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Volume
II
Issue 15 Early Fall 2000 |
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A Quiet Storm: The Cinema of Valerio Zurlini by Michael Nicolella La Ragazza
con la Valiglia (The Girl with the Suitcase) Il Deserto
dei Tartari (The Desert of Tartars) The Film Society of Lincoln Center's presentations of Zurlini's La Ragazza con la Valiglia and Il Deserto de Tartari juxtapose Jacques Perrin as a young aristocrat falling in love with a lounge singer in post-World War II Italy and a military officer in a declining imperial desert outpost who is nagged by futility as he slowly meets his death. La Ragazza's Aida irritates men and is hated by other women. After seducing her, Marcello abandons her on a tediously hot day. When she shows up on Marcello's stoop and begins crying before his younger brother Lorenzo, played by Perrin, her tears muster sympathy. Bemused by her, he is fortunate to be neither pensive nor deliberate in nature. As he phrases the moral question of his life to the priest who tutors him, "Is a person responsible for the misdeeds of his family members?" It is a question the priest is unable to answer. As Lorenzo’s education with Aida continues, he becomes distracted from his studies. Curiosity about each other leads him to her hotel room and her to his estate when the household is away for the evening. Aida tells him stories about being a nightclub singer and taking advantage of gullible men in order to have dinner. He starts seeming strange and confused to the aunt who raises him. Aida, of course, is fascinated with his wealth, having made her living from her sensuality.
Claudia Cardinale and Jacques Perrin The articulate depiction of love and lust progresses through run-ins with the pious priest and an assortment of cads, leading to a sun-basking finale at a sybaritic seaside vacation spot. Ill-fated romance finally prepares our couple only for solitude. The officer class of Il Deserto de Tartari spends its time directing the business of the isolated military base and mulling over the horsemen who ride about on the fringes of their terrain. Drogo is a young man eager to engage the experienced, worldly, and mannered officers when he is drafted to serve at the harsh outpost. His sense of duty and service becomes simplistic and the film verges upon psychic terror before settling into crushing ennui. Time marks itself through mysterious circumstances in the military, in the desert, and in the lives of the men, and life at the base becomes mystic in its confusion and its small horizons. The fable's plausible symbolism and situations are strong and odd against the mute question of death framing the entire film. In the barren fort of the hypothetical empire, above a ruined ancient city ravaged by marauders, the landscape of mind that Drogo finds in this society of men is the only comfort and diversion to be had. Max von Sydow's Hortiz, who initially seems slightly insane, carries the lengthy film through its more pensive or absurd moments with a strange, convincing performance. Philipe Noiret's august General is a quiet master of the powerful forces at work through their travails, drills and inflammations. Set against Drogo's gradual aging process are brief moments that mark out new dimensions to his character, through a few well-turned words or a quiet expression. Notwithstanding a length that makes the end a long time in coming, the large star cast gives unfailingly good performances and the quality of the filmmaking is excellent. The sensual pleasure of La Ragazza is missing from Il Deserto, and the youthful exuberance of Drogo and others turns strange and exhausts itself in that mute terrain. As in La Ragazza, the people of Il Deserto become more complex the more they are known. A plain fact of both is a man passing time, or time passing a man. About the Author: Michael Nicolella most recently reviewed David Williams's 1997 movie, Thirteen, in Newsletter Issue 14. Resources: For details on
the Valerio Zurlini series, presented by the Film Society of Lincoln
Center and Cinacitta Holding, visit the FSLC website at |
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