- 19 ore fa
Luca Comerio. L'uomo con la macchina da presa, di G. Massimetti, è il documentario che Rai Cultura dedica all'affascinante figura del fotografo milanese Luca Comerio, cineasta ufficiale della Grande Guerra che ci ha tramandato alcune tra le immagini più suggestive del primo conflitto mondiale. Fin da piccolo si appassiona alla pittura. A soli 12 anni viene assunto come assistente nello studio di Belisario Croci, un pittore fotografo amico di famiglia. Sarà l'inizio di una lunga passione. Qui si getteranno le basi artistiche e tecniche della fotografia che gli permetteranno di diventare il pioniere del reportage cinematografico e del documentario italiano.
Raccontare la storia di questo pioniere non significa soltanto conservare la memoria di un paese, ma beneficiare di un altro piano visivo, straordinario, quello intimo e autentico di ciò che fu quel conflitto. Una testimonianza viva, il raro privilegio di poter assistere ancora oggi, attraverso un terzo occhio esetrno, alle vicende private, ai singoli fatti che contribuirono alla storia universale.
Ripercorrere le vie di un’arte, quelle del cinema, assoggettate ben presto al regime di Stato. Dopo la disfatta di Caporetto, infatti, nel 1917, venne costituita la Sezione Cinematografica del Regio Esercito che assunse il monopolio delle riprese.
Raccontare la storia di questo pioniere non significa soltanto conservare la memoria di un paese, ma beneficiare di un altro piano visivo, straordinario, quello intimo e autentico di ciò che fu quel conflitto. Una testimonianza viva, il raro privilegio di poter assistere ancora oggi, attraverso un terzo occhio esetrno, alle vicende private, ai singoli fatti che contribuirono alla storia universale.
Ripercorrere le vie di un’arte, quelle del cinema, assoggettate ben presto al regime di Stato. Dopo la disfatta di Caporetto, infatti, nel 1917, venne costituita la Sezione Cinematografica del Regio Esercito che assunse il monopolio delle riprese.
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ApprendimentoTrascrizione
00:01It's far away for us too, we have to come.
00:06The gigantic battle, engaged in pieces.
00:10The death of the dead, by the will of the vines.
00:13To soltare, who knows, to go back on track with a madman.
00:18We love colors, we reject things.
00:21The road, the world does not happen, it does not go.
00:25Until the war and the deaths and the victory have been in vain.
01:01In Milan, in the fair area, a 10-minute walk from Piazza Sempione, there is a street named after Luca
01:08Comerio.
01:11On the plaque under the name it reads
01:13Pioneer of Italian cinematography, 1878-1940.
01:19That pioneer was on the Karst in 1915,
01:23on the Adamello in 1916,
01:26in Trento in 1918.
01:28Without ever wearing a uniform or a rifle.
01:31In short, if we talk to you about him,
01:33It is because most of the images of the Italian front of the Great War
01:36they are his work.
01:49On the license plate
01:50On the license plate
01:57Luca Comerio was precocious. He was only 12 when his father sent him to work for a photographer.
02:13painter. Four years later, with his savings, he bought a second-hand camera
02:19hand and when Umberto I, the king of Italy, is visiting Como, he makes his way through the crowd
02:24And
02:24He takes a picture. Then he makes a giant photograph measuring two by two and a half meters and sends it to the House.
02:30Royal. The king appreciates the gift and orders five copies. Thus begins the adventure of
02:36one of the most enterprising precursors of Italian cinema and reportage.
02:55This machine was born in 1914. This one here was made, it was used in war
03:02since 1915. With this one it was possible to carry out many war actions, always with a 16-frame hand crank
03:12the second. Comerio took me right to the beginning, right to the first fights,
03:26then after I had to reach the regiment, then he picked me up again and we went
03:36to do it better. The one who speaks like this about Luca Comerio is his partner from Ventura, his
03:41First operator. His name is Paolo Granata and he was an officer in the seventh regiment.
03:46Lancers of Milan. But rather than fighting in his assigned position, he ran to follow
03:51of Comerio, the only civilian authorised by the supreme command of the royal army to film on
03:56front, to film, as he tells us, the war on the front line.
04:01Always with the troops, the assault troops, always because it was useless to stay behind,
04:07the rear lines were of no use to anyone, they had to bring home some interesting stuff
04:13and that had to be done right in the heat of battle. With the very bold Luca Comerio
04:19that he was intrusive, that he entered everywhere and was, he obtained everything.
04:36Intrusive, enterprising, a little cheeky, since his debut as a photographer. In May
04:41In 1898, the bread riots broke out in Milan. Comerio, with a pass from the command
04:48military, photographs the barricades and the riots ferociously repressed in blood by Bava Beccaris.
04:54These are four days of riots, factory strikes, and unrest. Following the conflict
05:01between Spain and the United States, the price of flour has increased, but Rudini's government refuses
05:07to suspend the grain duty. The Milanese pour into the streets, raise barricades, and divert
05:14Tram. It's the so-called stomach revolt. The army intervenes, the riflemen open fire.
05:20on the crowd. Comerio runs from one street to another of the city under siege with his
05:25heavy box camera. He creates a real service which he then sells to
05:30Italian Illustration, one of the most prestigious periodicals of the time. But it will not be yet
05:36his definitive consecration, which will come only nine years later.
05:42In 1907 he convinced the Minister of the Navy to entrust him with the task of resuming the cruise
05:48of Vittorio Emanuele III on the ship Trinacria. In this way he became the official photographer
05:53of the king. That same year he opened his first factory with laboratories and two sound stages. Luca Comerio
06:00he is in companions.
06:02This wall in the northern outskirts of Milan is all that remains of the many factories
06:07cinemas that arose in this area at the beginning of the twentieth century. This is where Milan was founded
06:14Films, the company with which Luca Comerio began his production career.
06:22Restless as a cameraman, Comerio is also restless as an entrepreneur. He opens new companies,
06:28but as soon as these grow with new subjects and capital, he prefers to return
06:33independent.
06:38He will film a bit of everything, from the maneuvers of the light cavalry on the Ticino, to the demonstrations
06:43on May 1st in Parma, at the meeting of the royals with Kaiser Wilhelm II in Venice.
06:48He is even credited with some short sequences by Leopoldo Fregoli, the famous quick-change artist.
06:54his friend. But it is on the level of pure news, of the event that must necessarily be
06:59told, that Comerio expresses himself at his best. On two occasions he engages in a ruthless competition
07:06with other cameramen and wins, during the earthquake of Messina and Reggio in 1908 and in the
07:12Italo-Turkish war of 1911. He was the first to arrive in Messina, to photograph and film
07:20from life, to use an expression of the time.
07:25In Libya, during the years of conflict, he even had a factory built in Tripoli
07:31photographic and cinematographic studio with a screening room and a laboratory. Most of its films are
07:36They are now preserved in the Cineteca Italiana in Milan.
07:52For me, cinema is magic, created by the Lumiere brothers.
07:58These are the first images of Luca Comerio on the front of the Italo-Turkish war and here he participates
08:09as a reporter, a film reporter of a war event and sees the war event as an opportunity
08:20formidable for experimenting with cinema and for telling the world.
08:25War actions were often reconstructed with the soldiers inside the trenches.
08:37This, in my opinion, does not take away the truth from Luca Comerio's documentation.
08:45Everything else is different, these are the limits and merits, if you like, of the first cinema.
08:51What seems important to me is that thanks to Luca Comerio today we can,
08:59consciously understand what the First World War represented.
09:04Today, as today, there are no longer any direct witnesses.
09:07What remains for us are these fragmentary, sometimes reconstructed, images by Luca Comerio.
09:17Well, here these are definitely not reconstructed images and, even if there is no blood here, there is no fight,
09:27just the effort of this dragging tells us so much about a terrible war like the First World War.
09:42The first works are works of fiction.
09:48He experiments with small dramas and comedies, so he has a fairly familiar relationship with staging.
09:59At the same time he is a formidable photographer and then he becomes a film commentator, he reports on the Giro d'Italia,
10:13It also tells the most crucial elements of the events and situations.
10:20Finding yourself in a crazy set like the one of the First World War,
10:29this experience emerges on all fronts, one could say,
10:36so it is obvious that there is a reworking, a contamination.
10:42This is also where Comerio's modernity and touch lies.
11:07A man who fully embodies the adventurous and reckless spirit of the early twentieth century
11:13and experiment with the main art of the century that is born, cinema,
11:17the new tool for telling the world.
11:20Yet Comerio's biography has not yet been completely written,
11:24some parts are missing, some aspects escape us.
11:27What remains are the images that speak for him and the meticulous and passionate study of the archivists.
11:38The spirit of Comerio is somehow present here because it is Milanese,
11:43because we preserve its materials.
11:45Not all of Comerio's materials are here in Milan.
11:50There is a copy of a film in Gorizia, in Udine and another one in Turin.
12:01He is an elusive character for several reasons.
12:05The first is that there is a lack of documentation that we would like to have to truly understand what kind of person he was,
12:20what kind of culture, what culture it fed on.
12:26Yes, also because a lot has been said about Comerio.
12:29For example, there are also those who have said that Comerio is the one who better than anyone else from the point of view of
12:36cinema view,
12:37embodies the futurist spirit.
12:39He himself who puts himself on the line.
12:45Extremely dangerous aerial footage, the front line during the war,
12:49technology, perhaps without making a futuristic film,
12:55but in reality, in his attitude, in his aptitude, you can breathe futurism.
13:04This is Luca Comerio's profile.
13:07We insert it and a menu appears where between the romantic adventure of a provincial
13:13rather than the Melissina earthquake,
13:15let's choose the Forlanini hydroplane for example,
13:18which is a 1910 revival by Luca Comerio,
13:22engineer Forlanini's own on a sensational machine,
13:27which is the hydroplane, which is a perfect futurist's machine.
13:32Filmed and shot on Lake Como,
13:35here is the preparation part
13:38and then there will be the hydroplane race on the water,
13:42led by Forlanini himself.
14:03This is an interactive map dedicated to cinematic exhibitions in Milan.
14:11Through this timeline we see the birth and death of cinemas in Milan
14:20from the early twentieth century to the present day.
14:24It is interesting to go back to the period in which Comerio worked, let's say 1910,
14:34we know from the news that he then brought his films to the cinemas to be screened,
14:42so it is likely that his films were screened in this room, which is Dumont, rather than in the Garibaldi room.
14:55Then the studies of Comerio in the area of Turro or Precotto,
15:02which are the current ones, in short, via Padova, via Le Monza,
15:10an area that is almost central today, but certainly an almost rural area in 1910.
15:24I have been especially interested in his work during the Italo-Turkish conflict in recent times.
15:33and during the First World War, the famous White War on the Adamello, for example,
15:40where, despite the very difficult conditions for the recovery, the snow, the mountains, the cold,
15:50during a conflict, Comerio pays attention to details, to the construction of the shots,
16:00which is what we see today as the artistic value, not just documentary, of these works.
16:14Comerio is, in some ways, obliged to create a final product with respect to these films.
16:21which also has its own narrative structure.
16:24First there is the bombing, then the soldier comes out of the trench, moves and then after that, there,
16:30we see the enemies, the enemies, the corpses too, because there is also this taboo that is broken
16:35from this type of production.
16:36Although, in fact, the War Office said not to show corpses in macabre positions,
16:42in reality we also see death in these films.
16:45And behold, we see, precisely, the slain enemies, lying on the ground.
16:58We have a fragment of a, what we called, war in the Alps, another war
17:03on the Damello, where above all, more than real clashes, we see explosions,
17:10We see the soldiers lying down, pointing their rifles, but we don't know if they're pointing them at anything.
17:21or there really is an enemy on the other side.
17:23In short, the first situation is more, so to speak, conceivable.
17:27We also see in these images the real enemy of these soldiers, in this case,
17:34which is the cold, which is the snow, which is the fatigue.
17:41Caporetto also marks the beginning of the crisis for volcanic Comerio.
17:45After the defeat, the Supreme Command constitutes the cinematographic section of the royal army
17:50which will have a monopoly on filming until the end of the war.
17:54The unstoppable cameraman is forced to retreat, but he doesn't give up.
17:58On November 3, 1918, the first to arrive in Trento
18:02to film the entry of the light cavalry into the liberated city.
18:14This was the last dinner I shot in Vittorio Vento.
18:18Afterwards, as usual, Luca Comerio arrived
18:22and from there, as always happens, with a quini of Citer, we went towards Trento.
18:33So we did the Val Sugana
18:37where we met our Alpine troops, the other troops, sharpshooters,
18:47all the troops that were going towards Trento.
18:51Prisoners, prisoners, many,
18:56until finally arriving in Trento,
19:00where I was still able to turn the cavalry,
19:04Bersaglieri, the entire parade of all the victorious troops in Trento.
19:19These are among the last news images that Luca Comerio will be able to shoot.
19:24The 15 Ter, which its operator Paolo Granata talks about,
19:28it's an armored Fiat car
19:30which she had built specifically for travel to the front.
19:34In 1919 he will be called again by a senator of the Kingdom
19:39to film Gabriele D'Annunzio's feat in Fiume.
19:42Then he will practice editing on his own films,
19:46with more propagandistic intentions than true cinematic passion.
19:51Resisting is Luca Comerio's tombstone.
19:57It is a montage film that he made on commission at the end of the war,
20:04a propaganda film in which somehow through this kind of cinema
20:12we try to strengthen the Italian spirit.
20:16Let's say it's not a film in Luca Comerio's style,
20:20an adventurous man, ready to capture the important moments of history,
20:31the significant figures.
20:33The work of assembling, of resisting, is a tiring job,
20:40it's not a passionate job,
20:42which essentially marks the end of a great filmmaker like Luca Comerio.
20:57There is an unusual Comerio, neither an aviator, nor an intrepid chronicler, nor a photographer in the service of the king.
21:03A Comerio like we've never seen it before,
21:05far from the blasts of grenades and arguments with the partners of his film companies.
21:11In a film, which emerged from the Cineteca of Milan,
21:14the camera turns towards its operator and reveals him to us like this,
21:18together with Ines Negri, the girl he had married in 1900.
21:31We recently found a small fragment in our archive,
21:37it's really just a few meters,
21:40and it was wrapped inside another film that had another title,
21:44and it's really something amazing,
21:48It was an extremely surprising discovery,
21:51because it added an extra piece,
21:55that is, a piece relating to his private life,
21:59to his intimacy, to his relationship,
22:03almost ours is a somewhat voyeuristic look inside,
22:07there's a bit of this taste too,
22:09but also from a historical point of view it tells us a lot,
22:13in short, it tells us about a still different Comerio.
22:26In 1982 two Italian filmmakers,
22:29Jervant Giannichian and Anna Ricci Lucchi,
22:32they discover in the semi-basement of a building on the outskirts of Milan,
22:36Luca Comerio's latest workshop.
22:38The owner is the nephew of that Paolo Granata
22:41that we met at the beginning of our story.
22:44Giannichian thus describes the sense of abandonment and end that that place conveys.
22:53The owner, the only worker,
22:55he has already dismantled and destroyed the Lumière printing press with hammer blows,
22:59out of desperation, out of a lack of a future.
23:03The various pieces, rusted, dismembered,
23:06they fill buckets placed outside, in the courtyard, in the rain,
23:10where the wooden frames for the developments are also aligned.
23:14Inside other objects, cinematic mechanisms on pedestals,
23:19They are covered with heavy black sheets and tied with thick ropes.
23:32After the war, Comerio no longer works as before.
23:34In 1921 he separated from his wife Ines Negri,
23:38which is co-owner of Comerio Films,
23:40and therefore the company is dissolved.
23:43Try working as an operator with the Luce Institute
23:45and with the Experimental Center of Cinematography.
23:48To no avail.
23:49He writes another heartfelt letter to Mussolini,
23:52who responds with vague and generic promises.
23:55In 1930 he fell ill with depression.
23:58To memory lapses.
23:59He was admitted to the Monbello mental asylum
24:02and died there in 1940.
24:14Find out how Comerio's life ends
24:17it's shocking compared to what it was
24:20its importance in the history of Italian cinema.
24:26Alone in a psychiatric hospital
24:29without remembering what he did,
24:36what he experienced.
24:38It reminds me of the end in some way
24:40of another great pioneer of world cinema
24:44which was Méliès.
24:46He too in some way
24:48everything he did
24:51it had no value then.
24:53But it's a bit like the history of cinema,
24:55of early cinema.
25:16which was bigger and
25:22of the acrata of world cinema
25:28that there is his life
25:30that there is his life
25:31that there is his life
25:44what he did
25:54Author of the superimposed
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