Don Camillo

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Don Camillo is a fictional priest, one of the two protagonists in Giovanni Guareschi's gentle stories of a postwar Italian town with the Catholic priest and a Communist mayor locked in rivalry. The first Don Camillo story appeared in Guareschi's satirical magazine Candido in 1946. During the 1950s, Guareschi wrote a series of Don Camillo novels, which enjoyed an international following. Several films were produced based on these. A decade later, during his last years, Guareschi came out with two more Don Camillo novels.

Contents 1 Characterisation 2 Books 3 Adaptations 3.1 Films 3.2 Radio 3.3 Television 3.4 Novel 4 Bibliography 5 See also 6 References 7 External links

[edit] Characterisation

In the postwar years (after 1945), Don Camillo Tarocci (his full name, which he rarely uses) is the hotheaded priest of a small village in the Po valley in northern Italy. Don Camillo is a big man, tall and strong with hard fists. The stories' village was identified with Brescello after the production of movies based on the Guareschi's tales, but in the first story Don Camillo is introduced as the parish priest of Ponteratto.

Don Camillo is constantly at odds with the communist mayor, Guisseppe Botazzi, better known as Peppone (meaning, roughly, Big Joe) and is also on very close terms with the crucifix in his village church. Through the crucifix he hears the voice of Christ^[1]. What Peppone and Camillo have in common is an interest in the well-being of the village. They also appear to have both been partisan fighters during the war; and while Peppone will make public speeches about how "the reactionaries" ought to be shot, and Don Camillo will preach fire and brimstone against "godless Communists", they actually grudgingly admire each other. Therefore they sometimes end up working together in peculiar circumstances, though keeping up their squabbling. Thus, although he publicly opposes the Church as a Party duty, Peppone takes his gang to the church and baptizes his children there, which makes him part of Don Camillo's flock. If Peppone can be a Communist and a Catholic at the same time, Don Camillo, on the other side, gets labeled by local rich landowners and traditionalists as a "Bolshevik priest" because he's not afraid to decry the avarice of rich people.

The stories give sympathetic depictions of Peppone and a number of other Communists, many of whom are recurring characters. However, there is little doubt that the writer is politically opposed to Communism and that his Communist characters are sympathetic despite, rather than because of, being such ^[2]

The books are set in a society where the Italian Communist Party and the Church (and hence the Catholic centrist party, the Christian Democrats) both enjoy a mass grassroots support, a fact which the opposing factions cannot but acknowledge.

The Christ in the crucifix often has far greater understanding than Don Camillo for the troubles of the people, and has to constantly but gently reprimand the priest for his impatience.Through this plot device, conservative institutions in Italy are chided. Camillo loses his temper on occasion, to the extreme of getting involved in fistfights, and even on occasion using a bench as a club. This behavior twice brings reprimands by the Church.

According to Guareschi,^[3] priests who object to his portrayal of Don Camillo may break their staffs over his head, and Communists who object to his portrayal of Peppone may break a hammer and sickle across his back, but no one is to criticize him over Christ's voice, for that stands for his conscience.

Many stories are satirical takes on the real world political divide between Italian Roman Catholic Church and the Italian Communist Party, not to mention other worldly politics. Others are tragedies about schism, politically motivated murder, and personal vendettas in a small village where everyone knows everyone else, but not everyone necessarily likes everyone else very much.

Sometimes the village is menaced by the very real world floods of the Po river. Often either Camillo or Peppone tries to seize the upper hand, with unexpected results. At times, the village gets a visitor or visitors, some politician or some Cardinal or even youngsters from a rival village, who bring problems.

In one story, Don Camillo visits the Soviet Union pretending to be a comrade. In another, the arrival of pop culture and motorcycles propels Don Camillo into fighting "decadence", a struggle in which finds he has his hands full, especially when the Christ mainly smiles benevolently on the young rascals. In this later collection, Peppone is the proprietor of several profitable dealerships, riding the "Boom" years of the 60's in Italy. He is no longer quite the committed Communist he once was, but he still does not get on with Don Camillo — at least in public. Don Camillo has his own problems — the Second Vatican Council has wrought changes in the Church, and a new assistant priest, who comes to be called Don Chichì, has been foisted upon him to see that Don Camillo moves with the times. Don Camillo, of course, has other ideas.

Guareschi created a second series of novels about a similar character, Don Candido, Archibishop of Trebilie (or Trebiglie). The name of this fictional village is a pun on Trepalle, a real village (near Livigno) whose priest was a personal acquaintance of Guareschi's.

[edit] Books

• Mondo Piccolo "Don Camillo" (The Little World of Don Camillo, 1948)
• Mondo Piccolo: Don Camillo e il suo gregge (Don Camillo and His Flock, 1953)
• Il Compagno Don Camillo (Comrade Don Camillo, 1963)
• Don Camillo e i giovani d'oggi (in USA: Don Camillo Meets the Flower Children, 1969, England: Don Camillo Meets Hell's Angels, 1970)

The following English translations were published by Victor Gollancz Ltd:

• The Little World of Don Camillo. 1950.
• Don Camillo and the Prodigal Son. 1952.
• Don Camillo's Dilemma. 1954. Collection of short stories.
• Comrade Don Camillo (published 1964; translated by Frances Frenaye)
• Don Camillo Meets Hell's Angels (published 1970)

The following collection of short stories was composed in English by Guareschi and published by Victor Gollancz:

• Don Camillo and the Devil. 1957.

The first five were compiled into a larger book published in 1980: The World of Don Camillo^[4], to coincide with the television adaptation.

[edit] Adaptations

[edit] Films

A series of black-and-white films were made between 1952 and 1965. These were French-Italian coproductions and were simultaneously released in both languages. Don Camillo was played by French actor Fernandel, Peppone by the Italian actor Gino Cervi. The author of the original stories was involved in the scripts and helped select the main actors. To this day, the films are screened in Europe.

• The Little World of Don Camillo (fr. Le Petit monde de Don Camillo/it. Don Camillo) [1]
• The Return of Don Camillo (fr. Le Retour de Don Camillo/it. Il Ritorno di Don Camillo) [2]
• Don Camillo's Last Round (fr La Grande Bagarre/it. Don Camillo e l'onorevole Peppone) [3]
• Don Camillo: Monsignor (fr Don Camillo Monseigneur/it. Don Camillo monsignore ma non troppo) [4]
• Don Camillo in Moscow (fr Don Camillo en Russie/it. Il Compagno Don Camillo) [5]

A Don Camillo film was made in 1983, an Italian production with Terence Hill directing and also starring as Don Camillo. Colin Blakely performed Peppone in one of his last roles for cinema.

• The world of Don Camillo (it. Don Camillo) [6]

[edit] Radio

A BBC Radio 4 English language radio dramatization of The Little World of Don Camillo was broadcast in December 2006^[5]. It starred Ian Hogg as Don Camillo, Sean Prendergast as Peppone and Joss Ackland as the voice of Christ.

[edit] Television

In 1980, the BBC produced the television series The Little World of Don Camillo, based on the stories, starring the German actor Mario Adorf as Don Camillo and Englishman Brian Blessed as Peppone. The narrator and Voice of the Christ was Cyril Cusack.

[edit] Novel

The Little World of Don Camillo was taken and adapted by the famous Thai writer and politician, Kukrit Pramoj, into his own 1954 novel, Phai Daeng (Red Bamboo).

[edit] Bibliography

• Riccardo F. Esposito, Don Camillo e Peppone. Cronache cinematografiche dalla Bassa Padana 1951-1965, Le Mani - Microart's, Recco (Italy), 2008 ISBN 9788880124559

[edit] See also

• Marcelino pan y vino also features a talking crucifix
• Monsignor Quixote (Graham Greene novel about friendship between priest and Communist mayor)

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• The Little World Wide Web Homepage of Don Camillo
• Auf den Spuren von Don Camillo und Peppone
• Don Camillo as film character at the Internet Movie Database
• Don Camillo Web