An excerpt from Allegro Non Troppo

I saw this film in January of 1987 back in my care-free days at Boston College. It was a wonderful time, having arrived back on campus shortly before the official end of Christmas break. Most of my roommates were back--we'd all had enough of our families (never dreaming how relatively soon thereafter we'd actually bury many of them and miss those times together we in our youth so easily grew bored of)--and reveled in one another's companionship, as well as our shared affection for alcohol and 'other' substances of mind 'enlightening' effect. Two of them worked in a video shop in Brookline and brought home such classics as John Hurt's rendition of "1984', an animated version of George Orwell's "Animal Farm", assorted straight pornos such as Marilyn Chamber's "Behind the Green Door"--which was actually rather arousing even for a young, albeit closeted, gay man--and a little known, 1978 Italian film called "Allegro Non Troppo" which combined live action sequences revolving around curious animated features set to classical music. Some 20 years later, I now know--given my continued fascination with this film--that it wasn't so much the party favors that made this film special and enduring in my mind so much as it was the film itself and the messages and visuals contained therein. In addition to an Evolution themed segment that would send millions of fundies into convulsions, there was one particular segment about the follies of war and conformity that have particular meaning to me now...the deaths over over 3,500 soldiers in the past 5 years, many of whom were only children when I first saw this, make we wish now that only more people had seen it and absorbed its meaning. This piece is set to Dvorak's Slavonic Dance No. 7.

This piece is set to Dvorak's Slavonic Dance No. 7.



For a more enlightened view of evolution, enjoy it set to Ravel's Bolero.