RobertoLeoni

"Contagion" has resurfaced as a popular film to stream worldwide and it is only one of the many films on epidemics and pandemics in the history of cinema, starting from "The Seventh Seal" by Ingmar Bergman... Contagion speaks of a contagion which starts from Hong Kong, so it's very very current, so much so that streaming is very crowded. The story tells the trip of an American businesswoman returning from Hong Kong to the United States carrying a contagion. When this contagion breaks out, this strange and unknown virus which is a mixture of swine fever and avian created by the fiction story, unleashed an emergency and the film tells about this emergency, tells about the desperate hunt for patient zero, the index case from which the infection started, which is used to understand the origin of the virus and it also serves to block this contagion as quickly as possible. But this zero patient is very difficult to find because this woman left Hong Kong, took a plane probably infecting all travelers, landed in the United States in a transit airport where he met some people, then she took another plane and arrived home after touching the hostesses, having been in bars, getting into taxis and meanwhile the people she infected went on buses, caressed and touched their friends and relatives, ate and used dishes... This explosion of the disease is truly a nightmare and meanwhile in the international medical centers both in Geneva and in the United States there is desperate hunting to try to isolate the virus to see its characteristics, but the virus changes and adapts to any situation. It is one of the most terrible things about these viruses. So you absolutely have to isolate it to find a vaccine, quickly enough to be able to distribute it. Panic must be avoided and meanwhile the states are taking political measures, social measures, health measures, research, investigations meanwhile the fear spreads... So the film tells all this with a live shot of reality able to describe attempts to get around the pandemic which is called this because it is an epidemic that travels all over the world, a total health emergency. And to fight it, you have to violate rules of privacy and intimacy of people and lovers and secret encounters are discovered, in addition to a whole network of affections and relationships that every person has and maybe doesn't want everyone knows it. In this intricate web that by one person radiates all over the world, we can follow the evolution of the disease with its tragic events and with the possibilities of repair that there may be. The interpretation is very suggestive. There are Matt Damon, Jude Law, Marion Cotillard, therefore a great cast with excellent actors. Jude Law plays a kind of news jackal, one of the first authors of fake news that creeps into this apparatus where everyone tries to repair and infiltrates with false information about plots and about situations that may even be true, also passing off its natural remedy no one knows for sure what the effects are. He even cheats pretending to be ill and to be healed thanks to this remedy and therefore is followed by his followers who are millions. So on the one hand there is the struggle of legal organizations trying to block this virus and on the other side there is another dangerous virus which enters as a metaphor, that is, that of false news and political and social speculation, maybe to be able to fight a government or to break down a status quo. So there is the disease of the disease: there is social disease with physical disease. Clearly the film has its roots in an atavistic fear of man. The human species for centuries has been plagued by disease...

(translation from Italian) I've been working in film industry for many years and I have witnessed the repetition in global cinema, but especially in Italian cinema of the phenomenon of cloning or "series". Whenever there is a film of some success that receives public approval, immediately inspires further films to be made that would like to be twins of the original. The more the first film, the progenitor, was successful precisely because of its originality, of its particular rhythm, of its invention, of its suggestive interpretation, the more a series of epigones is born, increasingly smaller, squalid and repetitive. I have witnessed this trend since the beginning of my career: from the "musicarelli", films whose heart is a song then the "pepla" that were mythological films trying to emulate the big-budget Hollywood historical epics, that really had an illustrious precedent. In fact, we Italians in the early twentieth century had made a very important "kolossal" film: Cabiria by Giovanni Pastrone from 1914 that taught everyone how to make a "kolossal". But soon after, also because of the scarcity of means, we folded over the peplum films in the 50s and 60s, first copying the American epics and then with a series of ours rich in subgenres even mixing contemporary heroes to ancient ones as Maciste against Samson or Hercules against, now I say to joke, Mandrake... Immediately afterwards there were westerns, the famous spaghetti westerns with the grandeur of Sergio Leone followed by a series of first interesting "copies" and then by completely absurd titles like this one: "Sartana's here... Trade your pistol for a coffin" Then, the "poliziotteschi", then the political films, the "cinema of navel gazing", then the films about the mafia, then "La piovra" and then the films based on Gomorrah. Gomorrah is an important Matteo Garrone's film very successful based on the novel by Roberto Saviano, origin of the television series Gomorrah which has had great success. From this great success Marco D'Amore, together with Cattleya, decided to elaborate something absolutely new, which he defines "a bridge between the 4th series and the 5th future series, in the middle there is a film that will serve to bring television viewers to the cinema and the cinema spectators to watch the TV series ". So an important experiment realized without paying attention to expenses with intelligence and with a charming glamor, which is that of Gomorrah. I'm sorry, though, that Marco D'Amore - an actor and also an author that we have already appreciated both as a director, both as character in the television series, for how he gave his character Cyrus a boost - this time he falls into the trap of authorship. That is, it hurts itself because the very important feature of the Cyrus character that was having an extraordinary fixity as result of his moral desolation and also of his absolute and iron will that gave him this determination and this look, deep but at the same time it was as if he didn't see anyone, so surely one of the keys to his success, precisely because of this original and suggestive interpretation, here in the film he abuses it. There are even times when he is catatonic, moments in which this capacity, this mask of his becomes too rigid, as if it really imprisoned him and forced him to repeat himself in such a way that his feelings no longer show. Only this still image remains that in the long run of the film tires. Unfortunately it happens very often that an actor-director lose control of himself for a moment, perhaps because he no longer has the capacity to watch himself with criticism and almost with malice and unfortunately this is detrimental to the film. Also because the layout of the film, beyond the scenographic idea of transferring it to Northern Europe, therefore in some unusual and suggestive landscapes, actually it lacks strength because in this union of mafia, camorra and gomorra it is as if borders and outlines were lost, the epic nature of the characters is lost. Not surprisingly, a comparison came to mind with another very successful Italian film, played by Pierfrancesco Favino, The Traitor directed by Bellocchio, in which the epic character is preserved and it is possible to give a dimension of strength which is not entrusted solely to the actor, but also to a context with a concrete reality which gives the desperate sense of violence. Here, however, they are rightly called "swindlers" the Neapolitan bandits who are in Northern Europe, because they really have a swindlers look without offending to the famous movie "The Swindlers" directed by Francesco Rosi in 1959 written by Rosi himself and by Suso Cecchi D'Amico. I have to give a special praise to Giuseppe Aiello who plays the little Ciro as a child and also to Martina Attanasio who has the freshness of a desperate "little star" in the neighborhood. Both of these figures, as well as other contour figures, are carefully, forcefully and with poetry made and I particularly appreciate it because I also had a childhood in a difficult neighborhood like Trastevere in the postwar...

(translation from Italian) In these days, Santa Sangre is back on the screens in a copy restored in 4k in the original version for the 30th anniversary of its release. Many have asked me to review it, but I can't do it because, first of all I wrote it together with Alessandro Jodorowsky and therefore it would seem to me not very polite and professional to praise me or to criticize me because then in a possible critical judgment today I could also be very bad towards myself... Beyond the jokes, what I can do instead it's telling the genesis of the film, without spoiling it and without weaving neither praise nor criticism, but leaving them both to the judgment of the spectators, above all new spectators, because it is a cult movie and has gone through 30 years unscathed. Even the famous GB magazine Empire has included it among the 500 best films of all time... Beyond this exaggeration, it can be interesting just how the film was born and meanwhile special thanks goes to Claudio Argento, the "crazy" producer, wonderfully crazy, because he believed in this story and produced it. The first idea of this film has a distant origin. I attended university working in the library of a psychiatric hospital and I was in contact with the so-called madness, with mental illness, I saw it up close, I read the medical records, I prepared texts for some degree theses... Obviously I have no competence as a psychologist or as a psychiatrist, however, I also followed humanly life of some patients because I was part of therapy program which taught painting and theatre and also another ergotherapy program, that is, work therapy, which offered to the patients the possibility of doing small jobs allowing them to take off their uniform, because then patients were in uniform. Take off their uniform and attend the library meant that in the eyes of a stranger they were treated like normal people. During the program I had some patients that apparently were very quiet, and they were also very cultured and prepared. In fact, this experience made me understand that schizophrenia is often proper a "degeneration of intelligence", in fact, very often schizophrenics are very clever, very sensitive and very attentive. One of these patients, who worked with me because he knew 3 or 4 languages so he could help me sort the books, because the library had 50,000 volumes of all types and ages, one day started looking sideways and saying: "... 'shut up ...' shut up ..." The third time I asked him what happened and he answered me calmly with his calm blue eyes: "No, nothing, I have a voice that tells me to kill you, but don't worry because I love you. " I was a little uncomfortable, but he reassured me: "No, no, don't worry, I love you, I don't listen to it... " Continuing to stare at me with his blue eyes and I was, as far as I could be, calm. The library was very extensive because there were five very large rooms for the 50,000 volumes and it was me and him alone, isolated on a high floor of this immense palace. And I trusted. I trusted his blue eyes, I trusted him his sincere way of telling me "I love you". Probably this episode, like a small seed, has yielded within my psychology, giving me a sense of confidence, giving me a sense of equality and above all a sense of brotherhood even with mental distress. I found Abel in what might have seemed Cain and this fact so ancestral and so mythical has yielded within me and it is probably the origin of Santa Sangre because over time, I conceived a story in which even the worst demon actually can't forget he is an angel. Whoever saw Santa Sangre knows that the character I wrote together with Alejandro Jodorowsky is a serial killer, but every time he kills you feel sorry for him that is you are sorry more for him than for the victim just to completely overturn the concept of the brute, of the violent, of the monster, but returning almost to the Latin root 'monstrum', that is, something to see, a curious thing to discover. Because the human soul is an infinite gallery of typologies, it is a very deep mine in which, as the famous verses of De Andrè say: "... nothing comes from diamonds, but from the manure the flowers are born... " That is, there is in the depths of the soul, even the most horrendous soul, this incredible ability, this little spark... Over time I have developed a story that I told Claudio Argento because it was a time when we worked together. Claudio understood this story and indeed he even added to it things he thought and together we decided to present it to the director who seemed the most suitable to represent it that is Alejandro Jodorowsky. Jodorowsky for about ten years seemed to have disappeared from the international scenes, but Claudio with great diligence and a lot of skill found him and talked to his agent. Alejandro made an appointment in Paris, but he wanted to meet only me. We didn't understand why, but he said: "I want to meet who wrote this story" I went to meet Alejandro in Paris and in the entrance hall of his agent's building, while I was going to take the elevator, an elegant man has sprung from the shadows, curious, particular, completely dressed in purple: he also had purple shoes, a purple shirt, the purple tie, he was completely purple. And he said to me: "Oui, c'est moi ..." So, I saw Alejandro for the first time. He didn't want to go to the agent because it was a place of merchants, instead he told me: "Let's go to a bar, let's look at each other and talk" The first thing he asked me was: "When did you write this story?" "About a year ago ..." "When exactly?" "I do not remember..." Then, I remembered that my daughter had a fever and I was telling her stories, then I went to my study, an idea had occurred to me and I started to throw that one down which was the first nucleus of Santa Sangre. Then I said: "It should have been March 29." "What time did you write it?" "Around half past one or two in the morning ..." "I knew it... ...that night I went to sleep early and the angel of stories has passed over Paris to bring me a story, saw that I slept and continued to Rome, saw that you were awake and gave you the story. But the story was mine and you are a thief! " "But Alejandro, I invented it ..." "No, you are a thief, 'tu es un voleur' ..." And since then he called me 'ce voleur là', 'that thief there' referring to me. This is a very beautiful story because you can understand how every artist in reality has the ability, when he likes something, to take it, to feel it and to think that he really conceived it. Then, Alejandro developed this story with his imagination and his art, also telling me an episode occurred in Mexico City which in some respects had similar characteristics and together we wrote the script by which he then made the film that we all know.