Virtually Processed Law - How Films Transfer Ideas of Justice

• Autore: Ulrich Mückenberger
• Pagine: 219-224

Virtually Processed Law –

How Films Transfer Ideas of Justice

U M

1. In a breath-taking 2008 essay “Letteratura e diritto di lavoro agli albori

della società industrial” Bruno Veneziani studied how labour law was reected

in literature from (among many others) Miguel de Cervantes` Don Quijote till

Honoré de Balzac’s Papà Goriot or Émile Zola’s Germinal. He identied the

poetical protest against poverty and misery in the early days of the industrial

revolution and, later-on, the myth of freedom of contract: „la ‚grande nzione‘

della libertà nel diritto borghese e le smentite della letteratura“. Literature for

him is, at the same time, both testimony of factual working conditions of the

time when Capitalism emerged and took over hegemony in the western world,

and ideology-criticism of the existing laws and the class-biased court rulings try-

ing to hide the power relations inherent to the capitalist labour relation.

This is an approach where Bruno – despite discussing literature, i. e. arts – is

relatively near to his proper academic area: labour law. We equally know him,

however, far away from this academic area – when dealing with cinema and lm.

I know no professor of labour law (possibly apart from my friend Rainer Erd

who equally is both a profound cineaste and a professor labour law) who can

tell so many backgrounds and details of so many lms as Bruno Veneziani can.

And I have never known Bruno Veneziani talking in an equally enthusiastic and

lively manner as when talking about cinema. Readers who doubt that are recom-

mended to do the following test – let’s call it the „Veneziani-test“. Tell Bruno

two words: „cinema paradiso“. For the rest of the day, you will be listening to

him – not only explaining the double role of Giuseppe Tornatore, the roles of

Franco Cristaldi, Giovanna Romagnoli, Ennio and Andrea Morricone, Blasco

Giurate and Mario Morra, the strengths and weaknesses of the actors Philippe

Noiret, Jacques Perrin, Marco Leonardi and Salvatore Cascio. You will equally

have a look at the cticious small Sicilian village Giancaldo of the 1940s and the

particular relationship of their inhabitants to the Nuovo Cinema Paradiso, and

of course the love story with obstacles between Toto and Elena. And you will

learn how skilfully Tornatore built-in into the lm – via extracts from Renoir’s

Les Bas-Fonds, Fellini’s I Vitelloni, Chaplin‘s Knockout and Visconti’s La Terra

Trema – his own cinematic biography. Make the Veneziani-test – but mind that

many hours, and many glasses of wine, are required to really perform and evalu-

ate this test.