L'ingorgo - Una storia impossibile (1979)

User Rating:

6.4/10   

Director:

Luigi Comencini

Writers:

Peter Berling (screenplay)
Roxane Boutang (screenplay)

Release Date:

4 March 1988 (USA)

Genre:

Drama

Plot:

A tremendous congestion hit the Roma highway ring. The biggest traffic jam ever seen endures for more than 36 hours...

Plot Keywords:

Car | Traffic Jam | Traffic | Episodic | Italy

Awards:

1 nomination

Cast

Annie Girardot	...	Irène
Fernando Rey	...	Carlo
Miou-Miou	...	Angela
Gérard Depardieu	...	Franco
Ugo Tognazzi	...	Professor
Marcello Mastroianni	...	Marco Montefoschi
Stefania Sandrelli	...	Teresa
Alberto Sordi	...	De Benedetti
Orazio Orlando	...	Ferretti
Gianni Cavina	...	Pompeo
Harry Baer	...	Mario
Ángela Molina	...	Martina
Ciccio Ingrassia	...	The Dying Man
Patrick Dewaere	...	Young man
Giovannella Grifeo	...	Germana

Also Known As:

Black Out in Autostrada (Italy) (DVD title)
El gran atasco (Spain)
L'ingorgo (Italy) (short title)
Le grand embouteillage (France)
Stau (West Germany)
Traffic Jam (USA)

Runtime:

121 min | Germany:113 min

Country:

Italy | France | West Germany | Spain

Language:

Italian | French | Spanish | German

Color:

Color (Eastmancolor)

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Italy:VM14 | Finland:K-16 | West Germany:16 | Argentina:16

Company:

Albatros Filmproduktion

Motionless road movie.

So few comments for the great Luigi Comencini!One of the best Italian directors in the heyday (sixties and seventies) of Italian cinema!

"Ingorgo",like "lo scopone scientifico" ,is a modern fable.But whereas the former dealt with the power of money,the poor wops against the high and the mighty,the later involves the whole society,including the social worries.

At first sight,it looks like an unspectacular disaster movie:the traffic jam acts reveals the deep malaise of the Italian (???) consumer society .The car,what a symbol!Long before Cronenberg("crash")and infinitely better than him,Comencini heralds the dead end of our era ,poisoned by selfishness,hypocrisy,wickedness and the God named car that man created...As Pollack a decade earlier had shown in "They shoot horses,don't they" an America going round in circles,Comencini shows here the end of the road.

As in a disaster movie,there are a lot of subplots (no plot,no main character),but Comencini is too clever to follow the rules:except for Sordi and Mastroianni,the stars (Depardieu,Annie Girardot,Ugo Tognazzi,Miou Miou,et al) take a back seat to less familiar faces.

A road movie,it is for sure.Everything happens on the road.And anything can happen.A desolate landscape,cars on the road,and along the wayside,wrecks of cars .And inside this apocalyptic world,the milk of human meanness,everyman for himself and God against us all!The movie reaches paroxysms of horror during a rape scene in a van during the night :the doors remains open:four bourgeois,in the car behind ,put on their headlights and relish with the girl's screams.(She might like that,one of the peeping toms says!They pay for such a show in town,another one replies)

If there is a hope,as such is often the case in Comencini's world,it can be found in children's eyes.A little ray of light illuminates the darkness when a girl (sadly the one who will be assaulted)takes her guitar and sing a lovely tune for little boys and girls with cherubic faces.Another hope can be found in the reverend's words when he prays over the body of the man in the ambulance (stuck in the traffic jam too).Comencini's words indeed.

"Ingorgo" is an absolute pessimistic work.And the last pictures,displaying the populace ingurgitating jars of baby food comes as another symbol.Either man will be born again with a child's wisdom,or he will be doomed for eternity.Children are fathers to the man and so much more in Comencini's work:in "lo scopone scientifico" it's the daughter who's the most sensible;in "incompreso", a child suffers from the adults' indifference;in "cuore" the children who were carefully taught are sent to the war and lose all their illusions.

Like most of Comencini 's works,it is a black comedy that cries to be seen.Comedy is a wrong word anyway when you verge constantly on human dumbness tragedy.