Old Stories: Bread and Chocolate
Failure is always an option
With immigration much in the news lately, I thought it would be interesting to revisit one of the films that made a real impression on me when I was younger. As a student in the late 70’s, early 80’s my school had a number of film groups, and each of them would show a movie in one of the auditoriums on the weekend. Many of the films were older, and many were foreign, and both types enjoyed an audience that had never had a chance to see them. I saw Casablanca for the first time, and Laurence Olivier as Hamlet from 1948. The one foreign language film I saw that stuck with me all these years is Bread and Chocolate, an Italian movie, (Pane e cioccolata) from 1974.
It’s a brilliant movie, owing a great deal to its star Nino Manfredi, an actor with such a gift for comedy he’s funny even when he’s serious; or maybe I should say, he’s funnier when he’s serious.
The film actually tells a very human story about the life of an Italian immigrant, Nino, who goes to Switzerland for the work, with the hope of eventually bringing his family there to live as well. He’s a legal migrant, he has that going for him, but he needs to find a permanent position in order to bring his family. This is the lever to the action. One attempt after another fails due to the difficulties Nino has trying to fit into Swiss society, or just due to the normal trials of life. With each failure Nino heads to the train station, but he just can’t return to the simple “give us the sun, give us the sea” life of a working class man in Italy. After three years, he’s lost some of his Italian roots, or at least his fondness for “la patria” and he now prefers the more refined Swiss life.
As his attempts to make it in Italy become progressively more bizarre, he finds himself at a chicken farm with an odd group of fellow Italians, who eventually gather at the window of the hen house where they they live, to gasp at the beautiful blond children of the owner, swimming naked in the river:
Great comedy always starts by putting characters into imaginative situations just on the cusp of what’s possible, and then the lines and the comedy flow out of the situation. This is certainly true of Bread and Chocolate, and like the best comedy it skirts alongside of serious questions even as it makes you laugh.
American critics, almost without fail, see Nino as the immigrant hero, the Everyman they call him, who tries valiantly to fight his way to victorious success in his adopted country. Believe me, all four of my grandparents were immigrants to the US, so I understand the sentiment. But like all human activities immigration can be demeaning, unrewarding, just plain sad and very often a failure. Some immigrants have worse lives in their new country. One of my grandfather’s brothers lived in a flop house his whole life in America, working as a dish washer, and cast out from the family. He saved his money and every two years returned home to Belgium in a new suit. What stories he told of his life in America I can only imagine.
Immigration is not always a triumphant event. Life is hard everywhere, and you’ll have to decide if the end of the movie is man’s infinite and unbreakable spirit, or his ego run amok. Either way Bread and Chocolate is a great movie, funny, even hilarious at times, but also moving in ways you won’t see coming until they hit you (Hint: the photograph). You’ll both root for Nino and beg him to stop, and you won’t forget him.
Bread and Chocolate, now 50 years on, is available from the library, and there is one service that streams it, but none of the popular ones do. Shame. It’s a film you’ll think about often over many years.