The continuing story of the house Joe and Mary Ann Scott lived in for over 50 years and the families that have lived here since. *
Now I doubt that Joe and Mary Ann watched Italian films, but yesterday was Totò night in the house.
Rosa had arrived over from Milan on Friday, and we had bought in several films by Totò, who like Rosa was from Naples.
He is someone I have written about before, and over the years I have become quite a fan.**
Last night we chose Totò Cerca Casa, or Totò Looks For A House, which was made in 1949 and was the second most popular film of the year.
The sets were pretty basic, the humour fairly slapstick and some at least of the actors might have been better enrolling in acting school, but given all of that it was funny.
And while the plot was at best fairly implausible it did hold some truths.
Like most of post war Europe there was a severe housing shortage and Totò and his family end up in a number of different properties, each more unsuitable than the one before, including a school, a cemetery caretaker's house, the studio of an artist, a large luxury apartment and even the Colosseum before ending up in a psychiatric hospital.
Each location offers up comic possibilities, from a student rebellion led by Totò, to an apparent ghost at the cemetery, and the discovery that the luxury apartment has also been rented out to another family at the same time.
Behind the humour of course is the very real hardship of people with no where to live.
Naples was already a hard city to live in and the war made it harder.
Here in Britain there was the same lack of properties, which in turn led to the squatter movement was a direct response tin part to the shortage of accommodation because of war damage but also because some properties had been deliberately left unoccupied by their owners.
The campaign was nationwide and in London was coordinated by the Communist Party.
Here in Manchester the first successful squat was at the gun site near Alexandra Park which housed one family at 8 p.m., but by the following day contained a community of over 20 families and all available huts were occupied. It is a fascinating story and ended with the Corporation accepting the squatters as tenants.***
Joe and Mary Ann will I suspect have known about the Alexandra Park squat, and taken a keen interest given that they built decent and affordable houses across Chorlton.
But I have no idea whether they would have enjoyed Totò Cerca Casa or the selection of foods Rosa cooked up that evening, which included peppers, a selection of greens in olive oil and may favourite, a salad made from oranges and dressed with garlic, olive l and chillies.
Pictures, Totò Cerca Casa, 1949 and a selection of Neapolitan dishes.
*The story of a house, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20story%20of%20a%20house
Walking the streets of Naples with a comic genius ........ Totò, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2020/01/walking-streets-of-naples-with-comic.html
Totò
***The forgotten story ………. a little bit of squatter history in Alexandra Park, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2020/07/the-forgotten-story-little-bit-of.html
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