Così ridevano (1998)

Director:

Gianni Amelio

Writers:

Gianni Amelio (writer) and
Daniele Gaglianone (writer) ...
(more)

Release Date:

2 October 1998 (Italy)

Genre:

Drama

Plot:

Turin at the end of the fifties: two brothers have emigrated there from Sicily and the older works very...

Plot Keywords:

Industrial Town | Sicily | Immigrant | Violence | Turin

Awards:

3 wins

Cast

Francesco Giuffrida	...	Pietro
Enrico Lo Verso	...	Giovanni
Rosaria Danzè	...	Lucia
Fabrizio Gifuni	...	Pelaia
Claudio Contartese	...	Rosario
Domenico Ragusa	...	Simone
Simonetta Benozzo	...	Ada
Pietro Paglietti	...	Battista
Corrado Borsa	...	Teacher at Examination
Barbara Braga	...	Girl at Bar
Calogero Caruana	...	Giovanni's Friend
Edoardo Ciciriello	...	School Assistant from Naples
Valerio Contartese	...	Unemployed Boy from Calabria
Iolanda Donnini	...	Mrs. Verusio
Erika Doria	...	Alessandra
Pierfranco Ghisleni	...	Teacher at Examination
Massimo Greco	...	Carmelo
Giovanni Leoni	...	Soldier from Sardinia
Renato Liprandi	...	School Assistant from Turin
Antonio Madaro	...	Student from Lecce
Patrizia Marino	...	Mother from Foggia
Roberto Marzo	...	Giovanni's Friend
Luigi Mauro	...	Soldier
Francesca Monchiero	...	Girl from Foggia
Domenico Mungo	...	Cooperative's Director
Davide Negro	...	Giovanni's Friend
Fabrizio Nicastro	...	Student
Giorgio Pittau	...	Giovanni's Friend
Antonino Prestipino	...	Teacher at Examination
Salvatore Refano	...	Old Sicilian Man
Vittorio Rondella	...	Giovanni's Assistant
Rossana Rovere	...	Mother
Giuseppe Sangari	...	Boy from Foggia
Giorgia Scuderi	...	Assuntina
Paolo Sena	...	Prof. Rosini
Giuliano Spadaro	...	Father from Foggia
Ileana Spalla	...	Sister-in-law
Nanni Tormen	...	Brother-in-law
Irene Vistarini	...	Student
Pasqualino Vona	...	Giovanni's Friend
Giuseppe Zarbano	...	Giovanni's Friend
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Clara Droetto	...	La zia
GianNicola Resta	...	Young guy

Directed by
Gianni Amelio

Writing credits
Gianni Amelio		(writer) and
Daniele Gaglianone		(writer) &
Lillo Iacolino		(writer) &
Alberto Taraglio		(writer)

Produced by
Vittorio Cecchi Gori	....	producer
Mario Cotone	....	executive producer
Rita Rusic	....	producer (as Rita Cecchi Gori)

Original Music by
Franco Piersanti

Cinematography by
Luca Bigazzi

Film Editing by
Simona Paggi

Casting by
Lorella Chiapatti
Nicola Conticello

Production Design by
Giancarlo Basili

Set Decoration by
Nello Giorgetti

Costume Design by
Gianna Gissi

Makeup Department
Giulio Pezza	....	makeup artist

Production Management
Stefano Benappi	....	assistant production manager
Fulvio Rossi	....	production manager
Lierka Rusic	....	production supervisor
Olivia Sleiter	....	production manager
Ladis Zanini	....	production manager

Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Lidia Biondi	....	assistant director
Elisabetta Boni	....	assistant director
Enzo Di Terlizzi	....	assistant director
Gianluca Greco	....	assistant director

Sound Department
Alessandro Zanon	....	sound mixer
Francesco Perri	....	assistant sound recordist (uncredited)

Camera and Electrical Department
Eraldo Barbona	....	key grip
Salvatore Bognanni	....	assistant camera
Stefano Falivene	....	focus puller
Patrizio Marra	....	grip

Editorial Department
Patrizia Ceresani	....	assistant editor

Other crew
Alessandro Fiorito	....	payroll clerk
Daniele Gaglianone	....	assistant to director
Lillo Iacolino	....	assistant to director
Melissa Strizzi	....	script supervisor
Alberto Taraglio	....	assistant to director

Production Companies

• Cecchi Gori Group Tiger Cinematografica
• Pacific Pictures

Distributors

• Alpha Filmes
• Cecchi Gori Distribuzione (Italy)
• Diaphana Films (France)
• New Yorker Films (2001) (USA) (subtitled)

Other Companies

• Cine Audio Effects  sound effects and foley design (sound effects)
• Solare Location & Casting  casting

Also Known As:

The Way We Laughed

Runtime:

124 min

Country:

Italy

Language:

Italian

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Dolby SR

Certification:

Iceland:L | France:U | Italy:T

Filming Locations:

Turin, Piedmont, Italy

Company:

Cecchi Gori Group Tiger Cinematografica

Trivia:

The title refers to the back page of a popular 1950s Italian magazine which had a section devoted to old jokes that were no longer funny but still evoked a sense of nostalgia. One such joke is repeated throughout the film: "How do you get four elephants in a Fiat?" The answer: "Two in front and two in back".

Quotes:

Giovanni: You think your children are your own, then they learn to walk and they leave you. Know what they say back home? "Raise hogs, 'cause then you can eat them"

Movie Connections:

References Rocco e i suoi fratelli (1960)

A near-masterpiece, highly recommended.

Watched on Italian DVD (using the standard-Italian subtitles for the hearing-impaired to decode the Sicilian dialect) for the first time March 2005. Winner of the top prize "Leone d'Oro" at Venice. Actually available as of 2004 on a US code DVD.

The title, referring to an old joke column, is ironic. The film's review of Italian post-war economic miracle years is deeply tinged with sadness and a sense of the price paid in innocence lost to gain security and status. The whole focus is on the love between two Sicilian brothers, Giovanni and Pietro. The angel-faced Pietro (Francesco Giuffrida) from the first appears devious. When his brother arrives at the station, he slinks off and hides from him. He's lazy, a dandy, a liar, a faker, a bad seed. Yet he's worshiped by the innocent, muscular, illiterate Giovanni (Enrico Lo Verso), who has turned up with other southern immigrants at the Turin railway station intending just to visit his baby brother as the film opens and then stays on in the North to support him.

The mise-en-scène is visually beautiful but conventionalizes the period into a kind of grimy poetry more worthy of twenty or thirty years earlier, no doubt consciously echoing Italian neorealist films (Amelio has been called the new De Sica) or becoming a glossier color version of Visconti's mournful epic tragedy of southern Italians in Milan, "Rocco and His Brothers" (1960). My DVD's Italian jacket copy translates a paragraph from Stephen Holden's 2001 NYTimes review expanding one of its key ideas: "'Così rideveno'has the power to keep its own secrets," this Italian version reads. "Without ever being moralistic, by the end it becomes the metaphor for a whole society that makes a kind of tacit pact with itself never to look too deeply into the hidden effects social processes have on individuals and their destinies." The interest -- and yet the frustration -- of the film is that its sequences each appear revelatory, but shed little light on the intervening periods of time. It is organized in a "rather elegant" manner (Rosenbaum) into a structure of microscopic views of single days out of each year from 1959 through 1964, each day designated by a key word: "arrivals," "deceptions," "money", "letters, "blood," and "families." This neat structure masks a surrounding mystery in the relationship between the two brothers, and we deduce for ourselves from the way they seek out and avoid each other how alike and interdependent they are. Each cherishes illusions about the other; one is proud, the other ashamed. Vivid and touching as the film is, it's also highly artificial, notably in how little of the two characters' lives is made clear, how little the world outside their relationship is explored.

Metaphorical indeed, "Così ridevano" explores an inseparable (and ultimately false) dichotomy between innocence and experience, naiveté and sophistication that may go to the heart not only of North-South relations but of the Italian soul. Both actors, Amelio regular Lo Verso and newcomer Giuffreda, are remarkable, and the scenes between them are heartbreaking.

So far the only other Amelio film I've seen is "The Housekeys" ("Le chiavi di casa," 2004), which being a documentary-like chronicle of a short stretch of contemporary time, seems so different, and yet on reflection is so similar in feeling. Obviously Amelio is an extraordinary director and I must see "Lamarica" and "Stolen Children" ("Il ladro di bambini"), both also starring the intense, soulful Lo Verso, which have received the highest praise of any of Amelio's films.