Monicelli in the desert of war
The great master of Italian cinema, Mario Monicelli, is back at work, on a film entitled Le rose del deserto (lit. "The Roses of the Desert"), produced by Mauro Bernardi (Luna Rossa Cinematografica), on the adventures of an army medical unit, the third division of the 31st "Sezione Sanità", stationed in the Libyan desert during WWII.
The film, starring Giorgio Pasotti, Michele Placido and Alessandro Haber, is in its eighth and second to last week of production, on a desert set in Tunisia, between the towns of Djerba and Tozeur, where it is 50 degrees in the shade.
Monicelli, 91, explains that Le rose del deserto was inspired by the book Il deserto della Libia by Mario Tobino. "The book is the basis, but the characters in the film mix the pages of the novel with my own encounters, and stories and characters I stole, many from journalist and writer Giancarlo Fusco".
Monicelli, who experienced that conflict directly (not in Libya, but in the Balkans), is striving to once again relate "the tragedy and absurdity, the ridiculous con of war. The waiting, mud, sweat, flies, the boredom and then the slaughter. No one has wanted to talk about that war. I had lost hope yet after two and a half years of waiting, we were off".
The heroes of Le rose del deserto await the defeat of Alexandria and a speedy return home, only to see their dreams crushed as a result of the flash war. "My heroes are the spiteful, the lowdown, the charlatans who fight to change their condition, unsuccessfully. I haven’t liked anyone as much as them, from I soliti ignoti (Big Deal on Madonna Street) to this film.
(Translated from Italian)
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