© Silvia Amodio
There was a time in the history of Italian cinema when animation films were inextricably linked to one name, Bruno Bozzetto, and to an extraordinary TV advertising program, Carosello, broadcast for the last time in 1978. The same cannot be said about Bozzetto, who remains one of the reference points in the field, almost unreachable in terms of originality, creative strength and consistency. Undoubtedly an enviable achievement for an author that started with animation almost as a joke, driven – at first – by his passion for drawing, the first Disney films (Bambi, 1942, still represents one of his main source of inspiration) and short films characterized by a sophisticated message and a simple and immediate graphic, such as the ones of the National Film Board of Canada, which led a young Bozzetto to realize the potential of animation cinema despite the low available budgets.
In fact, it is for fun that Bozzetto produces his first work, the short film Tapum! Weapons history (1958) in the Italian animation setting that until then had only produced two relevant works, The Dynamite Brothers (1949) and The singing princess (1949), and where possibilities of career were rather limited. However, the film – focused on the evolution of weapons, form prehistoric slingshots to atomic bombs of the 20th century – achieved some success at Cannes, thanks also to its satirical (and still somehow educational) humor on the subject of human aggression. The discovery of a vein of bitter comedy with which the history of humans and contemporary society is portrayed – a characteristic to which Bozzetto would always be faithful in all his creative exploits in the next decades, including the famous Grasshopper of 1990 – encouraged the author to move his first steps in the field, also made possible by the introduction of Carosello, which was first broadcast in 1957. For twenty years, Carosello represented one of his main creative forges for animation in Italy, from the shorts on Calimero by the Pagot brothers to the works in claymation by Fusako Yusaki. This also allowed Bozzetto to produce commercial works (while maintaining a certain creative freedom), to collaborate with authors who were also destined to have an important career (in particular, Guido Manuli and Giuseppe Laganà), and, most importantly, he managed to have some economic and creative autonomy, thanks to which Bozzetto was able to complete several works characterized by a delicate and melancholic humor, at times with shifts in the direction of a more ferocious satire, and graphically in debt, not only with the previously mentioned Canadian school, but also with independent USA authors and Zagreb film’s cartoonists.
Mr. Rossi, an ordinary man with moustache and a red hat, sometimes accompanied by the dog Harold, soon became Bozzetto’s hand-drawn alter ego, a character introduced in An Award for Mr Rossi (1960); inspired by a real-life event experienced by the director (the unsuccessful screening of a short film he had presented at a festival in Bergamo). Mr. Rossi – well-meaning and poetic, but often an unlucky character – will allow Bozzetto to develop his more adult streak, in a long cycle of short and full-length films inspired to the everyday life: vacations, car, the skiing holiday. This melancholic imprint also characterizes most of his best works, even if not centered on Mr. Rossi (destined, in recent years, to become protagonist of satirical comic strips published on national newspapers): in Alpha Omega (1961) Bozzetto pessimistically tells about the life of an anonymous character, drawn with few essential strokes, while in Life in a tin (1967) it is the metropolitan existence the target of the narration, seen as a series of never-ending journeys in and out of grey buildings – the school, the factory, the house – the “tin” in the title, precisely.
With a lot of self-irony and perhaps also a bit of impatience, in the same years Bozzetto started to target himself as well, or rather, his activity as an advertiser and the consumerist connotations linked to it: it’s precisely a gag connected to an ad that closes West and soda (1965). The film is the author’s first full-length film, a a very successful re-interpretation of westerns and – indirectly – of Disney films: just as many animated feature films of the time were inspired by pre-existing fairy tales, Bozzetto decided to create a film from a modern fairy tale, that of cowboys and Indians, very popular at the time. The resulting work is a true masterpiece from a narrative and graphical point of view (some character designs are worthy of Saul Steinberg): all classics topoi of the genre are taken up and parodied with great affection, and the film is still considered a classic of Italian animation. A similar fate befell VIP my Brother Superman (1968), another parody, this time of the superhero genre (the tiny and unfortunate protagonist is an unlucky version of The Phantom of Lee Falk), but also and especially a fierce satire of the advertising universe; in fact, the “villain” of the film, Happy Betty, is a sort of Bond villain, planning to produce a sort of brainwashing on a global scale in order to convince all mankind to buy from her supermarkets. The creative peak of Bozzetto’s full-length animation films is finally Allegro non troppo (1976), which also includes some live action sequences starring as leading character director and screenwriter Maurizio Nichetti, a former collaborator of Bozzetto. The film is apparently also a joke-tribute, this time to Disney’s Fantasia (1940), but once again the term “parody” is but a reductive description. In the episodes of the film – each one characterized by a specific piece of classical music – we can find the poetics of the author: the satire on advertising, the melancholy of old age, pollution.
Allegro non troppo is currently the last full-length film by Bozzetto; however, in the most recent years, he managed to take advantage also of new means to create animated films, turning to the web for a cycle of short films in Flash Animation, which include, among others, Europe vs Italy (1999). Using essential symbols – basically only circles and maps seen from above – Bozzetto succeeded in producing another satire, this time focused on the primacy (also from a negative point of view) of Italians in the European context: a visual approach that will turn out to be successful and that Bozzetto will also use in Yes and no (2001) e Female vs male (2004). This approach also led to the creation of a new recurring character, Mister Otto, demonstrating how inexhaustible the creative streak of one of the “fathers” – but artistically still a “boy” – of Italian animation still is.
Davide Giurlando
WORKS TO BE SCREENED AT THE FESTIVAL:
Una vita in scatola – Life in a Tin (1967 – 6’)
By restraining the whole cycle of life into just six minutes, the film underlines how our constant commitments often mislead us from the real meaning of life.
(Short film dated 1967 that, almost 50 years later, still speaks a lot to contemporary society)
Cavallette – Grasshoppers (1990 – 8’)
In the natural course of earth’s evolution, five or a thousand years represent just a handful of seconds. What is the role of mankind on this boundless stage?
(Oscar Nominee for Best Animated Short in 1991.)
Europa e Italia – Europe Vs Italy (1999 – 5’)
This film ironically shows the behavioural difference of Italians compared to other European people.
(It opens with: “This film is dedicated to those who believe that Italians behave the same way as all other Europeans”, but even those who know Italians better will still greatly enjoy this film).
