Paolo Sorrentino's Naples

A double-bill of Paolo Sorrentino's first and newest features:

One Man Up (2001)

Parthenope (2024)

Soccer and Women

Tell me someone is an Italian filmmaker without telling me someone is an Italian filmmaker.

The presence of Soccer and Women in these two films emphasizes Paolo Sorrentino’s Italian credentials even though both aren’t present in all his films.

One Man Up and Parthenope are set in Sorrentino's birthplace of Naples, which since the late 1980s has been associated with soccer after Diego Maradona’s arrival in 1984 to play for Napoli. Therefore, it isn’t a surprise that soccer features in Sorrentino’s first and newest film. In addition, Sorrentino’s 2021 film Hand of God is named after Diego’s infamous 1986 handball goal against England in the World Cup. Soccer is absent in Parthenope until the finale when the film ends with Napoli’s 2023 title celebrations to emphasize a magical finale to the film and the soccer team’s fairytale title.

Soccer is front and center in One Man Up, a tale of two men who share the same name, Antonio Pisapia, and an unlucky fate. The two Antonios live different lives and have different careers but their paths intersect slightly when both their lives are in a state of decline. One Antonio (Tony played by Sorrentino regular Toni Servillo) is a pop singer who is still living on past fortunes despite having his reputation in tatters after a sex scandal. The other Antonio (Andrea Renzi) is a professional soccer player who career is ended early after injury. Since Antonio has only ever known soccer, he tries to become a soccer coach and has some new innovative tactical ideas but he soon learns how talent and a reputation aren’t enough to open all doors for him. Meanwhile, Tony is used to having all doors open for him all his life but soon finds out that those doors aren’t opening like they used to.

It is refreshing to see that Sorrentino once made a film like One Man Up as the film is devoid of any glossy visuals like those in his subsequent films, such as Il Divo (2008), The Great Beauty (2013). Also, unlike those other films, One Man Up is narrative and acting driven. The film also contains the most soccer related content than any of his other films.

The Male Gaze

The male gaze has featured in a few of of Sorrentino’s films especially Youth (2015) where the two elder characters (played by Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel) watch all the female characters with lustful eyes. That same male gaze is prominent in Parthenope, which covers a timeline from the birth of the titular character until her retirement. The film shows Parthenope’s birth in water and then the next time we see her, she is an 18-year-old (played by Celeste Dalla Porta) emerging from the water in a bikini while Sandri (Dario Aita) is in awe of her beauty. Sandri isn’t the only one taken by Parthenope but so is Raimondo (Daniele Rienzo). Raimondo is Parthenope’s brother and his inability to be with her is given a Greek tragedy treatment, a tragedy that hovers over the entire film.

The film jumps in time and depicts fragments of Parthenope’s life as she grows up, completes her education and pursues her career. A constant throughout her life is that men are bewitched by her beauty. This includes writers (with a cameo by Gary Oldman playing John Cheever), actors, producers, professors, politicians and priests. They all want her and she obliges and gives them a few moments of attention but no one can truly have her.

Of course, since this is a Sorrentino film, there is beauty to be found in each frame. One particular segment shows Naples on a hot sultry day, which allows audience to witness all the beauties of the city (both men and women), cat walking through the streets while the camera slows down. This slo-mo music video treatment recalls The Great Beauty and even Il Divo, a Sorrentino signature.

In the hands of another director Parthenope would have been a different film, one that would have given the material an actual narrative and emotional core. In Sorrentino’s hands, the film’s beauty is only on the surface. There is nothing beneath the surface but that isn’t anything new with his films. Films such as Il Divo, The Great Beauty and now Parthenope are visual eye candy made as extended music videos with some dialogues. In the case of The Great Beauty, that treatment worked wonders but doesn’t do justice to Parthenope.

Allan Fish Online Film Festival

Hands Over the City (1963, Italy, directed by Francesco Rosi)

Francesco Rosi’s 1963 film Hands Over the City (Le Mani sulla città) feels contemporary despite being released almost 6 decades ago. Given the film’s topic of corruption and urban sprawl, it will always feel contemporary as long as politicians spend more time slinging mud at their rivals and lying to protect their crimes while letting innocent civilians suffer. The words “urban sprawl” are part of our everyday language yet it was Rosi’s film that gave an incisive look into how such a situation could occur. The city in Rosi’s film is his beloved Naples but as the film dives into the close connection between city planners, politicians, land developers and businessmen, it becomes evident that there is a universal aspect to the film.

The opening shots of Hands Over the City begin with a few aerial shots of Naples which highlight the city as a maze of buildings. After the opening minutes, we learn that it will get worse. That is because we are shown an informal meeting between a few businessmen who all want to profit from fast land development. The city council is about to propose expanding along the city's core, which makes sense from an urban development point of view. But these businessmen and land developers want to build outside the city because the land is cheap and they can earn more profits in the future. The businessmen can get away with this because one of the leading land developers is also on the city's board and he has a lot of friends on the council. The promise of fast money is enough to swing the votes in his direction.

There is a lot of money to go around when the city expands outside the core because there is more investment needed to provide necessary infrastructure such as water, electricity, parks, etc. The film shows that all the businessmen involved in such organizations have friends on the city council. Handshakes and promises are the two things that decide the city’s future. Land permits and architectural plans are passed in a matter of days as opposed to the normal waiting time of 6 months. One of the consequences of this quick development results in an apartment wall crashing down resulting in a few deaths.

An investigation is conducted to uncover the real reasons for this building's collapse. However, there is a lack of interest in the city council to determine why the building wall collapsed. Only one councilman accuses his fellow colleagues of having "dirty hands" regarding the land dealings. This results in one of the film's lasting images where all the councilmen shout "our hands are clean" and wave their 'clean' hands at the honest councilman.

As the investigation continues, it is apparent that the truth won't ever come out because behind each lie is a handshake and a promise. Watching this film, one can truly appreciate the complicated series of lies and promises that exists in each political party. Politicians today spend a lot of time lying to the media in order to prove their innocence even though there is plenty of evidence which implicates them. Their lies are akin to the “our hands are clean” image.

The film gives a fly-on-the-wall perspective to the audience and at times it feels like we are being led into a secret world about how politics really works. As per the production notes, Rosi got some of the city councilmen to play themselves in the movie. That adds a bit more to the realism of the heated council scenes. The core discussions and fighting between different sides can be extrapolated to our world and can explain why different political parties can never find a common ground and why some issues never get resolved.

Francesco Rosi returned to Naples in 1992 to film a documentary (Diario napoletano) to see how the city had developed compared to 1963’s Hands Over the City. The first part of the documentary takes place in a university class where Rosi is presenting the movie to students, some city planners, professors and architects. As it turns out, in some cases, things unfolded in Naples as per the movie's fictional situations and the sprawl got worse over the decades after the film was made. Some of the professors in the documentary offered solutions to improve things but it became clear that there is no over-night solution. When a city grows outward traffic congestion is one of the worst problems. Driving through the city, Rosi was able to truly get a feel for how bad the situation is. Unfortunately, Naples is not alone in this problem. The issue of urban sprawl is a problem impacting major cities across most continents. In this regard, Hands Over the City is still an essential and relevant film for our society. The dynamics of how each city chooses to expand may vary from the situation in the film but it is clear that plenty of the decisions made for new land development are driven by money. We can only guess at some of the real discussions that take place in a city but Rosi's film depicts some situations for us to ponder upon.

Cross-published as part of 3rd Allan Fish Online Film Festival.