Director Giuseppe Piccioni is nowhere near as well known outside Italy as he should be. Following his collaborations with Margherita Buy on Ask For the Moon (1990) and Not of This World (1999), he guided Luigi Lo Cascio and Sandra Ceccarelli to the acting honours at the Venice Film Festival in Light of My Eyes (2001). He reunited the pair in The Life That I Wanted (2004) before providing Valeria Golino with one of her best roles in Giulia Doesn't Date At Night (2009).
Now, 35 years after he made his debut with Il grande Blek (1987), Piccioni returns his hometown of Ascoli Piceno for L'Ombra del Giorno/The Shadow of the Day, which is the latest offering from those splendid folks at CinemaItaliaUK. It screens at the Garden Cinema in London on 17 December, with Piccioni and star Riccardo Scamarcio due to be present for a Q&A.
Cogently reminding Italians of the dangers of extreme prejudice, this composed reflection on the Fascist state has acquired added poignancy since the election of Giorgia Meloni's Brothers of Italy in the year that marks the centenary of Mussolini's accession to power in 1922. Indeed, one can hear echoes throughout the story of Il Duce's infamous line from a 1925 speech: `Italy wants peace and quiet, work and calm. I will give these things with love if possible and with force if necessary.'
This sums up Osvaldo's modus operandi and the apolitical Luciano accepts the merits of seeming to acquiesce. However, he is prepared to risk his neck to do the right thing by both Anna and Émile, even though he knows nothing about the latter's views and makes no attempt to understand them. This elemental decency epitomises Piccioni's film, which stands as nobly as the Art Nouveau Caffè Meletti in the Piazza del Popolo.
It has its melodramatic moments, the majority of which involve Corrado. But the exploration of such themes as love, honour, integrity, and courage evoke wartime classics like Michael Curtiz's Casablanca (1942), which celebrates its 80th anniversary this month. Despite being more buttoned up, Luciano has much in common with Rick Blaine and, as he surveys the passing scene from the restaurant window, Riccardo Scamarcio limns Humphrey Bogart's brand of vulnerable virility in making the limping Luciano such a decorously flawed anti-hero.
Although Benedetta Porcaroli is much the same age as Ingrid Bergman when she played Ilsa Lund, Anna/Esther is nowhere near as worldly (or discreet) and the screenplay by Piccioni, Gualtiero Rosella, and Annick Emdin rather evades an assessment of her conflicted feelings for Luciano and Émile. Nevertheless, Porcaroli and the rest of the ensemble convey the changing mood of the times with an expertise that is matched by the darkening light and colours in Isabella Angelini's production design and Michele D'Attanasio's cinematography. Esmeralda Calabria's editing similarly reinforces the shift between acquiescence and anxiety, although Michele Braga's score can occasionally be a touch emphatic. But this remains a thoughtful recreation of a sombre period whose message is encapsulated in the professor's contention that `disobeying a wrong law is sometimes an obligation'.
By David Parkinson