Giovanna Daddi

L’Inconsolable (The Inconsolable One).1st version. 2010. France. Written and directed by Jean-Marie Straub. Based on Dialogues with Leucò, by Cesare Pavese. With Andrea Bacci, Giovanna Daddi. In Italian. 14 min.

Returning from the forest of shades, a quietly defiant Orpheus tells a Bacchante it was free will, not destiny, which compelled him to cast the fatal gaze on his wife Eurydice, recognizing their love as a thing of the past and his own proper place in the world of living souls. A masterful series of camera shots reveals the Bacchante looking away in incredulity, horror, and betrayal. (Joshua Siegel – MoMA)Read More »

L’Inconsolable
2010, 14 minutes 44 secondes, couleur
D’après L’inconsolabile, Dialogues avec Leucò de Cesare Pavese.

Sept des Dialogues avec Leucò (1947) sont mis en scène dans De la Nuée à la résistance (1979), cinq le sont dans Ces rencontres avec eux (2006). Le genou d’Artémide (2009), Femmes entre elles (2009) puis L’inconsolable (2011) en constituent donc les treizième, quatorzième et quinzième adaptations.Read More »

La madre (The Mother).3rd version. 2011. Switzerland. Dir. Jean-Marie Straub. Based on Dialogues with Leucò, by Cesare Pavese. With Giovanna Daddi, Dario Marconcini. In Italian. 20 min.Read More »

Le Streghe, Femmes entre elles (The Witches, Women among Themselves).2008. France/Italy. Written and directed by Jean-Marie Straub. Based on Dialogues with Leucò, by Cesare Pavese. With Giovanna Giuliani, Giovanna Daddi. 35mm. In Italian. 21 min.

The enchantress Circe recounts to Leucò her attempts to bewitch and bed Odysseus. She talks about men and women, the human and the divine, and the brave hero who chooses to become neither pig nor God. In her adamantine repose, Circe also hints at the monotony of her own immortal fate, and contrasts it with the vibrating currents of life she so dearly craves and envies in Odysseus, with his longing for home, childhood, and love. These women-demigods are frank and sensitive at the same time, like the men of Raoul Walsh’s films, where the communities of male and female are deathly separate, and massive to each other. Walsh made a western, The Tall Men, in 1955. This 2008 Straub-film is its reverse shot. (Joshua Siegel – MoMA)Read More »