Inside the Historical Film by Bruno Ramirez

Author:Bruno Ramirez
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MQUP

4.6 | Marina Orsini as Sara in Il Duce Canadese (Photo by Céline Lalonde. Courtesy of Ciné Télé Action Inc.)

In and of itself, this household provides a social microcosm of the larger Italian community, where the search for stability and harmony is constantly threatened by economic insecurity, intergenerational conflict, gender dynamics, and, increasingly, the clash of opposing stances toward the local fascist agenda.

At the same time, by their normal daily activities, each one of these characters leads us into a variety of milieus that, all together, shed light on the larger universe of the Italian community. For instance, Mario’s pursuit of his musical vocation and his participation in the musical band takes us into the world of youth leisure, where courtship, personal aspirations, and family obligations are constantly interwoven. As the main person who attends to the bakery shop, Sara brings us in contact with a variety of customers, which sheds light on relations among women, especially after the men are taken to internment camps. As for Angelo, the head of the clan and the baker, his concern with the bakery’s survival is paramount, and this leads him to interact with pro-fascist associations in the hope of obtaining supplier contracts. Turi spends much of his time with fellow retirees in various leisure activities but most frequently at the local Italian café where the men apply their ancestral wisdom to discuss community and political affairs, often in fierce comic-dramatic arguments and shouting matches. This still leaves him time to court a French Canadian widow.

Mommo, Sara’s intellectually disabled brother and the “duce” of the title, calls for a special comment, for he is the only character in my story that grew entirely out of my imagination. While purely invented, the character did not originate from nothingness, however. Rather, he rested on personal memories from my growing up in Italy as well as on literature. I had always been fascinated by the figure of the village idiot and by the particular place he holds in a community. However much he may be the object of derision or amusement, in the end few co-villagers would deny him the affection reserved to “one of ours.” I wanted Mommo to be a village idiot transposed into the urban village that was Montreal’s Little Italy during the 1930s. He is well looked after when not sheltered by his family, in particular by his father Turi and his nephew Mario. But he is also as much part of the community’s public space, and, like most village idiots, his presence doesn’t go unnoticed on the street, in cafés, playgrounds, or at religious and civic events.

Though Mommo lives in his own peculiar mental universe, he is far from invulnerable to the visual and verbal propaganda that is displayed around him – much of it aimed at promoting the public cult of the duce within the community. In trying obsessively to imitate some of the zealous local fascists through awkward gestures and chanting of slogans, his display of patriotic fervour takes

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.