Aggiornamento in Calvino and Tati

Recommended Citation

Miatello, Claudia. “Aggiornamento in Italo Calvino and Jacques Tati” Bibliosofia e Arte, What An Extraordinary Life. Toronto, ON: Claudia Miatello, 2025. https://whatanextraordinarylife.com/blogs/bibliosofia-arte/aggiornamento-in-calvino-and-tati/<paragraph number>

[1] In 1962, when Pope John XXIII used the term aggiornamento at the Second Vatican Council to describe the type of renewal needed in the Roman Catholic Church, he did not mean the church should simply adapt to modernity. Instead, by using the term aggiornamento, he hoped to bring the church up to date but in continuity with tradition. 

[2] The term aggiornamento is deeply linked to the Italian mentality and is therefore not easily translatable into English with a single word. It is derived from the verb aggiornare, which literally means 'to update,' 'to bring something up to date,' or 'to make current.' But in translation this term loses the historical and cultural depth of the Italian word. It does not simply mean throwing away traditions and replacing the old with the new. Aggiornare means to adapt to change while still maintaining one’s essential human or spiritual core. In Italian culture, “modernizing” means integrating rather than replacing; creating without destruction. History is part of Italy’s national identity and so innovation must necessarily maintain continuity with the past, and never threaten to erase it. 

[3] At the same time as Vatican II was taking shape, Italy and France during the 1950s and 1960s underwent an extraordinary period of economic growth which transformed these countries into industrialized economies after the Second World War. Author Italo Calvino and filmmaker Jacques Tati were writing books and scripts that also dealt with humankind’s adaptation, or aggiornamento, to the modern world. 

[4] In 1962, Calvino published a series of short stories titled Marcovaldo. The stories featured a working-class dreamer in an industrialized city in northern Italy who tries to reconcile his traditional ways with the modern world. In France, Jacques Tati was creating films, such as Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot (1953), Mon Oncle (1958) and Playtime (1967), which featured the character of Monsieur Hulot, who, like Marcovaldo, is equally at odds with the ultra-modern, hyper-functional city in which he lives. 

[5] The theme of aggiornamento ran through the work of these artists, however, in completely opposite ways. Whereas Marcovaldo tries to uphold his simple values in the modern world, Hulot doesn’t make an attempt to fit into the modern world at all. It seems that, in these works of Calvino and Tati, aggiornamento is so difficult to achieve that it becomes impossible. 

Marcovaldo: A Man at odds with Modernity

[6] Marcovaldo is a dreamer who clings to his old way of life, but he soon discovers that the rules of the city are different from those of the old, rural towns. Every attempt he makes to integrate his traditional ways with modern reality is inevitably doomed. 

[7] Calvino explains in the preface to his book Marcovaldo, “the first [stories] in the series were written in the early 1950s and thus are set in a very poor Italy, the Italy of neo-realistic movies.” Portraying life in neo-realistic terms meant depicting the social inequalities and the harsh conditions of working-class people after World War II. In a rapidly changing world, aggiornamento was not a choice, it was a necessity. Life was moving forward in a certain way and it was necessary to follow, or perish. In the story “Park-bench Vacation”, Marcovaldo dreams of sleeping under the stars but is instead disturbed by the traffic lights, welding torches, and a sprinkler system. In “Mushrooms in the City”, Marcovaldo eagerly forages mushrooms in a city park, only to unknowingly poison himself and his family with these city-grown fungi. Marcovaldo wants to find a way to meaningfully live in the world, but modernity refuses to make space for his type of aggiornamento. It is true that Marcovaldo stubbornly adheres to his old-world ways, but his failure to integrate is not entirely his own doing; it is also the failure of the modern world to recognize the human values of traditional people like him. 

[8] In the last stories of Calvino’s book written “from the mid-60s, when the illusion of an economic boom flourished”, the modern world continues to fail to accommodate Marcovaldo. In the story “Marcovaldo and the Supermarket”, Marcovaldo and his family visit the grocery store for entertainment to watch others shop, since they have no money of their own. They push their shopping carts down the aisles, while loading them with food until they unintentionally come face-to-face with the cashier. In a frantic attempt to return all the food to the shelves, they pass through a hole in the wall, precariously balancing their carts on a plank of wood, only to tilt their carts emptying their food into the mouth of a construction crane. Lost in the illusion of abundance, Marcovaldo gets swept up in grocery shopping. But the modern world, which is becoming increasingly sterile and dehumanized, does not make space for the poor. The modern supermarket offers him no accommodation and instead makes him literally “walk the plank”. Ironically the crane, which has no use for food, swallows the groceries that could have sustained Marcovaldo and his family. 

[9] In his own bumbling way, Marcovaldo tries in vain to navigate the industrialized reality around him, but it crushes his romantic hopes. In modernity, there is no place for Marcovaldo – he remains on the outside of it, looking in.

Monsieur Hulot: Oblivious to modernity

[10] Tati’s cinematic character, Monsieur Hulot, is similar to Marcovaldo in that he, too, is a figure living in a world that is relentlessly modernizing. However, unlike Marcovaldo, who at least recognizes modernity and tries (albeit unsuccessfully) to belong within it, Hulot moves through the modern world as if it simply isn’t there! In the film Mon Oncle, Hulot visits his relative’s ultra-modern house, but the rules of the mechanized kitchen and the purpose of the fish-shaped fountain are lost on him. He doesn’t try to make sense of any of it because, for him, the modern environment simply doesn’t mean anything. And this is where the humour lies: aggiornamento is never on his mind. Hulot doesn’t struggle with modernity or reject it because the modern world is neither real nor important to him; it is just a neutral setting through which he playfully moves. In Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot, Hulot’s spare tire, covered in leaves, is mistaken for a funeral wreath, and he unwittingly joins the procession with good-humoured and detachment. He is neither interested in efficiency nor progress, and instead finds spontaneous moments of warmth and human connection. Even though he does not form deep connections and his warm demeanour is not always reciprocated, he remains cheerful and unaffected. 

[11] Hulot stands in stark contrast to modernity, revealing the absurdity of the modern world’s obsession with automation and expansion. For Hulot, modernity that is not human-centered is as incomprehensible as the loud speaker announcing train arrivals and departures at the beginning of Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot.

Two Failed attempts at Aggiornamento

[12] If aggiornamento is a process of bringing the essence of the past in line with the present, then neither Marcovaldo nor Hulot succeed, but for different reasons. Marcovaldo tries to find a place that meets his needs in the modern world but there is no such place in it for him. The modern world rejects his attempts to re-humanize it, which leaves him alienated. Marcovaldo’s failure to adapt is not only painful for him but also deeply tragic, which echoes the neorealism of the 1950s.

[13] Hulot, on the other hand, is the one who does not accommodate modern ways. Instead of struggling against modernity, as Marcovaldo does, Hulot navigates the modern world with playful innocence and good humour. He feels no pain from his inability to really assimilate because he is unaware of the requirement to do so. The comedy arises from the modern world’s reactions to Hulot’s obliviousness as it struggles to accommodate him.

A New Type of Character: Accidental Aggiornamento 

[14] If both Marcovaldo and Hulot find it difficult to adapt to the modern world, who can succeed? Perhaps there is a third type of character who shares the best characteristics of both Calvino and Tati’s characters: like Marcovaldo, this new character would try to adapt to the modern world, but, like Hulot, he would remain blissfully naïve. The way he would succeed at adapting is by stumbling into aggiornamento by sheer luck! This may seem absurd, but it’s not absurd at all!

[15] Including an element of luck into the portrayal of aggiornamento in literature works for a couple of reasons. Firstly, aggiornamento is inherently difficult to achieve. By introducing an element of chance in the story, this technique illustrates that tradition and modernity are very difficult to reconcile. We see this with the homogenization of culture – international cities can sometimes be indistinguishable from each other with the erasure of traditional identity for a more globalized culture (for example, global retail brands are quickly replacing traditional artisan shops across Europe). 

[16] Secondly, introducing an element of chance in the story humanizes the literary character, making him feel more authentic. As in life, we are not fully in control of the outcome of our efforts and so the requirement to leave a part of life up to chance is true to reality. When a character’s world is suddenly turned upside down by a fortunate twist of fate, it makes the uncertainty in life less scary and makes us laugh (perhaps also, in part, out of relief).

[17] Thirdly, the way in which this new character’s situation would somehow always be resolved by a series of lucky breaks, is humorous. Comedy thrives on the unexpected and when events that defy logic occur, they remind us that life is often ironic, and can sometimes be taken less seriously.

[18] And finally, this element of “luck” is not necessarily inconsistent with the aggiornamento sought at Vatican II, since “chance” occurrences in life, described here, could also be interpreted as “the design of God” (Gaudium et Spes, 57), “Wisdom” or God “composing all things” (Gaudium et Spes, 57).

Conclusion

[19] Both Marcovaldo and Hulot struggle with aggiornamento in the 20th century, yet neither fully achieve it: while the modern world does not accommodate Marcovaldo’s old-world views, Hulot does not recognize modernity altogether. Today, we face similar challenges of adapting to a digital world, but which age in history hasn’t had to renew itself? As Vatican II’s Constitution Gaudium et Spes explains, humans have always lived in “times of static reality and also dynamic evolution”. (Gaudium et Spes, 5)

[20] Perhaps aggiornamento is not about resolving the tension between the old and the new, but accepting it. Neither Marcovaldo nor Hulot accepted the tension that accompanied adaptation. I think this notion of acceptance may come closest to the Italian idea of aggiornamento: we must embrace efficiency and progress, without letting the tension between old and new overshadow our spontaneity, humour, and the ineffable qualities that make life meaningful.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Calvino, Italo. Marcovaldo. Trans. by William Weaver, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1963.

Second Vatican Council. Gaudium et spes [Pastoral constitution on the church in the modern world]. December 7, 1965. https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19651207_gaudium-et-spes_en.html