The pre-opening evening on August 27th (at 8:30 PM in the Sala Darsena) is dedicated to one of the masterpieces of Italian neorealism, which was presented in competition at the Venice Film Festival in 1954,
A film that marks, in the director’s filmography, the transition from a purely neorealist aesthetic to one in the vein of light comedy. Some episodes retain the tragedy present in the director’s earlier films: The Funeral, almost without dialogue, is the most bitter of all and still carries the elements that made De Sica famous worldwide. Episodes like Pizza on Credit, starring Sophia Loren, are clearly set within a framework of pure comedy. Two masks from the Neapolitan sceneggiata are depicted in the first episode: the guappo, which gives the episode its title, and ‘o pazzariello, played by Totò. The guappo is a sort of bully who lords over the Rione Sanità, similar to a mafia boss, although not truly part of the Camorra hierarchy, while ‘o pazzariello is a kind of street entertainer. This gradual shift from neorealism to Italian comedy also surfaces in the episode The Gamblers, in which the director himself plays a nearly autobiographical role as a gambling addict: the protagonist, banned by his wife from using money, forces a young boy into endless rounds of the card game Scopa just to keep playing.
Between comedy and tragedy, with a strong emphasis on moral redemption, the duo Zavattini-De Sica draws on the collection of short stories by Giuseppe Marotta, which in turn revives masks and tragicomic situations from the Neapolitan sceneggiata, to create an episodic film set...
There is no moral redemption in the episode Teresa, featuring Silvana Mangano as a prostitute who is manipulated into marrying a wealthy Neapolitan man atoning for a sin: here, tragedy and bitterness outweigh the comic elements. This Neapolitan series is brought to a close by the great Eduardo De Filippo in The Professor, where he plays the role of a wise man who, for a fee, helps his fellow citizens solve small problems—highlighted by an amusing tutorial on how to blow the perfect raspberry.
