TJE 7/28 - Momo (1986)

"Momo," by Michael Ende, was one of my favorite books as a kid. I didn't realize that a film version existed until a few years ago, when I stumbled across a trailer on Youtube. A co-production of German and Italian studios, with an international cast, the 1986 fantasy film never penetrated the American market. An English language version was prepared, however, along with German and Italian ones. It was one of those projects where every actor performed in whatever language they were comfortable with, and the rest were dubbed, so it's not clear which language should be considered the original. I've seen the German and English versions now, and I think it's a perfectly wonderful children's film, no matter what language it's in.

An orphan girl named Momo (Radost Bokel) is our heroine. She is about ten years old with fuzzy hair and a big smile. Momo is discovered living in the ruins of an ancient amphitheater, and makes friends with the people who live nearby, becoming especially close to an old street sweeper, Beppo (Leopoldo Trieste), and a young entertainer, Gigi (Bruno Stori). One day the Grey Gentlemen appear, a group of anonymous figures who steal away people's time by causing them to rush and hurry, tricked to think they are saving time when they're really losing it. Momo's friends are drawn away one by one, until she must leave the amphitheater to find a way to save them. Her journey takes her out into the world and beyond. She meets a clairvoyant tortoise named Cassiopeia, and the keeper of time, Professor Hora (John Huston), who help her prepare to fight the Grey Gentlemen.

Michael Ende was famously unhappy with the Hollywood adaptation of his more famous children's novel, "The Neverending Story," and so took a more active role in the development of "Momo." And it shows. "Momo" follows very close to the book, containing a little too much story for the film to handle, and several concepts that don't work on the screen the way they do in print. The primary one is Momo herself. Radost Bokel is a charmer and carries the film easily, but the script does a messy job of explaining Momo's special power - that she knows how to listen and pay attention to people, helping them feel better about themselves, that in turn makes their problems easier to solve. Miraculous things tend to happen around the movie Momo, but the mechanism of her magic is left largely unexplained.

On the other hand, there are many, many things that the movie gets right. I'm not familiar with director Johannes Schaaf, but he finds a nice balance between the big, impressive fantasy visuals and simpler techniques. The first half of "Momo" is very natural in style, and a brief fantasy sequence with the children is mostly achieved through trick photography and clever framing. But once the supernatural threat of the Grey Gentlemen arrives, then we get fancy makeup effects, wilder costumes, and the art design becomes more and more elaborate - but never to the point where it overwhelms the story. There's a lovely moment when Professor Hora takes Momo to visit the place where all time comes from, and the audience is treated to a beautifully surreal sequence of impressionist images instead of a more literal representation.

The most memorable visuals of the film may be the Grey Gentlemen, with their uniformly bald heads, sharp suits, bowler hats, and granite briefcases, wreathed in ever-present clouds of cigar smoke. In force they are striking to behold, a perfect embodiment of sinister, heartless bureaucracy. And then there are the incredible sets - the otherworldly home of Professor Hora that looks like it's situated a few doors down from Heaven, the coldly modern city that engulfs Momo's friends, and the sterile Time Bank that the Grey Gentlemen use as their headquarters. The limited budget is very apparent, but "Momo " accomplishes so much with it, and isn't afraid of tackling big and complicated ideas, even if it can't quite do justice to all of them. And yet it also seems quite satisfied with being a children's film, using a great deal of dream logic and child logic that most films for grown-ups can't get away with.

I have a special fondness for 80s fantasy films, because I grew up on them, and seeing "Momo" was like unearthing a forgotten bit of my own childhood. I'm glad that I saw this as adult and a film buff though, so I could appreciate the appearance of Ninetto Davoli as a shopkeeper, and Armin Mueller-Stahl as the leader of the Grey Gentlemen. And then there's John Huston, the legendary American director, playing Professor Hora. His part in "Momo" was his last appearance onscreen, and it's a warm and wonderful performance.

I suspect that if I didn't love the book so much, and wasn't so happy see these familiar characters brought to life, I wouldn't have enjoyed "Momo" nearly so much. But I do, so I did, and that's that.
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