answers are to such questions like whether or not he might ever be
interested in growing up and becoming a monk; but, because of the personality
and intellect this young man exudes both through his onscreen and off-screen
persona – especially considering the fact that he was cast from 6,000 children,
and not as a previous child star.
All in all, Marcellino is worth
watching, if not, in the very least, to catch a glimpse of a likeable group of
friars and their radical and extreme lifestyle characterized in such a way as
to make both them and the things they do in an attempt to maintain devotion to
their God endearing, and not the stuff of Christian cult-horror stories. Comencini understands, as do most of the
characters in this film that faith is not always a bad thing, and the ability
the celebrate characters who have faith, or any strong conviction with
socio-economic or political consequences – as being a monk in the 16th
century inevitably was – without lampooning them is something that European
filmmakers have always been more comfortable and skillful at than their
American counterparts. A key example of
this occurs as Marcellino is taught his ABC’s by a friar utilizing flashcards
with both letters and saints whose names begin with that letter – but even
though these flashcards depict these saints being tortured and martyred in
various ways, with Marcellino having to identify not only the letter and the
saint, but their manner of death as well, the underlying insidiousness of an
indoctrination that couples both education and religion with violence and
language, becomes a conclusion left to the viewer, and not one preached through
suggestive camera work or music. So,
while only average by film standards, any film that manages to normalize
beliefs, since, in fact, we all have them – right, wrong, or indifferent –
can’t be that bad, especially when attempting to do so through the eyes of a
child.
-
Gregory Allen
Gregory
Allen -- filmmaker, scholar, and critic -- is an assistant Professor in the
Cinema and Digital Arts Department at Point Park University, and is currently
pursuing his Ph.D. at the University of Pittsburgh. He also oversees the student film production organization The
Sprocket Guild www.sprocketguild.org and
can be contacted at info@sprocketguild.org.
