Итальянский киновариант гоголевской «Шинели»

Abstract

The article analyses the landmark film for Italian cinema — The Overcoat directed by Alberto Lattuada, an adaptation of the great Gogol’s The Overcoat. The problem of screening, in fact, has two dimensions – the translation of the artistic structure of one art’s language into the language of another and interpretation from the optics of its time and national culture. The subject of the article is the consideration of the creative solution of these problems by the film editor. According to the remark of H.-G. Gadamer the classics reveal the light of truth. The same task is pursued by the reconstruction of the classical literary heritage by means of cinematography. This is especially relevant in a country of literarycentric culture such as Russia. The theme of a person of little mark has remained actual during almost two centuries since the writing of The Overcoat, and not only in Russia. At the same time due to the fact that the classics are multifaceted, the truth opens in it from different sides, depending on the time and cultural soil. The film The Overcoat depicts and expresses the problem of a person of little mark from a certain point – Italy in 1952. The objectives of the article are the following: to discover differences in the image of the main character from his Russian prototype; to identify the features of the plot structure and genre mechanisms; to determine the place of the film in the history of Italian cinema. The author of the study comes to the conclusion that the adaptation of Lattuada, created during the period of neorealism, or rather the moment of expanding its palette, the transition into the “pink” period, interprets Gogol’s text in a social way in the spirit of the times, while softening Gogol’s caustic discourse. In the process of interpreting the artistic and semantic texture of the film, the signs that characteristic for some Italian cinema trends in the future are revealed.