10. Action boys and English boys

 

THE THREE young actors Daniel Keller, Daniel Dempsey and Joseph Cassuto -- plus a fourth, the slender boy in a white shirt – form a group I think of as the “English boys”.  They are native English or bilingual Italian-English speakers who, from the anonymity of the “chorus”, help to drive the plot and to supply important information (such as the presence of enemy trucks or the location of the transmitter in Capt. Von Hecht’s office), which would be pointless to dramatize.  They “tell” rather than “show” – the opposite, incidentally, of the prose writer’s mandate. They support the main characters by questioning or reacting to them.  Tekko, Giorgio and Franco were prominent in the novelization and early drafts of the screenplay, and Keller, Dempsey and Cassuto were included in the list of main cast members accompanying the New York Times review of the film.  The four “English boys” don’t speak more than a handful of lines collectively, but the story would progress very differently without their parts in the dialogue. 

They do not speak with the shrill voices of childhood nor with the rumble of adolescence.  They are in between.  In the scenes where the boys chatter excitedly in English, it’s interesting that it’s higher voices rather than lower ones that are heard -- in keeping with the intention of the original script that the orphans would be ages 8 to 12.  

Indeed it seems that there are really only two or three voices blurring together to represent the rest.  There’s no real dialogue to this chatter but just single lines (“He’s gonna blow up the dam!”) excited cries and laughter and, once, tantalizingly, a few words spoken in an Italian intonation but too faint to make out.  The sound they make reminds me of the hubbub of crowd scenes – brusio, Dan Keller said they were called.  He added his voice to a few of them in his time as a child dubber in Rome.  I wonder, actually, if that isn’t just young Dan in the recording studio, being layered and layered over himself. 

Despite Hornet’s Nest being a movie set in Italy with actors that sound and look Italian (even the German soldiers), there is no Italian dialogue.  A stray “Bellissima!” does not count. The actual Italians among the boys are silent.  Two of the older ones do get to speak in English, though they still sound as if they’re speaking Italian, which to me is quite charming.  

Was it unfair that most of the Italian cast were seen but not heard?  I don’t think so. They get to act with their bodies, and Hornet’s Nest would not be the adventure fantasy that it is without them.  I think of them as the “action boys.” They get to scramble up trees and handle plastique and fire guns from rooftops, spent casings flying about their ears. Several were from Naples and could swim and had movie-making experience. Three were professional circus performers.☺

A mixed bag: British, American and Italian actors

Text © 2023 by Lakambini Sitoy

Screenshot from Hornet's Nest (1970), United Artists featuring characters Arturo, Luigi and Paolo.

B&W photo by Claudio Patriarca. Thanks to Dan Keller.

Earlier: Why Hornet's Nest? Why only now?

Soon: Valerio Colombaioni