L'ultimo gattopardo: Ritratto di Goffredo Lombardo

I’m getting too old for this shit. I thought that only action scenes could be “over-cut”. But that characteristic also applies to Tornatore’s tribute to the influential Italian producer. Almost every sentence is followed by a cut. At the same time, it seems that everyone who knew and liked Lombardo, and was able to come to together and hold on to a thought, was invited to reminisce about him. The memories are rather unsorted, extremely informationally poor and strongly biased. (The profligate American Robert Aldrich, with his The Last Days of Sodom and Gomorrah, is indirectly fingered as the cause of the collapse of Titanus. Conversely, the contribution of Visconti and Lombardo himself, two Italians, the former of whom recklessly spent money while the latter gave it away, is marginalised.) Besides the fact that, after a long and chaotic introduction, the documentary starts to very loosely follow a timeline, it does not adhere to any order. It is not divided into thematic segments, it does not separate Lombardo’s work from his private life or crucial moments from banal incidents. Everything thus merges into a monotonous ode of praise. A hundred minutes of repeatedly hearing about what an amazing person he was eventually became rather stupefying and much less enriching than a five-minute reading of a handful of Lombardo’s obituaries. As in some of Tornatore’s overly stylised, emotionally clamorous fictional films, quantity was thoughtlessly given preference over quality here. 55% (30.01.2014)