Metropolitan Blues – Remembering a True Original of Italian Cinema

Without Salvatore Piscicelli many things would never have happened in Italian cinema. A native of Pomigliano d'Arco, a working-class town, he appeared on the film scene with a film that immediately assumed the trappings of a legendary work. In an era, still highly polarized politically, in which homosexuality, both male and female, was taboo, Piscicelli made Immacolata e Concetta - L'altra gelosia (1979), a white-hot melodrama that deeply marked Italian cinema. Starring Ida Di Benedetto, Marcella Michelangeli, Tommaso Bianco, and Marcello Colasurdo of the Gruppo Operaio E'Zezi from Pomigliano d'Arco, the film, which was presented at the Locarno Film Festival that year, won the Pardo d'Argento.

Piscicelli, a cultured Neapolitan intellectual, knew how to articulate melodrama in contemporary forms and was in this sense akin to Germans like Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Werner Schroeter. Today it is virtually impossible to imagine the impact and revolution caused by that film, and the endless debates it provoked. Immaculata and Concetta was followed by Le occasioni di Rosa (1981), a blue-collar drama starring Marina Suma, who would win both the David di Donatello and the Nastro d'argento for best debut actress. The crude but very human story tells of Rosa, a factory worker who leaves the factory and decides to turn to sex work with the approval of her partner Tonino (Angelo Cannavacciuolo), who in turn is linked to Angelo (Gianni Prestieri), a wealthy homosexual man who would like to have a child by the couple. The plant where Rosa's mother works is the former Alfa Romeo plant on Via Impero in Pomigliano d'Arco, which later became Fiat Group Automobiles - Stabilimento Giambattista Vico.

Despite the film's success, it took Piscicelli four years before he succeeded in making Blues metropolitano (1985), a film set in the seething Naples of the mid-1980s and featuring Tony Esposito, Tullio De Piscopo, James Senese, Maurizio Capone, and a young Peppe Lanzetta. The film's poster was entrusted to Filippo Scozzari, a columnist for Frigidaire magazine.

Two years later, in 1987, he returned to melodrama with the magnificent Regina, starring Ida Di Benedetto and Fabrizio Bentivoglio. Five years later he signed Baby gang (1992), but Italian cinema had changed and in the meantime a host of names of auteurs from Naples emerged who without Piscicelli's lesson would probably have struggled more to emerge. Piscicelli, despite progressive difficulties, continued to make out-of-the-box films such as Il corpo dell'anima and Alla fine della notte, made in 1999 and 2003, respectively. Between the latter unfortunately and Vita segreta di Maria Capasso (2019), more that fifteen years would pass. Starring Luisa Ranieri, the film remains true to Piscicelli's obsessions.

With his absence, following a long and insidious illness, Italian cinema loses one of its most original voices, which, unfortunately, was not offered the necessary means so that it could make an even deeper impact. And yet, there appears - sharply - a before and after of Salvatore Piscicelli in Italian cinema.

Giona A. Nazzaro
Artistic Director