UNA BREVE STAGIONE (BRIEF SEASON)

Italy, 1969, 95 minutes, Colour.
Christopher Jones, Pia Degermark.
Directed by Renato Castellani.

A Brief Season is a romantic story about doomed lovers – with echoes of Romeo and Juliet. It was directed by Renato Castellani, a director in Italy from the late 30s and during World War Two, best remembered for his epic of 1941, The Iron Crown, and his 1954 adaptation of Romeo and Juliet with Laurence Harvey.

The setting is Rome in the 60s, a young man and his relationship with a girlfriend, told with a variety of flashbacks to illustrate their characters, the plight of the young man in jail, the need for escape, the idyll between the two before their deaths. Christopher Jones was popular briefly at this time, making his mark in David Lean’s Ryan’s daughter. Pia Degermark was also popular especially as starring in the title role of Elvira Madigan.

1. For what audience was this film made? It was not particularly popular. Why? Impact for American audiences, Italians? For other audiences?

2. The dramatic importance of the structure: the mysterious opening, the consequent puzzle, the lining up of sympathies for Johnny and Louisa, the growing number of flashbacks, their interlocking, the flashbacks as a revelation of memory and not chronological order? How did the audience grow in understanding and sympathy of the two characters, what had happened, their predicament, their future? How different would the film have been if the events were presented merely chronologically?

3. The basic structure of the film in the incidents shown: Johnny's arrest, escape, the death of the policeman, the escape from Rome, the final week? how was this idyll a ‘brief season’? As explained by the characters? The emphasis of the title?

4. The Roman settings, the Italian background? An American in Rome, a Swedish family in Rome? Strangers in a strange city, learning to be at home in Rome? The streets of Rome, the F.A.O. building, the Stock Exchange? The atmosphere of the prison, the hotels? The countryside, the country town and its hotel? The seasons and their use? How real did the plot and the characters seem? How unreal? The stylised presentation? How real were the events for the characters, for us?

5. The quality of the relationship between Johnny and Louisa at the end? Louisa's farewell to her mother, the intensity of her helping Johnny, the evening in the hotel brothel? Johnny's desperation? The build-up of the week? Johnny’s dependence on Louisa? Her giving herself completely to him? When did they plan their deaths?

6. The origins of their relationship: the humour and the forwardness of the TV play, Johnny's directing Louisa with her parking? The exchange of friendship, their growing in love? Going, to the Stock Exchange and Johnny's dramatization of his future? Louisa and her job? Their going to the room to make love? The garishness of the room, the effect on each of them, the beginning, of their love?

7. The crisis and Johnny's desperation? The importance of his explanation of what he had done? The drama of the arrest, Louisa’s helplessness and help?

8. The importance of the repetition of the arrest sequence and the audience knowing more about it? The effect on Johnny of prison, the prospect of the length of time, Louisa’s visit and its impact?

9. The pressure on Johnny to escape? The repetition of the prison sequence, of the escape and the death sequence in the car? Audience sympathy of antipathy because of the death?

10. How did audience sympathy change throughout the film, was there a shifting judgement about the behaviour of Johnny and Louisa?

11. The build-up of the drive into the country, the night in the countryside, the crashing of the car and the finding of the town? The romanticism of the week together, their shopping, love? The overtones of Romeo and Juliet and the doomed lovers?

12. The preparation for their deaths? The discovery of their identity, the police coming, a mutual shooting, after their declaration to each other? The high angled shot showing the final tableau? Whata was the audience left with?

13. The film as a romantic presentation of love, relationships between men and women, justice and law, violence, the consequence of mistakes?