{"id":3688,"date":"2017-05-25T20:25:46","date_gmt":"2017-05-25T20:25:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/?p=3688"},"modified":"2017-05-25T20:29:20","modified_gmt":"2017-05-25T20:29:20","slug":"elio-petri-good-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/reviews\/elio-petri-good-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Elio Petri: Good News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Aka Buone notizie (It)
\nItaly
\n1979
\nProduced by Elio Petri and Giancarlo Giannini for Medusa Distribuzione
\nDirector: Elio Petri
\nStory & screenplay: Elio Petri
\nCinematography:\u00a0 Tonino Nardi {Eastmancolour}
\nMusic: Ennio Morricone
\nEditor: Ruggero Mastroianni
\nArt director: Amedeo Fago, Franco Velchi Pellechia
\nCameraman: Ubaldo Terzano
\nRelease dates & running times: Italy (22\/11\/79, 107 mins)
\nFilmed: Incir-De Paolis Studios
\nItalian takings: 379.000.000
\nCast: Giancarlo Giannini (the man<\/i>), Paolo Bonacelli (Gualtiero Milano<\/i>), Angela Molina (Fedora<\/i>), Aurore Cl\u00e9ment (Ada Milano<\/i>), Ombretta Colli (\u2018Tignetti\u2019<\/i>), Ninetto Davoli (office porter<\/i>), Ritza Brown (Benedetta<\/i>), Franco Javarone (a police commissioner<\/i>), Filippo De Gara (the syndicate representative<\/i>), Giovanni Baghino.<\/p>\n

\"Buone<\/a>
Buone notizie<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After an adaptation of Sartre\u2019s Dirty Hands<\/b> (La mani sporche<\/i>)<\/b> for TV in 1978, Petri made his last film the following year.\u00a0 Good News<\/b> was another science fiction film, although anyone expecting more of the out-and-out freakiness that so informed Todo modo<\/b> is likely to be surprised.\u00a0 It\u2019s actually a small scale, almost intimate, film that concentrates upon the relationships of the central characters.\u00a0 As such it could possibly be described as a more adult work; it deals with real emotions rather than abstract concepts or ideals.\u00a0 It is certainly far more approachable than anything he had produced during the previous decade, although in some ways that does act to its detriment.<\/p>\n

It is also instructive for a couple of other reasons.\u00a0 For one thing, the humour is much more explicit than had previously been the case.\u00a0 Petri\u2019s films are generally funny, even the bleak stuff such as The <\/b>Working Class Goes to Heaven<\/b>, but this really becomes clear when you see him tackling a virtually \u2018straight\u2019 \u2013 albeit left-of-centre – comedy.\u00a0 For another thing, the suspicion that he tends to drop intangible elements into his films for aesthetic, as much as philosophical, reasons seems to be strengthened here.\u00a0\u00a0 There is absolutely no explanation given for the strange dystopia that is the future here, it is merely a backdrop which has no message, but appeals to the director\u2019s Dadaist sensibilities.\u00a0 The parallels with the work of JG Ballard – in which tormented people engage in fractious, obsessional liaisons in topsy-turvy environments – comes to mind.<\/p>\n

\u2018The man\u2019 (Giancarlo Giannini) has a job for RAI (the Italian television network) that involves watching the news in a room full of televisions all day (the \u2018news\u2019 in fact being largely clips from Mondo Movies and Prisoners of the Cannibal God<\/b>!)\u00a0 Society seems to be breaking down: the screens show a succession of riots, murders, epidemics and car crashes.\u00a0 The only interruptions are frequent bomb scares that cause everyone to scurry off to the park, romp, shag, play football and pick their way among the litter and corpses that seem to be everywhere.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, his home life is a mess.\u00a0 He continually argues with his wife, Fedora (Angela Molina), and not only because she\u2019s named after a type of hat.\u00a0 Their relationship seems to have ossified.\u00a0 He is crude and shallow, swears a lot and lusts after her friends and his workmates.\u00a0 She pedals frantically on her exercise bike.<\/p>\n

Into this depressing existence comes Gualtiero (Paolo Bonacelli), an old school chum who he hasn\u2019t seen for fifteen years.\u00a0 Gualtiero claims that he is being hunted down by a group of unknown people who are planning to kill him for some unclear reason.\u00a0 He also insists that \u2018the man\u2019 is his best friend, something that would make any reasonable person run a mile.\u00a0 The man isn\u2019t reasonable, though, and despite suspecting that his \u2018friend\u2019 is a paranoid nutter he becomes increasingly involved with his delusions; not least because he fancies Gualtiero\u2019s nymphomaniac wife, Ada (Aurora Clement).\u00a0 Of course, murder isn\u2019t too far away.<\/p>\n

Despite the serious sounding synopsis, this is a very light-hearted affair that completely plays down the murder mystery side of things.\u00a0 At times (not least the sequence which finds Giannini playing hide and seek with his topless wife and her equally topless female friend) it comes across as a standard lowbrow comedy.\u00a0 The comic interplay and dialogue, especially between Giannini (a macho, insecure man with a fear of dying) and Molina (a confident, apparently self-possessed woman), is very well done indeed.\u00a0 Bonacelli gives a winning performance, as does Franco Javarone as a laconic, sarcastic police inspector.\u00a0 Pasolini favourite Ninetto Davoli turns up briefly, sporting a frankly shocking Kevin Keegan hairdo.<\/p>\n

\"Giancarlo<\/a>
Giancarlo Giannini in Buone notizie<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Of course, it wouldn\u2019t be a Petri film without a small quota of deranged touches.\u00a0 These include the aforementioned rubbish that\u2019s absolutely everywhere, the strangest park known to mankind (Hampstead Heath on acid) and Ada\u2019s predilection for singing \u2018Frere Jacques\u2019 when she makes love.\u00a0 There\u2019s also an ending that comes straight out of leftfield and acts as a veritable flicked finger to anyone who may have thought that the director was getting sensible in his old age.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also one or two of those jaw-droppingly well composed moments that you come to expect from Petri.\u00a0 The scene in which a demented Bonacelli forces Giannini to waltz around his room whilst the curtains blow and the sun sets is extremely striking, and probably as memorable as anything to come from this eminent director\u2019s canon.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, Good News<\/b> proved to be Petri\u2019s last film: he died of cancer in 1982, at the age of just 53.\u00a0 Despite many of his films being successful upon initial release, his work seemed to fall out of fashion in the 80s, with very little of it receiving any kind of proper release on video.\u00a0 This is a shame as, although very much of their time, his films are of sufficient quality and entertainment value to easily stand up to repeated viewing today.\u00a0 In recent years, however, there have been some attempts at re-evaluation, with Petri seasons playing restored prints of his films in rep theatres around the world.\u00a0 Hopefully, some enterprising distributor will take the initiative of putting the likes of Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion<\/b>, Todo modo<\/b> and We Still Kill the Old Way<\/b> out on DVD, where they can hopefully be discovered by a whole new generation of viewers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Good News was another science fiction film for Elio Petri, although anyone expecting more of the out-and-out freakiness that so informed Todo modo is likely to be surprised. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4604,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1212,8],"tags":[1146,68,1145,1143,1144],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3688"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3688"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3688\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4606,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3688\/revisions\/4606"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}