The Italian film selected by the academy in the five in the running for the statuette
NoonJanuary 28, 2023 – 11:02
The story contained in a letter reproposed in the correspondence between the writer and the critic and published by the Neapolitan publishing house Liguori. Presentation at the Pan with double screening of the film Le pupilleby Alice Rohrwacher who will be present with Goffredo Fofi
Of Natasha Party
Cos a small film of 37 minutes, The pupilsby Alice Rohrwacher, produced by Disney+, is taking Italy to the Oscars this year. He wrote about it immediately after the announcement of the Academy. And reference was also made to the genesis of the medium-length film inspired by a letter from Elsa Morante to Goffredo Fofi, the critic and essayist who writes the column every Sunday in this newspaper High noon. The two interlocutors, by imaginary coordinates, make the pupils turn over Naples and its surroundings. Both because the sender and recipient are attributable to the cultural register of Campania – two reasons for all: Arthur’s Islandfor Morante, almost a Homeric formulary of Procida and the feat of Proletarian children’s canteen for Fofi – both because their correspondence, revealing a historical and intellectual climate as well as a friendship studded with skirmishes, was published by the well-deserving Neapolitan label Liguori with the titleDear Elsa. Story of a friendship. And it is Maria Liguori with Laterzagor and the Municipality of Naples who has organized a meeting with Fofi and Rohrwacher for today at the Pan, precious because, as one might say, she is on the spot and, in addition to the presentation of the volume, offers a vision of the film in two replies at 5 and 6.30 pm.
The letter
But what was written in the letter that Elsa Morante wrote to Fofi from Rome on 21 December 1971?
Dear Goffredo – the author was then fifty-nine years old – with this letter of mine I send you my best wishes for Christmas and the New Year, and I will tell you, for the occasion, a true fact (true at least in part, and up to a certain point) . And it tells the story that, reinterpreted in a feminine way, offers the plot of the film that convinced the Academy. The story, as is well understood from the nourishing reading of all the correspondence, for Morante a sort of apologue to offer the dearest friend of many intellectual disputes, an interpretative hypothesis of good and evil, good and bad and, ultimately analysis of their different ideological positions which in other letters the writer summarizes as Mao and Tao. The letter had appeared in the past in the magazine Linea d’ombra and in the large collection edited for Einaudi by the nephew of the writer Daniele Morante.
Christmas in the convent
It happened more than 50 years ago – he continues in the letter – during the holiday season. In a college of priests (or friars) about ten boys were forced, for family reasons, to spend the holidays inside. The lunch of the main holiday (Christmas day) was – relatively – lavish. The list was: Fettuccine – Lamb with potatoes – 1 pear. At the end, a magnificent cake (zuppa Inglese) is brought to the table. And this is the bone of contention that becomes a dramaturgical pivot to overturn the consequential nature of things: like the biblical apple, it offers an opportunity for disobedience but also becomes an instrument of secular “providence” or social justice.
The blackmail of the Prior
The story continues: The Prior gets up and says: “Children, on this holy day I invite you to think of so many poor children who don’t even have bread: and in the thought of these poor people, I invite you to offer a foil to Jesus. Each of those gathered here at this table gets, or would get, a slice of the cake you see here. Well, here’s my proposal: give up your slice of the cake, offering it as a foil to Jesus. All the good children who agree on this foil will now leave the table. All bow their heads to blackmail except one, Egidio who blushes, and finds no other answer: “I’m bad”. “Ah”, says the very embittered Prior. And reluctantly, forced to cut a slice of cake and put it on Egidio’s plate. Who remains alone at the table with his slice of trifle. Which he also finds disgusting and throws it at a dog.
The fat abbess
The screwed prior: Look at that cake that is no longer whole, that is to say, missing a slice, which hurts his nerves doubly. First reason: because it is a material symbol that in his flock there is a lost sheep, an individualist, indeed an aristocrat and, let’s face it, a reactionary: EGIDIO! And second reason: for political reasons, since, as often happens, a policy was also hidden behind that collective foil; that is, the Prior promised himself to offer that cake, renounced by the boys, to the very powerful, very fat and very greedy abbess of a convent in the district, who rightly would have given him credit for it.
The moral of Elsa Morante
But, there’s always a but, the chimney sweep comes by to collect the small annual salary from the prelate. And these, to get rid of his defeat in the form of a cake, place the cake in the hands of the little boy who will share it with poor friends like him.
And here is the heart of the apologue offered to Fofi: MORAL: – The ways of the lord are infinite or – All roads lead to Rome. I don’t know. The story, in any case (up to a certain point) true. I didn’t tell you a lie. It happened more than 50 years ago (exactly, if I’m not mistaken, 53 or 54 years ago). NB (instead of the chimney sweep, perhaps there was the milkman’s boy – or other minor underclass).
The power of a story is also infinite which, nestled in a precious twentieth-century correspondence, unearthed and filtered by the eyes of a good director, is now sailing towards the Oscars.
January 28, 2023 | 11:02
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