FILM AND EMIGRATION

We finally got a hold of, and watched, La donnaccia (dir. Silvio Siano), a film I had heard and read about, but was never able to see. It just recently came out on DVD in Italy, and M and I watched it last night on my laptop. It was filmed in Cairano (the town we’re living in) in 1962 using a mix of professional and nonprofessional actors. It clearly aspired to be a neorealist take on emigration, the poverty in the mezzogiorno, the relationship between the Church, folklore, and spiritualism, and the role of women and sexuality. The film itself kind of falls apart on the level of plot, but thematically it’s interesting and ripe for academic criticism.

The making of the film and the recent “recovery” of the film makes for an interesting story too, and I look forward to writing more about the film in the future. (It’s too bad I couldn’t incorporate it into my co-edited book with Kristi Wilson, RADICAL FANTASY: ITALIAN NEOREALISM’S AFTERLIFE IN GLOBAL CINEMA, that’s due out next fall/winter!) You can find out more information about the film, here http://www.comune.cairano.av.it/default.htm.

Paolo Speranza’s book about it, UN AVVENTURA NEOREALISTA, is great too. I’d love to get the film to the U.S., but it would take some work; as it stands, it has no subtitles and the copy, while it’s been cleaned up a bit, is pretty poor. Perhaps one could find a better original copy in France (since it starred a lot of French actors) or the U.S. There’s some great music in it too, some of which reminded me of Alan Lomax’s recordings of traditional Italian folk music.