In the pantheon of notoriously unavailable films, Jerry Lewis' "The Day the Clown Cried" occupies a special pedestal: Its scheme: a circus clown is imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp where he cheers up Jewish children before being forced to take them to their destination. Doom: Makes it one of the few movies that has been suppressed simply because of "yikes." It's perhaps unfair to compare it to "Freaks Out," the second film by Italian director Gabriele Mainetti, though given that Mainetti's film also involves circus performers, Nazis, and a trainload of transported Jews. to camps, which film the comparison is unfair to is up for debate. After all, the Lewis boondoggle didn't have a psychotic, ether-addicted, six-fingered pianist yelling "Sieg Heil!" and that he could see the future, and a lot of references to, of all things, Marvel Comics canon.
A ghastly mix of dazzling circus-like maximalism, poorly CGI supernatural whims, and sentimentality so cloyingly sweet you can feel it in your fill-ins, "Freaks Out" is nonetheless almost admirably unaware that it's "Springtime for." Hitler's production design, and its vague invocation of the Holocaust as a narrative shortcut to high emotional stakes, could be in questionable taste. Instead, this is a sincere, if profoundly misguided, attempt to manufacture tearful wonder amid the wreckage of World War II.
Director: Gabriele Mainetti
Writers: Nicola Guaglianone, Gabriele Mainetti
Stars: Claudio Santamaria, Aurora Giovinazzo, Pietro Castellitto
As the ringmaster of the circus Israel announces from the very beginning, under the fairytale sparkles and mystical theremins of Mainetti and Michele Braga's omnipresent score, the goal is to transport us to a world where bombs are falling and extermination is taking place. massive, but also one where "imagination is reality!" and "nothing is as it seems!"
Actually, everything is what it seems. Trapped on the outskirts of occupied Rome, Israel's traveling troupe consists of: the albino Cencio (Pietro Castellitto), who can command the insects to do his bidding; Wolfman Fulvio, who can bend iron with his bare, hairy hands; Mario, the comically well-endowed, constantly masturbating midget clown, to whom metal sticks as if it were magnetic; and Matilde (Aurora Giovinazzo), a young woman with a pure heart who cannot be touched because she generates electricity that lights light bulbs and gives shocks. The thing is, these aren't just artists, they actually have these supernatural powers.
Franz, the fanatical Nazi leader from the much better equipped nearby ZirkusBerlin, is also endowed with strange gifts. Franz, with an extra digit in each hand, is famous for his piano recitals, but his true power is that in the swirling zoetrope of his dreams, he sees the future. Franz's lab is covered in drawings of these visions, allowing Michele D'Attanasio's feverishly busy camera to pan over sketches of PlayStation controllers and smartphones. But the best use it's been able to make so far seems to have been copyright theft: Cue a 1943 audience captivated by elevator muzak-style instrumentalizations of Radiohead's "Creep" and Guns' "Sweet Child of Mine." n'Roses. .”
Of course, Franz also knows that Germany will lose the war and Hitler will commit suicide. These are eventualities he is desperate to avoid, despite the frank disbelief of his brother, a high-ranking Nazi embarrassed by his strange brother's insane quest to assemble a team of similarly gifted individuals to turn the tide of war. in favor of the Third Reich.
As if the story wasn't flashy enough, Mainetti and co-writer Nicola Guaglianone pepper it further with random riffs distracting from 20th and 21st century pop culture. Aside from the very obvious X-Men and Avengers screams, Franz's visions of the quartet, who he actually calls his "Fantastic Four," are always styled to resemble the famous silhouettes on Yellow Brick Road. A roving band of maimed and crippled partisans looks like they've come straight out of a Terry Gilliam movie. The obviously Chewbacca-like Fulvio is framed more than once in terms of "Star Wars" mythology, Chaplin's "The Greatest Dictator" makes an appearance, and Big Top pantomime scenes do no one a favor. to remember "The Last Circus." We're even treated to a wink moment ripped wholesale from "Reservoir Dogs" when a character speaks into a severed ear.
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