L'OR DE NAPLES
Moments of life in the bustling city of Naples where Vittorio De Sica spent his early years. The Gold of Naples has six episodes inspired earthy news Giuseppe Marotta : A clown squatted and operated by a mobster ( Kingpin ), a rather light pizza seller ( Sofia) who loses the ring that her husband gave her ( Pizza credit) , the funeral of a child (a child is dead) , Count Prospero B. depleted inveterate player ( the Players) , the improbable marriage of Teresa , a prostitute ( Theresa ) , and the exploits of " teacher " Ersilio Micci , careful seller ( Professor ).
This film was presented at Cannes in 1955 and , much later, the Toronto International Film Festival film in 1977. In Cannes , there was rather poorly received and divide all criticism. According to Jean A. Gili , " most journalists there saw a nice fantasy without perceiving the underlying drama of a wounded city. " In reality , even if L'oro di Napoli apparently seems to make some concessions to the commercial show - the film is produced by Dino De Laurentiis duo / Carlo Ponti - it is the result of research as carried Vittorio De Sica to find " in the register of comedy, its most fertile vein , that of careful observation of reality. Sign of strong emotional commitment , it bears for the first time on the city of his childhood screen. "
The director instructed on the meaning of the work , stating further : " My film is a comedy, and yet the idea of death there constantly appears in filigree . The Neapolitan constantly thinking about death . This is what gives it probably smiling this philosophy, the wisdom you need to know to discover . There is no other than gold in Naples Neapolitan wisdom. " Vittorio De Sica also said: " I always execute all my directorial activity in Naples, because it is a city that really gives me the poetic human impulses , artistic . Naples is the most photogenic town, the most human of all the cities of Italy and the world. " Giuseppe Marotta , literary inspiration for L'oro di Napoli, then push Cesare Zavattini , screenwriter , and De Sica writing another film about Naples, The Last Judgment (1962).
The Gold of Naples went to Paris in 1955, amputated two sketches : One child died and Professor.
Freddy Buache , " The Gold of Naples is a film that shows too high possession of his means of expression does not deserve in any event , the admiration that was unjustly denied him in Cannes. Especially as this admiration was refused precisely what's best is to say, the intelligence of the story and the latent cruelty , if revealed, in each of his Neapolitan stories. "
A year earlier , Giuseppe Marotta attended the scenario of a musical film about the history of the city of Naples, Fantastic Carousel (1954) Ettore Giannini and which starred Paolo Stoppa