Chichester Cinema at New Park
The Little World of Don Camillo
Fernandel is Don Camillo, the hot-headed priest always fighting to be the head of the community against the communist major in the first of a delightful series of comedies.
Set in the village of the Po valley where the earth is hard and life miserly, the priest (Fernandel) and the communist mayor are always fighting to be the head of the community. If in secret, they admired and liked each other, politics still divided them as it is dividing the country.
And when the mayor wants his "People's House"; the priest wants his "Garden City" for the poor. Division exist between the richest and the poorest, the pious and the atheists and even between lovers. But if the people are hard as the country, they are good in the bottom of there heart.
Fernandel is great as Don Camillo, the hot-headed priest with the classic clown's face, strecthing from comical to deeply human, scarred with compassion and sadness. Gino Cervi, the mayor Peppone is also great, his physique is stiffer, bulkier, his face is also stiffer - a perfect communist-mechanic, earnest and passionate but slow, Don Camillo's opponent, on the surface thoroughly different but inside very much like him (subtitles).
Part of the SPIRITUAL CINEMA SEASON
Italy · 
France · 1952 · Julien Duvivier · 108min
