Gordiano Lupi, “Pierino contro tutti”

We all know the Pierino of the jokes, who seems to have an illustrious precedent even in Mark Twain and who, going back even further, derives from the Atellan farce, Plautus and the commedia dell’arte. In the early eighties it was brought to the screens by Alvaro Vitali — who had the phisique du rôle to interpret it — and by countless imitators. Gordiano Lupi, a lover of genre cinema, or rather a certain genre, wrote an essay on the figure of the enfant terrible.

Lupi analyzes all the films dedicated to Pierino: in addition to the three main ones, “Pierino contro tutti” (1980), “Pierino strikes again” (1982) and “Pierino goes back to school” (1990), his essay also refers to some secondary films, with or without Alvaro Vitali. Those without are called apocryphal (like the Gospels!). There was even a female Pierina.

“Pierino contro tutti” is the first and most successful. It revitalizes the joke movie, based on irreverence, vulgarity, swear words, contaminating it with a lot of slapstick comedy — that is, elementary and that uses body language — with the fast motion typical of cartoons and silent cinema, and with a little of malice derived from sexy comedy. An obscene and scatological comedy for junk cinema fans. But Lupi demonstrates a competence and attention that lead us to re-evaluate the subject, at least as a representation of a particular type of cinema, and at least for the value of nostalgic reinterpretation of bygone times, for configuring itself as a “manifesto of an era” and “icon of trashy comedy”.