(translation from Italian)
I've been working in film industry for many years and I have witnessed the repetition in global cinema, but especially in Italian cinema of the phenomenon of cloning or "series". Whenever there is a film of some success that receives public approval, immediately inspires further films to be made that would like to be twins of the original. The more the first film, the progenitor, was successful precisely because of its originality, of its particular rhythm, of its invention, of its suggestive interpretation, the more a series of epigones is born, increasingly smaller, squalid and repetitive.
I have witnessed this trend since the beginning of my career: from the "musicarelli", films whose heart is a song then the "pepla" that were mythological films trying to emulate the big-budget Hollywood historical epics, that really had an illustrious precedent. In fact, we Italians in the early twentieth century had made a very important "kolossal" film: Cabiria by Giovanni Pastrone from 1914 that taught everyone how to make a "kolossal". But soon after, also because of the scarcity of means, we folded over the peplum films in the 50s and 60s, first copying the American epics and then with a series of ours rich in subgenres even mixing contemporary heroes to ancient ones as Maciste against Samson or Hercules against, now I say to joke, Mandrake...
Immediately afterwards there were westerns, the famous spaghetti westerns with the grandeur of Sergio Leone followed by a series of first interesting "copies" and then by completely absurd titles like this one: "Sartana's here... Trade your pistol for a coffin"
Then, the "poliziotteschi", then the political films, the "cinema of navel gazing", then the films about the mafia, then "La piovra" and then the films based on Gomorrah.
Gomorrah is an important Matteo Garrone's film very successful based on the novel by Roberto Saviano, origin of the television series Gomorrah which has had great success.
From this great success Marco D'Amore, together with Cattleya, decided to elaborate something absolutely new, which he defines "a bridge between the 4th series and the 5th future series, in the middle there is a film that will serve to bring television viewers to the cinema and the cinema spectators to watch the TV series ".
So an important experiment realized without paying attention to expenses with intelligence and with a charming glamor, which is that of Gomorrah.
I'm sorry, though, that Marco D'Amore - an actor and also an author that we have already appreciated both as a director, both as character in the television series, for how he gave his character Cyrus a boost - this time he falls into the trap of authorship. That is, it hurts itself because the very important feature of the Cyrus character that was having an extraordinary fixity as result of his moral desolation and also of his absolute and iron will that gave him this determination and this look, deep but at the same time it was as if he didn't see anyone, so surely one of the keys to his success, precisely because of this original and suggestive interpretation, here in the film he abuses it.
There are even times when he is catatonic, moments in which this capacity, this mask of his becomes too rigid, as if it really imprisoned him and forced him to repeat himself in such a way that his feelings no longer show. Only this still image remains that in the long run of the film tires.
Unfortunately it happens very often that an actor-director lose control of himself for a moment, perhaps because he no longer has the capacity to watch himself with criticism and almost with malice and unfortunately this is detrimental to the film.
Also because the layout of the film, beyond the scenographic idea of transferring it to Northern Europe, therefore in some unusual and suggestive landscapes, actually it lacks strength because in this union of mafia, camorra and gomorra it is as if borders and outlines were lost, the epic nature of the characters is lost.
Not surprisingly, a comparison came to mind with another very successful Italian film, played by Pierfrancesco Favino, The Traitor directed by Bellocchio, in which the epic character is preserved and it is possible to give a dimension of strength which is not entrusted solely to the actor, but also to a context with a concrete reality which gives the desperate sense of violence.
Here, however, they are rightly called "swindlers" the Neapolitan bandits who are in Northern Europe, because they really have a swindlers look without offending to the famous movie "The Swindlers" directed by Francesco Rosi in 1959 written by Rosi himself and by Suso Cecchi D'Amico.
I have to give a special praise to Giuseppe Aiello who plays the little Ciro as a child and also to Martina Attanasio who has the freshness of a desperate "little star" in the neighborhood. Both of these figures, as well as other contour figures, are carefully, forcefully and with poetry made and I particularly appreciate it because I also had a childhood in a difficult neighborhood like Trastevere in the postwar...