Giuseppe Ungaretti - Vigil

Ungaretti was known as an Italian war poet - serving in the first world war, round the area of the Isonzo River. I found Ungaretti's work to be an exemplar of early 20th century Italian Identity - Italy is a relatively young country, comprised before of a handful of kingdoms and villages, suddenly strung together. Their sense of identity was loose, but the first world war provided a cause for which to unite a disparate county. They fostered their national identity through aggression, and war. This Italian search for identity was mimicked through Ungaretti himself, born in Egypt, moving most of his life around Europe, the war gave him a sense of purpose and meaning. It should be said that when looking at his work, there is a lot i disagree with. His work to em doesn't really convey horrors of war, but merely states them as goings on or as facts, A kind of acceptance of something i find morally wrong. Not to mention He supported Mussolini's fascist regime after the war. This was a good opportunity for me i felt to interpret the narrative of his poems into my own messages, into a message i prefer, to create my own political and artistic reading of his work.

Out of all his Poems, i chose to use his work "Vigil"

Vigil (Veglia)
A whole night
flung down beside
a murdered
companion

with his grinning mouth
turned to the moon
with the pressure
of his hands
piercing
my silence

I wrote
letters full of love
i have never been so passionately
devoted to life

in this poem, ungaretti describes a night during the war, being next to a "murdered companion". He describes his corpse, and how the silent night is disturbed due to this image. He then shows his love for life, his letters he wrote, possibly showing how his surroundings of death and despair makes him cherish his own life more.

What i fnd about this poem, (and many of his other poems) is that he too readily accepts and glorifies the systematic and horrific death of men at the hands of conflict. Describing the corpse as "Grinning", a creepy image, but with positive connotations. His only response to this and war is "i value my life more, let me write a few letters"

(I should note that while i disagree with a lot of Ungaretti's work, and am kind of giving it a harsh time, i can still appreciate a lot of it. and recognise that a lot of it is indicative of an unfortunate political situation of the time, that i think is important to critique)

In visualizing the poem, i decided to create my animation as a series of animated imagery that i can use to describe the poem in my own interpretive ways. I wont be using a voiceover or anything that directly describes the poem in the film, the film is my response to this poem.



The Isonzo river's white limestone plateaus are a striking image. i chose to exaggerate this, make a limestone plateau as far as the eye can see.

                                                    (a whole night... murdered companion)

The flats are empty, aside from the body and the man and the moon. Isolated, with the man only able to think about the emptiness the "silience" and the "murdered companion" beside him.

   (with his grinning mouth turned to the moon)

The grinning image i wanted to make gruesome and grim, make the grin a sinister one, pooling blood and a visible gunshot wound, on a soildier completely stripped, of clothes, of identity.

At this point, things get a little surreal

 (with the pressure... my silence)

the hands, piercing the silence, i chose to show this quite literally, the soldier's dead and cold hands re-animating and strangling the man's throat, crunching it into rubble, then into dust, a slight element of horror and gruesomeness. this image of the hand literally piercing the silence i feel communicates more of a suffocating fear of war and death, a fear i experience myself. it communicates erosion, destruction and death. (a few extra images of these lines below)

For the section "i wrote letters full of love" i am still considering imagery, it is a section that confuses me. Is he writing letters to a loved one? what kind of love is he expressing and where is it directed?

it's something i'm struggling to visualise.

"I have never been so passionately devoted to life" is another confusing line, is he passionate about life in war? does he value his life more after death? does he realise the fragility of life? I myself interpret as a personal revelation of mortality, an awareness of his course of life.

I chose this sort of fetal imagery, the curled up body, shows both fragility and life.

These images act as a rough storyboard for how my film is going to go.

 For production method i think drawn animation would allow for this imagery to work best. For more complex scenes with this realism of character, rotascoping would be of help.

I have not yet considered how colour could be used in this film, and if iw ant to use it

Sound will be a very important consideration - there is real potential for sound to be used creatively, especially when the poem describes "silence". The sound of the landscape could be a drone or ambiance in the background, making the silence that will come after at the hand parts even more striking, emphasising the slightly creepy, anxious and horrific atmosphere i hope to achieve.

Next steps - fully realising imagery and colour of the poem, storyboarding, sound design and then production.