Quentin Tarantino vs. the New Italian Cinema
by Andre Soares
While accepting his title as Commander of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic this past June 14, Pedro Almodóvar remarked that "Quentin Tarantino is simpatico and talented, but he sometimes suffers from a sort of verbal incontinence." Almodóvar was referring to the American director’s recent put-down of the new Italian cinema.
At the Cannes Film Festival, Tarantino had said that he "really loved the Italian movies of the 1960s and 1970s. But what happened? It’s a real tragedy. The Italian films I’ve seen over the past few years all seem the same. All they talk about is boys growing up, girls growing up, couples in crisis and holidays for the mentally disabled."
In response to Tarantino’s comments, Sophia Loren reportedly asked, "How dare he talk about Italian cinema when he doesn’t know anything about American cinema?"
Veteran director Marco Bellocchio, for his part, stated that Tarantino was "a good director, but in no position to give us lessons. In saying these things he has shown himself up as a jerk who doesn’t understand anything." (Bellocchio also had harsh words for another Italian cinema critic, Renato Brunetta, an economist for the center-right — actually, more "right" than "center" — Forza Italia party, calling Brunetta’s remarks "vulgar" while asserting that the economist "knows nothing about film.")
During an interview (Google translation) at the Naples Film Festival, director Fernan Ozpetek remarked that "if Nanni Moretti had made that declaration, we could discuss it. But it came from Tarantino, who was a fan of Italian B movies. Evidently, now that we make A movies, we don’t please him anymore. Who knows, maybe he was drunk when he made that statement."
Director Pupi Avati, however, said that Tarantino was "partly right. Italian cinema is far from dead, but it is weak," while B-movie director Dario Argento told La Stampa (Google translation) that he agreed with the American director "even though he is too scornful." Argento added that he was annoyed by Marco Bellocchio’s "offensive" reply.
At this year’s David di Donatello awards ceremony, winners and presenters remarked on the current state of Italian cinema, demanding that the Italian government dedicate more funds to the arts and culture.
Now, really, in all fairness to the guy responsible for Pulp Fiction — one of the most influential (and most grossly overrated) movies of the latter part of the 20th century: Why can’t those eye-talians make hip movies in which people discuss the appropriate way of eating French fries before getting stabbed, blown up, shot dead, and forcefully sodomized?
In fact, we don’t get enough of that cool stuff in Swedish, Australian, or Mexican movies, either. What’s up with that?
A spokesman for the upcoming Venice Film Festival said that despite his remarks Tarantino would still be a guest at the September event, where he will present his favorite spaghetti Westerns.
Personally, I’d rather check out Giuseppe Tornatore’s David di Donatello winner La Sconosciuta / The Unknown Woman, Ermanno Olmi’s Centochiodi, and Daniele Luchetti’s Mio fratello è figlio unico / My Brother Is an Only Child. But that’s just me.
Marco Bellocchio’s quote: La Stampa (Google translation)
Quentin Tarantino’s quote: The [London] Times
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Dio mio! Everyone seems to get their knickers in a twist over this silly statement from Tarantino. The real question is, obviously, how much of recent Italian cinema does he really see? Does he see three films a year, 20, 50 or the entire output (around 100)? Plus, since when is “good cinema” an equivalent of “universally accessible cinema”? Some countries, and I am thinking of Spain, Greece and Italy in particular though there are others, have quite a few films that are so tied to their culture/socio-political landscape that for outsiders they are hard(er) to decipher. Does that make them bad movies? Hardly. They were not made to be understood by people outside of the country in the first place.
Hey Boyd,
Thanks for the comment. Indeed, Tarantino may have spoken about something of which he knows very little.
Now, I’d say that even if a particular film’s sociopolitical/cultural elements go over the heads of international audiences, the film itself could still be “accessible” in terms of its human element. That’s what makes cinema — as any other type of art — universal.
I remember watching “La Scorta” a while back, and even though I didn’t know all the details about the Italian mafia and what happens to politicians and judges who dare fight that criminal organization, I could relate to the characters’ fears/hopes and to the reality that the bad guys often win in the real world, whether in Italy or elsewhere.
Something tells me, however, that Tarantino would have found “La Scorta” a “depressing” example of the state of Italian cinema…