“Spettacolo” – A Documentary with Soul & Esprit de Corps

Spettacolo is a beautifully-filmed documentary (available on Amazon Prime) about a declining Tuscan village, Monticchiello, with a unique cultural heritage: its more than 50 year tradition of plays put on by its TeatroPovero(Poor Theatre). These annual summer events have for most years involved the whole of the village’s now roughly 200 inhabitants. The plays’ themes evolve organically and with the involvement of any interested village inhabitant. They have focused on the reality of the village’s communal life and concerns since 1967.

Within the backdrop of stunning Tuscan vistas and a timeline of the shifting seasons, the film features the evolution of the plays’ themes, scripts, acting and finally, production.  Beginning in the winter, the villagers meet for spirited brainstorming sessions during which they develop a theme and plot around their main concerns. The play’s director, 80 year-old Andrea Cresti, begins to write and, with more of the villagers’ input, to refine the script. With his leontine mane, Cresti, also a visual artist, remains a vital force throughout the film’s documenting of the preparation and production of this annual rite in Monticchiello.

For me, a key draw from the film was the authenticity of the intimate back and forth in one-on-one social and communal exchanges among the villagers. In group meetings, people yelled over one another and fell into moments of chaotic exchanges, yet held together as a unit.

Spettacolo presents this uniquely Italian sensibility that I witnessed and lived during my year in Rome in 1977 while on a fellowship. The film evoked my nostalgia for those kinds of discussions where very little is off the table and people remain friends no matter their differences. It’s not a scene or culture I see repeated in the suburban America of my adult experience and I miss it.

The spettacolo (production or play in Italian) featured in the film was presented in 2012, though the film was shot between 2012 and 2016. It addressed the many issues of Italy’s economic crisis, the ongoing decline of the village’s population and the takeover and privatization of its crumbling housing stock by speculators. The town’s earliest productions drew on classic Italian sagas. In one of its more dramatic endeavors, the focus was a reanactment of the day in 1944 when the Nazis invaded and planned to kill all the villagers due to anti-Fascist fighting in the area.

Spettacolo’s directors, Jeffrey Malmberg and Chris Shellen, a married couple, are veterans of  film and television production.  The two worked together on the 2010 documentary “Marwencol,” featuring a brain-damaged man who makes sense of his world by creating his own world of dolls. Malmberg most recently edited “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?,” the acclaimed documentary about Fred (Mr.) Rogers of public tv fame.