Cinema
Caustic
Ted Whitehead
Allonsonfan Camden Plaza Allonsonfan OA) is about a man riding the tiger of revolution and desperate to get off, 'if only because he knows that the tiger will end up in the abattoir or at the very least in the zoo. Made by the Taviani Brothers in 1974 before the highly acclaimed Padre Padrone, it cloaks a caustic critique of leftwing attitudes with a melodramatic yarn of intrigue and betrayal. It might seem provocative to a politicised Italian audience but is more likely to strike the British as an entertaining costume drama with intellectual pretensions.
It's set in Italy in 1816, with the monarchs back on their thrones following the defeat of Napoleon. The authorities release Fulvio, an aristocrat but a revolutionary sympathiser, in the hope that he will innocently lead them to the hide-out of The Sublime Brethren, a band of revolutionaries. The complications start here, because while the authorities assume that Fulvio is still loyal to the cause, the Brethren, who promptly kidnap him, assume that he is disloyal. The truth is that he is neither, he simply wants out; he wants to go home and live as a private man enjoying the comforts of his estate. His feelings are confirmed when he discovers that the leader of the Brethren has hung himself— a man of forty-five, but looking twenty years older, and with lines of despair etched in his face. Fulvio persuades the Brethren that he is not disloyal, and finds himself to his horror mounted back on the tiger; the rest of the film is an account of his various attempts to dismount.
Sumptuous colours and majestic architecture constantly suggest the background of patriarchal and ecclesiastical authority, and there are stunning individual shots — a red shawl thrown over a cock on the grass, a yellow cat glaring at a green beetle on a white coverlet, freshly baked bread drawn from an oven. Some nice touches of humour, too — an old maid, washing Fulvio down, glances between his legs and says: 'I see you're getting better.' But no sooner has Fulvio begun to enjoy the comforts of aristocratic life than the Brethren turn up again. First comes Charlotte, who has had a child by him, and who mocks his 'shifty' family; Fulvio doesn't defend them, but suggests that life can offer alternatives, and proposes that they flee to America. However, his sister summons the soldiers, and after a brief and bloody encounter Fulvio flees with the mortally wounded Charlotte to the farm where their son is being brought up. His freedom doesn't last long, as the Brethren appear at Charlotte's funeral. There's a sly humour in the spectacle of these militant idealists — willing, indeed aching, to give their life for the revolutionary cause — persistently pursuing the jaded and harassed apostate, and even entrusting him with the organisation's funds. After a series of black-comic twists and turns, including the carnival sequence that now seems obligatory in Italian cinema, Fulvio wakes up to find himself on a boat bound for Southern Italy, where cholera and famine have created conditions considered suitable for revolutionary endeavour.
The conditions may indeed be suitable — except that the local peasants have not quite developed that level of political consciousness. (They're still into selfflagellation in defiance of the Bishop's• proscription). Fulvio betrays the expedition to the priest, who inflames the peasants against their would-be benefactors, and there's an extremely ironic conclusion, steeped in bitter farce, as the revolutionaries wait, singing the Marseillaise and wearing their red coats, while the peasants come thundering down on them, waving staves and scythes. 'They're going to kill us,' says one Brother incredulously. And kill them they do, most brutally. Right at the end Allonsonfan, the eponymous member of the group, tells Fulvio that the peasants and the revolutionaries have joined forces as comrades; and even now Fulvio swallows it, showing that he's not quite immune to idealism, and puts on his red coat and is promptly shot by the sol diers.
Marcello Maistroianni is excellent as the reluctant rebel, a corrupted innocent caught between two worlds, unsure whether he's been born too late or too soon, and quite unable to translate his cynicism into practice. He's a familiar type of disillusioned renegade, and is treated with complete fairness by the directors, as indeed are the revolutionaries who have forgotten, or refuse to believe, that life does offer alternatives. Overall, the film is a mischievous and exhilarating obituary, done with theatrical relish, for certain types of left-wing innocence.
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