L'armata Brancaleone
Encyclopedia
L'armata Brancaleone is an Italian
comedy movie released in 1966, written by the famous duo Age & Scarpelli
and directed by Mario Monicelli
. It features Vittorio Gassman
in the main role. It was entered into the 1966 Cannes Film Festival
.
The term Armata Brancaleone is still used today in Italian
to define a group of badly assembled and useless people. Brancaleone is an actual historical name, meaning the paw of lions in heraldry
jargon
. Brancaleone degli Andalò was a governor of the Middle Ages Rome
.
arrives and bravely kills the bandits. However, as he is healing his wounds he is attacked by two of the surviving villagers and one of the thieves. They throw the wounded knight into a river.
The attackers try to sell the knight's armor and weapons to a miserly Jewish merchant who finds among his belongings a letter of donation by the Holy Roman Emperor, granting the knight the fief of Aurocastro, an Apulia
n town. The parchment is torn at the lower end, which refers to a condition the knight must fulfill to enjoy the donation.
The Hungarian bandit comes up with the idea to propose a partnership to a cadet nobleman, so the group can take possession of the aforementioned fief and enjoy its riches. The knight they find is the poor and incompetent, yet well-meaning, Brancaleone da Norcia
and they tell him that a noble knight handed them the parchment before dying. Brancaleone initially refuses the plan but after a farcical defeat at a jousting
tournament that promised the hand of an overlord's daughter and a wealthy fief, he is too eager to take command of this "army" (L'Armata) of underdogs and lead it towards "fortune" and "glory", in what he sees as an epic
journey.
As they set up towards the fief, Brancalone lives several grotesque adventures, inspired by the confused and cosmopolitan world of Italy during Middle Ages; each one of them more hilarious than the last. These include:
When finally the band reaches the fief, they discover that the missing part of the parchment mentioned that condition for the granting of the fief was that its new ruler should have provided adequate defences against the "black scourge coming from the sea", frequent raids by Saracen
corsairs. Brancaleone designs a cartoonish Rube Goldberesque trap to defeat the Saracens, but instead the band ends up trapped in it. As the band is about to be executed by impalement
, it is saved by the knight of the opening scenes, the rightful owner of the fief, thirsty for vengeance against his attackers.
Brancaleone (who did not know about the attack on the knight) and his army are about to be burned alive when the mad monk arrives out of the blue and saves them from the knight, "so they can fulfill their duty to go onto the Holy Land". Being deprived of his dreams of richness, Brancaleone-Gassman and his band agree to go along with the monk and his followers, saving themselves. Albeit sad, when he finds his untrustworthy horse, Brancaleone mounts and regains his confidence, taking the lead from the monk. The story is continued in a follow-on film, Brancaleone alle Crociate
(1970
).
(including its dialects) and Latin languages, which is probably the main feature of the film and one of the keys to its success. Gassman's overbearing and pompous recitation was also perfect for the role. The main musical theme of the film was also a great success.
According to Monicelli, the idea for the movie was spurred by a simple scene written by Age and Scarpelli, about two mediaeval peasants talking about women. Monicelli suggested that they shoot a movie which avoids the stereotypes of the usual Hollywood Middle Ages movies. It would instead show "the other face" of the era: poor people, underdogs, ignorance, mud, cold, misery.
There is no such stereotype left standing: the oppressed villagers are capable of violence themselves (they are prey to the bandits, but join them to attack their saving knight); the clergy, depicted by the hallucinating monk, fanatical to the extreme, always capable of explaining misfortunes by "lack of faith" of his entourage; the miserly Jewish merchant; the heroine/princess in distress, who instead of ending up with the hero asks to be deflowered by another man just to spite him. Finally, the archetypical medieval hero, the knight, has in the clueless Brancaleone its greatest parody, always jeopardized by following his chivalric code of conduct; as for his dreams of glory, he leads an army of underdogs that are a little more than a band of cowardly bandits who flee from fights and feign submission while actively trying to manipulate him from the bottom.
Underdogs and humiliated people were constantly present in Monicelli's art, but in this case they are showed mainly from a comical side. Another important theme of the film is male friendship, which was also an important element in movies such as La grande guerra
and the later Amici miei
.
The costumes often provide a near-surreal effect, particularly in the wedding banquet and Byzantine castle scenes. Their designer, Piero Gherardi, won a Silver Ribbon
for them in 1967.
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
comedy movie released in 1966, written by the famous duo Age & Scarpelli
Age & Scarpelli
Age & Scarpelli is the stage name used by the pair of Italian screenwriters Agenore Incrocci and Furio Scarpelli . Together, they wrote the script for about a hundred movies, mainly satirical comedies....
and directed by Mario Monicelli
Mario Monicelli
Mario Monicelli was an Italian director and screenwriter and one of the masters of the Commedia all'Italiana , three times nominated for Oscar.-Biography:...
. It features Vittorio Gassman
Vittorio Gassman
Vittorio Gassman Knight Grand Cross OMRI , popularly known as Il Mattatore, was an Italian theatre and film actor and director...
in the main role. It was entered into the 1966 Cannes Film Festival
1966 Cannes Film Festival
The 19th Cannes Film Festival was held on May 5-20, 1966. To honour the festival's 20th anniversary, a special prize was given.-Jury:*Sophia Loren *Marcel Achard *Vinicius de Moraes *Tetsuro Furukaki...
.
The term Armata Brancaleone is still used today in Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
to define a group of badly assembled and useless people. Brancaleone is an actual historical name, meaning the paw of lions in heraldry
Heraldry
Heraldry is the profession, study, or art of creating, granting, and blazoning arms and ruling on questions of rank or protocol, as exercised by an officer of arms. Heraldry comes from Anglo-Norman herald, from the Germanic compound harja-waldaz, "army commander"...
jargon
Jargon
Jargon is terminology which is especially defined in relationship to a specific activity, profession, group, or event. The philosophe Condillac observed in 1782 that "Every science requires a special language because every science has its own ideas." As a rationalist member of the Enlightenment he...
. Brancaleone degli Andalò was a governor of the Middle Ages Rome
History of Rome
The history of Rome spans 2,800 years of the existence of a city that grew from a small Italian village in the 9th century BC into the centre of a vast civilisation that dominated the Mediterranean region for centuries. Its political power was eventually replaced by that of peoples of mostly...
.
Plot
The movie opens with a small Italian village being stormed by a band of Hungarian pillagers. When the murders and rapes are over, a German knightKnight
A knight was a member of a class of lower nobility in the High Middle Ages.By the Late Middle Ages, the rank had become associated with the ideals of chivalry, a code of conduct for the perfect courtly Christian warrior....
arrives and bravely kills the bandits. However, as he is healing his wounds he is attacked by two of the surviving villagers and one of the thieves. They throw the wounded knight into a river.
The attackers try to sell the knight's armor and weapons to a miserly Jewish merchant who finds among his belongings a letter of donation by the Holy Roman Emperor, granting the knight the fief of Aurocastro, an Apulia
Apulia
Apulia is a region in Southern Italy bordering the Adriatic Sea in the east, the Ionian Sea to the southeast, and the Strait of Òtranto and Gulf of Taranto in the south. Its most southern portion, known as Salento peninsula, forms a high heel on the "boot" of Italy. The region comprises , and...
n town. The parchment is torn at the lower end, which refers to a condition the knight must fulfill to enjoy the donation.
The Hungarian bandit comes up with the idea to propose a partnership to a cadet nobleman, so the group can take possession of the aforementioned fief and enjoy its riches. The knight they find is the poor and incompetent, yet well-meaning, Brancaleone da Norcia
Norcia
Norcia is a town and comune in the province of Perugia in southeastern Umbria, located in a wide plain abutting the Monti Sibillini, a subrange of the Apennines with some of its highest peaks, near the Sordo River, a small stream that eventually flows into the Nera...
and they tell him that a noble knight handed them the parchment before dying. Brancaleone initially refuses the plan but after a farcical defeat at a jousting
Jousting
Jousting is a martial game or hastilude between two knights mounted on horses and using lances, often as part of a tournament.Jousting emerged in the High Middle Ages based on the military use of the lance by heavy cavalry. The first camels tournament was staged in 1066, but jousting itself did not...
tournament that promised the hand of an overlord's daughter and a wealthy fief, he is too eager to take command of this "army" (L'Armata) of underdogs and lead it towards "fortune" and "glory", in what he sees as an epic
Epic poetry
An epic is a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation. Oral poetry may qualify as an epic, and Albert Lord and Milman Parry have argued that classical epics were fundamentally an oral poetic form...
journey.
As they set up towards the fief, Brancalone lives several grotesque adventures, inspired by the confused and cosmopolitan world of Italy during Middle Ages; each one of them more hilarious than the last. These include:
- a Byzantine knight, Teofilatto dei Leonzi (Gian Maria VolontéGian Maria VolontèGian Maria Volonté was an Italian actor. He is perhaps most famous outside of Italy for his roles as the main villain in Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More.-Early life:Volonté was born in Milan, and graduated in Rome in 1957...
), who proposes to fake his capture by the band so they can demand and share a ransomRansomRansom is the practice of holding a prisoner or item to extort money or property to secure their release, or it can refer to the sum of money involved.In an early German law, a similar concept was called bad influence...
from his father; - a city seemingly abandoned, which they begin to pillage, until they find out that it was depopulated by plagueBubonic plaguePlague is a deadly infectious disease that is caused by the enterobacteria Yersinia pestis, named after the French-Swiss bacteriologist Alexandre Yersin. Primarily carried by rodents and spread to humans via fleas, the disease is notorious throughout history, due to the unrivaled scale of death...
; - a fanatical mad monk, Zenone (Enrico Maria SalernoEnrico Maria SalernoEnrico Maria Salerno was an Italian theatre & film actor, also a film director. He was also the voice of Clint Eastwood in the Italian version of Sergio Leone's Dollars Trilogy films, and the voice of Christ in The Gospel According to St...
), who promises that those who join his army of Crusaders will be "healed" from all ills, having the band follow him to a crusade in the Holy LandHoly LandThe Holy Land is a term which in Judaism refers to the Kingdom of Israel as defined in the Tanakh. For Jews, the Land's identifiction of being Holy is defined in Judaism by its differentiation from other lands by virtue of the practice of Judaism often possible only in the Land of Israel...
. When trying to convince his followers to cross a precarious bridge by leaping upon it (crying out loud that the Lord would protect them), the monk falls down into a deep gorge - this releases the band to follow their previous quest; - the saving of a bride named Matelda (Catherine SpaakCatherine Spaak-Biography:Spaak was born at Boulogne-Billancourt, Hauts-de-Seine . She is the niece of Belgian politician Paul-Henri Spaak.She spent most of her career in Italy, where she became a teenage star...
), who falls in love with Brancaleone, but is rejected by him due to his oath to take her to her groom; to Brancaleone's misfortune, she avenges herself by losing her virginity to the Byzantine knight (by then a member of the gang); later, while the 'army' is relaxing at her nuptial feast her husband finds out about her state and she accuses Brancaleone of deflowering her. - giving in to Teofilatto's plan the army arrives at his father's castle to demand a ransom. His father refuses to pay, revealing that Teofilatto is his illegitimate child; meanwhile Brancaleone has to fend off the sadomasochistically-fueled passion of Teofilatto's aunt, just one example of the cross-bred, decadent Byzantine household.
When finally the band reaches the fief, they discover that the missing part of the parchment mentioned that condition for the granting of the fief was that its new ruler should have provided adequate defences against the "black scourge coming from the sea", frequent raids by Saracen
Saracen
Saracen was a term used by the ancient Romans to refer to a people who lived in desert areas in and around the Roman province of Arabia, and who were distinguished from Arabs. In Europe during the Middle Ages the term was expanded to include Arabs, and then all who professed the religion of Islam...
corsairs. Brancaleone designs a cartoonish Rube Goldberesque trap to defeat the Saracens, but instead the band ends up trapped in it. As the band is about to be executed by impalement
Impalement
Impalement is the traumatic penetration of an organism by an elongated foreign object such as a stake, pole, or spear, and this usually implies complete perforation of the central mass of the impaled body...
, it is saved by the knight of the opening scenes, the rightful owner of the fief, thirsty for vengeance against his attackers.
Brancaleone (who did not know about the attack on the knight) and his army are about to be burned alive when the mad monk arrives out of the blue and saves them from the knight, "so they can fulfill their duty to go onto the Holy Land". Being deprived of his dreams of richness, Brancaleone-Gassman and his band agree to go along with the monk and his followers, saving themselves. Albeit sad, when he finds his untrustworthy horse, Brancaleone mounts and regains his confidence, taking the lead from the monk. The story is continued in a follow-on film, Brancaleone alle Crociate
Brancaleone alle Crociate
Brancaleone at the Crusades is an Italian comedy film directed by Mario Monicelli in 1970, the sequel of the famous L'armata Brancaleone.-Plot:...
(1970
1970 in film
The year 1970 in film involved some significant events.-Events:* January 9 - Larry Fine, the second member of The Three Stooges, suffers a massive stroke, therefore ending his career....
).
Evaluation and themes
The plot is structured as a series of sketches revolving around different parodies of the Middle Ages world: it is itself a parody of the classical knights' quest typical of Middle Ages tales. Age and Scarpelli devised for the characters a striking, mocking form of a mixture of ItalianItalian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
(including its dialects) and Latin languages, which is probably the main feature of the film and one of the keys to its success. Gassman's overbearing and pompous recitation was also perfect for the role. The main musical theme of the film was also a great success.
According to Monicelli, the idea for the movie was spurred by a simple scene written by Age and Scarpelli, about two mediaeval peasants talking about women. Monicelli suggested that they shoot a movie which avoids the stereotypes of the usual Hollywood Middle Ages movies. It would instead show "the other face" of the era: poor people, underdogs, ignorance, mud, cold, misery.
There is no such stereotype left standing: the oppressed villagers are capable of violence themselves (they are prey to the bandits, but join them to attack their saving knight); the clergy, depicted by the hallucinating monk, fanatical to the extreme, always capable of explaining misfortunes by "lack of faith" of his entourage; the miserly Jewish merchant; the heroine/princess in distress, who instead of ending up with the hero asks to be deflowered by another man just to spite him. Finally, the archetypical medieval hero, the knight, has in the clueless Brancaleone its greatest parody, always jeopardized by following his chivalric code of conduct; as for his dreams of glory, he leads an army of underdogs that are a little more than a band of cowardly bandits who flee from fights and feign submission while actively trying to manipulate him from the bottom.
Underdogs and humiliated people were constantly present in Monicelli's art, but in this case they are showed mainly from a comical side. Another important theme of the film is male friendship, which was also an important element in movies such as La grande guerra
The Great War (1959 film)
The Great War is a 1959 Italian film directed by Mario Monicelli. It tells the story of an odd couple of army buddies in World War I; the movie, while played on a comedic register, does not hide from the viewer the horrors and grimness of trench warfare...
and the later Amici miei
Amici miei
My Friends is a 1975 Italian comedy-drama film directed by Mario Monicelli.The film, which made it to number one on the Italian box-office in front of Steven Spielberg's Jaws, was followed by two sequels, Amici miei Atto II , Amici miei Atto III , directed by Nanni Loy.-Plot:Like in many other...
.
The costumes often provide a near-surreal effect, particularly in the wedding banquet and Byzantine castle scenes. Their designer, Piero Gherardi, won a Silver Ribbon
Nastro d'Argento
The Nastro d'Argento is a movie award assigned each year, since 1946, for cinematic performances and production by Sindacato Nazionale dei Giornalisti Cinematografici Italiani, the association of Italian film critics...
for them in 1967.