Although the Vele of Scampia in Gomorrah and the degraded shore of Dogman are the most memorable places in Matteo Garrone’s filmography, the director should also be recognised for having made famous places and corners that were previously known only to few. Settings that are anything but postcard perfect, chosen for their elements of kitsch or, more often, for their decay which, thanks to the director’s aesthetic taste balancing realism and pictorial style (unsurprisingly he is the child of a photographer and studied at art high school), become stars in his stories and conquer a lasting place in the memory of viewers. In some cases, they even become famous.
Print itineraryIf the seashore on the Via Domiziana where Marcello lives in Dogman (which won the Best Actor Award at the Cannes Film Festival) was intended as the representation of a border setting, a modern Far West governed by the law of the jungle, Garrone was already fascinated by the area 16 years earlier when he chose it to recount physical and moral degradation and precarious living conditions in The Embalmer. In both films, the Parco del Saraceno in Pinetamare and the abandoned dock of Villaggio Coppola near Castel Volturnoprovide the background for most of the events. Here Dogman’s Marcello walks the dogs, grooms them and chats with friends and neighbours. Here too Peppino lives and works with his apprentice (and secret love) Valerio. The tourist village built by the Coppola brothers was intended to be a new Rimini on the Via Domiziana coasting the shore: a tourist beach resort with 8 skyscrapers, villas with sea views, a shopping mall, new streets. Plans were interrupted by the earthquake in 1980, after which Pinetamare was overrun by invasive and abusive construction: all that can be seen today is a hotel built to resemble a castle, single-storey buildings on the beachfront and porches.
Some of the Castel Volturno coastline is seen again in Gomorrah which won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival and made the director famous. In one of the film’s four episodes, Marco and Ciro mug African drug dealers in one of the many abandoned hotels on Via Domiziana and, later that evening, enjoy themselves racing at top speed on scooters along the Darsena Occidentale, cheeking the boss who warned them to follow the rules. It is on the Caserta seashore that they wind up dead in an ambush that not only kills them but also removes all traces of their bodies forever. The background for Totò’s story is, instead, the Vele in the Scampia neighbourhood which became symbolic of the film and the TV series that derived from it developed several years later. Designed in the Sixties to support the development of the area east of Naples, today these buildings, in the triangular shape of Roman sails, have become a symbol for fans of the film and series. Camorra mobsters patrol the roof terraces of the buildings to ensure the smooth-running of their drug sales and look out for approaching enemies. Here too, Totò meets Maria amidst the many corridors and floors of the large complex and eventually cheats on her. In an attempt to requalify the area, the Municipality of Naples, which owns the complex, has begun to eliminate several of the buildings.
In Reality (winner of the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival), Luciano is a fishmonger on the outskirts of Naples with a talent for entertainment that we see at the start of the film when he appears for wedding guests cross-dressed as a woman. The reception location is the Grand Hotel La Sonrisain Sant’Antonio Abate (province of Naples), a Baroque building featured previously in Garrone’s 1998 documentary, Oreste Pipolo Fotografo di matrimoni, that became famous with the film and brought to the attention of a wider clientele beyond the local reach was eventually chosen to be a key setting for the TV show My Crazy Italian Wedding. In the film, Luciano auditions for the Big Brother TV show and, subsequently, while awaiting the answer that he is certain will be positive, begins a slow, total detachment from reality that will lead him to a distorted perception of everything around him. Many of the events take place in some of the Vesuvian villas on the Golden Mile, the stretch of road that leads from Herculaneum to Torre del Greco whose abundant citrus trees made it “golden”. Today, sadly, many of these villas are abandoned and in total decay. The fishmongers where Luciano works and jokes with clients was entirely built in the ample inner courtyard of Villa Pignatelli di Monteleone (1728) in the Barra neighbourhood in Naples’ Eastern suburbs, while Villa Pignateli di Montecalvo (1747) in the small centre of San Giorgio a Cremano, provided the setting for the apartment where he lives and where, overcome by megalomania, he gives away his furniture to neighbours.