Books, Arts & Manners: Obnubilated

THE German idiom for abject stupidity, “dumm wie die Nacht” (stupid as the night), has no American equivalent. Being good, democratic egalitarians, we have no paradigm for stupidity. We can be honest as the day is long, quick as a bunny, bright as a button—but stupid as . . . what? Let me propose “stupid as a Hollywood adaptation of a foreign film.” Stupider than that would be hard to find. Take A Walk in the Clouds, a piece of lifeless plastic made from an intensely human Italian film of 1942, which ushered in a new realism in contrast to Fascist cinema.

Alessandro Blasetti’s Quattro passi fra le nuvole (Four Steps in the Clouds) was written by four gifted men: Cesare Zavattini, the legendary scenarist of, among other things, all of De Sica’s masterpieces; Piero Tellini, who later worked with Fellini; Giuseppe Amato, himself an able director and producer; and Aldo de Benedetti, a gifted popular playwright. Blasetti was a fine and varied filmmaker who, in Pierre Leprohon’s words, “survived the Fascist era thanks to his wit and irreverence, without sinking to propaganda films.” This fountainhead film of neorealism is the story of Maria, a pretty young woman impregnated and deserted by her lover, and now returning by bus to the family farm. She is terrified of her father, and tearfully confides in the sympathetic fellow sitting next to her: Paolo, a married traveling salesman. As Georges Sadoul summarizes it, “She persuades Paolo to go with her . . . and pretend to her father that he is her husband. He does so, hoping to leave in a few hours. But he becomes so lost in his surroundings that he spends the night. Maria’s parents discover the truth but, under Paolo’s eloquent pleading, forgive her, and Paolo returns to his wife and children.”

JS

About the Author

John Simon

Featured Tags

THE German idiom for abject stupidity, “dumm wie die Nacht” (stupid as the night), has no American equivalent. Being good, democratic egalitarians, we have no paradigm for stupidity. We can be honest as the day is long, quick as a bunny, bright as a button—but stupid as . . . what? Let me propose “stupid as a Hollywood adaptation of a foreign film.” Stupider than that would be hard to find. Take A Walk in the Clouds, a piece of lifeless plastic made from an intensely human Italian film of 1942, which ushered in a new realism in contrast to Fascist cinema.

Alessandro Blasetti’s Quattro passi fra le nuvole (Four Steps in the Clouds) was written by four gifted men: Cesare Zavattini, the legendary scenarist of, among other things, all of De Sica’s masterpieces; Piero Tellini, who later worked with Fellini; Giuseppe Amato, himself an able director and producer; and Aldo de Benedetti, a gifted popular playwright. Blasetti was a fine and varied filmmaker who, in Pierre Leprohon’s words, “survived the Fascist era thanks to his wit and irreverence, without sinking to propaganda films.” This fountainhead film of neorealism is the story of Maria, a pretty young woman impregnated and deserted by her lover, and now returning by bus to the family farm. She is terrified of her father, and tearfully confides in the sympathetic fellow sitting next to her: Paolo, a married traveling salesman. As Georges Sadoul summarizes it, “She persuades Paolo to go with her . . . and pretend to her father that he is her husband. He does so, hoping to leave in a few hours. But he becomes so lost in his surroundings that he spends the night. Maria’s parents discover the truth but, under Paolo’s eloquent pleading, forgive her, and Paolo returns to his wife and children.”