Italian Comedy
An Italian film-maker named Mario Monicelli believed that most Italian comedies had downbeat endings. This is true, even if the ending is downbeat in a way which is comedic instead of dramatic. Even William Shakespeare borrowed heavily from Italian plays when it came to the structure allowing for content to straddle between light and dark. When Bruce Lee made The Way of the Dragon, he may have been thinking on the lines of Italian cinema. People often talk about him being an aficionado of Japanese cinema, but Bruce had read a lot of film books to prepare for his directorial debut. Who’s to say that he didn’t learn a thing or two about Italian cinema? Ng See-Yuen must have picked up on something because Kidnap in Rome is a comedy that is harrowing, and it even has a bittersweet ending.
Italian comedy is essentially tragedy with a humorous viewpoint. When I was young, I assumed that Lemon Popsicle was an Italian movie when it was aired on UK’s Bravo channel. It’s telling that it is the most popular Israeli movie to be released in Italy. Mario Monicelli’s belief is that there are six topics which always makes people laugh at comedies - death, hunger, illness, misery, poverty and senectitude. In The Way of the Dragon, hunger figures heavily in the opening reel. Mario Monicelli’s other belief is that the more dramatic that something is, the more material that there will be for irony. In The Way of the Dragon, it’s ironic that the weakest character is depicted as literally stabbing people in the back.
Hong Kong cinema owes a debt to Italian cinema with the sheer contrast of tone. One need to look no further than a 1978 movie called Being Twenty. It starts off all fun and games before veering into extreme tragedy towards the end of the third act. When Hong Kong cinema “officially” ended its golden era in 1997, this was the same year when a classic Italian film had been released. Titled Life is Beautiful, it was a huge success commercially and critically despite the topic being the Holocaust. This is because the humour comes from how a father uses his creativity to protect his son from the atrocities of internment in a concentration camp. The Hong Kong equivalent could have been something like the Japanese invading China, but that would have been tempting fate after Hong Kong was handed back to China after being under British rule (not the joyous occasion that you would think it would be).
With some of the best horror films coming out of Italy, you would think that the best horror comedies come from there as well, but it’s 50–50 at best. Before Shaun of the Dead got recognition for being a rom zom com, a British actor could already be seen in such a movie albeit in an Italian setting. Rupert Everett is the titular Cemetery Man who searches for love while defending himself from zombies who emerge from his cemetary. The Exorcist: Italian Style could have been a scathing satire had it not been for a censorship rule that restricted mentions of the secular world, which sort of defeats the point. More liberated is Frankenstein: Italian Style (1975) which is an X-rated rip-off of Young Frankenstein (1974) where the creature is aroused. Ten years later, an irony worthy of Italian cinema transpired when The Incinerator (1984) appeared to have at least some minor influence on The Re-Animator (1985) as far as being a horror comedy about a scientist who plays with life and death. As for how such an influence could manage to occur, the Italian film was screened at the 41st Venice Film Festival.
Even Troll 2 could be regarded as a comedy. Any film that comes to life because a person wants to express their frustration with something is automatically social commentary. It becomes satire depending on how you choose to write it. You would have to be an idiot (if not the world’s biggest imbecile) if you think that Claudio Fragasso was trying to make a serious horror film about vegetarian goblins. Don’t forget that comedy is best played with a straight face rather than people who broadly act as if they are in on the joke. That said, there is something to be said about making Italian films less serious after the fact. The aforementioned Being Twenty was heavily edited (re-arranged even) and rewritten in the dubbing when it was released in America. Frankenstein `80 (1972) was a rape-themed slasher take on Frankenstein’s monster where there were attempts to inject humour in the dubbing.
My favourite film-maker is a Chinese genius named Wong Jing. He doesn’t make Italian films but he has said, many times, that he often steals from Italian comedy. It could be said that Italian comedy is the spiritual life force of Hong Kong comedy. Sammo Hung’s Lucky Stars franchise are cartoony versions of the fifties Italian neo-realism comedies. Those comedies were about the survival skills of thieves and lower class people, but Sammo’s best tragicomedies were ones written with and without Wong Jing. The Victim, not written by Jing, starts off ominously, continues to be a comedy, gets darker (complete with an attempted rape), and has a light ending which ruins what the film had built up. The ending, involving three graves, makes for a neat bookend to the first reel where Sammo defeats three martial artists without killing them. In The Prodigal Son, Yuen Biao’s character faces tragedy and farce in equal measure but never really matures in spite of his physical growth.
