The loneliness of the long-distance scholar
As the scrupulous student of the cinepanettone I am, I went to see this year’s Vacanze di Natale a Cortina for a second time in the communal, I imagined, setting of a Roman cinema – the Cinema Reale, a two-screener in Trastevere. I went to the last show, ten thirty, on a Wednesday evening, and only noticed four other punters in the foyer when I was getting my ticket, two young couples for Il gatto con gli stivali (sic) in the other screen. As it turned out, I was completely alone for what was therefore a personal if not private screening of my film.This, or almost this, has happened to me in Rome before – at the Sala Troisi nearby, where I watched a 2D projection of the 3D motion-capture Beowulf with only a bemused Indian friend who couldn’t understand the dubbed dialogue, and at Natale in Sud Africa last year in the Europa near Porta Pia when there were maybe seven of us – so I don’t think we can assume the emptiness was due solely to the poor performance of Vacanze di Natale mentioned in the previous post. These jaded two-screeners (Reale, Europa and Sala Troisi all), converted inadequately – I suspect – from large single auditoriums, seem to be dying a slow death.
Still, in splendid seclusion, I chose the best seat in the house (centre, about seven rows back where I didn’t have to crane my neck but could enjoy the scale of the screen) kicked my shoes off and stretched out.
The amplification was poor and some of the dialogue and sound effects were hard to decipher, so that I missed some of what I’d enjoyed on the first occasion.Instead I registered more product placement, much of it frank – a whole plot thread built around the new Fiat Panda, for example (Enrico at cinepanettoni.it has lamented this aspect of the film in his fan review; actually I enjoy the kitsch value and brazenness of the product placement, which must however be humiliating for the actors). These are films, as I have argued, intended to be enjoyed in company; but even alone, I laughed out loud at De Sica and Sabrina Ferilli (both though underused) and cackled in schadenfreude at the film’s revelation of the proximity and threat of man-on-man action for the hyper-masculine Italian male. Here De Sica pulls down the trousers of the Sicilian stud played by Dario Bandiera, screaming ‘Voglio vedere l’uccello!’ (I promise to explain why another time), and the two are discovered prone on the ground by a host of posh party-goers including De Sica’s triumphant wife (Ferilli).
When the film ended I stood to put my coat on and to await the list of ‘sponsors’ and so check what product placement I’d missed. But the film was interrupted abruptly with a screech and the house lights, which had come up, started to go down again: I was plainly expected to leave.
I emerged from the screen to the foyer as disoriented and purblind as always after a film, but, crucially, entirely alone, where I was confronted by an employee looking me up and down in quizzical amusement. I presume he was the projectionist or cinema gopher, and he was clearly entertained by the mezzo scemo, possibly foreign, alone at the cinepanettone. I ignored him and made for the exit, a series of glass doors. Still befuddled with eyes adjusting to the light, I pushed at one of the doors only to realize just then that the adjacent one was already wide open. At this point the gopher broke into loud and contemptuous laughter obviously intended to attract the attention of a co-worker to my idiocy.
As a paying customer and major international scholar, I wasn’t going to tolerate this, and I turned back to remonstrate, as it turned out in gestural silent movie fashion, because he had already closed and barred the glass doors from behind which he faced me, visage fixed in a jeering mask which emitted a high-pitch bleat of contempt. I turned again and left, but minutes later I heard the same contemptuous whinny from a moped as jeerer and colleague passed me on the Ponte Garibaldi (at least I didn’t suffer a beer can to the head like John Malkovich on the New Jersey Turnpike).
Who knows to what extent the ragazzo’s (I’d say late twenties) derision was motivated by my choice of film, or was due just to the fact I was alone at the screening. But this is the real cost of research: to be subject to the loneliness and humiliation of the long-distance scholar.