| There are few more spectacular settings
for a film festival than the ancient Greek amphitheatre in
Taormina, Sicily, high above the blue bay with Mount Etna
fuming gently in the background. Opening this 50th anniversary
edition of the festival was a real rarity: a world premiere
of a film that was made 78 years ago. At least that of the
restored version of the film that has lain in oblivion since
its showing in 1926. The 33-minute film, entitled Napoli
Che Canta (The Song of Naples),
was directed by Roberto Roberti, the pseudonym of Vincenzo
Leone, the father of Sergio Leone.
In 2000, a letter was sent to George Eastman House, in
Rochester, New York, one of the main film archives in the
USA, from an old lady in California. She was Elinor Leone,
a cousin of the director, who claimed to possess three reels
of nitrate film which had been stolen from Italy at the end
of the 1920s to save it from destruction by Mussolini. The
woman had decided to donate it to the museum, knowing that
it was in need of restoration.
It was the 23rd and last silent film made by Roberti who,
subsequently made four sound films, none of which was successful.
He died in 1959, aged 80, just before his son gained fame
with his spaghetti Westerns. It took two years for the George
Eastman team, headed by the assistant curator Caroline Yeager,
to restore the film to almost pristine condition.
At first, one wonders why on earth a fascist regime would
have objected to this charming but certainly not polemical
documentary about the music of Naples . But, besides marvellous
views of the city, vivid and often sensual portraits of a
byegone social era, and the importance of song in Neopolitan
life, it hints at the hardship of those who were obliged
to emigrate during the period, failing to celebrate the achievements
of the fascists.
This 'once upon a time in Naples', which shows street musicians,
family celebrations, people at play, becomes more and more
heartbreaking as the Neopolitans sing of the misery of their
condition and that perhaps music is their way of speaking
to God. The last shot is of a woman on a beach, with a baby
in her arms, watching a ship with her loved ones on board,
leaving Italy forever.
Much of the impact of the restored version comes from the
new soundtrack of the songs sung by the Sicilian diva, Giuni
Russo, whose rich and passionate voice lends added poignancy
in this context even to such war-horses like O Solo Mio
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© Copyright Ronald Bergan 2004. No part of this article may be reprinted
without permission of the author.
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