Maurizio Nichetti`s Italian film ”The Icicle Thief” contains a great comic idea, though it stops short of becoming a great comedy. The problem may be that Nichetti is too in love with his concept; he`s so concerned with working it out that he neglects the actual gags.
The film begins with a subjective shot-representing the point of view of
”the Author” (the tiny Nichetti himself, with his bristly moustache and static-cling hair) as he enters the Milan television studio where he is to present his acclaimed neo-realist drama, ”The Icicle Thief,” to the prime time audience.
It`s the film`s sole subjective shot until shortly before the end, when the Author, finding himself trapped inside a television set, pounds desperately on the tube, trying to attract the attention of the oblivious housewife to whom the set belongs.
Nichetti`s subject is precisely that-the gradual absorption of the personal point of view by the great, faceless cultural institution of television. The film traces the evolution of a human being (the Author) into an object (the television), as the world of the movie slowly fills to bursting with products, commodities and meaningless brand names.
The Author`s ”Icicle Thief” is a grim, black-and-white drama set among the urban working class in the immediate postwar years-a play on Vittorio De Sica`s humanist classic ”The Bicycle Thief,” and about as far away as one can get from current notions of commercial appeal.
The hero of the film-within-the-film is Antonio (Nichetti again, but with a shave and a haircut), an unemployed factory worker with an extended family to support: a beautiful young wife (Caterina Sylos Labini), a small, soulful- eyed son (Federico Rizzo) and a trouble-prone baby (he likes to stick his fingers in electric outlets). But there is no work, no food, no nothing.
Where the black-and-white world of the past is defined by its deficiencies, the gaudy, full-color world of the present is defined by its almost absurd plenty, as represented in the relentlessly upbeat commercials that interrupt the Author`s film without warning.
The commercials and the movie dance a frenzied, ironic counterpoint, until a power failure in the TV studio causes a cosmic video scramble, and characters begin commuting between the two dimensions. A towering Nordic model in a skimpy swimsuit (Heidi Komarek) turns up in Antonio`s cramped apartment; meanwhile, Antonio`s wife escapes into the singing and dancing world of a detergent commercial, where she can finally fulfill her show-biz aspirations. As spectactularly confused as the Author`s movie gets, it still makes no impression on its viewers. Nichetti gives us glimpses of an over-stuffed modern apartment, inhabited by the contemporary equivalents of Antonio`s family: A wife who chatters on the telephone, a husband who reads the sports pages and a son furiously engaged in building a scale model of the Kremlin out of Lego blocks. They glance occasionally at the screen, and go back to their private pursuits.
”The Icicle Thief” is consistently clever and pointed and highly intelligent, yet it`s only occasionally laugh-out-loud funny, and then in moments that seem thrown away, tangential to the main ideas (the adventures of the danger-prone child, for example).
There comes a point where the open-ended structure, instead of promoting spontaneity, actually stifles it: Nichetti has too much to explain, too many threads to keep untangled, to allow himself the anarchic freedom of Frank Tashlin in his similar, seminal modernist comedies of the 1950s, ”The Girl Can`t Help It” and ”Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?”.
Nor is Nichetti quite willing to acknowledge the sentimental distortions of the neo-realist style-the romantic view of poverty that made De Sica`s films, in some way, as dishonest as today`s commercials. The movie`s final image of entrapment seems to apply to Nichetti himself-comedy needs open space, and he has left himself very little room in which to move.
”THE ICICLE THIEF”
(STAR)(STAR)(STAR)
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Directed and written by Maurizio Nichetti; photographed by Mario Battistoni;
edited by Rita Olivati; production design by Ada Legori; music by Manuel De Sica. In Italian with English subtitles. An Aries Films release; opens Friday at the Fine Arts Theater. Running time: 1:30. Not rated by the MPAA.
THE CAST
The Author/Antonio…………………………………Maurizio Nichetti
Maria…………………………………………Caterina Sylos Labini
Bruno……………………………………………….Federico Rizzo
Don Italo…………………………………………….Renato Scarpa
The Model…………………………………………….Heidi Komarek