| For Love and Gold | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | Mario Monicelli |
| Written by | Agenore Incrocci Furio Scarpelli Mario Monicelli |
| Produced by | Mario Cecchi Gori |
| Starring | Vittorio Gassman Catherine Spaak Gian Maria Volonté Folco Lulli Maria Grazia Buccella Barbara Steele Enrico Maria Salerno |
| Music by | Carlo Rustichelli |
| Distributed by | Titanus Film |
Release date |
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Running time | 120 minutes |
| Country | Italy |
| Language | Italian |
| Box office | $2.2 million (Italy)[1] |
For Love and Gold (Italian:L'armata Brancaleone), also known asThe Incredible Army of Brancaleone, is an Italiancomedy film released on April 7, 1966, written by the duoAge & Scarpelli and directed byMario Monicelli. It featuresVittorio Gassman in the main role. It was entered into the1966 Cannes Film Festival.[2]
The termArmata Brancaleone is still used today inItalian to define a group of badly assembled and poorly equipped people. Brancaleone is an actual historical name, meaning the paw of lions inheraldryjargon.Brancaleone degli Andalò was a governor ofRome in the Middle Ages.
The movie opens with a small Italian village being stormed by a band of Hungarian pillagers. When the murders and rapes are over, a Germanknight 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 thefief of Aurocastro, anApulian 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 aforementionedfief and enjoy its riches. The knight they find is the poor and incompetent, yet well-meaning, Brancaleone daNorcia 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 ajousting 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 anepic journey.
As they set up towards the fief, Brancaleone 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 their 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 bySaracen corsairs. Brancaleone designs a cartoonishRube Goldberesque trap to defeat the Saracens, but instead the band ends up trapped within. As the band is about to be executed byimpalement, 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 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-up film,Brancaleone alle Crociate (1970).
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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 ofItalian (including its dialects) andLatin 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 usualHollywood 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 shown mainly from a comical side. Another important theme of the film is male friendship, which was also an important element in movies such asLa grande guerra and the laterAmici miei.
The costumes often provide a near-surreal effect, particularly in the wedding banquet and Byzantine castle scenes. Their designer, Piero Gherardi, won aSilver Ribbon for them in 1967.
The film was the third-highest grossing Italian film in Italy for the year with a gross of $2,150,000.[1]
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