WTI Magazine #75    2016 January 18
Author : Edoardo Peretti      Translation by:

These days, a storm hit the Italian box office: we are talking about the film "Quo Vado" by Gennaro Nunziante and Checco Zalone, able to earn some 52 million euros (and counting) in about ten days, a monstrous figure for the Italian box office. To give an idea, the first movie in 2015 – "Inside Out" - earned about 25 million in more than a month, while the 2014 winner – "50 Shades of gray" - gained just under 20 millions. "Quo Vado" is the movie that gained more money in the whole story of Italian cinema.

This success is not entirely a surprise, and enhances the already generous data collected from the their previous film, "Sole a catinelle", which with 51 million euros was is the most successful Italian film before "Quo Vado" was distributed and third overall following "Titanic" and "Avatar" that soon will be passed by "Quo Vado". Besides, Checco Zalone's earlier one, "Che bella giornata", is third in the Italian movies chart of all times, with 43 millions.

But who is Checco Zalone? How can we explain his role of steamroller on the economy of the Italian cinema? Checco Zalone is the stage name of Luca Medici, a comedian from Puglia, beome nationally known after years in local television when, between 2005 and 2006, he appeared on the stage of Zelig, a tv standing comedians program that forged almost any successful comedian of the last ten years. Relying mainly on imitations and parodies of songs and comedy, Checco soon did his own movie, in the almost obligatory (for an Italian comedian) rite of passage between television and cinema. Just a few times this passage grants success: television and cinema are not the same, and getting people to go to the cinema paying a ticket is different than being watched on the tv from our own comfortable couch, for free. Zalone did it with an astonishing success.

The reason for its success is primarily based on something obvious: the desire to laugh and being carefree, which more or less always and everywhere convinces to go to the movies even people who normally do not. Checco Zalone used his television fame occupying a place in the Italian cinema that has been empty for a few years. We've had increasingly indefensible stupid blockbusters "the so called "cinepanettoni", because they are always out in the Christmas period), or choral comedies more depth and built (very significant just in a very few cases, to be honest): Checco Zalone's movies occupy a space between those two genres. They also recover the centrality of the "one man show" comedy, that of the actor who himself becomes the mask and character on whom to build the entire movie.

Luca Medici has proved to be clever in producing a comedy which is evil, but not too much; popular without being vulgar; ironic while throwing the stone and hiding the hand before becoming really satirical. He plays on the ambiguity between a critical view of some assured characteristics of a certain kind of Italian and the complete acceptance of them. His character type is in fact a bit of an indifferent and ignorant charlatan, but with a certain "concrete" wisdom. He champions in the art of getting by, but he is good-hearted, ready to redeem himself (at least just enough). A representation which is a little ambiguous, while handled with extreme intelligence and cunning: which on one hand allows the viewer to laugh placing himself on a position of superiority, but on the other hand does not ends in the satirical report that we have seen in the tragic, lunar or bitter background of other comedians.

"Quo Vado" has become, partly thanks to a distribution which almost ends up in a monopoly (more than half of Italian screens show the movie) and to an aggressive marketing, an event that brought back the old idea of going to the cinema as a collective ritual, something that has been missing for a long time in Italy. Zalone and his films stormed with arrogance at the center of the debate, any debate: either the street one, or the one over the social media, and even that of the intellectual and cultural environment.

The Italian movie system, that is generally trying to get by in a period of crisis, went understandably crazy about numbers that give new breath to the whole sector, even though not everybody is happy about where these numbers come from. But we certainly must not fall into the error of thinking that the huge success of "Quo Vado" can cure the structural defects of the system. Instead, it looks more like the broom that hides the dirt under the carpet, rather than a real cleaning. But that's another story.