FROM the Archive of Alex's Forgotten Gems: Giornata balorda, 1960, is an Italian gem from the early New Wave Age that dropped completely out of sight for no good reason: The old English release Title was "The view from the Balcony" but I would go with "One Crazy Day"-- which would be a direct translation of the original Italian title. One reason it might have gotten lost in the shuffle is perhaps due to the titular similarity with a very well known theater piece of the time, "A view from the Bridge! ~~ Director was Mauro Bolognini, 1960, the B/w picture is based on a Moravia story, scripted by PASOLINI -- I saw this in Berkeley around 1960 when it first came out and was immediately impressed that here we had a quintessentially no-nonsense, unpretentious, totally realistic, down-to-earth Italian movie -- Neo-realismo updated with sixties touches and no artsy-artsy symbolism or in group jokes. I would love to see it again but it seems to have disappeared entirely. -- Basic Plot: A philandering Alfie type guy played by French actor Jean Sorrel starts out in a gritty balconied multi-family apartment project the life of which is shown with almost documentary type matter-of-factness, finds out that a woman he's had sex with is knocked up, splits the scene and ends up at the beach in this One Crazy Day -- all delivered in ROME dialect all the way. If I had just one Italian film to show to represent Italian film of the sixties, this would be it -- ahead of all the Fellini's and Antonionis of the time -- but they would of course follow as Backup in "Italian Cinema 10". Professore De Leone, cinema know-it-all --or Nothing at All!

I missed this film in its initial release; then it disappeared completely. It wasn't even shown in Bolognini retrospectives in subsequent years because of its rarity. The movie boasts an excellent screenplay by Pasolini and Moravia and resembles "Accattone" in style and content. It really seems more like a Pasolini film than one by Bolognini. It is a story, set entirely in one day, about a Roman loser (like Accattone himself) who has fathered a child with his mistress and is now trying, sort of, to find work when not having sex with one woman after another. His name is Davide Saraceno and he's played by Jean Sorel. Paolo Stoppa has a small role as a sleazy man-of-connections that Davide asks for help in finding work. The settings are stark, and the opening of the film beneath the multi-tiered and cacophonous balconies of an apartment complex is breathtaking. Lea Massari plays a well-to-do woman who takes to Davide. Valeria Ciangottioni plays his distraught mistress. She is the girl of the innocent face we remember from Fellini's "La Dolce Vita." Roman dialect abounds on the soundtrack.

Imagine a black-and-white film about the lower class of Rome with a screenplay written by Pasolini before he becames a director himself. That's "Una giornata balorda". His director, Mauro Bolognini, is the same of "La notte brava" and "Il bello Antonio" - both also written by Pasolini, and was also a pretty good director. Here you can see the pasolinian proletarian world filmed as a good commercial product of the italian cinema of the early 60's. Says the legend that Pasolini decides to became a filmaker to avoid the glamourous professional actors of the period, and so did "Accatone", his first feature. Of course, Franco Citti who protagonized this one, is much more convincing than Jean Sorel, the star of "Una giornata..." but of course, not so good-looking (Sorel was one of the most beautifull men in the world at this time).It's a problem of style: glamour versus authenticity, etc etc. Enjoy it.