Firstly want to say godspeed soldier you are fighting a noble uphill battle of tumblr reading comprehension vs nualced subjects
Secondly, I just finished Todo Modo (bc of your reblogs) and would like to hear if you have some thought about it? Any will do.
I felt like I need to do some homework to comprehend it, however what I really need to know is, like with many old movies, is it intended to see homoeroticism as such, or to brush it off as some religious imagery? Bc brother I literally sat there at the first meeting or leads going "well on one hand it is Italy and not Hays-code USA, on the other it still is the 70s..."
Thanks for this experience btw! It was beautiful, even if I need some time and a rewarch to comprehend everything
BLESS YOU. I'm so so so delighted you took the rec, I've been thinking about Todo modo since I watched it. First of all, yes, the homoeroticism is textual and intentional. The leads are in a gay relationship that both underpins a lot of the tension and paranoia of the main action and stands in as a really vicious little allegory for the relationship between the party and the catholic church.
My own thoughts on the movie are largely about the dramaturgy - the claustrophobia, the way all of the characters seclude themselves from a civilian mass death event only to hide underground, buried themselves, in a space that's half defensive bunker and half literal crypt. The starkness of the setting leaves the characters with nowhere to turn their guilty, repressed, avaricious energies except on each other. Whether interpreted literally or allegorically, they have walked into purgatory - but there is a central tension between their unwillingness to confess the sins that brought them there, and the complicity of Don Gaetano in his role as exculpator. It's a pact of the damned, really. The ever-present cameras in this physical and psychological prison space only exert more pressure, standing in for the eyes of the audience, the eyes of God, and the eyes of the state imo? Everything is watched. Everything is judged. We, the viewer, have been called here to judge them.
Buuuuut if they don't mind weighing in I want to tag in @sewerfight here too, bc while I have enough understanding of the political backdrop to the movie to be transfixed by the satire in its broad strokes, I am not the person to talk about its historical context lol. And the political context is really key to seeing exactly why things play out the way they do (and why the movie was wiped out of the public consciousness so fast).
