Amedeo Tommasi: Thomas
A modest theatrical company and an evoked spirit
“Thomas… Gli Indemoniati” (1970) was a low-budget grotesque movie, unconventional for Italian cinema, with some sporadic creative flash and a questionable script. Pupi Avati’s second work behind the camera was not particularly fortunate: unpublished in Italy due to the failure of the distribution company, but presented at the Locarno Film Festival of 1970, where one of his interpreters, Bob Tonelli, won the Stephen Prize Best as best supporting actor.
It’s no coincidence, “Thomas… Gli Indemoniati” has gone to history more like the film that marked the debut of Mariangela Melato on the big screen. The actress was called to Ferrara in exchange for a colleague and showed particular determination to get the part, making the director unbalanced at the time of her death: “in my career she was the first interpreter, without distinctions between males and females, which gave me a real emotion”.
Directed after “Balsamus, L’Uomo Di Satana” (1970), “Thomas… Gli Indemoniati” confirmed Pupi Avati’s horror propensity, interested in surprise the spectator with a not homogeneous narrative, in which emerges a comic vein, where fantastic elements and disturbing symbols are confused, a typical trait of his cinematography, inclined to poetic environments and referring to an ancient Italy and, above all, embellished with personal suggestions.
The film of the filmmaker from Bologna tells the story of a modest theater company dealing with the proofs of an early stage comedy, whose protagonist is a non-existent child, named Thomas, who one of the reciting think she has her son. A strange character invites the cast to take part in a scrumptious spiritual session to know the outcome of their artistic efforts in advance. At the end of it, he appears to be a real child who, inevitably, is renamed as Thomas.
The latter is well received by the company and, after having taken care of it, its members decide to spend a day with him, waiting to choose who wants to spend his life. Meanwhile, the group of actors move to a small town to stage their work and, while on the train, another mysterious individual warns them that he is the only survivor of another theater show performed on the spot, massacred and torn into pieces by the angry public.
Once comes to destination, the cast is at the center of surreal events such as watching a hospice for ex-actor and actresses, a bizarre sex lesson, or extracting statues from the ground. The day of the show, the audience, even before its beginning, raises the shutter to defend the stage. The comedy begins with the protagonist and Thomas who are improvising and remembering some moments of their lives. A final that doubts the veracity of previous events.
A theatrical representation and the unreality of its reflections. The search for inspiration of artists through a child. A complex relationship between art and the public. “Thomas… Gli Indemoniati” was an intriguing film in terms of content but, in fact, it did not fully comply with its initial promises, slamming to its conclusion, with sharp change of atmosphere commented on, however, by the great music of Amedeo Tommasi, author of an equally homogeneous score.
Published for the first time by Gemelli (1970), the soundtrack is finally released thanks to Sonor Music Editions. “Thomas (Colonna Sonora Originale Del Film)” (2017) presents the same theme in six different versions of a fine workmanship. The introductory Thomas, entrusted to the spinet, is connoted by a high rate of romance with its notes. Bossa as new expression of joy. The same air is subsequently stripped of any tinsel without suffering any backslash.
And, likewise, Thomas is embellished both by Edda Dell’Orso’s voice and enhanced by the use of trumpet or harmonica. At another juncture, the bows are more evident. A jazz player with a vast background like Amedeo Tommasi, already Atmo, is skilled in choosing the right instrument to characterize every frame. For example, only one prolonged note with piano effects can create great suspense in Obsession, with the drums in the background.
Then a sudden tension after the relaxing main track. On the same mood the successive Pendolo Mortale and Spirale, pervasive of hallucinating situations, with dense series of blows in the void and a whistling terrorizer. The same is at the center of Borgata, to seal a sad melody. However, there is a remedy to the creeping boredom: Piccolo Vagabondo and Giochi Nel Parco. Both tracks are nothing but simple intervals without pretensions.
The first one is designed for harmonica to mouth and castanets. The second sung by children. In addition to the warmth of Thomas and the dramatic, esoteric moments or the playful backgrounds, the score offers also a choreographed and tragic atmosphere, not muffled, performed by a chorus and rhythmic beat, namely Shake Tragico, and a true sad and mystical chant like Bottiglie. A score of this genre returns to the posters the climate of a ‘proudly provincial’ movie.
