Kirpianuscus
not beautiful or great or touching. only special. for each detail. for the dialog. for the clash between two different people who are, basically, the same. for a not usual love story under dictatorship. for a picture of a small universe in the right nuances. it is difficult define A Special Day. because in its case important is only the feeling after its end. subtle, bitter, discreet. one of the most powerful films about dictatorship. and about the need of the other. the meeting between Matroianni and Loren has new fascinating nuances. and that is the genius' mark of Scola - to define, in simple manner , at the first sigh, a period. that simplicity, that profound and cruel and delicate and convincing simplicity transforms the film in special one. the dialog becomes axis not for revelations but for precise diagnosis of a strange form of miracle out of the circle of solitude. short. but essential. because, like each special film, A Special Day is a film about its public.
stephanlinsenhoff
The film begins with approx five minutes archive footage from Hitler's Italian state visit May 8th 1938, a gigantic, enthusiastic reception by Mussolini, the King, the diplomatic corps, leading Italian industrialists (whose names are still familiar) and 90 percent of the city's population and a military parade. Hitler's address we hear is from the 1934 Nuremberg Party Meeting, speaking the third day to the German Youth, be "strong and peaceful", "courageous and peace-loving". Antonietta, alone in the roman hyper modern apartment block, the family can not afford a maid, overworked, barely literate housewife and enthusiastic mussolinisupporter. The myna bird Rosamunde escapes and flies to the other side of the courtyard of the apartment block; the reason that Antonietta and Gabriele meet. The well-mannered, cultured Gabriele has recently lost his job as a radio announcer. The concierge warns Antonietta, asking what she has against him, "I say this for your own good. Certain people are bad for your name. I didn't want to say it... but that one from the sixth is a wart, a traitor... an antifascist. In short, a bastard." Gabriele tells Antonietta that he does not fit "L'ordine è la virtù dei mediocre". While Antonietta prepares the coffee, Gabriele looks at her treasured fascist album: the fascist women are the homes guardian, a man is not a man if he is not a husband, a father and a soldier and that genius is not a female but a male feature. They argument, speak, he laughs and asks "So why aren't you laughing? You should have everything you want? A home, a husband, six children. Why aren't you laughing?" On the flat roof, collecting the laundry, truth is revealed, Gabriele not a man, can not be a father and will never be a soldier. He is gay. She, at first pretending not to understand and when she hits him, taking the run and Gabriele after her, accusing that she needed him, she accusing for the same shortly before he told her the truth. Gabriele, furious what society doe with him, she receiving screen: "… good for what you want and ready for judging us and lynch others". The ecstatic, forlorn love scene in his apartment. Is her self-important, macho husband the reason, the wife needed for child-production. And the intelligent, sensitive, sardonic gay Gabriel, cashiered from work because of being degenerate, waiting for his escort for Sardinia, Carbonia (where gays were rounded up by the Fascist regime and the more fit of them forced to work in the local coal mines, on the wrong assumption that having them engage in "manly" work will somehow "fix" their issues); another movie is Cristo Si e' Fermento a Eboli, the doctor from Turin, Carlo Levi). Antoniettas body, rejected by her husband and this man, after the initial chock, rapes this anti fascist, gay body. Is the gay really willing to give the fascist what she asks for? The scene can be translated differently: When does rape start and what gives the permission? A gesture, a look, what? The fact here is her power and he as the 'vogelfrei' object, using him without a witness. He tells how he pretended normality. A friend at work as his fiancé, both a normal couple, going to the movie, eating at restaurants. But it didn't work. After the act the fascist admits that she never had such an experience before, he answering that in his situation sex with a woman is possible "… but changes nothing. To meet you, be a day with you has meant much for me, just today." And she: "It is enough to see you, hear you, seeing your window." The encounter turns them not into a straight and an anti-Fascist, but their future life has a different angle to look at. The movie has in focus a gay, representing the other none-mediocre, the disabled, gypsy, colored, Jews. Used as taxpaying 'Freiwild', needed for mediocre taxpaying staff . The background sound, the fascist rally at Via dei Fori Imperiali, 'Guido Notari' replacing Gabriele. Antonietta, honest, shocked, hitting him, returned in shame. She recognized him, as the others, but saw him behind recognition, liking what she saw. The same for Gabriele, sharing with her a meal of an 'omelette'. By looking again (anamorphosis is a distorted projection or perspective requiring the viewer to use special devices or occupy a specific vantage point to reconstitute the image; anamorphosis, formed again) both form again his gay and her child producing distortion function. They see beyond themselves what they are beyond. The skewed skull in Holbein's painting The Ambassador is anamorphic distortion, meant as visual puzzle for the viewer approaching the painting from the side, to see the form morph to a human skull. Was the painting meant to hang in a stairwell, so that a person walking up the stairs from the painting's left would perceive the skull? Should we, "walking up the stairs from the gay's left" perceive beyond the distortion what is behind? As the movies title: not only a special day for the fascist but for the gay and the child producing machine: Una Giornata Particolare.
