DIFFICULT YEARS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 734, 7 August 1953, Page 16

DIFFICULT YEARS

(Lopert Films) ‘THis sardonic story of the rise and fall of "Fascism, from 1934 to the liberation of Italy by the Allies, is not perhaps the best of the post-war Italian films, but in its: attempt to come to grips with a serious political and social problem it deserves to be widely seen. It is a humanitariay film, and its theme is presented with considerable wit, irony, and sophistication. Thanks to the direction of Luigi Zampa and the performance of Umberto Spadaro, it is a film with many memorable scenes, although the general flatness of the photography suggests that the picture was made with inferior film, or possibly shown here from an indifferent print. The film opens with Spadaro, in the role of a humble civic clerk in a Sicilian town, being forced by his employer’s in-sistence-and the unhelpful attitude of his intellectual group of friends who meet at the local chemist’s shop-to join the Fascist party. He is cast as a kind (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) of Sicilian prototype of the 20th Century "little man." a person without strong political allegiances who is compelled by forces beyond his control to conform to a pattern of behaviour in which he has little faith, He is egged on by his ambitious wife, who procures him a fictitious foundation membership card from the local Party secretary, but he makes his decision mainly because of his fear that he will lose his job with the city council if he doesn’t conform. His only consolation lies in his vision of his son’s Strength and opportunity to survive the evil that Mussolini has brought to his country. Unfortunately his son has been called to the army, and serves as an officer in the various campaigns-Ethiopie, Spain, North Africa, Russia-only to be shot down at home just as the war ends by retreating Germans. The little clerk, having endured every unhappiness and humiliation in his attempt to live a decent life under such conditions, ends up by being sacked from his job anyway, because his fictitious record as an 2Idhand Black Shirt condemns him in the eyes of the American military governor who has taken over the town. Umberto Spadaro is a sly comic actor who brings out the irony of the film’s treatment, and gives to his role as well unusual warmth, compassion, and understanding. The English sub-titles are by Arthur Miller and the narration by John Garfield.