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• Cogas, janas and the others: mythical and fantastic creatures in Sardinian literature and cinema

  56-76

  Myriam Mereu

  Views:

  271

  Sardinian contemporary literature and films have recently recovered an extensive heritage of folk myths and legends taken from the oral tradition. Legendary figures, such as accabadoras (female figure who was enabled with the task of easing the sufferings of the dying people), and fantasy creatures, such as cogas, surbiles (‘vampire witches’), janas (‘fairies, pixies’), and panas (‘the ghosts of women who died in childbirth’) are being revived by writers and film directors with the purpose to bring their memory back to life and share it with a wide audience of readers and spectators.

  The analysis of imaginary and legendary creatures in Sardinian contemporary literature cannot overlook orality and its central role in shaping popular imagination over the centuries. Writing has replaced orality, whilst mass media and digital media are getting the upper hand over storytelling as a practice of community and family aggregation, meant to mark the long working hours and scare the children, amongst the most common functions of Sardinian oral storytelling. 

  The literary corpus includes fairy tales, novels, tales and legends dealing with the Sardinian oral tradition, whilst on the cinematic side I will examine short films, feature films and documentaries made in Sardinia over the last fifteen years.

• Monicelli and the memory of the Great War

  125-139

  Giovanni De Leva

  Views:

  636

  In my essay, I examine Mario Monicelli’s La Grande Guerra, in order to verify if its comic and anti-heroic perspective really leads to a new concept of WWI. I first retrace the director’s previous filmography, where the characters, genres and patterns which will recur in La Grande Guerra originally take shape. I then reconstruct the movie’s genesis, focusing on the sources the screenwriters refer to: not only WWI movies and memories, such as Kubrick’s Paths of Glory and Lussu’s Un anno sull’Altipiano, but also, quite unexpectedly, La vita militare by De Amicis.

  On this basis, I analyse the representation of the war, in its figurative and narrative elements. In many senses, it’s a war seen from the ground, and indeed the scenography and script take inspiration from the soldiers’ pictures of the front and their military songs. In this realistic context, Monicelli develops the plot of two cowardly privates, from a poor, undisciplined background, who ultimately identify with their nation enough to sacrifice themselves for their compatriots.

  The purpose of highlighting the unacknowledged war contribution of the mass, however, is somehow contradicted by the army’s image. The comic and anti-heroic aspects, indeed, concern only the low-ranked soldiers, while the Command is represented in a sentimental way. In this respect, Monicelli confirms a rhetoric coming from De Amicis, and later inherited by Fascism: the army as an image of a model society, where North and South, rich and poor, educated and illiterate unite, and where everyone deserves his hierarchical rank.