The Basilisks has an unusual narrative structure, broadly following the lives of members of a community in a hilltop town, without much attempt at a narrative arc. The major theme seems to be that most men and women lead lives of silent frustration. It is in a sense a political movie, but in an undogmatic way. The inhabitants are trapped by the attitudes and customs of the time and place, and although they loll in front of panoramas and walk down streets of picturesque buildings there is always a faint sadness in everything. A whole clutch of characters cross the screen, but three male friends get particular attention, Antonio is a good-looking though unambitious student, Francesco an apathetic landowner and tentative lover (in a town where women are comedically unavailable), and Sergio a sad-eyed prematurely balding schoolteacher, who sits out youth without pleasing the eye of any young lady. This film does however have its fleeting joys, a child dancing in a piazza, the synchronised glancing of the "cousins", and certainly the occasional narration from Enrica Chiaromonte, an underemployed actress of the Italian cinema, with a marvellous, conspiratorial yet loving voice, playing the character of Maddalena. Chiaromonte was a philosophy graduate of the University of Pisa and a schoolteacher of history and philosophy, a multitalented lady. In the end Wertmüller's cinema is gentle and inclusive, aided by a sympathetic Morricone score.
The film is worth comparing to I Vitelloni, Fellini's third feature film from a decade before. In Italian that title refers to the calves that are fattened to be turned into veal, and also refers to young slackers from middle class provincial families. That movie also features a group of young men struggling to escape a certain dreary stranglehold. In that sense The Basilisks is not particularly original, but it's certainly beautiful and I prefer it to I Vitelloni overall.
