Kaos ***** (1984, Margarita Lozano, Orazio Torrisi, Carlo Cartier) – Classic Movie Review 11,331

The amazing 1984 Italian art work drama film Kaos is ‘A Canvas of People, Politics, Passion and Pirandello from Italy’s Taviani brothers’.

Italy’s Taviani brothers conjure up an astonishing, visually astounding film drawn from Luigi Pirandello’s folk-like tales of turn-of-the-last-century Sicilian life.

There are four separate stories, plus a 20-minute epilogue, Colloquio con la Madre {Conversing with Mother] that describes Pirandello’s fictional visit home many years after his mother has died. The comic tale The Jar [La Giara], in which a glue craftsman, the great jar-fixer Zi’ Dima, gets trapped inside a giant olive jar he is hired to repair by a feudal landowner, is delightfully amusing, while the serious yarns are moving and majestic. The werewolf episode Moon Sickness [Mal di Luna] (three weeks after their honeymoon a wife discovers that during the full moon her husband spends the night howling outside like a werewolf) and the climax with children playing on sand hills, are quite haunting.

Writer-directors Paolo Taviani and Vittorio Taviani’s 1984 Kaos [Chaos] is quite the amazing little art work, with a beautiful production, marvellous Eastmancolor cinematography (by Giuseppe Lanci) and outstanding score (by Nicola Piovani). It has an epic runtime of 188 minutes to do justice to each of the stories, so at this length it is hardly a little art work, just an amazing one.

The cast include Margarita Lozano, Orazio Torrisi, Carlo Cartier, Claudio Bigagli, Enrica Maria Modugno, Ciccio Ingrassia, Franco Scaldati, Regina Bianchi, Franco Franchi, Biagio Barone, Maria Lo Sardo, and Omero Antonutti.

Margarita Lozano plays Mariagrazia in the segment L’altro figlio [THE OTHER SON], Franco Scaldati plays Don Sarso in the segment Requiem [REQUIEM], Claudio Bigagli plays Batà in the segment Mal di Luna [MOON SICKNESS], Regina Bianchi plays Madre di Pirandello in the segment Colloquio con la Madre [Conversing with Mother/ CONVERSATIONS WITH MOTHER], Maria Lo Sardo plays Sara in the segment La giara [THE JAR].

It is based on short stories by Luigi Pirandello (1867–1936), who said he was a ‘son of chaos’ as he was born in Girgenti (Agrigento), on the southern coast of Sicily, where the local name of the woods near his birthplace is Càvusu, deriving from the ancient Greek word Kàos.

It won the 1985 David di Donatello awards for best production and best screenplay, and won the Silver Ribbon award for best screenplay.

Vittorio (above left) and Paolo Taviani at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival.

RIP Vittorio Taviani (1929–2018). RIP Paolo Taviani (1931-2024).

The celebrated Italian writer-director Vittorio Taviani, winner of the Palme d’Or and Berlin Golden Bear, died in April 2018 aged 88 after a long illness.

Paolo Taviani was born on 8 November 1931 in San Miniato, Tuscany, and died on 29 February 2024 in Rome, aged 92.

The Taviani brothers won the Palme d’Or and the FIPRESCI prize for Padre Padrone at the Cannes Film Festival in 1977 and the Grand Prize of the Jury at the Cannes Film Festival in 1982 for La Notte di San Lorenzo.

In 2012 they won the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival for Caesar Must Die.

Their notable works also include Kaos, Wondrous Boccaccio and Una Questione Privata.

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 11,331

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