If, come early December you start feeling not just tired but desperately sick about the pointless pressures caused by Christmas shopping, have a break at London's Royal Institute of British Architects.
Together with Disegno Magazine, RIBA has launched a series of events with architects and designers introducing a film that has been an influential inspiration in their work. On 4th December fashion designer Antonio Berardi will introduce Pietro Germi's Sedotta e Abbandonata (Seduced and Abandoned, 1964).
Before the film Berardi will take part in a Q&A about it and, after the screening, there will be a drinks reception to encourage further debates about the main themes of the film.
While the movies that are part of these RIBA events are picked according to the taste and suggestions of the person introducing them (in this case Berardi mainly chose it for his Sicilian origins), Sedotta e Abbandonata has also got some wonderful connections with architecture, so it's an absolutely perfect choice.
Inspired by the real story of Franca Viola who in the '60s refused to marry the man who raped her and by an article of the Italian Code stating that a rapist could go free if the victim agreed to marry him, the film revolves around the vicissitudes of Don Vincenzo Ascalone (Saro Urzì), a mine owner and father from a small town in Sicily who tries to save the honour of his fifteen-year-old daughter Agnese (Stefania Sandrelli), seduced by her sister Matilda's fiancé, Peppino (Aldo Puglisi).
Through this story about restoring the honour of a family and about the power of patriarchy, masculinity and violence, the director pondered on local customs and traditions including bride kidnapping, eloping and the final (often undesired) rehabilitating marriage. Germi tackled these themes through satire coming up with some wonderfully cynical yet brilliantly tragicomic moments.
Style-wise there are many elements in this story that will charm people with an interest in fashion. The film will definitely help fashionistas who may not be familiar with certain Sicilian stereotypes to detect where some inspirations for Dolce & Gabbana collections came from (from women clad in black dresses to motifs borrowed from religious ceremonies and processions to tailored menswear suits). Being the second installment of Germi's "Baroque" trilogy, in this case the film is also a reference to Berardi's very own "Baroque'n' Roll" style, a mixture of Sicilian influence and British moods.
Another vitally important key linking the film to fashion is the concept of bella figura (meaning “cutting a beatiful figure”), often mentioned by Berardi in interviews about his background and his work, and turned in this film by Vincenzo as a lifestyle philosophy that prompts him to obsessively make sure that his family honour is perfectly preserved.
Appearances are everything for Vincenzo, they are even more important than his own daughter's happiness, that's why the latter can be sacrified to avoid rumours and protect the honour.
Passionate cinema lovers with an interest in architecture will enjoy the film for its studied frames in which local buildings help the director to create stunning sets.
From the very beginning of the film the director follows his characters through the village as they interact with the buildings surrounding them: while the film titles are running on the screen, Agnese and the family maid, both clad in penitential black, rush through the streets of the town to go to church, allowing us in this way to become familiar with the spaces in which the drama will unfold.
Vincenzo's attempts at restoring his family honour often imply quarrels with Peppino's parents in public spaces, a clever trick devised by the honour obsessed father that allows all the people sitting in the main square or gathered in the streets to hear what they are saying, as if Vincenzo wanted even the buildings to hear his own version of the facts.
The public spaces of the small town become in this way a sort of common or shared ground for collective quarrels, discussions, and rumours, while an architectonical and religious feature - a simple cross in the town centre - becomes the silent witness of many debates between some of the main characters.
Some of the most clever moments in the films come from the juxtaposition between the landscape/the buildings and the main characters: one of Vincenzo's furiously explosive outbursts is followed by a symbolic explosion in his mine; the impoverished and toothless Baron Vincenzo finds to marry his daughter Matilde perfectly reflects the rotten and abandoned building in which the young and unlucky man is living in; the police station with its baroquish façade becomes the set for multiple battles between Vincenzo and Peppino's families; the three voluptuous prostitutes (daring to wear low cut tops and even trousers, clothes that distinguish them from the local women perennially dressed in black) who visit the town every now and then becoming the main attractions of the local men, use the main street up to their hotel door as their own private runway to display their bodies.
Towards the end of the film the main piazza turns into an arena in which Agnese is haunted by the local crowd of gossipers turned for the occasion into a lynch mob. Even the final shot in the graveyard with Vincenzo's bust on his tomb hints at architecture: the solid statue marks the bitter goal he has reached, it desn't matter if, while doing so, he sacrified his daughter and his own life.
Carlo Egidi who designed the costumes and the sets for this film is often described in the credits for this movie (and for others as well) as “Architect-Set Designer”, a label that perfectly describes his work.
In his films Germi often tackled the conflict between the state and the individual, a conflict punctuated in this case by the local architecture. Apart from providing an aesthetic background within which the characters move, architecture turns in Sedotta e Abbandonata into an active and stylish co-protagonist and into the framework for some of the most memorable scenes in this melodramatic story.
Antonio Berardi presents Sedotta e Abbandonata by Pietro Germi, 4th December 2012, 6.45pm, RIBA, 66 Portland Place, London.
With many thanks to Kutmusic for digging from its private archives this film for the screens in this post.
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