Cinemamuto

In the 1910s and 1920s, Naples was one of the film capitals of Italy, with a remarkably rich production output and the resulting presence of several film studios. Among the figures who shaped the Neapolitan film scene, one stands out above all: Elvira Notari, producer with her husband Nicola for Dora Film, actress, screenwriter and above all director, the first woman in Italy to take on that role, author of melodramas and documentaries of striking visual power, aimed especially at Southern Italian emigrants overseas.

We are at the end of the 1920s. Cinema is changing with the arrival of sound, but above all Fascism has taken hold in Italy, something entirely removed from the anarchic and creative vitality of the Neapolitans. Elvira too, who had moved to the city from nearby Cava dei Tirreni, is forced to begin her own battle: the films she directs, often set in the slums of the “belly of Naples”, are disliked by the young but increasingly invasive dictatorship, especially because they enjoy great success abroad. In short, in the Italy that claimed to be new, dirty laundry had to be washed at home, and Leone, the censor of the moment, scolds, advises, but above all orders Elvira and her Dora Film to cut, soften and alter scripts whose strong realism made them unacceptable to Fascist ideology.

Driven by her own energy and intelligence, Elvira, who also pays the price for being a woman, has no intention of accepting the advice and blackmail of this man, whose gestures, though disguised as mild benevolence, become more and more frequent. She thus begins a duel with her censor that will lead to the unveiling of that man’s unspeakable secrets, as he hounds her with the most absurd and often laughable demands. But the world, for better and for worse, is moving in new directions, and difficult times lie ahead for Elvira…

A “porous” and disorienting city like Naples, a pioneering woman of silent cinema, creative and courageous, and one of the most talented and original actresses on the Italian stage and screen, together form an entirely female triad, born from the skilled and sensitive pen of Roberto Scarpetti, which I will finally bring to the stage, also drawing on my documentary gaze. But Cinemamuto also seeks to reflect on freedom of expression. Fascism effectively interrupted Elvira’s artistic and entrepreneurial career, guilty as she was, besides being a person free from ideological constraints, of being a woman in a man’s world. What happened less than a century ago may still serve as a warning for our own troubled days.

Gianfranco Pannone