A Girl in Australia (Bello, onesto emigrato Australia sposerebbe compaesana illibata) | |
---|---|
![]() Film poster | |
Directed by | Luigi Zampa |
Written by | Rodolfo Sonego Luigi Zampa |
Based on | story by Rodolfo Sonego |
Produced by | Gianni Hecht Lucari Fausto Saraceni |
Starring | Alberto Sordi |
Cinematography | Aldo Tonti |
Edited by | Mario Morra |
Music by | Piero Piccioni |
Production company | Documento Film |
Distributed by | Columbia Pictures (Australia) |
Release date |
|
Running time | 107 minutes |
Country | Italy |
Languages | Italian English |
A Girl in Australia (Italian : Bello onesto emigrato Australia sposerebbe compaesana illibata [Handsome honest emigrant in Australia would marry chaste fellow-countrywoman]) is a 1971 Italian comedy film directed by Luigi Zampa, with stars Alberto Sordi and Claudia Cardinale. [1] [2]
At the end of World War II, the promise of jobs and a chance to start a new life induced tens of thousands of young Italians to join the post-war immigration to Australia. In 1971, having lived about twenty-five years Down Under, one of those immigrants, middle-aged Amedeo Battipaglia, a lineman in the remote New South Wales settlement bearing the (fictional) name of Bun Bun Ga, several kilometers from the outback city of Broken Hill, is about to meet Carmela, his prospective bride from Rome, with whom he has been corresponding. Each of them misrepresented facts to the other — Carmela, a very attractive Calabrian woman in her early thirties, is a semiliterate prostitute seeking an opportunity to get away from her abusive pimp, with the letters to Amedeo ghostwritten by her friend Rosalba, while Amedeo, feeling inadequate about his ordinary appearance, sent Carmela a photograph, taken about ten years earlier, of himself between two Italian immigrant friends, Giuseppe Bartoni and Bampo. The arrow in the photo, however, is over Giuseppe because, when Amedeo visited his tall, handsome friend for advice, Giuseppe erased the arrow over Amedeo's head and pencilled it over his own head.
In Rome, getting a ride to the airport on the back of a friend's motorcycle, with her pimp in pursuit, Carmela arrives at the boarding gate, meets Rosalba who hands her the travel documents, has a final across-the-gate shouting match with her pimp, and takes a seat in Qantas first class next to a turbaned passenger perusing Life (issue of 19 February 1971). [3] A stewardess points out that her ticket is for tourist class with special discount for immigrants. Meanwhile, Amedeo drives his substandard auto nearly 1600 kilometers to Brisbane Airport, where Carmela's flight, filled with other Italian mail-order brides (as well as those from neighboring Yugoslavia) will land. Sitting at the airport lounge with numerous Italian men awaiting their future wives, they pass around outdated photographs that the women had sent to their prospective mates and speculate whether their appearances had changed. Still uncertain of recognizing Carmela from the black-and-white photo of her as a young peasant girl, he examines and questions a few of the newly arrived women and then is hit with realization as she slowly comes into view on the down escalator. Becoming disconcerted by her beauty, he retreats to the airport's bar where, sharing a drink with a balding Italian who sent a photo of himself with a full head of hair, he expresses his own self-doubts. Convinced that she will reject him, he returns to the arrivals area, introduces himself as Giuseppe and hands her a note, purportedly written by Amedeo, explaining that he is ill with the flu and requesting that Giuseppe, a trusted friend, provide an escort to her new home.
Unable to decide how to resolve this situation, Amedeo tells Carmela that driving to Giuseppe's home in Broken Hill would take three days, but as the trip starts, they are seen riding not southwest of Brisbane, but thousands of kilometers off-course in the city of Cairns, a gateway to the Great Barrier Reef in Queensland's tropical far north. The brightly colored lush greenery provides a picturesque background for an eventful multi-day journey down the coast of eastern Australia, with one of the stops at Barrier Reef's Dunk Island, [4] a popular tourist vacation spot, which provides the opportunity for the rental of a rowboat and, as Amedeo rows, Carmela strips to her underwear and dives into the warm water, revealing her skill as an expert swimmer, speedily maneuvering amidst brilliantly colored fish and corals, while Amedeo sits in the boat, peering downward with concern. As the long trip to Broken Hill continues, they become better acquainted and she learns of his hardships as an immigrant and also finds out, since it happens in front of her, that, due to a years-earlier bout of malaria, he is subject to occasional epileptic-like convulsions which leave him unable to function for a few hours. Further along, they stop for a visit to the nursing home where Bampo is a long-term patient, having become unresponsive as a result of malarial damage to his brain and nervous system.
As Amedeo's small auto, unable to withstand the long journey, breaks down, they push and pull into a town and try to sell it in an Italian-speaking neighborhood, but run into some hostile local Italians who force Carmela into their car and drive away with her while Amedeo hangs on to their door handle, as the car veers off into a ditch and flips on its side. Shaken but unhurt, they go off to board a train, but when he has another malarial attack during a station stop and she rushes off the train to get help, it pulls out, leaving her behind. Seeing no other recourse, she decides to briefly take up her former profession in order to earn enough for continuing the journey. Now on her own, she takes a later train and, as it stops at the small town of Menindee, she sees Amedeo waiting at the station. Reunited, they continue to Broken Hill, which is a little over a hundred kilometers further. Upon arrival, Carmela meets Giuseppe, whom Amedeo, still pretending to be Giuseppe, introduces as her betrothed, Amedeo. After a few pleasantries, Giuseppe who, as it turns out, is himself a pimp, leaves after driving Carmela to the back entrance of what he describes as her new apartment, but which quickly reveals itself as a prostitute's walk-up house situated in the city's red light district amidst numerous other such dwellings, each with its own resident "working girl" sitting on the porch. Amedeo finds out where Giuseppe has taken Carmela, goes to the red light neighborhood and approaches her porch, hoping to offer an explanation, but she goes inside to get her switchblade and attacks him, inflicting a stab wound in his shoulder.
Eventually, Carmela and Amedeo, with his arm in a sling, are on a train, as he is still trying to convince her of his honorable intentions by offering to pay for her trip back to Italy but she begins to cry that she was a prostitute there and, upon returning, would be beaten by her pimp. Dismayed and outraged, he jumps up and exclaims (in Italian) to all the passengers that she has cheated and deceived him, but when she tells him that he was equally untruthful, he says that he forgives her and she slaps him, retorting that no one needs his forgiveness. At this point, the train is slowing to a stop and, upon spotting from the window the remoteness of the outback, she refuses to disembark at the tiny Bun Bun Ga railway shack "in the middle of the desert". As she is cajoled and then forcibly pulled off the train by Amedeo and two of his Italian friends who regularly travel this route, the spectacle is witnessed, several meters further, by the group of local English-speaking residents, brandishing a "WELCOME CARMELA" sign, who had come to meet the train. As Amedeo and Carmela approach, a little girl among the greeters slips a 45" record into a portable player which starts to emit Wagner's "Bridal Chorus", while one of the men takes out a sheet of paper and reads a speech, which Amedeo interprets for Carmela into Italian: "Dear Carmela, this is a historical day for Bun Bun Ga. Carmela, you come from the noble and ancient country that is Italy. The country of Julius Caesar, the country of Michelangelo, of Galileo, the country of Guglielmo Marconi, the country of Caruso, of Bartali, and Pope Giovanni. Carmela, you come to this corner of the desert to bring us a little breath of your old civilisation." As the train leaves the station, Amedeo can be seen through one of its windows carrying Carmela bridegroom-style into his/their house.
The film was shot in Australia in February and March 1971 and recorded in Italy. [5] Filming took place around Cairns. [6]
Claude Joséphine Rose Cardinale, known as Claudia Cardinale, is an Italian actress.
Rosa Ponzillo, known as Rosa Ponselle was an American operatic dramatic soprano.
I gioielli della Madonna is a opera in three acts by Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari to an Italian libretto by Carlo Zangarini and Enrico Golisciani, based on news accounts of a real event. First performed in 1911, the opera's controversial themes include love between a brother and his adoptive sister, implied criticism of the Catholic Church, and an on-stage orgy.
Lady Frankenstein is a 1971 Italian horror film directed by Mel Welles and written by Edward di Lorenzo. It stars Rosalba Neri, Joseph Cotten, Mickey Hargitay and Paul Müller.
Carmela Corleone (1897–1959) is a fictional character in Mario Puzo's 1969 novel The Godfather. Carmela is portrayed by Italian-American Morgana King in Francis Ford Coppola's 1972 film adaptation of the novel, and in The Godfather Part II (1974). King also played Carmela Corleone in the 1977 television mini-series, The Godfather Saga.
"Commendatori" is the seventeenth episode of the HBO original series The Sopranos and the fourth of the show's second season. It was written by David Chase and directed by Tim Van Patten, and originally aired on February 6, 2000.
Rosalba Neri is a retired Italian actress.
Girl with a Suitcase is a 1961 Italian–French romantic drama film by Valerio Zurlini starring Claudia Cardinale as a spirited but naive young woman who lives on the fluctuating good will of others. It was shown in competition at the 1961 Cannes Film Festival. In 2008, the film was included in the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage's 100 Italian films to be saved, a list of 100 films that "have changed the collective memory of the country between 1942 and 1978."
Paisan is a 1946 Italian neorealist war drama film directed by Roberto Rossellini. In six independent episodes, it tells of the Liberation of Italy by the Allied forces during the late stage of World War II. The film premiered at the Venice International Film Festival and received numerous national and international prizes.
Luigi Zampa was an Italian film director.
The Unknown Woman is a 2006 Italian psychological thriller mystery film, directed by Giuseppe Tornatore that depicts a woman alone in a foreign country, haunted by a horrible past. Although selected as the Italian entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 80th Academy Awards and make the, it was not final nomination.
Franco Cristaldi was an Italian film producer, credited with producing feature films from the 1950s to the 1990s.
The Bandit is a 1946 Italian drama film directed by Alberto Lattuada and starring Anna Magnani, Amedeo Nazzari and Carla Del Poggio. It was shot on location in Turin. Nazzari won the Nastro d'Argento as Best Actor for his performance. The film was entered into the 1946 Cannes Film Festival.
Bread and Tulips is a 2000 romance comedy film directed by Italian Director Silvio Soldini. The movie stars Licia Maglietta and Bruno Ganz as Rosalba Barletta and Fernando Girasole. The film was an official selection at numerous film festivals, including the Cannes Film Festival and the Toronto International Film Festival.
Leda Gloria was an Italian film actress. She appeared in 66 films between 1929 and 1965. During the expansion of Italian cinema of the Fascist era of the 1930s and early 1940s she appeared in starring roles, later transitioning into character parts after the Second World War. She appeared in the Don Camillo series of films, playing the wife of Gino Cervi's Giuseppe Bottazzi.
L'udienza is a 1972 Italian–French satirical drama film directed by Marco Ferreri. In 2008, the film was included in the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage's 100 Italian films to be saved, a list of 100 films that "have changed the collective memory of the country between 1942 and 1978."
My Darling Slave is a 1973 Italian comedy film directed by Giorgio Capitani. It stars Lando Buzzanca, Catherine Spaak, and Adriana Asti.
Mid-Century Loves is a 1954 Italian anthology historical melodrama film consisting of five segments directed by Glauco Pellegrini, Pietro Germi, Mario Chiari, Roberto Rossellini and Antonio Pietrangeli.
Baby is an Italian teen drama streaming television series created for Netflix. The first season debuted on 30 November 2018. The series follows students at an elite high school in Rome who are involved in prostitution. It is loosely based on the story of two high school girls in Rome involved in an underage prostitution ring in 2014.
Harlem is a 1943 Italian sports crime film directed by Carmine Gallone and starring Massimo Girotti, Amedeo Nazzari and Vivi Gioi. It was shot at the Cinecittà Studios in Rome. The film's sets were designed by the art director Guido Fiorini. The former world heavyweight champion Primo Carnera appears in a small role. It is also known by the alternative title of Knock Out.