Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Introducing Uccellacci e uccellini/The Hawks and the Sparrows

2023; Wayne State University Press; Volume: 64; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/frm.2023.a914984

1559-7989

Nicky Hannan,

Cinema History and Criticism

Introducing Uccellacci e uccellini/The Hawks and the Sparrows Nicky Hannan (bio) Uccellacci e uccellini/The Hawks and the Sparrows (IT, 1966) was Pasolini's fourth narrative feature film and said by the director to be, if not his favorite, then his "most pure" cinematic work.1 It was, he suggests, the first of his films to be a product of cinematographic (rather than figurative) culture.2 As several contributors to this dossier note, the early and mid-1960s, when Pasolini started making films, was a period of great social, cultural, and political change in both Italy and beyond—to which there are many references seeded throughout this film. Some of these are more legible to a contemporary English-speaking audience than others—and I must admit that there was certainly much in this often enigmatically allegorical "ideo-comedy" that left me somewhat confused on first, and even subsequent, viewings.3 I'm not alone in this; as Mino Argentieri wrote at Uccellacci's release in the semi-official journal of the Italian Communist Party, Rinascita, the film is a bewildering pastiche of styles and intercultural references: at the same time, fable, essay, confession, pamphlet, didactic representation, picaresque saga, an abandonment to the joy and magic of spectacle, refined figurative assemblage, mimesis of a stylistic primitivism which crosses cultures, and—why not?—a freewheeling chat among friends meant to leave the references incomprehensible to outsiders. . . .4 I would like to suggest, however, that such bewilderment might be embraced, even celebrated, in this often-riotous caper of a film. [End Page 49] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Italian film poster. Uccellacci seeks to treat important Pasolinian themes—neorealism, Marxism, religion, consumerism—in a light manner, although the director admitted that the end result was perhaps more ideological or philosophical than it was comic. As Pasolini suggested to interviewer Oswald Stack, "I agree it is not very funny, it makes you think more than laugh."5 Certainly, any uncritical enjoyment of the film's comedy is frustrated by a fragmented narrative structure. This fragmentation can be viewed as a kind of skewed realist gesture, which seeks to reflect on contemporary affairs by [End Page 50] resisting teleological or totalizing meaning.6 This is an ethos foreshadowed by the title card, which initiates the film proper. Purporting to be "Succo di un'intervista di Mao a Mr. Edgard Snow" (From an interview of Mao by Mr. Edgard Snow), it reads: "Dove va l'umanità?" "Boh!" ("Where is humanity heading?" "Who knows!").7 This follows on from what must be one of the finest opening credits songs ever committed to film—written by Ennio Morricone and performed by someone whose voice would have been instantly recognizable to Italian audiences, Domenico Modugno, the famous singer of "Nel blu dipinto di blu" (aka "Volare").8 Thereafter, Uccellacci consists of a series of semi-autonomous tableaux that are nevertheless tightly linked both at the thematic level and by the continual presence of our aimlessly wandering, blundering father and son protagonists, played by Totò and Ninetto Davoli: the former a true giant of Italian cinema and the latter making his full cinematic debut. We are introduced to the pair bantering along a dirt road, having set out on foot, ostensibly to collect rent and use it toward paying off a debt—though this is only revealed later and in an oblique fashion. Soon they are joined by a Marxist ideologue who so happens to be a particularly vocal and opinionated crow, and who seeks to offer them intellectual guidance along their way. Together, the trio (perhaps an unholy trinity, as Viano remarks)9 embark on a picaresque journey across the countryside, via a sojourn in medieval Italy, before the corporeal and consumerist concerns of father and son finally win out against the crow's more cerebral tutelage. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 2. The aimlessly wandering, blundering father (Totò) and son (Ninetto Davoli). [End Page 51] Uccellacci reflects upon what Pasolini referred to as a decline, even a crisis, of ideology.10 This was a crisis that would find expression two years later in the international protest movements of 1968, but...