Two of the actors that can be seen in Christmas Present give performances of an impressive metaphysical depth:it is utterly shocking.These two roles ( Santelia and Ugo) are better that almost any other roles on any screen;though,CDP gave a role as good in Graduation Party.Anyway,if you are interested in a couple of flawless performances watch Carlo Delle Piane and Gianni Cavina in Christmas Present;they both have amazingly nuanced and precise approaches,and very sharp and pure.CDP is matchless and absolutely stunning and astounding.Sometimes,I dare say to myself that he is the greatest actor that ever lived (though I regularly bestow this title upon other actors).My appreciation for Carlo Delle Piane is boundless. CDP's many intensely wonderful performances,in various movies (Graduation Party, Christmas Present, Bride and Groom,to name a few of Avati's) give a direct immediate strong physical delight.When you test these roles,you find them to be very intelligent and energetic and authentic.His originality and artistic purity and honesty are striking.
It was fair that an actor of Carlo Delle Piane's greatness was recognized and treated as such by a director like Avati.
Christmas Present is more spectacular (because much more stylized) than Graduation Party,but not better.It has a great and chilling theme:the loss and treason and baseness,human features that in Pupi Avati's movies are never the object of some moralistic denunciation;the canvas is very simple,and the film is a masterpiece of concision,lucidity, precision,power and economy.
A poker game gathers around the table five men:an erotically insatiable older man ( Santelia);a bald and Podgy man, slipshod and a slob ("Lele",a movie critic that talks about Ford:Alessandro Haber,that some of us consider a first-hand actor!);a handsome man that has a Nietzschean mustache ("Franco":Diego Abatantuono);Franco's former friend,"Ugo",an intelligent and somehow fascinating man:Gianni Cavina,a slick and ambiguous man;and lastly a bearded and spectacled fellow (the skilled and cool Luigi Montefiori ).This is almost the entire cast.Another character is "Martina" (Kristina Sevieri),a young woman that gives CDP the occasion to speak about her while he is playing cards.We are also shown,in a dreamy and bright light,scenes from Franco's marriage.
The most uncanny aspect of this movie,and the most shocking,is its sadism.Avati implicitly acknowledges that in silence one savors man's pain:this hidden,mute cruelty,the fact that one may find and indeed finds Franco's pain savory and secretly enjoyable.The fact is that Franco's debacle is savored and enjoyed by the viewer.
Avati has found the regard,the look of the greatest,of Maupassant and Schopenhauer:more profound, or deeper than reality itself.Avati's is the metaphysical regard cast upon the reality.Within Avati's work, Christmas Present is a movie of stylization;while Bride and Groom is a movie of notation,a note-book.In "Graduation " we had beautiful marine images;in "Xmas " the photography is as a matter of fact straightly functional (of course,there are also the dreamy bright images from Franco's past,but this brightness and dreaminess are quite functional themselves,in the sense that they are symbolic and codified).
Alighieri wrote,around 1310, this:"ye men at variance/With every virtue, full of every vice/Wherefore are ye not scattered from the world?";and:"We passed still farther onward, where the ice/Another people ruggedly en-swathes,/Not downward turned, but all of them reversed."
Avati's characters are like meteors, comets, asteroids.
It was fair that an actor of Carlo Delle Piane's greatness was recognized and treated as such by a director like Avati.
Christmas Present is more spectacular (because much more stylized) than Graduation Party,but not better.It has a great and chilling theme:the loss and treason and baseness,human features that in Pupi Avati's movies are never the object of some moralistic denunciation;the canvas is very simple,and the film is a masterpiece of concision,lucidity, precision,power and economy.
A poker game gathers around the table five men:an erotically insatiable older man ( Santelia);a bald and Podgy man, slipshod and a slob ("Lele",a movie critic that talks about Ford:Alessandro Haber,that some of us consider a first-hand actor!);a handsome man that has a Nietzschean mustache ("Franco":Diego Abatantuono);Franco's former friend,"Ugo",an intelligent and somehow fascinating man:Gianni Cavina,a slick and ambiguous man;and lastly a bearded and spectacled fellow (the skilled and cool Luigi Montefiori ).This is almost the entire cast.Another character is "Martina" (Kristina Sevieri),a young woman that gives CDP the occasion to speak about her while he is playing cards.We are also shown,in a dreamy and bright light,scenes from Franco's marriage.
The most uncanny aspect of this movie,and the most shocking,is its sadism.Avati implicitly acknowledges that in silence one savors man's pain:this hidden,mute cruelty,the fact that one may find and indeed finds Franco's pain savory and secretly enjoyable.The fact is that Franco's debacle is savored and enjoyed by the viewer.
Avati has found the regard,the look of the greatest,of Maupassant and Schopenhauer:more profound, or deeper than reality itself.Avati's is the metaphysical regard cast upon the reality.Within Avati's work, Christmas Present is a movie of stylization;while Bride and Groom is a movie of notation,a note-book.In "Graduation " we had beautiful marine images;in "Xmas " the photography is as a matter of fact straightly functional (of course,there are also the dreamy bright images from Franco's past,but this brightness and dreaminess are quite functional themselves,in the sense that they are symbolic and codified).
Alighieri wrote,around 1310, this:"ye men at variance/With every virtue, full of every vice/Wherefore are ye not scattered from the world?";and:"We passed still farther onward, where the ice/Another people ruggedly en-swathes,/Not downward turned, but all of them reversed."
Avati's characters are like meteors, comets, asteroids.