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From Arlecchino to Wertmuller: modern Italian archetypes in the commedia all’italiana

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 June 2017

Georgia Lawrence-Doyle
Georgia Lawrence-Doyle*
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia
*
*Email: glaw2912@uni.sydney.edu.au
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Abstract

This article explores the trajectory of the Italian comic archetype, ‘The Opportunist’, and how it illuminates, and allows us to draws connections between, numerous junctures of modern Italian history. The caricature ‘Arlecchino’, deriving from the masked ‘types’ of the commedia dell’arte of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, is an historic exemplar of the Italian ‘everyman’ who simultaneously evades and exploits the established order in order to ‘get by’, ‘get ahead’ and survive. Filmmakers of la commedia all’italiana such as Mario Monicelli, Dino Risi and Lina Wertmuller, employed this caricature of the wily – yet ultimately harmless – petty crook in their work. They did so not in order to reinforce prejudices of Italians as self-serving and apathetic, but in order to examine what it meant to ‘survive’ 20 years of Fascism and the socio-political turmoil of post-war Italy. Examining how this caricature has historically evolved according to its ever-shifting social milieu illuminates not only certain defining moments of Italian history, but also how this archetype has contributed to popular understandings about Italy’s past and its people.

Italian summary

Il presente saggio ritraccia il percorso dell'archetipo comico italiano, ‘l’opportunista’, e mostra come questo permetta di stabilire dei legami tra alcuni punti nodali della storia italiana moderna. Il personaggio di ‘Arlecchino’, derivato dalle maschere della commedia dell'arte del Quattrocento e del Cinquecento, è un esemplare storico dell'italiano ‘qualunque’ che allo stesso tempo elude e sfrutta l'ordine stabilito per ‘cavarsela’, per ‘andare avanti’ e per sopravvivere. I registi della commedia all'italiana, come Mario Monicelli, Dino Risi e Lina Wertmuller, hanno fatto uso, nel loro lavoro, di questa caricatura dello scaltro – ma sostanzialmente innocuo – furfante di poco conto. Non lo hanno fatto per rafforzare i pregiudizi sugli italiani come individui egocentrici e apatici, ma per esaminare ciò che significava ‘sopravvivere’ a venti anni di fascismo e alle turbolenze socio-politiche dell'Italia del dopoguerra. Analizzare come questo personaggio si sia storicamente evoluto in relazione al contesto sociale in continuo cambiamento non solo chiarifica certi momenti decisivi della storia italiana, ma spiega anche come questo archetipo abbia contribuito alla diffusione di alcune popolari concezioni sugli italiani e sul passato del paese.

Keywords

commedia all’italianaItalian cinemapost-war Italy‘economic miracle’FascismHolocaust
Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Italy , Volume 22 , Issue 3 , August 2017 , pp. 275 - 289
Copyright
© 2017 Association for the Study of Modern Italy 

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