lchadbou-326-26592 Review of The Five Days

The Five Days (1973)

Atypical Argento Crude But Spirited And Cunning

[6 January 2014]

The Five Days as has been pointed out is an atypical Dario Argento: a lighthearted take on the politics of Italy in the year, tumultuous across Europe, of 1848, with the conflicting interests shown of Northern Italian rebels,Austrian occupiers, and the Pope,to name just three.It is also a buddy film as the two main characters, an escaped convict and a baker, land up bonding through a series of violent but comic episodes.Highlights include a silent style slapstick scene in which the two, naive about a woman's body, try to help with a childbirth; an argument over what a dying hero's last words were which turns physical; and especially a tryst with the blonde widow of a recently hung traitor, who gets sexually excited as the baker describes different kinds of bread.The convict has been looking all through the story for an elusive friend Zampino, who is supposedly a hero nicknamed Liberty but is actually double-crossing the rebels and working for the Austrians. The leader of one band of rebels, called "Duce,"a name which has an obvious connotation, is thrown down a flight of stairs when the baker tries to stop him from raping a woman who had sex with an Austrian.The convict's words at the end, as he ventures to speak before a crowd gathered to celebrate a victory, the new bigwigs pompously dressed up, are "We've been tricked." Some may see in this irony and cynicism Argento and his co-writers' critique of a similar wave of radical politics that swept through Europe- and elsewhere- just 5 years before the movie, in 1968. In any event the work invites interesting comparisons with the historical/war comedies of Mario Monicelli (The Great War, L'Armata Brancaleone) the sexual politics of Lina Wertmuller, and even the more serious historical epics of Luchino Visconti (Senso) rather than the horror genre in which Argento is usually pigeonholed.