THE LITTLE WORLD OF DON CAMILLO

New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 772, 7 May 1954, Page 16

THE LITTLE WORLD OF DON CAMILLO

(Rizzoli-Amato-London Films) HAVEN'T read The Little World ot Don Camillo, and can only judge Julien Duvivier’s film as if it were an original creation. It is in many ways’ so well made, directed and edited so as to produce such beautiful fluidity and effective contrasts, that I hate to say a word in criticism; but it is also so much like two different films-superimposed, as it were, on one another-that I must. One film tells an episodic story of life in a small Continental town, whose atmosphere M. Duvivier showed in Panique he could capture so well. The episodes are the sort one finds in films like Jour de Fete-in fact, the stooped old lady in Don Camillo who had been a schoolteacher and dies an unrepentant monarchist, suggests one of the characters from the Tati film. In the same class is a christening, lovers meeting through a wall that divides the rich land from the poor, and-best of alla village football match. In and out between these episodes weaves the story of Don Camillo the

priest and his enemy Pepone, the newlyelected Communist mayor. There would be nothing wrong with this if they were treated in the samé way, but while the village episodes are realistic and sincere the war between priest and Communist strongly suggests farce. Even when the story is meant to be genuinely moving-as in the funeral scene or when Don Camillo goes out alone with the Cross because everyone else is afraid to follow him-I expected farce to break in. However, the Don Camillo-Pepone affair at least suggests that priest and Communist are brothers under — their ideological skins, which is something worth saying today. One must add also that Fernandel’s Don Camillo. is a firstclass job of acting, and so for that matter is Gino Cervi’s Pepone-as you'd éxpect if you remembered him from Four Stens in the Clouds. --