Donald The Paladin, review: legendary tales
Donald The Paladin, review
Under the title Donald Duck Il Paladino, Panini Disney packs an anthological volume that collects the so-called paperingio cycle. It is a corpus of 4 stories, four parodies (in the broadest sense of the term) that have each entered the ranks of the best Disney stories of all time for different reasons. The paperingio cycle was inaugurated by the great Carlo Chendi and Luciano Bottaro with the essential Paperino Il Paladino, originally published in 1960, and then continued by Bottaro himself with Paperin Furioso and Donald Duck and the Treasure of Papero Magno. The conclusion of the cycle will come only in 1996 with Donald Duck and Paperotta in which Alberto Autelitano joins the Master to the screenplay.Donald The Paladin
Donald The Paladin, legendary tales
The volume opens with Donald Duck Il Paladino by Carlo Chendi and Luciano Bottaro. Donald is the victim of a joke by his nephews who terrorize him disguised as a dragon: why is Donald so afraid of those legendary animals? It is Hazel who unveils the mystery by reporting the narrative hundreds of years earlier or when the brave knight of fortune Donald the Paladin arrived, accompanied by his faithful squire Ciccio, near a castle besieged by armed militias. The Paladin defeated the besiegers not knowing that they were, however, mercenary militias in practice hired by the Duke Scrooge.if (jQuery ("# crm_srl-th_culturapop_d_mh2_1"). is (": visible")) {console.log ("Edinet ADV adding zone: tag crm_srl-th_culturapop_d_mh2_1 slot id: th_culturapop_d_mh2"); } Having to repay the angry Duke, the Paladin agrees to work at the castle while awaiting a mission that can redeem him. When the Duke decides to marry Madonna Paperina, her charming niece, the Paladin, falling in love with her, volunteers to escort her to Portus Delfini where the richest nobility lived. The Paladin's plan to win the heart of the Madonna is however an obstacle first from Messer Gastone, a storyteller as sly as it is out of tune, who begins to court the Madonna and then from an assault on the city by Saracen pirates.
After defeating the city. all the pirates with cunning, the Paladin fell exhausted into a deep sleep. To take advantage of it was Gastone who, taking the credit for the victory, had walked towards the castle of the Duke together with Paperina. It is the lawyer Filippo Azzeccagarbugli who advises the Paladin on a last desperate undertaking to win the heart of the Madonna: to kill a dragon. The animal is obviously out of reach of the Paladin but luckily Hazel will come to his aid. Too bad that the Dragon fed on an oil well, one of the sources of the future fortune of the Duke's students: the only way to repay the damage is therefore to remain in the Duke's service.
Donald The Paladin if (jQuery ("# crm_srl-th_culturapop_d_mh3_1"). Is (": visible")) {console.log ("Edinet ADV adding zone: tag crm_srl-th_culturapop_d_mh3_1 slot id: th_culturapop_d_mh3"); } In Paperin Furioso (originally published in May 1966), Nocciola is always the deus ex-machina of the story. In fact, a lazy Donald is sent back centuries before to the court of King Duck the Great where he must prove his worth against the Gastolfo (Gastone). Having learned that the evil wizard Basilisk is holding the beautiful Angelica (Daisy Duck) prisoner, the Paladin sets off and arrives at the Basilisk castle which, thanks to the intervention of Hazelnut, is made to collapse, freeing Angelica.
In the battle, however, the Paladin is passed out under the rubble and Angelica, meeting Ciccio, mistakes him for her savior. Mad for yet another unrecognized feat, the Paladin gets back on the road, returning to the kingdom of King Duck the Great now besieged by the Moors. Once the Paladin has been invaded, he defeats the Moors and unleashes his anger on the King whose palace he destroys and distributes the wealth. Desperate Duck the Great turns to the inventor Archimedes who suggests going to the Moon to retrieve the ampoule with the good judgment of the Paladin. It will be Gastolfo, riding an Archimedes' contraption, to fly to the Moon and restore the sense of the Paladin.
Donald The Paladin if (jQuery ("# crm_srl-th_culturapop_d_mh4_1"). Is (": visible")) {console.log ("Edinet ADV adding zone: tag crm_srl-th_culturapop_d_mh4_1 slot id: th_culturapop_d_mh4"); } Donald Duck and the Treasure of the Great Duck was published in August 1972. The Paladin, always accompanied by the faithful scuderio Ciccio, returned to King Duck the Great after a long absence, finding the kingdom besieged by the Moors. The King is besieged along with his wealth and the Paladin seeks the help of the arrogant Gastolfo to free him and drive out the Moors.However, even with an ingenious stratagem, pretending to be a leper, the Paladin does nothing but propitiate the escape of the Moors together with the treasure. of Duck the Great.
Having secretly embarked on one of the ships on which the Moors have loaded the treasure, the Paladin will nevertheless find in Hazel and the alchemist Archimedes the necessary help to put the Moors to flee definitively even if , as has already happened in the past, the merit of the enterprise will fall on Gastolfo.
Donald The Paladin The paperingio cycle ends, as mentioned at the beginning, in 1996 with Donald and Paperotta in which Alberto Autelitano joins Luciano Bottaro on the screenplay. King Duck the Great falls in love with Paperotta, daughter of the king of Mordikan who, together with her three abusive sons, refuses to give her as a wife unless she is kidnapped. Duck the Great then instructs the Paladin for the kidnapping. The two after various vicissitudes run away and seem to have sympathy for each other however in front of them the Haunted Forest stands out.
There they fall victim to the witch Hazel, allied with Matilda, promised wife of Duck the Great, who wants prevent the arrival of Paperotta at the palace. The witch transforms the princess into a frog and secretly substitutes her so that the Paladin brings the Magnasoldus twins to the palace, two monstrous giants who eat gold coins. Only thanks to Archimedes the two giants are "convinced" to return the coins, however it remains to free Paperotta and bring her back in duck form.
Donald The Paladin Successful in the enterprise However, Paladin will clash with the Great Duck: they both want to kiss Paperotta but the princess, fed up with the squabbles, runs away meeting Gastolfo who without too many ceremonies kisses her.
Donald The Paladin: form and content
There is no doubt how the paperingio cycle, in its four stories of which it is composed, is to be counted in that large, heterogeneous and very fruitful cauldron that is the parody, whether it is a "direct" adaptation or a simple "homage". The first two stories of this volume fall into the latter sub-category, which draw heavily from Orlando Innamorato by Matteo Maria Boiardo and Orlando Furioso by Ludovico Ariosto, turning more and more to Nordic and Celtic folkore. In this sense there had been "fantasy" experiments within the Italian Disney production starting from 1959 (in conjunction with the release of Sleeping Beauty in the Woods, for example, the excellent La Grande Tribù alla Corte di Re Arthur was released. ) and it would therefore be redundant to talk about the great skill with which Carlo Chendi and Luciano Bottaro "adapt" certain atmospheres so that they fit perfectly with the protagonists and their dynamics.Definitely more interesting is to concentrate on the first story that also gives the title of the volume or Donald Duck The Paladin and the reason is decidedly peculiar: among the characteristics of the story, whose plot is compelling and the plot adventurous enough, it immediately jumps to the eye (or it would be more correct to say to the reader's ear) the fact that the characters, and specifically Donald Duck Il Paladino, speak a sort of courtly, archaic and macaronic Italian. The term of comparison that can be made is with L'armata Brancaleone, a cult film by Mario Monicelli, in which the characters headed by Brancaleone da Norcia (a histrionic Vittorio Gassman) expressed themselves in an idiom very similar to that of this Disney story that however it precedes the film.
Donald The Paladin From a purely comic point of view it is not interesting to establish whether Monicelli was inspired by Donald The Paladin as much as examining the function of language within this specific parody, the original material from which it is inspired, its staging and so on. The very clean and very precise tables by Luciano Bottaro, despite their “romantic” and idealized reconstruction (as it should be) of the Middle Ages in which the events take place, are already explanatory in themselves. In fact, there is no doubt that the story is set in a precise historical moment in which the elements of the intertextual script are self-evident: from clothing to the castle with spiers and so on.
However the language used (not the dialogues in itself but the morphology and syntax) does not perform a purely descriptive function, that is, it does not serve to pass from the general to the particular, but on the contrary emphasizes and strengthens the idea that what is being told is a lived story (albeit for means of magical modalities) and not simply told thus depriving the protagonists of their (usual) role of actors in costume. Ultimately, therefore, Donald Duck and Il Paladino are the same duck but qualitatively different, the language as it is created and used by Carlo Chendi ensures that the story reaches a fullness of meaning that the drawing (narrative, that of the comic) suggests but which does not it can, by its very nature, never reach.
Donald The Paladin Donald The Paladin is in this sense a very refined story that should be read, reread and explained to many aspiring cartoonists so that they truly understand the role of language in comic literature. For all the other Donald Duck Il Paladino is also and above all one of the best volumes compiled and packaged by Panini Disney which proposes 4 peculiar, funny and excellently designed funny stories.
The volume
Donald The Paladino is an elegantly packaged volume. It is a hardcover of 276 pages 18.3 × 24.5 cm format embellished with a linen cover (vintage choice that brings to mind the old books of chivalric epic) with embossed details and a simple and effective chromatic combination between blue and gold. The paper chosen is thick and glossy which especially enhances the graphic rendering of the first two stories that have undergone a restoration and the last one, produced relatively recently. Unfortunately, the third story suffers a little from the reprinting on this type of paper with the backgrounds of the colors, especially the backgrounds, not rendered homogeneously. Let there be nothing that affects the reading too much.The editorial care is excellent. There is not only to applaud the work in the compilation phase of the volume but also the editorial one: in addition to the excellent "synoptic" index that indicates the date of publication and the authors of the stories, there are several editorials, extremely punctual, signed by Luca Boschi and Alberto Becattini as well as the introduction signed by Carlo Chendi (the last absolute contribution of the Maestro before his death) and, at the end of the volume, a short interview with Annabella Bottaro, daughter of Luciano, who tells some background on life and work of the father.
