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I attended the film uptown opening, at The Film Society of Lincoln Center’s new state-of-the-art Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center in New York where the screening also followed a Q&A with actor and director John Turturro (see video clip below). Indeed, a very sleek space that truly deserves its consistent appeal as the “mecca” for cinefiles.

The film opens with a personal introduction by Turturro among other comments peppered throughout the film. Turturro later revealed his narration was an advice he received from Francesco Rosi who also had directed him as Primo Levi in 1997 La Tregua – The Truce. I can’t argue with Maestro Rosi, but personally, I would have preferred to leave this English narration out, as it takes away from the pure authenticity of the spoken Napolitan dialect and music. In those instances, I felt the film unjustly turns into a Travel Channel segment.

Turturro follows a tried-and-true template that was formerly christened by Wim Wenders’s 1999 Buena Vista Social Club with similar ingredients: authentic location, archival footage, and phenomenal homegrown music performed by unknown yet gifted musicians that tell their rough life stories between songs. Someone in the audience later labeled this film as “music neorealism” which I found interesting.

Reggae-styled Nun te scurda’ performed by Almamegretta, Raiz,
Pietra Montecorvino & M’Barka Ben Taleb

You will find here some of the classic Neapolitan masterpieces such as Maruzzella by Renato Carosone with a striking performance on Napoli’s beach of all places by Gennaro Cosmo Parlato; O Sole Mio featuring legendary opera singer Enrico Caruso among less known but emotionally charged songs like Passione performed by James Senese. You can totally believe Senese’s bluesy delivery especially when he earlier recounts his challenging childhood in Napoli as a son of a black American solider whom he never met and a local girl.

An interesting anecdote, during my recent vacation to Napa Valley, I made the day for a friendly Napolitan bar tender in a wine tasting room after showing him the song list. So I guess these songs are considered gold standard even by the natives.

The film also includes archival footage from Istituto Luce, showcasing post-World War II Napoli: the people, their hardships, the American liberation and most of all the music as a powerful thread to the present that keep Napolitans alive. From this perspective the songs represent Napoli’s history of being conquered so many times, resulting in an eclectic ethnic collage.

Turturro’s as an Italian-American (half Sicilian half Pugliese) consciously decided not to show the pretty touristic image of Napoli and instead focused more on the evocative Napolitan reality as evidenced by singers and locals. In this sense, the film represents his personal journey into Napoli’s rich musical culture anchored around the past with WWII American liberation and its impact on locals and the present with its eclectic music scene. As such, the film nicely closes an identity loop with a global truth: know where you came from.

The big message the film eloquently delivers is simple. Music unlike any art form is about that special and direct dialog it has with the audience that goes beyond language, manipulative plots, director intent, history or any other external layers. At the end of the day, it’s all about this precious interplay between the audience personal experiences and the music. I found the music fairly contagious, so be ware.

I leave you with the post-screening discussion between Actor and director John Turturro and Italian journalist Andrea Visconti at Lincoln Center:

Click here to view the embedded video.

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Carmelo and Rosuzza his wife reunited against the backdrop of Italian Unification events: individual vs. collective story lines.

Blasetti known for other historical epics, takes the opportunity to tell the story of Italy’s unification from a personal point of view of a Sicilian patriot named Carmelo (Giuseppe Gulino) on a mission to reach Garibaldi’s headquarters in Genoa and get his help to rescue Sicily from the occupying Spanish Bourbons and German mercenaries. On his way, Carmelo runs into various Italian characters representing different dialects and views regarding the boiling political climate.

The film predated the Neorealism genre that typically referred to as starting with Roberto Rossellini’s Roma, città aperta – Rome, Open City (1945). However, you can already see the genre’s key ingredients at play: usage of non-professional actors, movie shot on location, and description of social rough realities from a commoner point of view. Stylistically, this film is a far cry from Blasetti’s light-hearted 1954 Too Bad She’s Bad – Peccato che sia una Canaglia another precursor. This time, to Italian comedy (Commedia all’italiana) genre that formally started in 1958 with Mario Monicelli’s Big Deal on Madonna Street – I Soliti Ignoti. Indeed, an interesting and prescient work evolution.

The camera movement takes a role of inquisitive “embedded journalist-like” that follows the events either as a follower of Carmelo on his journey, but also as an objective spectator of historical events such as the panoramic battlefield scenes. I especially liked the opening scene where you can see a close up behind window bars and then zooming out to reveal the context of a Sicilian village under rough Bourbon occupation – a simple, yet a powerful way to express the state of imprisonment.

The screening followed by panel discussion with Professors Alexander Stille and Stefano Albertini, and director Mario Martone. Here are a few pointers I found interesting:

• Director Mario Martone: His film Noi Credevamo – We Believed (2010) was also shown in the festival and provided a modern view of Risoregimento through the personal story of three friends joining activist Giuseppe Mazzini’s political movement (Giovine Italia) and the impact on their lives afterwards. Overall, there are not many films about Italy’s unification. Blasetti in this film is rather unique by explicitly conveying the brutality and physical rough aspects of the period, woven through a personal story. This technique makes the historical event more believable as viewers have tangible “real-life handles” to relate to.

• Prof. Albertini: The film is not about Garibaldi, in fact we don’t see him much throughout the film; only the facial reactions of soldiers listening to him speak. With that, Blasetti’s message is simple: The Risoregimento (Italy’s unification) was not about the larger than life leaders, it was about real people, with real stories that despite their cultural differences joined forces. This message of unity is interesting to examine against today’s Italian politics, where the separatist Northern League party for example refuses to celebrate the unification and sees it as a waste of money. Another difference, back in the 60’s Italians did not celebrate unification with flags, as it was frowned upon as radical, whereas in this year’s celebrations flags were widely used.

• Prof. Stille: Blasetti’s technique keeping Garibaldi’s role at a distance and focusing more on people around him processing his impact, was similarly adapted in Francesco Rosi 1962’s Salvatore Giuliano, the famous Sicilian gangster. It forces the viewers to conjure their own opinion about the renowned personality based on the impact of their emotional projection. The film also carries a gender element as Carmelo’s officer commands him not to move from his post to see his wife he hasn’t seen a month just a few miles away. The officer gives as an example Garibaldi who his wife had died, while he was away to reinforce Carmelo’s obedience and patriotism.

So as you can see this masterpiece has dual historical values: getting you introduced to an important chapter in Italy’s history, while at the same time experiencing initial ingredients of Neorealism – a cardinal chapter in Italy’s and the world’s cinematic history.

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Then, when you think of Soldini’s films (see Days and Clouds – Giorni e nuvole Silvio Soldini – 2007) you may consider him as neorealist too serving similar, yet updated formula customized to the social hardships of the modern man. This time around nobody stole his bicycles, he doesn’t live in a shantytown barely surviving and not caving down under the exploits of the fishing village cartels (feel free to guess films).

His basic needs are now fully satisfied: a nice apartment (shelter), sophisticated dinners (food), loving partner (personal love), family and friends (social love), and a decent meaningful job (money/esteem). So in essence, now his mind is practically free to wander around and entertain “what ifs” games that gradually turn into love affairs carrying some heavy implications to the above nearly perfect “Maslow needs pyramid” he has diligently built.

This is the context for the rather banal story of Ana (Alba Rohrwacher) and Domenico (Pierfrancesco Favino) each idly orbiting in their own quotidian spheres maintaining their “pyramids” until a meaningless encounter – Domenico serves as catering waiter at Anna’s office event – disrupts this Shangri-La and gradually mushrooms into an affair with real consequences.

Soldini has a great knack for fine details that transform such simple and over told plot into a human believable experience: this woodpecking thought Anna is first experiencing should she make the first step and call Domenico or not, the ensuing multiple attempts to consume their romance each time with another unexpected interruption and throughout the affair the cardinal role the cellphone plays nowadays, at once making the couple closer, but at the same time alienating their betrayed partners.

“What I want more” is the original Italian title for the film where in the US the title was revised to “Come Undone.” Without checking any background info or interviews with the director to learn the exact motive, which I bet most people don’t, I find the original title as an observation of a human hedonistic/selfish preference: “out of these menu life choices, after being stuffed with all the must-haves: food, shelter, and esteem, then being freshly loved is the one dessert item on the menu I really cannot get enough of.”

Whereas the revised title “Come Undone” to me signifies a more conservative observation of immature-undone behavior, or else the protagonists would have realized life is about making compromises where you get what you need from the menu, and not necessarily what you want.

That’s the beauty of films, it’s nice to dig deeper and understand exactly why a certain plot, title or camera angle were selected. But I believe, the purest movie experience is often a personal dialog between the content and the viewer’s own experiences to make it meaningful/less. What you see here is the outcome of my dialog. What’s yours?

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This film, which is part of the Italian Comedy genre (commedia all’italiana), a term coined after Pietro Germi’s two years earlier gem – Divorce Italian Style – Divorzio all’italana, also benefited from three “historical constraints.” The first, the absence of divorce laws in Italy, which arrived only ten years later with a 60-40 majority vote; the second, an ancient Italian statue that absolved a rapist if he marries his victim; and third, the importance of protecting the family honor no matter what in a fairly conservative Sicilian society of early 60’s.

These opposing constraints produced colossal “plot fireworks” when Germi threw in the sordid event of a sixteen years old girl that was “seduced and abandoned” – most likely inspired by a jargon title used in similar news stories at the time.

Germi utilizes these solid foundations to ironically criticize the social, religious and political conditions of a society undergoing massive changes during Italy’s Economic Boom (aka Boom economico) of early 60’s. Against the backdrop of economic growth and prosperity of the north, Sicily is portrayed as a backwards society with its own rules and social mechanics designed to protect the family honor.

Germi intentionally creates his characters as grotesque, at times violent, delivering double standards to produce the genre’s core formula: comedy mixed with bitter criticism of real social problems. From this angle you can trace down the origin of Italian comedy emanating from Neorealism documentary roots, evidenced even with a simple close-up study of locals’ authentic faces gathering in the piazza.

The film brings together an amazing cast with some of the main characters leveraging their Sicilian roots: the volcanic performance of Don Vincenzo Ascalone played by Saro Urzì who was born in Catania, the sissy brother Antonio Ascalone – (Lando Buzzanca) and the scoundrel Peppino Califano (Aldo Puglisi) – both actors born in Palermo.

And beautiful Stefania Sandrelli plays Agnese Ascalone as the innocent girl turned hysterical due to her placement right in the eye of the storm threatening the family honor. From this perspective, honor is perhaps the most important character of the film. Ever so fragile, underscoring the clear boundaries between the public space presented by the fake shows Don Vincenzo occasionally “broadcasts” to his neighbors, vs. the private space – inside their home where he let loose all his rage. Always shutting doors first to make sure the dirty laundry is only washed in complete privacy.

The film was shot in quaint town of Sciacca on the southwestern coast of Sicily, where its white alleys perfectly extenuated the actors’ black costumes. This binary color template works as another ironic layer since the reality presented is far from black and white carrying many shades of grays.

One of the film’s funniest quotes that reveals the absurd logic Germi uses to eloquently criticize social mores, comes from Peppino Califano who even though committed the sin, doesn’t want to marry Agnese because she’s not virgin and his rationale is:

It’s a man’s right to ask and a woman duty to refuse.”

And just so you don’t get the wrong impression, Italian society has dramatically changed since this film was released in 1964. According to the most recent statistics done in 2008, more than 84,000 out of Italy’s 60 million residents were separated and 54,000 divorced with a 4% increase annually. It used to be 12,000 thirty years ago. Part of the reason is economical as divorce cost became more affordable and changes in social dynamics, judging by a recent divorce fair held in Milan to address the needs of this growing cottage industry.

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