Abstract

The essay offers an original analysis of the screenwriting process and the intertextual references of "Renzo e Luciana", the episode Mario Monicelli contributed to "Boccaccio '70" (1962). In their depiction of the contradictions of the 'economic miracle', the director and his collaborators drew from two short stories by Calvino ("L'avventura di due sposi" and "Luna e Gnac"). Monicelli moreover acknowledged the influence of King Vidor's "The Crowd", which foregrounded issues (including social conformity and the conflict between the private and the public spheres) that were to affect Italy from the late 1950s. It was a conversation between the director and Franco Solinas that inspired the core of the story: the socio-political critique of an abuse of labor laws.