Starring: Toni Servillo, Salvatore Ficarra, Valentino Picone, Luigi lo Cascio
Distributor: Italian Film Festival
Runtime: 108 mins. Reviewed in Sep 2023
Reviewer: Fr Peter Malone msc
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A mainstream audience may find the strangeness of this story difficult to enjoy – and, sometimes, to follow. However, it is a film much for an Italian audience – but also for an audience interested in theatre, the history of theatre, Italian theatre and the playwright and author, Nobel Prize for Literature, Luigi Pirandello.
The setting is 1924, and Pirandello visits his home city Agrigento, Sicily. His nanny from the past has died and he wants to be present for the funeral. But, this is Sicily. There is bureaucracy, mislaid papers, delays – all leading to the presentation of a bribe.
The two men involved in the funeral arrangements and grave digging are comedy duo Salvatore Ficarra and Valentino Picone. Not only do they do the funeral arrangements, they are putting on the play in the local theatre, writing, producing, acting. Pirandello is invited to the performance. There are glimpses of rehearsals, the local amateur actors and their eccentricities, and then the performance. Pirandello is in a box, somewhat detached, but amused. The audience participates, often and loudly. And part of the performance is a satire on the money-grabbing bureaucrat and his relationships, denounced by his wife from the audience.
While the funeral eventually proceeds, Pirandello returns to Rome and draws on the Sicilian experience for his classic play, Six Characters in Search of an Author. The two Sicilians have been invited to Rome, an exciting train expedition, amazed at the city, the theatre, puzzled by the performance. However, the new player has drawn very much on Pirandello’s Sicilian experience and the characters. The play is denounced, booing from the audience, projectiles. However, there is also acclaim for it and it becomes a classic and, in 1934, Pirandello wins the Nobel Prize.
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