‘L’armata Brancaleone’ or — The Hilarious Lovability of Complete Failures?
“Eww! That’s crazy and HORRIBLE!!”
I shouted out such a declaration last night because the opening to Mario Monicelli’s ‘L’armata Brancaleone’ (1966), or ‘For Love and Gold’, is completely nasty, gross and seemingly out of control! A village is attacked by some blood-thirsty raiders and it is utter chaos: limbs are severed, men hide in barrels of excrement, another tears the head of a baby chicken with his bare teeth (I had to double-check afterwards that it was, thankfully, a fake chick). What?! It’s as though the entire world has been thrown into murderous mayhem. And I thought this was meant to be a comedy!
Fortunately ‘L’armata Brancaleone’ is a comedy (phew!), and an incredible funny one at that, but this insane opening achieves two purposes — it demonstrates that this is a world (and hence a movie) where anything can, and more than likely will, happen and that any and all Medieval clichés and tropes are going to be fully embraced, exaggerated and then destroyed beyond all recognition in all the madness. And this is a very mad movie.
After a series of somewhat convoluted events a rag-tag group of survivors of the opening attack find themselves with a letter from the Holy Roman Emperor himself granting the fief of Aurocastro, along with all its wealth and surrounding lands, to the knight who presents this parchment to the authorities of the aforementioned town. This knight must also agree to the conditions stated therein although, unfortunately, these conditions have been torn off so remain unknown… for now. All this sorry group need now is a noble knight they can convince to claim lordship of Aurocastro and with whom they can split its riches.
Enter Brancaleone da Norcia (Vitorrio Gassman), a knight as disheveled as his hair, who agrees to their plan. And so this group, accompanied by Brancaleone’s cowardly yellow (literally) horse Aquilante, set off to claim Aurocastro for themselves. Although this is the Middle Ages meaning that everything from the plague, a duel crazy Byzantine knight, the Crusades, a sado-masochistic dominatrix, a crazed monk, a deflowered bride and a lot of unstable bridges will need to be navigated and dealt with first.
Monicelli and his screenwriters, Age and Scarpelli, take all these incidents and subvert and/or exaggerate them to hilariously insane degrees to such an extent that one of the main thrill comes from knowing that every time a new character or situation appears that, in only a few minutes, expectations will be violently upturned like a banquet table in a sword fight. This means that although the movie functions as a series of comedic set pieces, as opposed to a single, focused narrative, that it is constantly compelling with each new scene appearing before us with the mouth-watering appeal of a new and unexpected course in a glorious and extravagant meal. “Ooh, so what’s going to happen THIS time?”
The obvious parallel is with Monty Python and the Holy Grail’ (1975) as both movies parody Medieval clichés with a furiously anarchic and imaginative sense of humour along an obvious delight in the grim and grit of the time (I have a strong hunch the Pythons must have seen this movie before making both ‘Grail’, specifically Gilliam with ‘Jabberwocky’), yet there are distinct differences between the two.
For one, despite all the rivista (review) style comedy going on here there’s Monicelli’s intense humanism that shines through in all the movies of his I’ve seen. His characters are not completely caricatured to the point of abstraction or two-dimensionality and neither are any of them particularly evil or bad. Instead, there’s compassion here for everyone involved as these are all flawed people simply struggling to survive in a harsh and brutal world.
Brancaleone himself might be a scruffy haired dolt but he isn’t deluded like Don Quixote nor dim or scheming like so many other anti-heroes with his biggest flaw being that of excessive exuberance and overflowing bravado, and he’s certainly self-aware and capable of honesty which helps make him incredibly likable. Plus, if he and his group ever fail it’s for the same reason many of Monicelli’s other characters fail — they simply fuck it up or run into inevitable bad luck and that’s a very human, and relatable, quality.
The other difference (and this is coming from a big fan of ‘Holy Grail’) is that Monicelli’s film is by far the better directed. The pacing, structure and execution are impeccable and as the movie goes on a striking visual flair makes itself apparent with some stunning costumes of almost Jodorowsky-esque surrealism appearing before our eyes. This elevates the comedic craziness even more as I’m pretty certain that nuns at that time didn’t wear habits quite like these!
‘L’armata Brancaleone’ grabs you by the throat as soon as it starts and doesn’t let go till the end. It’s relentlessly funny, frequently beautiful (keep an eye out for a gorgeously composed shot of a glorious sunset, a yellow horse and a figure traversing a silhouetted viaduct), occasionally demented and consistently energetic to the point where afterwards you want to leap on a bright yellow horse and gallop directly into calamitous (mis)adventure shouting “Branca, Branca, Branca!”
I’m smiling just thinking about it.
