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| Images courtesy of Radiance Films |
The prolific filmmaking career of Luigi Comencini, perhaps Italy’s
best director of child actors since Vittorio De Sica or the French director François
Truffaut, remains curiously overlooked outside of Europe. The father of film directors Cristina and
Francesca Comencini who worked with everyone from Marcello Mastroianni,
Jacqueline Bisset and Jean-Louis Trintignant, Comencini is perhaps best known
for Everybody Go Home starring international cast members Martin Balsam,
Alex Nicol and Serge Reggiani. Known for
attracting foreign talent for his distinctly Italian works, one of the director’s
strongest and most celebrated portraits of male adolescence Misunderstood
is finally making its worldwide blu-ray disc premiere through Radiance Films in
their continued effort to make their efforts known as perhaps the greatest new
boutique releasing label to emerge on the global marketplace since The
Criterion Collection or Master of Cinema.
Newly widowered United Kingdom Consul General of Florence,
Italy John Duncombe (Sir Anthony Quayle only four years after Lawrence of
Arabia) has just returned home to his mansion and estate from his wife’s
funeral to his two young sons Andrew (Stefano Colagrande) and his sickly
younger brother Miles (Simone Giannozzi).
Though he tells his older son Andrew of the news, father and Andrew
decide to withhold the information of their mother’s death from Miles which causes
problems of its own for the brothers.
Andrew, crushed by grief, takes on a paternal instinct to his younger
brother Miles who frequently causes attention-getting troublemaking for father’s
attention and disapproval of Andrew which he takes in stride. Soon however, tragedy strikes and father is
forced to reckon with his own emotional and physical neglect of his children
left to the devices of unsympathetic governesses and see Andrew’s selflessness
for what it really is.
A quietly agonizing youth drama about coming to terms with
losing a parent and trying to find the emotional maturity to ascend into
adulthood, Misunderstood starts out somber, drifting in and out of sunny
warmth and lonesome melancholy before going for the throat in one of the most
powerfully devastating child dramas of the 1960s if not the heaviest one. Aided by gifted child performances from
Stefano Colagrande who shoulders the film with a River Phoenix level of maturity
and grace, strong supporting performances from John Sharp as the no-nonsense Uncle
William and a sad-eyed but stern Sir Anthony Quayle, Misunderstood is
fully involving from start to finish as we share with Andrew his anxiety, grief
and sense of responsibility in the tragically reformed world he and his family
have plummeted into.
From the softly melancholic score by Fiorenzo Carpi
conducted by Bruno Nicolai interspersed with heart-stabbing sorrow by Wolfgang
Amadeus Mozart’s Piano Concerto #23 in A, the film starts out softly sad and
only balloons into outright grief from there.
Edited with a whip by legendary Pier Paolo Pasolini editor Nino Baragli
and shot exquisitely with symmetrical distance and grace by La Cage Aux
Follies cinematographer Armando Nannuzzi, the technical visual merits of
the film are top notch, capturing the Florence, Italy countryside and ornate
interiors of the mansion beautifully.
From sight to sound, Misunderstood is one really painterly piece.
Entered into the 1967 Cannes Film Festival, Misunderstood
was a critically acclaimed masterwork that seemed to swoop in and grab the
heart out from under the viewer. A
coming-of-age drama whose punches don’t come as phony contrivances but as real-world
pathos of closure and learning to move forward, as always, the Radiance Films
package limited to 3,000 copies is lovingly packaged with their obi banners on
the side spine of the case. Included in
the package is a booklet with new as well as archival writings and the disc
itself comes with newly prepared interviews and a visual essay on the director’s
oeuvre. Not all viewers will be ready
for this indefatigable heartbreaker that hits almost as hard as Rob Reiner’s Stand
by Me, but for those who like leaving their faith in the hands of a
confident masterful storyteller such as Comencini, it is an emotional roller
coaster ride well worth taking!
--Andrew Kotwicki
