So geht's im Leben

It's an anthology film, based on four stories by Luigi Pirandello. In the first, an obnoxious landowner fights with a man who seals himself in a jar he is repairing; the second has Myriam Bru as the penniless single mother of a baby; the third, directed and written by Zampi, features Totò as a man trying to make a living as a professional jinx; the fourth stars Aldo Fabrizi as a teacher in a too tight suit whose student, Lucia Bosès marriage seems to be doomed when her mother drops dead on seeing her in her wedding gown.

Anthology movies often suffer because of repetition of themes. Here, all four shorts stand out, in part because each is directed and written by a different team. All except the second have a lot of earthy humor. Totò, as always, is a delight, and with a role that is more than mugging shows himself to be a fine actor, too. It is Fabrizi who gives the standout performance, a bear of a man, simultaneously ridiculous, compassionate, wise and commanding.

This four-episode film, each part by a different Italian director, is based on stories in Luigi Pirandello's "Novelle per un anno" much as the 1985 Taviani Brothers' film KAOS would be. The first episode, "La giara" (The Jar) is the only story that appears in both films. It is about a wealthy Sicilian landowner's large terra-cotta olive vat that is broken and must be repaired by a jar-repairer who becomes trapped inside it. "Il ventaglio" (The Fan) is about a young mother who begs money in order to be able to buy herself a fan. The third episode is "La patente" (The License, or as it was called in the U.S.A. "The Jinx"). It is an amusing little anecdote about a man who wants to get certified as a jinx so that he can make money from his special abilities of warding off the evil eye.The character is played by the marvelous Italian comic Toto'. The last episode is is "Marsina stretta" (Tight Vest) with a corpulent Aldo Fabrizi needing a tuxedo to wear to a wedding and unable to fully fit into a borrowed one. The episodes were directed respectively by Giorgio Pastina, Mario Soldati, Luigi Zampa, and Aldo Fabrizi.

An adaptation of four short stories by Luigi Pirandello, a Sicilian writer and playwright, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature and who died in 1936.

Pirandello's literary universe is poetically realistic, in that it takes his life experiences, particularly his rural origins in remote Sicily, and transforms them into poems about life, where the virtues and spirit of the characters rise far above the precariousness and humility of their origins and experiences.

For this very reason, this is a bittersweet film. Pirandello has a sense of irony and his comedy is intelligent and full of undeniable social criticism. The episode La Giara (which has also had other more recent film adaptations) is a good example of this. La Patente is also a delightfully ironic tale, with Totó playing one of the most memorable roles of his career. In the episodes Il Ventaglino and Marsina Stretta, it is the drama that stands out, despite the evident social awareness of the text and even the magnificent interpretation by Aldo Fabrizzi.

In short, it's tales by Pirandello, literature of the highest order. Therefore, if announced as a comedy by Totó and Aldo Fabrizzi, even more so with the young and beautiful Lucia Bosé in the cast, it is normal that they disappoint viewers who want to watch a farce, in the style of Guardie e Ladri, with all the social background that this beautiful film by Steno and Mario Monicelli does not fail to display.

The point is, this movie is not a farce. Nor a comedy, in the true sense of the term. It is a set of four short stories, written at the beginning of the 20th century (or at the end of the 19th century), in which the author paints a critical portrait of the society of his time. Two of them in a sarcastic comedy tone and the other two in a costume drama tone.

The set is of quality, although it is certainly not the best example of a cinematic adaptation of Pirandello's literary universe. It has some lightness and the fact that there are four shorts, together in one film, also doesn't help to excite the viewer. Although it is a traditional practice in Italian cinema, I think that something is always lost in these patchworks that bring together several short films, with different stories, directors and actors, into a single feature film, distributed as such. There are always better and worse stories, happier and worse adaptations, richer and poorer scripts. The result, even when positive, as is the case, is always unbalanced, disjointed, light.

A work that has more than it seems, deserving a serious viewing, far beyond what it promises, a simple comedy with Totó and Aldo Fabrizzi.