Two Christs in Italy
Hammond, Margo
and the discovery of arms caches stepped up, the situation would be better. Apart from tracing and stopping the arms leaving the U.S., the Dublin government is hoping that the American...
...La Repubblica, a Socialist-leaning daily, hailed the play as "one of the most extraordinary pieces of comic popular theater that can be admired in Europe today...
...They would like to see IrishAmerican organiTations, which continue to subscribe money for Northern Ireland through dubious channels, harassed and, if possible, prosecuted on some count...
...The criticisms became so intense, in fact, that a journalist on the front page of the prestigious Corriere delle Sera claimed that it had simply become chic to pan the film...
...ZeffireUi's Jesus, wrote one critic, looks like "the statues on the altars of country churches...
...The wedding feast of Cana (a scene Zeffirelli leaves out entirely~ is described by an elated drunk, the resurrection of Lazarus by a pickpocket taking advantage of the crowd gathered to witness the miracle...
...Occupying a building--dubbed the Palazzina Liberty-in Milan, Fo broke with the "bourgeois theater" and succeeded in constructing an independent theater company which he brought into local cultural centers (Case del Popolo), Chambers of Labor, occupied factories and universities as well as to France, Greece and West Germany...
...devote a quarter of his time in the White House "listening to lawyers arg, ins about the tapes and so on" rather than concentrating his efforts on pressing government problems like the economy...
...The other parties from the Liberals ("Pluralism does not mean saying the same thing with different voices, but being able to say some~ thing different like the theater of Dario Fo") to the Communists ("We too have been affronted by certain television transmissions without, however, resorting to a call for censorship") have condemned any attempts to ban Fo again from national television...
...Or more precisely Jesus of Nazareth, a colossal film by Franco (Romeo and luliet, Zabriskie Point) Zeflirelli versus the Christ of actorauthor Dario Fo's Mistero Buffo, a series of Biblical tales based on the popular traditions of the Middle Ages...
...In the realm of the intellect, if that phrase applies anywhere in the whole rotten business, Ford is now imitating Chevy Chase imitating Ford...
...The "other" Christ has become just as controversial, but for exactly the opposite reason...
...Apart from tracing and stopping the arms leaving the U.S., the Dublin government is hoping that the American authorities will stop the traff~ at the source...
...What you didn't expect was for The Pardoner to surface here the next day and yet once more defend The Pardon, explaining that The Monster's television appearances have proved once more how right he, the Pardoner, was to hand over The Pardon, payable in thirty days, to the man who gave him his job...
...All he had to do was obey the rtding of the Supreme Court and turn the tapes over to the proper authorities asking for them...
...WASHIHCITOM REPORT PAST IMPgRgECT, IMPgRA Ifg You expected The Monster to act like The Monster and he did, right on schedule and in prime time...
...There were other strains, a touch, for example, of Edward G. Robinson as Little Caesar ordering the rub-ont of Eddie, a gang member about to turn honest CommonweaL" 359...
...This is how, says Dario Fo, the common people saw the Gospel...
...The Comunitd di base (a Catholic social action group) sent a telegram of solidarity to Fo which alluded to the scene in Mistero Bu~o satirizing Pope Boniface VIII: "It helps us understand how the common people have judged the Church of Christ when that Church has yielded to the temptation of power...
...0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Two C h r l s t s In I t a l y Italians, always fond of dialectics, were recently presented with a curious confrontation...
...The Italian Communists, on the other hand, are calling for an investigation into the amount of state funds that were spent to air Jesus o/ Nazareth, "an operation of such low artistic-cultural merit and of such pressing clerical importance...
...Zeffirelli, himself a Florentine Catholic, echoed the sentiments of the hierarchy attacking the play as vulgar and anticlerical...
...The judgment of the Vatican has been unequivocal...
...Next time out he'll wrestle him.gel] to the grotmd...
...What has been the reaction to his "other" Christ...
...The film critics, however, were not so generous...
...Whoever dares to admit that he enjoyed the Sunday shows is accused of being kitsch, of loving graven images, of joining the reactionary followers of Monsignor Lefebvre or of indulging, as with Jesus Christ Superstar, in another wave of religious consumerism...
...Expelled more than 14 years ago from national television--then controlled by the Christian Democratic Party--for making political comments on a variety show, he has also been at odds with the Italian Communist Party for his unorthodox, far-leftist views...
...My own guess is, One: AI Half, who said, Jerry, send the tapes to San Clemente, or I release the evidence that you promised Pardon in return for the job, a federal offense and an impeachable one and as long as you're up, please pass me NATO...
...The more I see of Nixon's replies," Ford said, "the more I'm convinced that my reason for the pardon has been validated...
...After all the killing and all the destruction of property, the Northern Ireland problem seems further away from a solution than ever...
...Cultural and political provincialism," concluded Paolo Grassi, former president of the Scala opera house, now president of the Italian RAI-TV, "ridiculous factionalism: first a pseudo-political gathering of forces for and against Zefftrelli's Jesus, then opposition between Jesus and Mistero BuOo as if we were closing ranks in two trenches . . . . " MAtO0 H,~MOm~ (Margo Hammond, who writes regularly for the Christian Science Monitor and other publications, b an American treelance writer currently based in Rome...
...Attacking its traditionalism, the film was labeled conservative, reactionary and sentimental...
...ZetFareUi has finally given us an authentic Jesus, a sweet Mary and Peter sculpted from a rock," wrote L'Osservatore Romano...
...After the first installment of Zeffirelli's Jesus o/ Nazareth--seen by an estimated 22 million viewers-the film received an immediate benediction from the Vatican...
...a Mary, a peasant woman, who screams like a banshee and curses the Angel Gabriel when she sees her son on the cross: and a Lazarus who rises from the dead, not wrapped in a fresh white sheet, but already beginning to rot...
...Dublin Ministers believe that any association with court cases will frighten off some contributors who would fear police and federal agencies' interest in their activities and others who would for the first time begin to suspect the organizations' bona lutes...
...And in the third, had he allowed justice to take its course, he would not really have had to spend all that time in arguments about the tapes...
...Not all Italian Catholics, however, found the play offensive...
...It was a film, according to the Vatican newspaper, that was "capable of translating in images the sublime dimension of faith...
...There was considerable satisfaction in Dublin with the move against Noraid, the chief collection agency for funds for Northern Ireland...
...In the second, what he was concentrating on, of course, was the handling of the Mayaguez affair, in which he came on like Chevy Chase gone berserk and heavily armed...
...As to Ford's benefactor, he continued his impersonaOf ]~.mt'l Jannings in the last scene of The B/ue Ange...
...In the first place, if Ford was concentrating on the economy, in...
...Fo himself has been the subject of controversy for some time...
...Using a Lombardian dialect based on the peasant language of the 1400s, Fo creates a Christ who drinks, laughs, eats and dances and talks of the here and now more than the beyond...
...Dedicating five columns to Mistero Buffo, L'Osservatore Romano spoke of ideological violence, claiming that the I0 June 1977:358 play was an affront to the conscience of Catholics...
...More cynically, perhaps, the hope in Dublin is that those who have supported the IRA because they seemed to be fighting for a worthy cause will begin to tire of keeping up the financing of what appears to be a lost one...
...Noraid is reported now to be bringing a suit against the Justice Department alleging harassment of members...
...Jesus Christ versus Jesus Christ...
...The reviews...
...DESMOND FISHER (Desmond Fisher, Director of Broadcasting Developments /or Radio Telefis Eireann, is Commonweal's regular correspondent in Ireland...
...An enormous applause, an impetuous and profound applause, is echoing along the entire peninsula," wrote the television critic for Corriere della Sera, "an applause coming from the common people (and much of Italy is made up of common people...
...Others called it a mixture of Cecil B. DeMille and illustrations in a Sunday School catechism...
...view of the results of his concentration it would have been a good idea for him to have something else to think about...
...Meanwhile the "case of Dario Fo" as well as that of Zeffirelli's Jesus have become political issues...
...Fourteen years later--and after a reform of the state-controlled television created two channels, one controlled by the Christian Democrats, the other by the Socialists----Dario Fo has returned...
...In the tradition of the Commedia dell'arte with its grotesque characters and ribald language, Mistero Buffo presents the Gospel as it was seen by the common people of the Middle Ages...
...Fo's Mistero Buffo (Comic Mystery) was shown April 22 and 29...
...It was taken to court by the Department of Justice for failing to complete its registration forms and supply all the information required...
...The Christ of Dario Fo is far from being the catechism figure of Zeffirelli...
...How many lawyers arguing did he have to listen to before deciding to give the incriminatil~ tapes to the criminal incriminated on them...
...The Christian Democratic Party is calling for the censorship of Fo (who is scheduled to present 15 television shows this spring and next fall...
...Both were the subject of recent television specials: the Zefilrelli film was presented in a five-part series from March 27-April 24...
...Today, the Provisional IRA seems to be no nearer its goal...
...Following up the first installment of Fo's play, the Cardinal Vicar of Rome, Ugo Poletti, sent a telegram to Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti protesting what he called a "blasphemous and anticultural transmission...
...Had he not pardoned the man who made him president, not only would he have been guilty of base ingratitude (a thought Ford did not say) but he would have had to...
...Ford's explanation this time for turning loose the master criminal while the subordinate members of the gang were jailed had a special quality of absurdity...
Vol. 104 • June 1977 • No. 12
