Like New Orleans, Naples is a city famous for its music. And also like New Orleans, it's famous as a seaport, and as a city where passions run high. "Passione," which opens here today, is a rich and fascinating documentary film of Naples, its people and its music, directed by John Turturro, who also acts as an occasional narrator.
And it's a very small-d democratic view, though it shorts grand opera and religious music in favor of flamenco, blues, jazz, Euro-beat, even modern hip-hop rhythms. Mostly, of course, it's songs of love, primarily tragic love, sometimes commercial love. There are three versions of "O Sole Mio," the most moving a rendition by M'Barkea Ben Taleb, a Tunisian who sings in Arabic. Fausto Cigliani offers a brilliant, tense, guitar solo, and James Senese, who never knew his American father, a black soldier from North Carolina, shows great talent on the saxophone and talks about his childhood difficulties stemming from being of mixed race, mixed nationality and illegitimate.
Three elderly Neapolitans argue the superiority of Enrico Caruso and Fernando de Lucia, an early 20th-century opera star on a similar level, but they do agree that no one in the discussion has heard De Lucia at his best because of the difference in recording ability.
The most startling music is a World War II-era novelty, "Pistol-Packin' Mama," sung in both English and Italian by a highly theatrical trio including Ben Taleb, Max Casella and Peppe Barra while silent military and newsreel footage shows Naples during wartime and after it was freed from the Germans, including de-lousing treatment for children.
It's a fascinating film, showing Turturro's love for Italy (his mother was Sicilian, his father from Bari), even in a difficult time with immigration problems, poverty and high unemployment (sound familiar?). Neapolitan laundry lines and back yards offer an interesting backdrop for singers in front of fountains, statues, churches and slum apartment buildings. The cinematography, often magical, is by Marco Pontecorvo, son of the great Italian director, Gillo Pontecorvo, whose "The Battle of Algiers" is a landmark film.
Passione opens today at the Tivoli
—Joe