Allegro non troppo (1976)

In an empty theater, a pompous presenter introduces an unusual show: while a conductor has an unlikely makeshift orchestra perform a series of pieces—the musicians are little old ladies in Belle Époque clothing, taken from a nursing home—a draftsman, kept chained up for years, creates an animated version of it in real time. But relations between the conductor and the draftsman gradually deteriorate, because the former finds the latter’s creations too sad and depressing. So, together with the presenter, he decides to get the draftsman in the right mood with the help of a “professional.” Meanwhile, strange beings begin to burst into the theater, such as a gorilla after the performance of Ravel’s Bolero, or the serpent that emerges from the animation of Stravinsky’s The Firebird. While the conductor gets the worst of it with the gorilla and the orchestra’s old ladies flee from the serpent, the draftsman turns himself and the cleaning girl into animated characters—the Prince Charming and Snow White—and flies away with her. Left alone, the presenter is forced to find a suitable ending for the film. He calls a monstrous being named Franceschini and asks it to search the archives for one, but everything it shows him is worse than the last thing (a cat caught in a giant mousetrap, a runner sliced to pieces by the wool/thread-like “blade” of the finish line, a man forced by a hamster to run in a wheel, an escalation of violence that leads to the destruction of Earth, and so on). In the end, the presenter starts thinking about a new film, a love story with a woman and seven little men... Claude Debussy’s Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun: In an idyllic world full of detail and sexual innuendo, an old faun seeks female companionship but, no matter how much he tries to improve his appearance, the young nymphs reject him. He is left alone, unaware that the hills he walks on are a woman’s breasts. Antonín Dvořák’s Slavonic Dance No. 7, Op. 46: In a community of primitives, one man decides to leave the caves and build himself a hut. Everyone else imitates him, however, and when he builds a modern house, they imitate him again. To rid himself of their unwelcome company, he confirms that the others keep copying his behavior even when he does bizarre things, then begins marching in military step, promptly followed by everyone else. He throws himself over a cliff, grabbing a branch just below the edge, convinced that the others will follow him and fall into the abyss. But no one falls after him, and when he climbs back up to see what happened, he finds everyone else lined up, showing him their backsides. Maurice Ravel’s Bolero: Life evolves from the liquid in a can of Coca-Cola abandoned by a spaceship, beginning with primordial soup and passing through creatures of all kinds, including an ape that takes advantage of the other creatures, until it reaches humankind, which dominates all the others but is, inside, nothing more than that ape. Jean Sibelius’s Valse triste: A cat wanders through a ruined house, sadly thinking about a past that is gone. Its memories—scenes of family life within the walls of the great house—seem to come alive and become reality, kindling its hopes, but each time they vanish within moments, plunging the poor animal back into desolate devastation. In truth, the cat itself is nothing more than a memory of the past, destined to disappear an instant before the house is finally demolished. Antonio Vivaldi’s Concerto in C major, RV 559: A methodical bee’s peaceful picnic is disturbed by a couple of lovers who have chosen that meadow for their amorous tryst. First, she is forced to move because of the shadow cast by their bodies; then the two, rolling around in the grass, knock her over. But she gets her revenge by stinging the man. Igor Stravinsky’s The Firebird: As told in Genesis, God creates Adam and Eve, and the serpent offers them the fruit of knowledge, but, unexpectedly, both refuse it. So the serpent eats the fruit and is plunged into an infernal world, at the mercy of demons who expose it to the worst aspects of contemporary consumer society. Finally, back in Eden with Adam and Eve, it frees itself of all the symbols of civilization and slithers away.