#REVIEW SHERLOCK OVERCOAT MAGNOLI FULL#

Some of this is marvellous, some of it rather dated. There is what can only be called a Chaplin-esque central performance though without Chaplin's mischief, some rather broad satire of Italian political life, and a more bleak, savage humour that is perhaps more faithful to Gogol. The film is also funny, but the comedy is sometimes jarring. There are many wonderful and original scenes a succession of lodgers trying to listen to the heartbeat of a dying man through a stethoscope a hearse interrupting the mayor's self-congratulatory speechifying at a public meeting a tailor ducking down alleys to get a further look at his beautiful coat being worn by its new owner. The Overcoat is happily relocated from bureaucratic nineteenth century Russia to corrupt post war Italy. Il Cappotto is a surprisingly faithful rendering of the Gogol short story.

#REVIEW SHERLOCK OVERCOAT MAGNOLI FULL#

Alberto Lattuada has made a great effort but not reached the full level of Gogol's masterpiece. The cinematography is excellent throughout, though, and the characters all perform well, although they are all rather exaggerated for the satire. The rest is good, shot in Pavia in northern Italy (close to Milan) with the right snowy settings and bleak city nocturnal staging, and there is a great scene in the end, stressing the acute satirical effort as Akaki Akakiyevich's funeral hearse passes through the city, completely sabotaging a great municipal event with the mayor and all, and it's worth waiting through all the film for this - only this scene is on par with de Sica and Fellini. He is deplorable and pathetic enough, but he is made more a fool of than he is, and all the sincerity of Gogol's character (well preserved in the Russian film) is missing here. This isn't funny at all but rather a twisted effort at making fun of the entire establishment without provoking a single laugh, while the main weak point of this film is the main character, played by Renato Rascel, who does not live up to his character. This Italian version shows some affiliation with de Sica and Fellini, but without de Sica's deep humanity, and without Fellini's rabulistic hilarity. Both films of it have become classics, but the Russian film, seven years later, is truer to Gogol, more realistic and much more artistic and well made. Gogol's story is such a momentous classic in Russian literature, that it is practically impossible not to make a good film of it. Plainly, it falls somewhere vaguely between 'City Lights' and Murnau's 'The Last Laugh.' It is a picture more than well worth seeing. It dwells at great length on the behavior of Italian bureaucrats, which is a little flossy for American fancy, and it is solemnly dreary toward the end. Though artfully played and directed and well-furnished with English subtitles, the picture does have some limitations, so far as a wide American audience is concerned. The sum total of them, as in a Chaplin picture, makes a haunting commentary. There also are scenes of scorching pathos and painful mockery. Or the scene in which a grotesque tailor, played by Giulio Cali, fits him for the new overcoat. There are scenes of magnificent humor, such as one in which the piteous little clerk reads back, with eloquence and gestures, some garbled dictation he has taken from his boss. But the peculiar attractiveness of the film is in the sharpness with which it satirizes politicians and, indeed, society, and in the incisive humor of Rascel's Chaplinesque pantomime.

Briefly, his spirit haunts the people who had been cruel and haughty to him. He is confident with beautiful women, whom he previously yearned for from afar.

A little clerk, tired of being pushed and badgered, puts his savings in a new overcoat.

To be sure, the dramatic situation is both simple and of dubious appeal. The fact that it is a brilliant picture, in its own special frame, is enough. How much of the film's insinuation derives from the sharp, sarcastic script of a corps of Italian screen-writers, how much from Rascel's apparent skill and how much from Lattuada's shrewd direction is a matter of minor concern. For this interesting Italian transposition of Gogol's semifarcical tale of the little man who was briefly elevated to a sense of importance by the possession of a new overcoat is, in many respects, an exciting and impressive piece of cinematic art, directed by Alberto Lattuada with uncompromising insight and skill. This wistful picture treats a grim and saddening theme, even though it is done in a superior serio-comic style. More than a hint of Charlie Chaplin in some of his memorable old roles wherein he conveyed a poignant notion of the ludicrous troubles of the little man is given by Renato Rascel in the Italian film, 'The Overcoat'.

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