Nanni Moretti
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6.5 I Am Self-Sufficient (1976)
7.0 Ecce Bombo (1978) 6.5 Sweet Dreams (1981) 6.5 Bianca (1984) 6.0 The Mass Ended (1985) 5.0 Palombella Rossa (1989) 7.0 Caro Diario/ Dear Diary (1993) 5.0 Aprile/ April (1998) 6.8 The Son's Room (2001) 5.5 The Caiman (2006) 6.9 We Have a Pope (2011) 5.5 Three Floors (2021) 5.0 A Brighter Tomorrow (2023) 7.0 My Mother (2015) | Links: |
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Nanni Moretti (Italy, 1953) had been making amateur short films since he was twenty, but he shot his first feature film (at very low cost) in 1976, using direct recording with non-professional actors: the director himself plays the lead.
Io Sono un Autarchico/ I Am Self-Sufficient (1976) is a humble fresco of the youthful intelligentsia after the defeat of 1968, a costume comedy set among the protesters.
Starting with this film,
Moretti often starred as a neurotic, uncompromising young man navigating the social and political shifts of Italy.
The same principles inspire the absurdist comedy Ecce bombo (1978), which tackles more rigorously the encyclopedia of crises in society (of couples, generations, existence, and the movement), fully exploiting the "comic-strip" structure of his humor; it is still a satire of the middle class, centered on a showman (a bit boisterous) and constructed around traditional gags.
The film captured the disillusionment of the post-1968 generation.
The absolute sincerity that emanates from Moretti's imaginary reportage opens the door to a new cinema of the private, which, without touching Antonioni or Bergman, can photograph the civilization of alienation with precise acuity.
With this film, Moretti coined a "youth cinema" based on private life and a revision of the public in an anarchic key.
Sogni d'Oro/ Sweet Dreams (1981) is even self-mythologizing in its self-parody; full of learned and caustic gags, it tells the story of a young filmmaker shooting a film about Freud and exalting himself for his role as a disruptor within Italian cinema; in reality, the public does not love him, and his insecurity is heightened by his relationship with a more mature woman: in the end, he transforms into a werewolf and disappears into the night. Here, the crisis of youthful idealism is placed within a broader psychoanalytic imbalance, reminiscent of Fellinis Otto e mezzo or Woody Allens confessional style. It is already "mannerism": the strip structure like in comics, the nostalgic echoes of 1968, free love but not too much, etc. Bianca (1984) is another of his unpolished comedies, directed roughly, egocentric comedies in which other characters are merely caricatures: Moretti is a perfectionist, order-obsessed, virgin, austere teacher at a grotesque high school, where video games, jukeboxes, and slot machines reign; his desperate attempts to impose order in a crumbling world (friends separating and being killed, a murdered neighbor, a sixty-year-old playboy, etc.) find support in an equally virginal French teacher; but then he collapses and confesses: he is the author of the three murders, driven by the need for order. A radical moralist, a stylized Monsieur Verdoux, but with a lyrical, infantilist regression. La Messa e` Finita/ The Mass Ended (1985) is another film about impotence in the face of moral chaos. Moretti is a neighborhood priest forced to endure the chaos of the laitys lives: a father leaving the mother for another, a sister pregnant by her boyfriend, disillusioned and troubled friends (a terrorist, a homosexual, an intransigent Catholic, a misanthrope); and everyone looks to him for a new order, but he is powerless against the spreading contagion; he ends up striking himself, going to serve as a missionary in the North. Morettis work became more explicitly political and deeply personal. Palombella Rossa (1989) examined the crisis of the Italian Communist Party, while Caro Diario/ Dear Diary (1993), his most famous film, dealt with his own battle with cancer, and Aprile/ April (1998) is a cine-journal about the birth of his son and the state of Italian politics. La Stanza del Figlio/ The Son's Room (2001) set a new standard for the austerity and psychological depth of his dramas. Il Caimano/ The Caiman (2006) provides a biting critique of the Silvio Berlusconi era. Habemus Papam/ We Have a Pope (2011) is a satirical comedy. Mia Madre/ My Mother (2015) is a moving portrait of a female director dealing with the illness of her mother while making a film about striking factory workers. Tre Piani/ Three Floors (2021) is an ensemble drama based on the novel by Eshkol Nevo. Il Sol dell'Avvenire/ A Brighter Tomorrow (2023)
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