IL DIAVOLO PICCOLO /LITTLE DEVIL
Italy, 1989, 101 minutes, Colour.
Roberto Benigni, Walter Matthau, Nicoletta Braschi,, Stephania Sandrelli, John Lurie.
Directed by Roberto Benigni.
This is a film strictly for Italian tastes. It is a film strictly for those who like the comedy and claiming of Roberto Benigni, who stars, and won an award for his direction. Fans of Walter Matthau will want to see the film but will be puzzled as to why he is starring in it, in Italy, as a Catholic priest, using his usual deadpan delivery as well as his shambling gait in his character.
The film opens with Matthau as an American Catholic priest, Fr Maurice, at the American College in Rome for seminarians. He goes to confession, an anguished experience, his feeling lost, wondering how long he can last. He confesses to a sympathetic priest.
He is called to a noisy situation where it emerges that a middle-aged, large lady, is behaving very strangely, talking with a male voice. It emerges that she is possessed by a devil who wants to come out of her. Fr Maurice is sceptical but does a blessing and suddenly the woman is well again, puzzled by what happened, and there is the devil in the form of Roberto Benigni.
While Matthau has an opportunity for comic situations, especially in his dealings with the devil, his exasperation with him, trying to explain the, finding him in the seminary, finding him clothes instead of the woman’s fur coat that he is wearing, finding him gatecrashing a clerical dinner which makes Fr Maurice drink all the more. He goes outside with him, walks in the street, sees him levitate, and finally goes home to sleep things off. In the morning, Fr Maurice cannot face celebrating Mass and the Devil goes into the sacristy, puts on vestments, does not know exactly know what to do, and decides to turn the celebration into a fashion show, similar to that that he has seen the day before, with the ladies all parading up and down the aisle as models. This is the final straw for Fr Maurice.
Then the Devil goes off on his own, meeting a professor and discussing religious matters, going to hotel, meeting an attractive woman on a train who has a letter of admiration – whether to him or to Fr Maurice is not always clear. This is a guest role for Stephania Sandrelli. Fr Maurice meets a friendly advisor, played by John Lurie, actor in some of Jim Jarmusch’s films (as was Benigni himself).
He meets the model, an attractive young woman, Nina, played by Benigni’s wife and co-star in practically all his films, Nicoletta Brascchi. She seems to be woman of loose morals than might be expected and tries to tempt the devil, who though he knows a lot of practical things and vocabulary, seems to be singularly ignorant about sexual matters which have to be explained to him. And that raises his enthusiasm.
Once again, he encounters Fr Maurice who, in lay clothes, seems to be on a date. Why so is not always clear, audience suspicious of what is happening it may be connected with Fr Maurice’s anguish at the beginning of the film and his confession.
It turns out that Nina is another devil with the commission to bring Benigni back home, to hell, and, when he is possessed by her, he vanishes.
