BREAD AND CHOCOLATE
Italy, 1974, 109 minutes, Colour.
Nino Manfredi, Anna Karina, Johnny Dorelli.
Directed by Franco Brusati.
Bread and Chocolate is an entertaining and interesting Italian film. Director and star Nino Manfredi collaborated on the screenplay which takes a warm but serious look at the Italian workers who live outside Italy. Switzerland is the scene for the film and the Italians take a critical look at the plight of the Italian workers in that country and the Swiss reaction to them. The film has a lot to say about the Italian ethos and the humiliation for the Italian men trying to get jobs and maintain a livelihood for themselves and for their families back home. The screen play is episodic and there is a variety of moods in the film, some very funny and some sad. There is also a lot of satire on Italians. Anna Karina has a very attractive role as a Greek migrant in Switzerland. Entertaining but also valuable social comment.
1. An appealing film: human, social, Italian?
2. The Italian and Swiss background? Swiss locations in their beauty, coldness? The comparisons with Italy? The contribution of the score: classical music, Italian songs?
3. The structure of the film: the focus on Nino and the episodes in his life in Switzerland? The cumulative effect of the episodes? The various crises punctuating his experience? The interplay of each episode on the other? The impact of his needs, the social situation, the need for human sympathy building up to the climax?
4. Nino Manfredi's performance as Nino? Comic and dramatic skills? As a man, a worker, a family man (and the importance of the talkback to the photos of his family and all that that signified, the tearing up of the photos and pasting them together, the photo coming apart in the bath in his encounter with Elena)? The Italian worker and migrant? Nino as representing the Italian male abroad? Audience understanding for his situation, sympathy?
5. The world of the Italian migrants, the reasons for their leaving Italy, the impact of Switzerland, their seeing it as cold and hard, their yearning for sea and sun, their continually singing (and the ironic dampening effect this had on Nino)? Money, working conditions, permissions and documents, language? Sense of inferiority, having to prove themselves? The type of jobs? The colonies of Italian workers living in groups? The yearning for returning? The impossibility of returning without the money? Loneliness and pride?
6. The character of Nino as portrayed through the various incidents? How enjoyable were they as episodes, as revealing Nino? The initial lunch with the classical music, the picnickers and their calm, his eating bread and chocolate? Kicking the ball with the boy, the German speaking nurse? The discovery of the corpse, the calling of the police, the interrogation and his fear, his urinating against the wall and being photographed? Seeing him at his job in the restaurant, his skills e.g. the comedy of peeling the orange? The accidents, the rivalry with the Turk, the training of the young boy? The loneliness of his apartment and sharing it with the Turk? The discovery of Elena and Grigori? His having to return home after the police had the photo of him and the owner of the restaurant sacked him? His sadness in the train and seeing the homage paid to the Turk and his family? Hiding out with Elena and the humour of his not being able to communicate with Grigori, Grigori's piano playing? The irony of meeting the millionaire and getting a job with him, being his confident, his way of life e.g. women as Heidi, the greeting of the boys and their disregard of their father, his loneliness in the field, his failure and suicide? Nino's loss of money and desperate attempts to revive him? His having to get the job on the farm, the peasants and their imitating chickens, their primitive way of life, looking through the cage in awe at the Germanic types? Nino's decision to disguise himself as German-speaking, his blond hair, the prostitute (and the irony of her being Spanish), watching the soccer, identifying with the Germans, his Italian coming out, his being thrown out? Nothing left to do but go home humiliated? Elena's care, the final trip, his decision to come back.
7. The portrait of Elena as a Greek woman, lonely, sympathetic, her friendship with Rudiger and the marriage and documents? Her love for Grigori? His skill as a piano player, the bonds with Nino? Loneliness, the decisions about lovemaking? The birthday party? Elena's helping him at the end?
8. The picture of the restaurant, the employer, the master of the waiters, the Turk, the boy and his dating the German speaking girl yet bashed for patriotism?
9. The millionaire and his entourage in the restaurant, joking about exiles and migrants, social oppression, his girls, the boys and their disregard of their father, his death?
10. The impact of the sequence of the family imitating the chooks, their poverty, ignorance, their looking at the Nordic Germans?
11. The film's attitude towards the Swiss and the ridicule of their attitudes towards the Italians? Their brutality against migrants?
12. The satire on the Italians - especially in the train and their singing? The importance of the long sequence where Nino went to the barracks, the chat with his friend, the entertaining of the men and the disguise as women, the indications of the loneliness of the men and the young man weeping?
13. A film of feeling, sympathies,, human and social insights?
