''Bread and Chocolate'' ( it, Pane e cioccolata) is a 1974 Italian comedy-drama film directed by
Franco Brusati
Franco Brusati (4 August 1922 in Milan – 28 February 1993 in Rome) was an Italian screenwriter and Film director, director.
Biography
He directed the internationally commended film hit ''Bread and Chocolate'', one of the finest examples o ...
. This film chronicles the misadventures of an Italian immigrant to Switzerland and is representative of the ''
commedia all'italiana
Commedia all'italiana (, pl. Commedie all'italiana, "Comedy in the Italian way") or Italian-style comedy is an Italian film genre born in Italy in the 1950s and developed in the 1960s and 1970s. It is widely considered to have started with Mari ...
'' film genre.
Plot
Like many southern Europeans of the period (1960s to early 1970s), Nino Garofalo (
Nino Manfredi
Saturnino "Nino" Manfredi (22 March 1921 – 4 June 2004) was an Italian actor, voice actor, director, screenwriter, playwright, comedian, singer, author, radio personality and television presenter.
He was one of the most prominent Italian a ...
) is a migrant "
guest worker
Foreign workers or guest workers are people who work in a country other than one of which they are a citizen. Some foreign workers use a guest worker program in a country with more preferred job prospects than in their home country. Guest worke ...
" from
Italy
Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...
, working as a waiter in
Switzerland
). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...
. He loses his work permit when he is caught urinating in public, so he begins to lead a clandestine life in Switzerland.
At first he is supported by Elena, a
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
woman and
political refugee
The right of asylum (sometimes called right of political asylum; ) is an ancient juridical concept, under which people persecuted by their own rulers might be protected by another sovereign authority, like a second country or another entit ...
. Then he is befriended by an Italian industrialist, relocated to Switzerland because of financial problems. The industrialist takes him under his wing and invests his savings for him, but kills himself after his financial scheme collapses, without having told Nino where he deposited his savings.
Nino is constrained to find shelter with a group of clandestine
Neapolitans living in a chicken coop, together with the same chickens they tend to in order to survive.
Charmed by the idyllic vision of a group of young blonde Swisses, having a bath in a river, he decides to dye his hair and pass himself off as a local. In a bar, when openly rooting for the
Italian national football team
The Italy national football team ( it, Nazionale di calcio dell'Italia) has represented Italy in international football since its first match in 1910. The national team is controlled by the Italian Football Federation (FIGC), the governing body ...
during the broadcast of a match, he is found out as a migrant Italian worker, after
celebrating a goal scored by
Fabio Capello
Fabio Capello (; born 18 June 1946) is an Italian former professional football manager and player.
As a player, Capello represented SPAL 1907, Roma, Milan and Juventus. He played as a midfielder and won several trophies during his career which ...
.
He is arrested and brought to a police station. He meets Elena again, who wants to give him a renewed permit but he refuses. He embarks on a train and finds himself in a cabin filled with returning Italian guest workers. Amid the songs of "sun" and "sea", he is seen having second thoughts.
He gets off at the first stop: better life as an illegal immigrant than a life of misery.
Cast
*
Nino Manfredi
Saturnino "Nino" Manfredi (22 March 1921 – 4 June 2004) was an Italian actor, voice actor, director, screenwriter, playwright, comedian, singer, author, radio personality and television presenter.
He was one of the most prominent Italian a ...
as Nino Garofalo
*
Johnny Dorelli
Johnny Dorelli (real name Giorgio Guidi; born 20 February 1937) is an Italian actor, singer and television host.
Early life
Dorelli was born in Meda, Italy. In 1946 he moved to New York City with his family, where his father, Nino D'Aurelio ...
as Italian Industrialist
*
Anna Karina
Anna Karina (born Hanne Karin Blarke Bayer; September 22, 1940 – December 14, 2019) as Elena
*
Paolo Turco as Gianni
*
Ugo D'Alessio
Ugo D'Alessio (1909–1979) was an Italian film actor.Goble p.113
Selected filmography
* '' Malaspina'' (1947) - Nicola
* '' Madunnella'' (1948) - Il ragionere, padre di Maria
* '' Assunta Spina'' (1948) - Epanimonda Pesce
* '' Red Moon'' (1951 ...
as Old Man
*
Tano Cimarosa
Tano Cimarosa, real name Gaetano Cisco, (1 January 1922 – 24 May 2008) was an Italian actor, screenwriter and film director. He participated in more than fifty movies.
He played the "Blacksmith" in the Oscar-winning film ''Cinema Paradiso'' fr ...
as Giacomo
*
Gianfranco Barra
Gianfranco Barra (born 5 April 1940) is an Italian film, television and stage actor. He has appeared in more than 80 films. Born in Rome, Barra studied at the Silvio d’Amico Academy of Dramatic Arts in his hometown. First active on stage, he m ...
as The Turk
*
Giorgio Cerioni Giorgio may refer to:
* Castel Giorgio, ''comune'' in Umbria, Italy
* Giorgio (name), an Italian given name and surname
* Giorgio Moroder, or Giorgio, Italian record producer
** ''Giorgio'' (album), an album by Giorgio Moroder
* "Giorgio" (song), ...
as Police Inspector
*
Francesco D'Adda
Francesco D'Adda (born 15 October 1943) is an Italian actor. He appeared in more than seventy films since 1970.
Selected filmography
References
External links
*
1943 births
Living people
Italian male film actors
{{Italy-film ...
as Rudiger
*
Geoffrey Copleston
Gerald Geoffrey Copleston (18 March 1921 – 1999) was an English actor, voice actor, and translator
Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. The Englis ...
as Boegli
*
Federico Scrobogna as Grigory
*
Max Delys as Renzo
*
Umberto Raho
Umberto Raho (4 June 1922 – 9 January 2016) was an Italian stage, film and television actor.
Life and career
Born in Bari, the son of an Italian father and a Bulgarian mother, Raho graduated in philosophy and then, immediately after the war, ...
as Maitre
*
Nelide Giammarco as The Blonde
*
Manfred Freyberger
''Manfred: A dramatic poem'' is a closet drama written in 1816–1817 by Lord Byron. It contains supernatural elements, in keeping with the popularity of the ghost story in England at the time. It is a typical example of a Gothic fiction.
Byr ...
as The Sportman
Reception
In the ''
Chicago Sun-Times
The ''Chicago Sun-Times'' is a daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Since 2022, it is the flagship paper of Chicago Public Media, and has the second largest circulation among Chicago newspapers, after the ''Chicago T ...
'', film critic
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert (; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American film critic, film historian, journalist, screenwriter, and author. He was a film critic for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, Ebert beca ...
wrote:
''Bread and Chocolate'' is a sneaky comedy that winds up being serious about its subject. It reminds us of some of Chaplin Chaplin may refer to:
People
* Charlie Chaplin (1889–1977), English comedy film actor and director
* Chaplin (name), other people named Chaplin
Films
* '' Unknown Chaplin'' (1983)
* ''Chaplin'' (film) (1992)
* ''Chaplin'' (2011 film), Ben ...
's later features, and maybe it's no coincidence that the lead character looks like Chaplin. He's a Southern Italian waiter named Nino (Nino Manfredi), who goes to Switzerland to tryout for a restaurant job and finds himself caught in a net of discrimination...
The only sympathy he gets comes from a neighbor (Anna Karina), a Greek immigrant who's concealing her child from the immigration authorities. Despondent, he goes into the country to find work on a chicken farm, and the film finds its best and most unforgettable image: a chicken-coop filled with immigrant laborers, who peer with admiration and envy through chicken wire at a crowd of Swiss kids frolicking in a pool.
It's here that we most completely feel the movie's underlying tension and seriousness. Other films have considered the dilemma of immigrant workers in Europe ... but not until this film by Franco Brusati has the subject been approached as a comedy.
Awards
* The film won several international awards including the
Silver Bear
The Berlin International Film Festival (german: Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin), usually called the Berlinale (), is a major international film festival held annually in Berlin, Germany. Founded in 1951 and originally run in June, the festi ...
at the
24th Berlin International Film Festival
The 24th annual Berlin International Film Festival was held from 21 June – 2 July 1974. The Golden Bear was awarded to the Canadian film '' The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz'' directed by Ted Kotcheff.
Jury
The following people were announc ...
in 1974.
*
1978
References
External links
*
*
{{New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Foreign Language Film
1974 films
1974 comedy-drama films
Commedia all'italiana
1970s English-language films
Films directed by Franco Brusati
1970s German-language films
1970s Italian-language films
Films set in Switzerland
Films about immigration
Italian comedy-drama films
1974 multilingual films
Italian multilingual films
1970s Italian films