Figure 1.--Here is Renato with some of the boys who he wants to make friends. They tease him because he is still wearing short trousers. We wonder if this really occurred in the 1940s or is a modern view of the 1940s.

The wonderful, sensitive Italian film, "Malena" (2000) is set in a small town in Sicily (Castelcuto) during World War II. The film begins in 1940.. The story concerns a beautiful woman, Malena Scordia, who moves with her young husband to Castelcuto, where her father is a deaf Latin teacher. Her husband is almost immediately sent away as a soldier to fight in Musolini's Fascist army, leaving his ravishing young wife behind to be amorously admired by nearly all the men of the town including most of the adolescent boys. One of these boys, Renato Amoroso, is about 14 and still in short pants, which causes him considerable embarassment with his school mates and friends, the majority of whom have graduated to long trousers. Renato falls hopelessly in love with Malena and becomes obsessed with her every movement. He follows her everywhere, and in fact we experience Malena's tragic story through the eyes of her adolescent admirer, Renato.

Filmology

The director was Giuseppe Tornatoro, famous for "Cinema Paradiso". There is a very moving musical score by Ennio Morricone which adds greatly to the bitter-sweet character of this movie.

Cast

The character of Malena is played by the beautiful Italian actress Monica Bellucci. Renato is played by the the boy actor Giuseppe Sulfaro. Both performances are superb.

Setting

The wonderful, sensitive Italian film, "Malena" (2000) is set in a small town in Sicily (Castelcuto) during World War II. Much of the filming was done on location in Siracusa, Sicily.

Chronology

The film begins in 1940. After the German victory in France seemed assured, Mussolini declared war on Britain and France in an effort to share in the spolis.

Plot

. The story concerns a beautiful woman, Malena Scordia, who moves with her young husband to Castelcuto, where her father is a deaf Latin teacher. Her husband is almost immediately sent away as a soldier to fight in Musolini's Fascist army, leaving his ravishing young wife behind to be amorously admired by nearly all the men of the town including most of the adolescent boys. One of these boys, Renato Amoroso, is about 14 and still in short pants, which causes him considerable embarassment with his school mates and friends, the majority of whom have graduated to long trousers. Renato falls hopelessly in love with Malena and becomes obsessed with her every movement. He follows her everywhere, and in fact we experience Malena's tragic story through the eyes of her adolescent admirer, Renato.

The film has great charm and humor as well as tragedy. Malena, with her husband absent, is forced to compromise herself to various men just to survive, and the horrifying climax of the action dramatizes her brutal beating and shearing (the mob cut her hair) when she is thought to have been sexually involved with hated Nazi soldiers who are in Sicily because of the war. Renato, Malena's boy-admirer, is forced to watch helplessly as his beloved is humiliated and savagely hurt. He can do nothing to help her because he is just a boy.

The film is a coming-of-age story. Renato passes through his tragi-comic phase as an adolescent, learning lessons about loyalty, romantic love, and the cruelty of the world. His passion for Malena never comes to anything. She believes her husband to have been killed in the war, which is one of the reasons she has affairs, but in the end her husband returns and she is at least partially restored to respectability in Sicilian society. In this process, Renato plays a small but symbolic role through acts of kindness to her.

Figure 1.--Here is Renato and the boys at his school. Some boys wear shorts, but most wear long trousers.

Costuming

Clothing contribute to the plot of the story. In one of the early episodes Renato gets in trouble with his father because he so desperately wants to wear long trousers and be a grown-up that he takes one his father's suits to the tailor to be altered for him. Later in the film, the father who hates Il Duce, promises his son that he can wear long pants if he does something to show disrespect to the Fascist leadership of the dictator Musolini. Renato does this by breaking a statue of Il Duce and thus winning the right to wear long trousers.

The costuming of the film is historically accurate. Renato at the beginning wears short pants, an open-necked knitted shirt, ankle socks and leather low-cut shoes. The slightly older boys with whom he wants to associate have already graduated into long trousers and make fun of him because he is a year or so younger than they. He seems to be about 14 at the beginning of the film. In the opening sequences we see boys about Renato's age running beside a Fascist open car wearing short pants held up with suspenders--typical clothing for Italian school boys about 12-14 years old in 1940. By the end of the film, Renato is a year or so older and wearing long trousers with a jacket and a cap with a bill. There are several scenes at Renato's high school where the boys wear a variety of clothes. Most wear long trousers but a few of the boys still wear shorts, often with suspenders, and others wear knickers with long socks.

War Regulations

HBC has read that the Italian Government required that pants in boys sizes be made as shorts. A a Time-Life volume from their series of the History of the Second World War, gives a little information about clothing in Italy during the War. According to the source, Fascist Italy had decreed that boys 15 and under were to wear shorts. Shorts were deemed to be hygienic, according to the propoganda. Of course they required less material to manufacture than did long pants, and that was important, considering the wartime shortages. Unfortunately, all this info is provided in a caption of a photo all of youths posed on bicycles or standing, with no further discussion in the text. We are not sure just when this occured and how extensive it was. We do not have details on the actual clothing regulations. HBC has begun to collect information on World War II rationing, but has very limited information on Italy.

Created: December 17, 2001
Last updated: December 17, 2001