‘Il Compagno Don Camillo’ or — Don Camillo Meets Sartana?
Two of my favourite series in Italian cinema are the five original ‘Don Camillo’ and five original ‘Sartana’ films, so I was super excited about the prospect of watching ‘Il Compagno Don Camillo’ (1965), the fifth in the original run of the Don Camillo flicks, as the awesome Gianni Garko (Sartana himself!) appears in this one. Ooh!
The film starts as all the Don Camillo movies start and that’s with a gentle voice-over introducing us to the little town of Brescello nestled in the Po Valley where the town’s Catholic priest, Don Camillo (Fernandel), and its Communist Major, Peppone (Gino Cervi), are constantly engaged in their endless battle of equally stubborn wills.
The source of their feuding this time is down to Peppone wanting to twin Brescello with the Russian town of Brezwycewski. The Soviets like the idea so send the Italians a tractor as a present. However, the twinning starts looking to be on shaky ground when some Russian political refugees turn up looking for sanctuary and telling terrible tales about life under the Soviet regime.
How terrible? Well, the Soviets force little children to ride on merry-go-rounds. “But that sounds nice”, the Brescello villagers reply. Yes, they are told, but the Soviets make it spin at 4 thousand miles an hour so it explodes and kills all the kids. Also, the only thing to eat in Russia are bats. So, the Soviet Union isn’t the paradise Peppone has always been telling everyone it is?
Yet when it transpires that these aren’t Russian refugees but Italian con artists, and after even more convoluted adventures including Don Camillo going on hunger strike as a form of protest but, somehow, managing to put ON weight, it is decided that Peppone and his fellow Communist party members shall visit Brezwycewski to see what life is really like under Soviet rule. And to make sure they don’t return with a load of lies Don Camillo will disguise himself as a party member and join them.
After all, it’s not as if a priest disguised as a Communist party member entering the Soviet Union under false pretenses and secretly smuggling in a load of hidden religious paraphernalia could cause any trouble. Right?
Director Luigi Comencini doesn’t quite bring the gorgeous dreamlike style that Julien Duvivier brought to the first two Don Camillo movies but what Comencini was an absolute master at is handling comedy, actors and material with real brio so even though this might not be the best looking of the Don Camillo series it’s still outstandingly funny and constantly crammed with perfectly realised comedic flourishes.
For example — before Don Camillo starts his hunger strike he spies a Parma ham hanging up in a cupboard, goes up to it, lovingly caresses it then wipes his hand across his face, inhaling the aroma from his fingers with a look of pained bliss. It’s a single, simple moment but it’s just wonderful. And when Peppone decides to force-feed Don Camillo (who, after having been told by the Lord that it is actually okay for him to eat after all and so has just eaten three weeks worth of food in three hours) a huge bowl of pasta I was spluttering and choking just as much as Don Camillo was only I wasn’t spraying tomato sauce everywhere.
Don Camillo is his usual bullish self (at one point he is giving a sermon to his congregation and demanding to know who has been spreading dreadful rumours about him and that whoever it is should do so directly to his face so he can smash his teeth in, only to then remember where he is but still furiously carries on regardless anyway) so even when the crucified Christ himself tells Don Camillo from his cross (Christ and Don Camillo frequently chat to each other) that he’ll have nothing to do with Don Camillo visiting the Soviet Union under a lie Don Camillo not only ignores the Lord and goes anyway but packs up and takes Christ along too by folding him on his crucifix up and stuffing him in a tube!
Once Don Camillo, Peppone and the rest (Gianni Garko plays a left-wing journalist coming along to cover the story but spends most of his time hitting on every single available woman he sees) arrive in Russia it’s a rapid succession of very funny, and sometimes surprisingly touching, mishaps and misadventures nearly all of which driven by the highly strung Italians’ paranoia, presumptions and basic idiocy as the welcoming Russians behave like perfect hosts.
‘Il Compagno Don Camillo’ is a very funny film and made by filmmakers and actors who know the characters and material inside out. The majority of humour involves poking fun at both religion and politics along with how Italy and the U.S.S.R. viewed each other at the time of the Cold War, yet there’s never a hint of malice or cynicism towards either side.
Or is there?
Because at the end (which I won’t spoil) there’s a scene involving Peppone popping up in disguise this time before a shocked Don Camillo and with the joke behind it very much implying that both political idealism and religious belief are a form of insane brainwashing.
That’s what I love about these Don Camillo movies as they might give us the wink that all these gags are done purely for a bit of good-natured fun but there’s a real, delicious hidden twist and bite always going on underneath. They’re fantastic.
