A Sketch of the First Episode in Nanni Moretti’s Caro Diario

I am currently writing a collection of articles on the auteur theory, exploring Sarris and his detractors, and as I finalise the first article I thought that a short article on the first episode of Caro Diario (1993) would be interesting. I am also in the process of writing a longer review of the second episode however I have a million and one ideas for articles and when that gets finished is hard to say.

“Vespa”

 

Nanni Moretti’s Caro Diario, “Dear Diary”, is a film split into three sections covering important elements of Moretti’s life. The first section, which this short article is evidently concerned with, called Vespa, reveals Moretti’s obsession with cinema and Rome. We follow Moretti’s Vespa as it weaves down long sun-drenched streets exploring and filming the classical, modernist and postmodernist architecture set to an energetic non-diagetic soundtrack. This section is filmed primarily using the tracking shot. The form of this technique allows us to engage in the same unadulterated pleasure Moretti feels gazing at the patchwork of modern Rome. As Rome is explored through Moretti’s favourite activity, riding the Vespa, we are invited into a strange whimsical narrative. Moretti’s opinions, dreams and desires are acted out in brief scenes and it becomes hard to differentiate between dreams, desires and biographical elements.

 

In one of the most hilarious moments we see Moretti despondent after seeing Henry: Portrait of A Serial Killer (1986) and as the camera slowly zooms into Moretti’s position, replicating our growing emotional connection with Moretti and our induction into his world, we hear his imagination fire. He wonders whether the critic who wrote the positive review of Henry ever reflects on, and is ashamed of, his reviews. We then cut to a scene where the silhouette of Moretti haunts the critic by repeating and rereading the critic’s own words to him just before bed. Moretti is giving the critic nightmares like Henry did to him. In another interesting moment Moretti starts to dance, while still on his Vespa, to the formerly non-diagetic soundtrack. This moment breaches even the apparently safe wall between the film world and the non-film world. Seconds later Moretti rebuilds the barrier between the diagetic and non-diagetic world by apparently appearing never to have started dancing at all. We have again slipped in and then out of Moretti’s imagination.

 

The choice of music in this episode, as with the whole film, is excellent. In one part of “vespa” the slow piano score beautifully matches the sadness and heartfelt emotion that Moretti feels when he finally decides to visit the site of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s murder. Even though the site, and drive to, is hardly a romantic or inspiring place Moretti’s slow tracking camera allows the innate beauty and emotion of his personal journey bleed into the final revelation of a small artwork celebrating and commemorating the deceased cultural icon Pasolini.

 

In the first section of Caro Diario Moretti has chosen to reject the traditional narrative structure of cause and affect. This allows Moretti to draw us into his subjective perception of Rome. This section, as the title suggest, is centralised by the regular motif of the Vespa, establishing a tentative interconnectivity between the continuously bizarre or angry or enamoured thoughts that stream into Moretti’s consciousness. In the first section of Caro Diario we travel between the gig-lamps of Moretti’s mind delighting in the feast of his highly perceptive and often self-deprecating humour.  A patchwork of desires, imagined conversations, monologues and situations Moretti has welded together, in the vespa episode, a postmodern mini-narrative of one man’s world.

 

The Communication of Era In Cinema

Directors wishing to portray a definitive era in a movie use certain techniques which also produce nostalgic emotions of a sense of authenticity which are both beneficial to cinema as art and a commercial product. In Films such as O’ Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) the colour brown is used to produce an affect of a faded and lost past. This makes the film similar to looking at a very old photograph aged sepia-brown. This imbues the whole form of the film with a sense of a by-gone era. The use of browns also strips away, or inhibits, the editors’ [or whoever] ability to produce a slick glossy product as sepia-brown ensures an aesthetic affect which communicates a reality opposed to the whole editing process.

Another common technique, used more and more regularly due to the financial importance of a film having a commercially viable soundtrack, is the use of music. This is normally non-diegetic however occasionally this is a main part of the diegesis. One movie that uses music to produce a sense of era is Donnie Darko (2001). All through the film a classic eighties soundtrack is played which injects a sense of place, time and atmosphere. Using music of a definitive era helps communicate the atmosphere that the director wants as they can use a specific genre of music to imbue the film with an emotion. The music of the seventies can both be used to communicate a riotous sense of anger with a punk soundtrack and create a sense of love and romance with a use of disco soundtrack.