An unrestrained phantasmagoria from Italy’s Carmelo Bene, one of the world’s most defiantly idiosyncratic filmmakers. It may not be his best work, but it is quite representative: vulgar, hysterical and like nothing else.
The Package
The multi-talented Carmelo Bene seems better known, at
least in his native Italy, for his novels and plays than for his
filmmaking. That’s a shame, as his five features (the last of
which was made, sadly, in 1975) rank among the most fascinating
and distinctive ever made. Of course, it’s doubtful that Bene’s
peculiar brand of cine-lunacy would ever find financial backing
nowadays, much less a receptive audience.
Made in 1969, CAPRICCI, Bene’s second film, is, like
its predecessor NOSTRA SIGNORELLA DEI TURCHI (OUR LADY OF THE
TURKS), a hallucinatory, non-linear, and ultimately apocalyptic
look at life in “modern” Italy. Unlike Bene’s best work (NOSTRA)
and the mind-roasting
SALOME (which may just be the craziest
movie I’ve ever seen), CAPRICCI has not dated particularly well.
The violent series of car accidents that climax the film, for
instance, might have seemed shocking back in ‘69, but nowadays
they play like slow outtakes from NASH BRIDGES. Likewise, a
“scandalous” look at a transvestite love affair feels contrived
and plain silly. That’s NOT to say CAPRICCI isn’t worth seeing.
It is, after all, utterly unique, and a fascinating time capsule
showing just how weird movies got in the late 60’s, arguably the
cinema's last “golden age.”
The Story
CAPRICCI has no "story" to speak of, just a series of
surreal vignettes. It begins with a dissatisfied Communist
(played by Bene himself) getting into a dual with a superior;
they fight with, appropriately enough, a hammer and a sickle. An
old man lies in bed beside an alluring naked women; making noisy
rasping sounds, he tries to have sex with her (and has about as
much success as Bene did in NOSTRA SIGNORELLA DIE TURCHI, where
he tried to screw wearing a suit of armor!). Bene and a lady
companion make out furiously in the back of a smashed-up car
(intimations here of CRASH). And so on.
The Direction
The Italian novelist Alberto Moravia has described
Carmelo Bene’s work as “desecration by disassociation, pushed
beyond the point of schizophrenic delirium.” I’ll buy that.
Disorientation seems to be Bene’s primary goal, evinced in the
fast, jagged cutting and his preference for waving things in
front of the camera lens. Scenes are more often than not
structured around their visual essence, with logic and
storytelling being the last thing on the director’s mind–Bene’s
pictorial sense is so striking he gets away with an approach
that most Hollywood directors would love to fall back on (but
can’t). Add to that a preference (evident in all his films) for
sentimental arias and you’ve got one bizarrely impressionistic
film, one that must simply be experienced rather than
“understood.”
Vital Statistics
CAPRICCI
Director: Carmelo Bene
Screenwriter: Carmelo Bene
Cinematography: Maurizio Centini
Editor: Mauro Contini
Cast: Carmelo Bene, Ornella Ferrari, Anne Wiazemsky, Poldo
Bendandi, Piero Vida