As we have seen, there are two types of mother/son relationship in Ciprì and Maresco, where the sons are either subjugated and resentful towards their mothers or, reacting to their mothers’ possessiveness, they are dominant and aggressive. In the latter case there is a reversing of roles, with the mother portrayed as a childish hopeless woman who is constantly rebuked by a paternal, almost tyrannical, son. While Moretti’s films express a ‘beauty and meaning to being an adult with a childish soul’ (Mazierska and Rascaroli 2004: 80), in Ciprì and Maresco this infantilising never produces positive effects but generates uncomfortable situations with sons who feel oppressed by their mothers.
It is the uneasiness of this type of relationship that leads to a constant need for the son to assert his primacy against a mother who poses a continuous threat to his self-image as a strong and independent man. For some of the characters, who seem resigned to their ‘fate’, this becomes an insurmountable burden, while in others it
137 Mazierska and Rascaroli highlight how Moretti derides this trend although it is also self-ironic as Moretti himself lived with his parents until he was 29 and returned to live with them for some spells afterwards (Mazierska and Rascaroli 2004: 49).
126 causes anger and resentment towards their mothers and they react by ridiculing and deriding her.138
This primacy, however, is above all sought by the men through the constant need to show how well they perform sexually and in their obsessive search for a
‘woman’. One of the main elements of the apocalyptic world created by Ciprì and Maresco is that women - played by men dressed up us women - are rare.139 And if in the case of the lonely flâneur cyclist of Lo zio di Brooklyn140 this quest almost assumes existentialist aspects, for all the other characters women are mainly an obsession, a sought after commodity.
The obsession with sex, which is represented through group masturbation and frequent visits to the brothel, becomes so extreme as to clearly form a parody of a society in which men are under constant pressure to perform sexually. We can define this type of masculinity using Sciascia’s analogy of the cockerel. Sciascia notes that in the peasant world the cockerel represents the animal with the most perfect sexuality, ‘easily aroused, insatiable and capable of amply satisfying all the sexual demands made of it’ (Sciascia, 1997: 42). It is a model of sexuality that Sciascia suggests leads inevitably, in its ‘athletic short-livedness’, to ‘an unfulfilled sexuality that must be displaced as a result to the level of fantasy’ (ibid: 42). This concept, which embodies ‘the ideal of man whose masculinity is determined by his multiple experiences with women’ (Reich 2004: 54), is reflected in the Italian word gallismo, which derives from gallo, cockerel, and is usually translated into English as
‘machismo’ though, for example in the Italian dictionary Devoto–Oli (1990: 800), it implies more a ‘satirical denomination for male vanity or a presumed unfailing ability
138 The case of the singer in Lo zio di Brooklyn and Paletta in Totò che visse due volte are examples of the former and the magician in Lo zio di Brooklyn and Cardinal Sucato in Il ritorno di Cagliostro are examples of the latter.
139 Characters in Lo zio di Brooklyn lament their absence and set themselves the task of ‘finding one’.
140 See chapter 1.1.3.
127 to perform sexually, symbolised by the cockerel’. The conceptualisation of gallismo is attributed to the Sicilian writer Vitaliano Brancati (1907-1954), who had a certain influence on Sciascia himself. As Jacqueline Reich writes in her Beyond the Latin Lover: Marcello Mastroianni. Masculinity, and Italian Cinema (2004), the ‘Sicilian male’, in order to combat potential threats to his masculinity, ‘makes recourse to another essential aspect of his identity to exert his manliness: sexual prowess’ (Reich 2004: 54). Yet, adds Reich, this manifestation is ‘more a discourse than an actual trait’ (ibid).
Brancati wrote on the subject in an essay published in 1946, I piaceri del gallismo (‘The Pleasures of Gallismo’), and dealt with this matter in his novels Don Giovanni in Sicilia (1941), adapted for the screen by Alberto Lattuada in 1967, 141 and Il bell’Antonio (1949), adapted for the screen by Mauro Bolognini in 1960. 142 Reich points out how, according to Brancati, the pride that in Southern towns seems to characterise the ‘male face’ does not derive from the man being ‘good, truthful, generous, honest, tame, just, charitable, etc., but rather feeling or imagining himself to be “talented in matters of love”’ (ibid). All of this, concludes Reich, quoting Sciascia, leads to the fact that being gallo means mainly receiving recognition and respect for being a great lover and, more than sexual exploits, what really matters is the ‘talking about women’ (ibid).
This model has inexorably shown its fragility, the unstable nature of a ‘gender construction’ based traditionally ‘on the tendentious preservation of female chastity, the archaic code of honour, and talking about sex rather than sexual action’ (ibid). It is a model of masculinity that rose to its peak in Italy during Fascism, which based its
141Don Giovanni in Sicilia / Don Juan in Sicily is the story of Giovanni Percolla, a reputed womaniser who, in his forties, still lives with his three unmarried sisters who want him to get married. Once married, his beliefs about women collapse.
142 Il Bell’Antonio is the story of a handsome young man from Catania, a reputed womaniser, who marries a beautiful girl from the same town. After one year of marriage she seeks annulment of the marriage on the grounds that he is impotent.
128 ideology on the image of ‘men seen as virile soldiers, workers, husbands and fathers’
(Mazierska and Rascaroli 2004: 57). The fall of Fascism led to a masculine identity crisis compounded by factors such as the radical redefinition of working life due to a rapid industrialisation ‘that brought the men to the factories, encouraged urbanisation and emigration and broke the traditional link between man and earth’ (ibid). In addition we should also factor in the consequent increasing numbers of working women, and the exposure to new models of masculinity through the re-introduction of American films. American films had been banned during the fascist period and the liberated social mores and especially the emancipated female characters that they portrayed had a great impact on Italian post-war society.
This identity crisis has also provoked a reaction against the traditional father figure who embodied the myth of gallismo. As the father figure increasingly came to be viewed as the source of all kinds of repressive and oppressive power, a society without fathers was mooted in the political protests and upheavals of 1968.143 Many Italian directors have dealt with ‘the diminishing of fathers’ (Mazierska and Rascaroli 2004: 57) as well as the rejection of the father figure itself, including Bernardo Bertolucci, who, according to Alessandro Marini, frequently proposes a kind of
‘symbolic parricide’ (Marini 2012: 94). In Bertolucci’s Il Conformista / The Conformist (1970),144 not only fathers who were involved in and supported Fascism are shown in a negative light but also those who opposed it, such as the dissident left-wing professor that the protagonist kills despite having been one of his own University professors.
143 As discussed in an influential book of the time by Gérard Mendel: La Révolte contre le père (‘The revolt against the father’) (1968).
144 The film is initially set before the start of the Second World War, when Marcello Clerici, a spy for the fascist political police is on his honeymoon in Paris. The honeymoon is a cover and Marcello, unbeknownst to his wife, has been assigned the assassination of his ex professor who has become a dissident antifascist activist.
129 The absence of fathers is a core characteristic of Ciprì and Maresco’s films, which, as we have seen, very much revolve around the mother/son nucleus. While in Moretti men, albeit conflictually, come to terms with the challenges of masculinity by taking on more maternal roles, like the fathers in the abovementioned episode of Caro diario, in Ciprì and Maresco the aggressive side of masculinity is accentuated almost to the point of caricature.
This type of masculinity is displayed within the family by continuous arguments, a key example being the second episode in Totò che visse due volte, where Bastiano, Pitrinu’s brother, publicly derides and physically attacks his brother’s homosexual lover, Fefè, when the latter attends Pitrinu’s funeral vigil [Figure 12]. In a flashback, Bastiano leads a group of men on a ‘punitive mission’ to seek out Pitrinu and Fefè. He is the most aggressive of the group, removing his belt to beat the two lovers, mirroring the traditional father-delivered punishment as an affirmation of his authority and his own ‘undoubted’ masculinity.
Figure 12: Fefè (right standing) at Pitrinu’s funeral vigil, confronted by Bastiano (left)
The symbolism of this sequence is effectively rendered through alternate shots. There is a stark contrast between the shots of the brother and the men following him, who
130 are all big beefy men, as they rush up the hill to where Pitrinu and Fefè are hiding, and the shots of Pitrinu and Fefè who address each other in flowery poetic language as if imagining themselves to be in one of the romantic films of the immediate post-war period.145
The shots of Bastiano and his gang are in mid-shot from the waist up, their bodies filling the screen and emphasising their aggression and the physical threat they represent. When they find Pitrinu and Fefè, Bastiano’s gang hangs back and he advances alone, crudely deriding and berating his brother and his brother’s lover for having brought dishonour on the family and inciting the others to join in with his tirade. The group of men thus initially forms an audience to the event, with Fefè and Pitrinu moving as if on a stage, continuing to speak in their highly refined and affected manner, which contrasts starkly with the crude gestures and gruff guttural sounds of the dialect spoken by Bastiano and the others.
The emphatically aggressive masculinity in these scenes recalls films by other contemporary Italian directors, such as Roberta Torre, who has worked closely with Ciprì and Maresco. In Torre’s Tano da morire / To Die for Tano (1997),146 patriarchy is continuously ridiculed and seen as a burden for the men themselves. They are depicted as violent and aggressive, eager to perform according to traditional macho stereotypes whereas, although the women might seem to be ‘victims’, in fact they manage to make the rules work to their own benefit. Mario Martone also deals with the aggressive nature of this male-centric culture in his L’amore molesto / Nasty Love (1995), in which he seeks to redefine the woman’s role through emancipation from patriarchy. In L’amore molesto, Amalia, the mother of the protagonist, Delia, is a passionate woman who is determined to affirm her femininity even in later life and in
145 Aspects of the use of this type of language are analysed in chapter 3.3.
146 See chapters 1.2.2 and 3.3.3.
131 spite of the jealous rage of her husband. It is also thanks to Amalia’s determination that Delia, in the end, finds herself freed from her father’s demands and whims.Here, too, we experience endless fighting with men who have recourse to violence to affirm their status often creating a camaraderie that unites them, almost as if they realise they are in the wrong and need the support of other like-minded men. It is a camaraderie that embodies the culture of gallismo which, for example in L’amore molesto, leads to Amalia’s brother remaining friends with her ex-husband, despite the suffering he had inflicted on Amalia and their daughters.
Linked to this discussion is Paolo and Vittorio Taviani’s 1977 film Padre Padrone / Father and Master, based on Gavino Ledda’s autobiographical novel Padre Padrone (1975). The film is set in post-war Sardinia and portrays a strong authoritarian relationship between a father, an illiterate shepherd, and his son, Gavino.
The film centres on the life story of Gavino, who, against his father’s will, decides to become a writer. The Tavianis’ film deals with the conflicts faced by Italian society in its transformation from a rural to an industrialised country. The moment in which the father, ‘a perfect image of the primal father of psychoanalysis’ (Bondanella 2009:
343), enters his son’s classroom to take him away from school to work in the fields, terrifying the children with the threat that one day their fate will be the same as his son’s, is evocative of some of the situations in Ciprì and Maresco’s films, with the significant difference that in Ciprì and Maresco the tyrannical role is mostly played by mothers.147
An aspect of the primal masculinity portrayed in the Taviani Brothers’ Padre Padrone is the depiction of sex as an almost bestial act. Bondanella says of the protagonist that ‘he assimilates the language of sex by observing the animals about
147 Such as the scene, in Lo zio di Brooklyn, in which the singer’s mother tells her son he is a failure and wants him to give up or when Paletta’s mother, in Totò che visse due volte, says that Paletta is good for nothing and will end up being a failure like his father.
132 him coupling (or his fellow shepherds coupling with them)’ (Bondanella 2009: 344).
It is an aspect that resonates with the characters in Ciprì and Maresco, in which animals also become sexual objects, for instance in the opening scenes of Lo zio di Brooklyn one of the characters pays the owner of a donkey for allowing him to have sex with it, and in the last episode of the same film a hen is the object of the idiot figure’s desire. Together with the constant search for food 148 and the Mafiosi’s obsession with revenge,149 satisfying their basic sexual needs is the principal concern of the men in Lo zio di Brooklyn and Totò che visse due volte and it is these events that move the narrative along.
Representations of gallismo abound in post-war Italian cinema. Giacomo Manzoli (2014) has identified distinct categories, highlighting how the crisis of masculinity represented in this period contrasts with the image of the self-confident male associated with Italian cinema in general but mostly evident in the films of the fascist period, interpreted by actors such as Amedeo Nazzari and Massimo Girotti.
The first of these categories he eloquently calls, quoting Reich, l’incapace, the
‘incapable’, most emblematically represented by the characters played by Marcello Mastroianni, who are sexually inept just as they are inept in life (Manzoli 2014: 15) - for example Mastroianni’s role in Divorzio all’Italiana, discussed earlier, and his roles in Fellini’s films in which the male protagonists seem capable of little more than fantasising about the female bodies that ‘circle around them as if on a carousel’ (ibid).
Another category identified by Manzoli is the nostalgico regressivo, ‘regressive nostalgic’, illustrated with reference to the abovementioned Alberto Lattuada’s Don Giovanni in Sicilia, which centres on the myth of the Latin lover. The protagonist is cosseted by the attentions of three ‘sister-mothers’ and, oppressed by the need to
148 See chapter 2.3.
149 See chapter 3.2.
133 sexually perform, he develops a predatory form of sexuality (ibid: 18). What the film seems to suggest is that to be liberated from this form of oppression it is necessary to exercise self-denial and, as happens in the film, to reject one’s environment and culture (ibid: 19).
The main difference between Ciprì and Maresco’s films and the films discussed by Manzoli is that in Ciprì and Maresco the crisis of masculinity is regarded harshly without indulgence, while in the films considered by Manzoli, although a critical eye is not entirely absent, there is an element of compassion. The image that emerges is of a ‘sensitive’ and ‘understanding’ emancipated man. In stark contrast to this, the men that Ciprì and Maresco portray are extreme expressions of a culture in which, as they say, ‘at a certain point the women got up and left the men to talk’
(Valentini 1999: 22) and are an undeniable product of what Ciprì and Maresco define as ‘sexual mis-education’ (ibid).
Examples of this type of representation can also be found in Italian American cinema, from which Ciprì and Maresco have drawn inspiration, in particular from the macho culture portrayed in the work of Martin Scorsese, himself of Sicilian origin (Morreale 2003: 11). This culture is in evidence in the most Sicilian of Scorsese’s films, Raging Bull (1980), based on Jake La Motta's autobiography, which chronicles the boxer's rise and tragic fall. The film - which features a soundtrack based on the overture of Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana, evocative of ‘rustic’ Sicily - represents a certain type of macho culture and value system that are mostly typical of the Italian South. Aiming at a realistic portrait of the Italian American community, the film is filled with elements of first generation culture, including the use of Sicilian dialect peppered with strong language. In Scorsese men are often violent towards women but
134 here the ‘negative’ female figure is the wife, while in Ciprì and Maresco wives are mostly absent and the negative female figure is the mother.150