I Knew Her Well

Adriana has come to Rome from the provinces wanting to be an actress, and she will not be one. The film follows her days: photo shoots, work as an extra, parties, men, agencies, a record player and a new haircut. It does not proceed chronologically and the episodes are not connected; every scene is an encounter with someone else, and with each one there is slightly less of her. Antonio Pietrangeli directs. Stefania Sandrelli plays Adriana, with Ugo Tognazzi and Nino Manfredi in the cast. The striking thing is the structure. Almost no scene causes the next; Pietrangeli abandons classical plot entirely and shows a way of living through repetition instead. That was an unusual choice in Italian cinema in the sixties. The second subject is looking. Adriana is watched, photographed and assessed continuously; the film constructs her as the sum of those gazes and almost never shows what she thinks on her own. That is largely why it has been reassessed. The scene in which Ugo Tognazzi's ageing actor dances at a party is the cruellest passage; the man humiliates himself and nobody stops it. Pietrangeli drowned during a shoot in 1968 at forty eight and was forgotten for a long time; his films have returned to circulation in recent years. Who it is for: viewers who like the less known side of Italian cinema and formally bold films. Who it is not for: there is no plot, the narrative is deliberately scattered, and the ending arrives abruptly.