California Italian Studies

The spaces of the city and its periphery have always been central themes in cinema. From its origins, throughout the silent era (Lumière, Ruttman, Vertov, Murnau, Vidor, etc.), and with the advent of sound, and the establishment of cinematic genres, the city remained a central subject, which the spectator followed throughout the course of the 20th century. In a certain sense, audiences watched cities grow and transform before them on the film screen. Italian cinema was no different. It had chosen the city as its semantic and iconic space, explicitly, at least, from Roma città aperta (1945). The question now, in the 3rd millennium becomes: How are the neometropoli and neoperipheries of Southern Italy, poised between Mediterranean modernity and post modernity, reflected in contemporary Italian cinema? This article focuses on three cities (and their provinces and peripheries) of this new South: Napoli, Bari and Palermo, examining the poetics of directors that straddle two generations of Italian filmmaking (Beppe Cino, Sergio Rubini), alongside members of the new wave (Matteo Garrone, Alessandro Piva, Andrea and Antonio Frazzi, Franco Capuano). The films that are examined at length are: Mio cognato (A. Piva); Certi Bambini (A. and A. Frazzi), La terra (S. Rubini), La guerra di Mario (A. Capuano), Gomorra (M. Garrone). This critical interdisciplinary work (between sociology and cinema) follows the development of a general theme, that of the new mediterraneità or meridianità (F. Cassano). At the connotative level, throughout the new Italian cinema of “the South” there is also an internal aesthetic of a new, neorealism. This article traces certain recurring themes— streets, walls, land and sea— that are often represented as complementary to, or in opposition to the city. And despite whether these films propose, at the level of conspiracy or plot, two opposing endings (happy and sad), between faith (Miracolo a Palermo, La terra) and resignation (Mio cognato, Certi Bambini, Gomorra), it seems that the search for a new mediternaneità underscores every narrative, demonstrating the need to weave a sense of meridianità (indigenous or foreign) that is open to mediation and negotiation.