Snippets from the Italian Scene
Don Camillo's Italy: Things have
Changed!
Mention Italian literature and most people think Dante or Boccaccio, while those who enjoy prose may think of Manzoni instead; he was a delightful stylist and had a way with similes that few have equaled: "Giving him a look of the sort one might give a dentist who's reaching into one's mouth with pincers to extract a bad tooth..." There are of course many other writers, and few were as successful as at capturing the flavor of an epoch as Guerreschi was with his Don Camillo stories, which feature the never-ending battles between Don Camillo, the indomitable parish priest, and Peppone, the Communist town mayor. An irresistible force versus an immovable object, and the results are delightful.
They're also supremely suited to the silver screen, so it comes as no surprise that Rizzoli decided to do a series with Gino Cervi as Peppone, Fernandel as Don Camillo, and Guerreschi providing Jesus's voice. The first came out in 1952, followed by several more, and they're now shown on Italian TV at least once a year. Small wonder; they're great fun: The communists call the conservatives reactionaries, while the conservatives accuse the communists of having a direct line to Stalin, and though the two factions are in constant battle they respect each other as individuals, and when the going gets rough, they all pull together. The films, in other words, mimic the books very well. They also open a window, as it were, onto an Italy that no longer exists: No antennas on the roofs or TVs in the houses, hardly any cars or motorcycles (lots of bicycles), and lots of packed earth, even in the town square. Everybody walks, and when the town notables go someplace, on foot, they have a following, also on foot. Phones are enjoyed by some but not all, and radios are enough of a rarity that people still set their watches by the bell in the town square. And the people are dressed in work clothes of a sort one now only sees out in the country, worn by members of the elder generation, who are also the only people whose accents (Romagnolo in this case) are still as thick as those of the characters in the film -- 50 years of TV has diluted the accents of the younger generations considerably.
Contrast this with modern Italy, where asphalt has flowed throughout almost every town, with cars, motorcycles, and scooters stuffed wherever one can find a place, people ride to the corner store, rooftops bristle with antennas and satellite dishes, most everyone has a cell phone so family members and friends can keep track of each other as they zip around, everybody's dressed according to the latest fashion, and the kids all speak the same jargon from one end of the country to the other. It hardly seems the same place.
Is it better? Certainly in terms of creature comforts; My father ran an excavation in the town of Murlo, south of Siena. The first year (1966) there was water, but you had to pump it from the well in the town square -- if you wanted hot you heated it on the stove -- and there were three privies for the whole town; as you might expect there were chamber pots. The phone and the TV were both in the bar, which was about a mile down the road in the neighboring village. By 1970 there was running water, from a spigot outside the gate, there were some television sets, and there were bath rooms in the houses -- but in many one flushed by pouring a bucket of water into the bowl. By 1975 all of the houses had plumbing, and since then the majority have been bought by Sienese who have transformed them into pleasant country homes, often by removing everything within the outer walls rebuilding from scratch. They have air conditioning, heating, and all the other comforts one could ask for.
Murlo was (and is) a tiny hilltop town. What about larger cities? Even the older, poorer neighborhoods did have water, electricity, and plumbing by the 1950s. But this doesn't mean things were rosy; the apartment my parents bought in a working-class neighborhood in Florence had a toilet but no shower or tub, and if you wanted to wash your hands you went to the kitchen sink. Nor did it have hot water until my parents installed it (they also put in a shower; the previous residents instead used the bagni comunali, or communal baths). Things were similar in the other apartments on our street, and this explains why those who could moved into newer housing with better amenities during the 60s and 70s; the landlords subsequently rented their vacant properties to students and foreigners, creating an extremely cosmopolitan neighborhood. And now new people are buying into the area and renovating.
So, we're doing much better on the comfort scale. But what about popular spirit? Depends where you happen to be. In the sprawling housing tracts that surround major cities things can be very grim -- perhaps not on a par with the ravaged inner city neighborhoods in the US, but bad enough that you won't want to visit alone, especially at night. But smaller towns and the more traditional neighborhoods of larger cities have changed less; people still look out for each other, and do step in to give a hand when it's needed, while volunteer organizations are quite effective in providing short and long term aid of all kinds. Both Don Camillo and Peppone would be pleased.
A presto,
Kyle Phillips
Webweaver, About Italian Cuisine
Thoughts on Italian food
On Italian wine
On
living in Italy
Send a card from the
Italian Cuisine Post Office, or browse the photos!
