L'oro di Napoli

I recently watched The Gold of Naples after a prolonged search. Like many others, I first learned of this film through Martin Scorsese's documentary on Italian cinema. While not as famous as some of Vittorio De Sica's other films, I assumed The Gold of Naples would eventually be released on DVD. Years have passed and the only American DVD release is a cheap, dubbed, public domain copy paired with The Bicycle Thief. I recently found a subtitled VHS tape from a 90's dealer (Facets or Sinister Cinema). Although the print is the 107 minute U.S. cut with two stories missing, the experience was well worth it. The Gold of Naples is an anthology film and, like most, the stories vary in quality. However, none of these stories are bad (something I cannot say about many anthology films). The first one has Toto as a man with the misfortune to be stuck living with a bully. This local thug moved in and will not leave. This story I found the weakest, but Toto is something of an acquired taste. The second story features the lovely Sophia Loren as the adulterous wife of a pizza maker. Much havoc ensues when the wife's prized jade ring goes missing. The third story is the funniest (and was prominently featured in the Scorsese documentary). In it, director Vittorio De Sica, himself, plays a compulsive gambler who meets his match in the hotel doorman's young son. Lastly, Silvano Mangano plays a prostitute who marries a wealthy man she has never met. This one is the most melancholy of the stories, a far cry from the good humor of the first three. That is all. I wish I could report on the other two stories, but they remain unseen in America. How about a restoration, Criterion?

I wish mildly to dissent from the love fest shown for this de Sica film by my nine IMDB colleagues below. I feel that, like most anthology movies, it is a mixed bag with some estimable sections, and some that are, frankly, on the dull side. Oddly enough, in a group of short films geared toward the comic end of the spectrum, I found that my two faves were the two most somber, namely the moving story of the prostitute Teresa who, remembering the cold world out there that she used to be in, chooses material comfort over love, and the very brief work that deals with a child's funeral procession along the Naples waterfront and that manages, in ten minutes of screen time, to get at the thin line that separates the joys of life from the bleakness of death. The three comedies, by contrast, I found way too broad and strained and excessively pushing the Italian stereotypical envelope, with too much yelling, weeping and general operatic histrionics in lieu of comedy. I will say, however, that Sophia Loren's breakthrough role as a pizza maker's unfaithful wife was striking, as well as a timely reminder that this greatest of Italian actresses could give Claudia and Gina stiff competition in the curvaceous dept. And De Sica's love for his home town comes through so vividly that you can almost smell the pasta puttanesca. B minus.

A masterwork about Naples directed by a Neapolitan that really has it all. As with all 'portmanteau' films there are segments that 'appeal' more than others although here all of them have merit. The 'wow' factor obviously belongs to 'Pizza on Credit' in which a lusty, unfaithful wife pretends to have mislaid her wedding ring in the pizza dough. No director brought out the raw, earthy sensuality of Sophia Loren as well as de Sica who apparently choreographed her every move, gesture and inflection. Bringing them together proved a masterstroke by Carlo Ponti and as we know the de Sica/Loren partnership reaped rich rewards. The segment called 'The Gambler' featuring de Sica himself as an impoverished nobleman is masterful. Just how many hopefuls he auditioned before casting Piero Bilancioni as the servant's son who keeps beating him at cards is anyone's guess but the boy is stupendous and one wonders what became of him. Personally the story that stays with me most features Silvana Mangano as Teresa, a former prostitute who is faced with a tough choice between being the mistress of a large house and denied a husband's love or going back to her old 'profession'. The scene where she wavers and goes from tearfulness to defiant resolution is La Mangano at her most magnificent and is certainly one of the finest moments in Italian cinema. Music is by Alessandro Cicognigni, a regular de Sica collaborator and Carlo Montuori, who went on to film 'Bicycle Thieves', is behind the camera. The story by Giuseppe Marotta is adapted by the ubiquitous Cesare Zavattini who also had a hand in the screenplay. De Sica himself once said that 'Neapolitans, like children, always look good on camera' but in this he was being unduly modest. A truly magical film of which one can never tire.

Vittorio de Sica knew his home town Naples by heart, as he, like his favourite actress Sofia Loren, practically had grown up there from the gutter. In these six episodes are reflected different insights and aspects of Napolitan life, reflecting both comedy, tragedy, drama and, as always in de Sica's films, deep humanity. One of the episodes is dedicated entirely to a funeral procession of a dead child. The most dramatic episode is the fifth with Silvana Mangano getting married to an unknown man, naturally she is shy and feels rather uncertain about the venture, and gradually the whole scheme of the situation unfolds, and she naturally reacts. Her performance is the most memorable in this film. Sophia Loren is still very young here and brilliant as a pizza hostess selling in the streets with her husband and extricating herself magnificently out of a scandal. Vittorio de Sica plays the lead himself in one of the episodes, actually making a satire out of himself, as he was a great gambler himself and needed some detachment and to handle the situation, which this sequence illustrates perfectly. The brilliant comedian Totó introduces the episodes in a very domestic situation of outrageous difficulties and awkwardness, and he manages it in a very Italian way. In brief, these six chapters of daily life in Naples in 1954 will go through to eternity with the rest of de Sica's films as timeless and ageless expressions of deep sympathy and keen warm-hearted observation.

"L'oro di Napoli" is the kind of movie which has everything in it. Human emotions, good and evil in Humankind, great sceneries of Napoli and its Golf, great music, great actors and most of all a genius director, Vittorio De Sica.

This is the kind of movie one may watch again and again without getting bored.

As for myself, I even took a trip to Napoli on August 2001, to find out the beautiful sites where the movie took place.

I found the beautiful "Castello Dell'Ovo" and the "Fontana Dell'Immacolatella", which are not mentioned by name in the movie. Amazingly both sites look the same as in 1954, as well as some neighboring buildings.

I managed finding a collection of the most beautiful Neapolitan Canzoni (Songs), including the song `A Marechiaro' which plays at the end of the movie, a song I cherished for long, before watching the movie.

To summarize, as far as I am concerned, `L'Oro Di Napoli' (The Gold of Napoli), constitutes a genuine treasure in the history of movies, which I'll always cherish deep in my heart.

Zeev Kasher