‘Chains’ or — Neorealism on Steroids?
Ever been in the mood for some Italian neorealism but also fancied the emotional excess of a Douglas Sirk melodrama too? Then why not watch Raffaello Matarazzo’s ‘Chains’ (1949), or ‘Catene’, where you can have both at the same time!
Not only that but you also get a dollop of thriller on the side with the film opening in an almost noir-esque fashion as a desperate thief is forced to push the broken-down car he’s stolen into a nearby repair shop and, thus, into the lives of honest, hard-working mechanic, Guglielmo (Amedeo Nazzari), and his honest, hard-working wife, Rosa (Yvonne Sanson), and their two young kids.
However, the thief is in cahoots with a gangster, Emilio (Aldo Nicodemi), and when these two return to retrieve the hot vehicle the following day it transpires that Emilio and Rosa used to be girlfriend and boyfriend before she was married. Oh no!
Seeing her again Emilio wants Rosa back by any means necessary and he still carries the love letters she once wrote to him, and even though nothing physical occurred between them (the thought of a woman having sex before marriage is unthinkable!) they can be used as “proof” of adultery so Emilio threatens to reveal these letters to her husband if Rosa doesn’t give in to his lustful demands. OH NO!
What’s poor Rosa going to do?! Go through bloody hell, that’s what she’s going to do. But fortunately in a highly entertaining manner so let’s get the popcorn out.
As is typical with these Matarazzo melodramas ‘Chains’ deals with everyday people living everyday lives served-up as crowd-pleasing dramatic spectacle, so it’s a bit like watching early Rossellini or Visconti combined with the mainstream appeal of Spielberg or even Disney (the children here are weaponsied for maximum cuteness and emotional manipulation). This appeal is also down to Matarazzo’s knack of cramming his movies with a vast amount of operatic incident as every two or three minutes these people’s worlds are upended or fundamentally shaken by some unforeseen event or terrible consequence.
A fantastic example of Matarazzo’s ability to destroy a universe in a quotidian setting is the scene where the family are dining with friends at an outdoor restaurant overlooking the Bay of Naples. A band is playing Neapolitan music, the children are chasing a ball and Guglielmo is performing magic tricks at the table when the treacherous Emilio enters under the pretence of discussing business with Guglielmo but in reality to psychologically torment poor Rosa, so we can’t help but notice on Emilio’s entrance that the restaurant’s wooden roof has cast a lattice of fractured shadows over his body signifying his intent to similarly shatter a family unit’s unified field or maybe the idealised image a child has for their mother.
As the old song ‘Torna!’ is sung, and the friends casually chat about the nostalgic lyrics, hands are secretly, but unwillingly, clasped under the table which induces an information heavy memory flashback that montages in parallel with the music thus acting as a mini opera condensed into twenty seconds before a ball is dropped and something is seen that changes a young boy forever as, behind him, a boat sails across the horizon and “enters” his head like an unwanted memory that can never be unremembered.
It’s an astonishing chain of events that demonstrates Matarazzo’s deft handling of visual information, music and memory (both individual and collective) to grip, engage and surprise the audience. It’s also a great excellent example of Matarazzo’s pacing as, if you look closely enough, there’s always a carefully planned moment going on that’s designed to hook our attention (when we see Guglielmo and his family for the first time his daughter, Angelina, doesn’t want him to touch her in her new dress with his dirty hands as she wants to remain clean, but notice that he immediately puts his hands on his wife meaning Matarazzo has in one simple, wordless gesture presented us with the entire crux of the movie — Rosa’s implied impurity).
Unsurprisingly ‘Chains’ contains dated social attitudes where men can commit murder if their wife commits adultery (an attitude Pietro Germi would savagely satirise a few years later), religious symbolism (Rosa is framed as the Madonna at moments of extreme emotional crisis as well as functioning as a sort of female Jesus who must suffer the sins of the world) and the importance of family (if you’re detached from the domestic unit you’re in a state of destitution) so it’s easy to see why critics turned their noses up at Matarazzo’s melodramas when they were released (it’s one thing to watch films about the unwashed masses but god-forbid we’d enjoy the same movies they do!) but it’s also easy to see why they were so unbelievably successful.
If you’re a fan of Italian directors such as Visconti but never seen anything by Matarazzo you should really check him out because whilst he might not possess their reputation of prestige auteurism what he was doing was just as captivating and, quite frankly, possibly even more entertaining.
