‘L’eredità Ferramonti‘ (whose English title is ‘The Inheritance‘) made in 1976 is one of the latest films in Mauro Bolognini‘s directing career. His name is less mentioned today, being overshadowed by those of his more famous contemporaries, but in the decades after World War II Bolognini was a prolific director and made several successful films, some of them not without controversies, including a two-month prison sentence for ‘indecency’ in 1965. ‘The Inheritance‘ is an epoch drama set in late 19th-century Rome, an interesting film to watch today, primarily thanks to his international cast but also cinematic qualities that prove that Bolognini was a first-rate professional in a mature cinematography.
It’s a classic family saga combined with a terrible fight for inheritance. The Rome of the ascending bourgeoisie after the formation of the Italian state is the background of the action. Old Gregorio Ferramonti (Anthony Quinn) sells out his bakery which helped him gather a beautiful fortune, but he is in no hurry to share his inheritance. The three children – daughter Teta (Adriana Asti) married to a government official also an aspiring politician, son Mario (Fabio Testi) a speculator with a reputation of a Don Juan, and second son Pippo (Gigi Proietti) a blacksmith seller a bit fluffy and a bit insecure, are all disappointed, because they could use the money in the conditions of the capitalist expansion of the new Italy, but they don’t have many alternatoves, because the old man seems determined to live his own life comfortably. Emerges Irene (Dominique Sanda), Pippo’s beautiful and ambitious new wife, who will take the initiative in the attempt to seize the old man’s fortune. The road to his money is paved with a lot of passion, infidelity, treason. This is not a classical Italian family saga. In the Ferramonti family, money seems to be more important than the feelings or the unity of the family.
The story is specific to the great social and naturalistic novels describing the rise of the bourgeoisie and the personal price paid by heroes to succeed in the conditions of the savage capitalism in the second half of the 19th century Europe. Gaetano Carlo Chelli the author whose book inspired the film was a contemporary of Emile Zola, and the excellent cinematography of the film, with a Rome shrouded in fog, populated by women fastened in corsets within elegant dresses and sumptuous hats recalls the paintings of the French Impressionists. The cast is dominated by international celebrities, with Dominique Sanda playing a memorable role as the beautiful, ambitious, sensual Irene who conquers and destroys one after another all the men in the family. The role brought her an award at Cannes, by the way. For Anthony Quinn, the role in this film is not one of his great roles, but I think it met expectations. Other aspects of production are not as successful. I was especially surprised by how conventional the music of Ennio Morricone sounds, a disappointment from the composer of so many soundtracks and memorable musical themes. The style of music composed for this film with violins in the key scenes seems old-fashioned for a film of the ’70s, late by two or three decades. There are however plenty of good reasons to see today ”The Inheritance‘. It’s not a masterpiece, but it’s a film that stands the test of time. The saga of the Italian family falling apart due to the fight for money, the passions of men in two generations fascinated by the same woman, and the landscape of Rome at the end of the century remain with the spectators after the end of the viewing.