Richard Dyer

The Pervasiveness of Song in Italian Cinema

A young man is yanked out of a cafe by a man and a woman and flung into a carriage. ‘Dove volete portarmi?’ (‘Where are you taking me?’), he wails. The young woman, cracking the whip for the horses, cries ‘Alla vecchia fattoria’ (‘To the old farm’) and the man adds ‘Ia ia oh!’. Suddenly, somewhere else a woman and three men come forward, dressed in natty cowboy clothes, and sing ‘Nella vecchia fattoria’ (‘In the old farm’), a song involving an ever-increasing number of repeated imitations of animal sounds (it is the song known in English as ‘Old Macdonald’s Farm’). As they carry on, the carriage careers its way along dusty roads, the young man tossed about in the back. On the roof of the farm a man says ‘Ma che stiamo diventando tutti matti qua?’ (‘Is everyone going crazy here?’) and the singers give a final ‘Ia ia oh!’; the man on the roof fires a gun in the air, and the singers run off as the horse and carriage arrive at the farm.