In my new home I’m 2 blocks from the Arno river. This last Sunday I decided to take advantage of the glorious afternoon and check out what surprises the Arno near me held. I was not disappointed!

For one thing: little flower blossoms! Oh! what a sight for sore eyes! Three weeks ago I was living in snow and ice in Illinois. Though I do miss seeing my donkey.

One last look at my long winter legs. Pretty soon the shadows will change and I’ll be regular sized again.

Across the Arno I spotted this proud graffiti.

And, last but not least, a poster advertising a play soon to be staged in Florence.

The title of this play is: An Average Little Man (Un borghese piccolo piccolo) Taken from Wikipedia.

An Average Little Man (Italian: Un borghese piccolo piccolo, literally meaning a petty petty bourgeois, also known in English as A Very Little Man) is a 1977 Italian drama film directed by Mario Monicelli. It is based on the novel of the same name written by Vincenzo Cerami. The movie mixes “Italian-Style Comedy” (commedia all’italiana) with psychological drama tragedy. The film was an entrant in the 1977 Cannes Film Festival. In 2008, the film was included on the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage’s 100 Italian films to be saved, a list of 100 films that “have changed the collective memory of the country between 1942 and 1978.”

Plot
Giovanni Vivaldi is a petty bourgeois, modest white-collar worker nearing retirement in a public office in the capital. His life is divided between work and family. With his wife Amalia he shares high hopes for his son, Mario, a newly qualified accountant, not a particularly bright boy who willingly assists his father’s efforts to make him hired in the same office.

The father, in an attempt to guide his son, emphasizes the point of practicing humility in the presence of his superiors at work, and he enrolled himself in a Masonic lodge to help him gain friendships and favoritisms that, at first, he would never hope to have.

Just as the attempts of Giovanni Vivaldi seems to turn to success, his son Mario is killed, hit by a stray bullet during a shootout that erupts following a robbery in which the father and son are accidentally involved.

Misfortune and sufferings consequently distort the lives, beliefs and morality of the Vivaldis. Amalia becomes ill, loses her voice and becomes seriously handicapped. Giovanni, now blinded by grief and hatred, throws himself headlong into an isolated and desperate quest. He identifies his son’s murderer, abducts him, takes him to a secluded cabin and submits him to torture and violence, eventually bringing the killer of his child to a slow death.

Then, for Giovanni arrives – at his set date – his retirement and, only a day later, the death of his wife, who had by now been overcome by her disability.

Giovanni is now prepared with serenity and resignation to live into old age, but a spontaneous verbal confrontation with a young idler revives in him the role of an executioner who will, presumably, kill again.

BTW, I found the movie on Youtube and watched it tonight. It was so 70s: weird and kind of wonderful both.

And that, my friends, was my interesting, sunny and warm Sunday afternoon in Firenze! I had to take off my puffer coat to stay cool.