RobertoLeoni

"Contagion" has resurfaced as a popular film to stream worldwide and it is only one of the many films on epidemics and pandemics in the history of cinema, starting from "The Seventh Seal" by Ingmar Bergman... Contagion speaks of a contagion which starts from Hong Kong, so it's very very current, so much so that streaming is very crowded. The story tells the trip of an American businesswoman returning from Hong Kong to the United States carrying a contagion. When this contagion breaks out, this strange and unknown virus which is a mixture of swine fever and avian created by the fiction story, unleashed an emergency and the film tells about this emergency, tells about the desperate hunt for patient zero, the index case from which the infection started, which is used to understand the origin of the virus and it also serves to block this contagion as quickly as possible. But this zero patient is very difficult to find because this woman left Hong Kong, took a plane probably infecting all travelers, landed in the United States in a transit airport where he met some people, then she took another plane and arrived home after touching the hostesses, having been in bars, getting into taxis and meanwhile the people she infected went on buses, caressed and touched their friends and relatives, ate and used dishes... This explosion of the disease is truly a nightmare and meanwhile in the international medical centers both in Geneva and in the United States there is desperate hunting to try to isolate the virus to see its characteristics, but the virus changes and adapts to any situation. It is one of the most terrible things about these viruses. So you absolutely have to isolate it to find a vaccine, quickly enough to be able to distribute it. Panic must be avoided and meanwhile the states are taking political measures, social measures, health measures, research, investigations meanwhile the fear spreads... So the film tells all this with a live shot of reality able to describe attempts to get around the pandemic which is called this because it is an epidemic that travels all over the world, a total health emergency. And to fight it, you have to violate rules of privacy and intimacy of people and lovers and secret encounters are discovered, in addition to a whole network of affections and relationships that every person has and maybe doesn't want everyone knows it. In this intricate web that by one person radiates all over the world, we can follow the evolution of the disease with its tragic events and with the possibilities of repair that there may be. The interpretation is very suggestive. There are Matt Damon, Jude Law, Marion Cotillard, therefore a great cast with excellent actors. Jude Law plays a kind of news jackal, one of the first authors of fake news that creeps into this apparatus where everyone tries to repair and infiltrates with false information about plots and about situations that may even be true, also passing off its natural remedy no one knows for sure what the effects are. He even cheats pretending to be ill and to be healed thanks to this remedy and therefore is followed by his followers who are millions. So on the one hand there is the struggle of legal organizations trying to block this virus and on the other side there is another dangerous virus which enters as a metaphor, that is, that of false news and political and social speculation, maybe to be able to fight a government or to break down a status quo. So there is the disease of the disease: there is social disease with physical disease. Clearly the film has its roots in an atavistic fear of man. The human species for centuries has been plagued by disease...

(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...

(translation from Italian) In these days, Santa Sangre is back on the screens in a copy restored in 4k in the original version for the 30th anniversary of its release. Many have asked me to review it, but I can't do it because, first of all I wrote it together with Alessandro Jodorowsky and therefore it would seem to me not very polite and professional to praise me or to criticize me because then in a possible critical judgment today I could also be very bad towards myself... Beyond the jokes, what I can do instead it's telling the genesis of the film, without spoiling it and without weaving neither praise nor criticism, but leaving them both to the judgment of the spectators, above all new spectators, because it is a cult movie and has gone through 30 years unscathed. Even the famous GB magazine Empire has included it among the 500 best films of all time... Beyond this exaggeration, it can be interesting just how the film was born and meanwhile special thanks goes to Claudio Argento, the "crazy" producer, wonderfully crazy, because he believed in this story and produced it. The first idea of this film has a distant origin. I attended university working in the library of a psychiatric hospital and I was in contact with the so-called madness, with mental illness, I saw it up close, I read the medical records, I prepared texts for some degree theses... Obviously I have no competence as a psychologist or as a psychiatrist, however, I also followed humanly life of some patients because I was part of therapy program which taught painting and theatre and also another ergotherapy program, that is, work therapy, which offered to the patients the possibility of doing small jobs allowing them to take off their uniform, because then patients were in uniform. Take off their uniform and attend the library meant that in the eyes of a stranger they were treated like normal people. During the program I had some patients that apparently were very quiet, and they were also very cultured and prepared. In fact, this experience made me understand that schizophrenia is often proper a "degeneration of intelligence", in fact, very often schizophrenics are very clever, very sensitive and very attentive. One of these patients, who worked with me because he knew 3 or 4 languages so he could help me sort the books, because the library had 50,000 volumes of all types and ages, one day started looking sideways and saying: "... 'shut up ...' shut up ..." The third time I asked him what happened and he answered me calmly with his calm blue eyes: "No, nothing, I have a voice that tells me to kill you, but don't worry because I love you. " I was a little uncomfortable, but he reassured me: "No, no, don't worry, I love you, I don't listen to it... " Continuing to stare at me with his blue eyes and I was, as far as I could be, calm. The library was very extensive because there were five very large rooms for the 50,000 volumes and it was me and him alone, isolated on a high floor of this immense palace. And I trusted. I trusted his blue eyes, I trusted him his sincere way of telling me "I love you". Probably this episode, like a small seed, has yielded within my psychology, giving me a sense of confidence, giving me a sense of equality and above all a sense of brotherhood even with mental distress. I found Abel in what might have seemed Cain and this fact so ancestral and so mythical has yielded within me and it is probably the origin of Santa Sangre because over time, I conceived a story in which even the worst demon actually can't forget he is an angel. Whoever saw Santa Sangre knows that the character I wrote together with Alejandro Jodorowsky is a serial killer, but every time he kills you feel sorry for him that is you are sorry more for him than for the victim just to completely overturn the concept of the brute, of the violent, of the monster, but returning almost to the Latin root 'monstrum', that is, something to see, a curious thing to discover. Because the human soul is an infinite gallery of typologies, it is a very deep mine in which, as the famous verses of De Andrè say: "... nothing comes from diamonds, but from the manure the flowers are born... " That is, there is in the depths of the soul, even the most horrendous soul, this incredible ability, this little spark... Over time I have developed a story that I told Claudio Argento because it was a time when we worked together. Claudio understood this story and indeed he even added to it things he thought and together we decided to present it to the director who seemed the most suitable to represent it that is Alejandro Jodorowsky. Jodorowsky for about ten years seemed to have disappeared from the international scenes, but Claudio with great diligence and a lot of skill found him and talked to his agent. Alejandro made an appointment in Paris, but he wanted to meet only me. We didn't understand why, but he said: "I want to meet who wrote this story" I went to meet Alejandro in Paris and in the entrance hall of his agent's building, while I was going to take the elevator, an elegant man has sprung from the shadows, curious, particular, completely dressed in purple: he also had purple shoes, a purple shirt, the purple tie, he was completely purple. And he said to me: "Oui, c'est moi ..." So, I saw Alejandro for the first time. He didn't want to go to the agent because it was a place of merchants, instead he told me: "Let's go to a bar, let's look at each other and talk" The first thing he asked me was: "When did you write this story?" "About a year ago ..." "When exactly?" "I do not remember..." Then, I remembered that my daughter had a fever and I was telling her stories, then I went to my study, an idea had occurred to me and I started to throw that one down which was the first nucleus of Santa Sangre. Then I said: "It should have been March 29." "What time did you write it?" "Around half past one or two in the morning ..." "I knew it... ...that night I went to sleep early and the angel of stories has passed over Paris to bring me a story, saw that I slept and continued to Rome, saw that you were awake and gave you the story. But the story was mine and you are a thief! " "But Alejandro, I invented it ..." "No, you are a thief, 'tu es un voleur' ..." And since then he called me 'ce voleur là', 'that thief there' referring to me. This is a very beautiful story because you can understand how every artist in reality has the ability, when he likes something, to take it, to feel it and to think that he really conceived it. Then, Alejandro developed this story with his imagination and his art, also telling me an episode occurred in Mexico City which in some respects had similar characteristics and together we wrote the script by which he then made the film that we all know.

(translation from Italian) The Hungarian princes Esterházi are one of the noblest families in Austria and Hungary. A representative of this family moved to Paris at the time of the Belle Epoque, between 1890 and 1895, then the times of Marcel Proust, the times of the Impressionists, the moment when Paris is the capital of the world. Ferdinand Esterházi was a dissolute man, a play boy, a player full of debts, but also a Major of Artillery in the Armée, the French army, and together with a certain Alfred, a provincial from Alsatia, without any cover, diligent, hardworking and serious, both are suspected of espionage in favor of the foreign power at that time more incumbent that was Prussia, that is Germany. But who is chosen as a suspect among these two? Who is chosen as a culprit? The provincial because he is a Jew. Imagine discrimination and racism that dominated a capital of that world and that era if there are still echoes in today's world... In this way the famous Dreyfus affair starts, the great court case of the late 1800s which is the basis of Roman Polanski's film "An Officer and A Spy" based on the novel by Robert Harris. The original title of the film is J'accuse, referred to the famous article of the great writer Emile Zola. At the beginning of the film Dreyfus is accused, judged, sentenced, degraded and sent to the Devil's Island to serve a life sentence. Everything is based on a very fragile trial that the new chief of the army's intelligence section, then called statistical office, turns out to be really small, indeed even been completely prefabricated on the injury that Alfred Dreyfus, being a Jew, could be capable of anything and having to discover a spy inside the army, because there was evidence of a spy, who do you choose as a spy? You choose the pariah, you choose the one that matters least, you choose the one that in common prejudice could be a spy, a delinquent, an abject, that is, a Jew. And everyone is convinced that it's true. Major Georges Picquart is played by a splendid Jean Dujardin, whom we know because for The Artist he won an Oscar, a Golden Globe, a Bafta, a Golden Palm, for his extraordinary interpretation in a silent film today, therefore with an expressiveness, a capacity, an intelligence, an irony and an extraordinary comedy. This time he plays a completely opposite character. He descends into a torn, almost dark character that when discovers the truth, realizes he must fight against power. He is a servant of the state being a soldier and above all being the chief of an office as delicate as that of intelligence, but he is between a rock and a hard place, between power and truth. Any effort he makes to go towards the truth is completely frustrated by power, that does not want to criticize itself. Because the paradox of this story is that, being now the matter of Dreyfus in the final judgment and having been fed to public opinion as a form of moral washing and cleanliness, can no longer be questioned. So our Picquart is facing a pyramid, a monolith, an immense mountain of lies which cannot be and above all must not be affected to safeguard the true and just serious face of power, which is actually a mask of hypocrisy, and he absolutely cannot break this image in the name of truth. The truth becomes a detail, an extremely annoying goad, that like a blowfly, it must be killed and eliminated. And Georges Picquart also annoys: "But who makes him do it... But don't get in the way... But you must obey... But what is the truth for... " Polanski represents all this important matter in a really fierce manner.

(translation from Italian) American films all have their roots in the Western: the man who faces others, the man who faces nature, the man who faces the great challenge. In this film the great challenge takes place with two extraordinary protagonists: Matt Damon and Christian Bale. Because this film to express its epic is implanted on the model of the Western and on these modern knights who ride the steel and ride the engines, but the structure and narration are those of the Western. The merit of the director is that he has found this formula. In a show business which is now flawed and calibrated by digital, he first rediscovered an epic realism - as he had already done with Logan, his previous film - that brings us back with this strength and courage. The film is important for its realism: cars and races shoots delude us that we are really there, because they are not simply digital, they are true and perhaps enriched by digital, but not fake and electronic. You can almost hear the cinema seats vibrate in the race. I have been and am a passionate driver so I found myself immersed in the cars of the 60s. I had had some of them and I reviewed them like old loves. I told to the person sitting next to me that I suffered as a lifer forced to watch an adult movie in prison, because seeing again the forms of those cars, hearing the engines roar of cars I had, remembering the feelings and emotions I felt was poignant and beautiful. So, my review is definitely partial because I couldn't get away, though I tried to be cold, from the charm of these engines. By the way, we talk about mythical cars because there are the Le Mans 24 Hours Ferraris, which therefore are absolutely extraordinary and there are the Fords made for this challenge. Indeed, the root of the film is this. There is a famous line by Henry Ford I - in the film there is his nephew Henry Ford II - who in 1909 created the first inexpensive automobile because he introduced moving assembly belts to make various mechanical parts and his assembly line was revolutionary, a production system called Fordism. Ford had his own way of making it clear what was his marketing concept: "Any customer can have a Model T painted any color that he wants - Model T was Ford first model - as long as it's black." His grandson Henry Ford II is the protagonist of the challenge against Enzo Ferrari. Everyone knows the myth and strength of Ferrari. While Ford Motor Company was born in 1909, the racing team Scuderia Ferrari was born in 1929, but in 1937 Alfa Romeo for which Ferrari developed race cars decides to regain full control of its racing division and immediately after the war in 1947 Enzo Ferrari founds Ferrara S.p.A. which is the most successful team in the world with 15 World Drivers Championship titles and 16 Constructors. So clearly Henry Ford II realizes to have a titan next to him and despite having the biggest automobile industry of the time he must face a Goliath who has no slingshot, but a bullet, or rather a cannon in his hand and therefore can beat him at any time. However, the power of money, strength and will in the film are also born by Lee Iacocca, his marketing expert, who starts the challenge. Although actually it is said that one day Henry Ford II wanted to drive a Ferrari and after a lap, when he got off, he said: "It's a perfect car, that damn Ferrari must have hired God to design it." In this kind of respect there is all the film yeast, the spring that triggers the story, making Ford decide to beat Ferrari on Le Mans race. 24 diabolic and terrible hours, whatever the weather: with the fog, with rain, with cold for 24 hours at a time the cars must run at infernal speed, reaching the famous, desperate, terrible 7,000 rpm. At 7,000 rpm it immediately goes out of phase and the cars grab, so you have to be constantly careful. The one with the most resistant rider wins with the best pilot, with the best car, more reliable, more powerful. These two elements combined must shoot in this hellish carousel for 24 hours, challenged by other terrible pilots with other diabolical cars. All against all in this eternal lap. The night goes down and you must run, the fog rises and you must run, rain comes and you must run, there is the sun that breaks the stones and you have to keep running. This is the 24 Hours of Le Mans and who wins there it's like he came out of hell. From 1960 Ferrari had won 5 times in a row and at this point it's up to Ford to beat him choosing two knights as Shine. In a western movie they would have been two gunslingers: one who has fought so many challenges, but is temporarily disabled - in a western movie he would be wounded in one hand or he would have the classic shoulder injury while his friend tells him "Come on, we'll make it" - and must train another gunslinger for this challenge, perhaps younger, perhaps less experienced, maybe as good as him, but irascible, not controllable. Therefore this couple joins to face this challenge by transforming it - and this is thanks to director James Mangold - in a talent challenge against marketing because it's not just Ford against Ferrari, but also the eternal challenge that is always there between artistic flash and prosaic reality. Ford makes this race to sell cars, so he must win but he must sell, while instead Ferrari makes the race for his pride, just to win. So this great challenge begins.