Carlo Verdone
Gallo Cedrone

Once the golden era of Italian comedy (that of Monicelli and Risi) ended, towards the end of the seventies, the Italian comedy began. The difference lies in the characters: the first was a comedy that aimed to be a faithful and ironic reflection of Italian society, the second is a shabbier comedy, less entrenched in the social fabric, useful more for laughing than for smiling. Among the founding fathers of Italian comedy, we have cabaret performers turned filmmakers, from Carlo Verdone to Roberto Benigni, from Renato Pozzetto to Massimo Troisi. Of the four, Troisi was undoubtedly the best, followed by Benigni and Verdone. Pozzetto was more quirky, more surreal, more adaptable when used in films built on gags rather than long-breathed stories.

Let's focus on Verdone. A great cabaret performer during the days of "Non Stop" and a decent actor-director in the early eighties, when he became very popular among the young (but not only) with two films that today have been elevated to the rank of "cult": "Un sacco bello" and "Bianco, rosso e Verdone". Then came a series of fluctuating films, some very successful ("Maledetto il giorno che t'ho incontrato") others less so ("Perdiamoci di vista", "Sono pazzo di Iris Blond"). When he attempted the path of romantic comedy, the public responded coldly, but when he returned to character-based comedy (perhaps a bit disjointed), he achieved tremendous success (consider "Viaggi di nozze").

In the wake of that "Viaggi di nozze", in 1998 Verdone retried his hand at comedy in the style of "Un sacco bello". This time, however, instead of creating a series of characters to unite in a story, he crafts only one, which by nature is chameleonic, and therefore it's as if it's not one, but many. Armando Feroci, alias Carlo Verdone, is the protagonist of "Gallo cedrone", a humorous comedy that achieved great public success, but was also slammed by most critics.

The film itself is a trifling matter (and this already doesn't speak in its favor), because it tells a banal story, and furthermore, it tells it quite poorly. Feroci is a volunteer of the Red Cross in an Arab country, but, true to his reputation as a Don Giovanni, he tries to seduce a local woman. He ends up in jail. Television takes an interest in the case, interviewing friends, acquaintances, relatives, and ex-girlfriends, recounting the life of a natural-born womanizer.

The film is, as mentioned, excessively fragmented. Because the story doesn't hold up, everything is so blatantly forced that the irony and satire, rather than being watered down, are practically non-existent. Despite Verdone's undeniable skill as an actor, everything is ruined by a patchy screenplay (still written by old foxes of Italian comedy, from Piero De Bernardi to Leo Benvenuti) and the usual mediocre direction by Verdone himself. So, in the end, what remains of this Italian comedy is not the satire of Arab countries and the typical moral and sexual intransigence of Muslims (as Verdone would like to do) but the usual displays of the actor's brilliance, a shapeshifter like few others. Some passages, however, are truly amusing: the quiz that Feroci participates in where he manages to distinguish the sound of the engine noises of various car types; the nostalgic gathering among old rock'n roll lovers where he tries to pass himself off as the "illegitimate" son of Elvis Presley; the duets with his dentist brother and the mishaps that seem to rain upon the brother's girlfriend, a very talented Regina Orioli, in the role of a charming blind girl. Verdone is priceless as he tries to make the girl believe they've arrived in Pisa's square near the tower when they are actually parked in a shabby suburban soccer field.

Displays of brilliance, moments that taken individually are also funny, but inserted into a broader context such as a film risk sinking without even deserving it. And "Gallo cedrone", deserved a little something more. Still better than the crude "Viaggi di nozze".