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“Munnezza
e Bellezza”
The Neapolitan problem is
well-known by now. Not even electricity and running
water are as essential to the civilized survival of a
city in the western world as taking out the trash and
avoiding not just the obvious problems of public health
but the cynical depression that settles on one million
people living in stench and filth. Local bloggers were
quick off the mark, even before the program ran, hoping
it would not just trot out tourist postcards of the Bay
of Naples while ‘O sole mio ran in the
background. It was, luckily, not that.
(As a matter of fact, the real musical leitmotif
was Pino Daniele’s Napule è, a
melancholy litany of how Naples has gone wrong.) Munnezza e
Bellezza is thick with the sociology and history
of blame. In between alternating shots of garbage and
beautiful castles and coast, there are excerpts from
some films that have tried to explain Naples to the rest
of Italy—and to the rest of the world. Wertmuller uses a
couple of Francesco Rosi’s highly political films, C’era una volta (1967), about the Spanish vicerealm of Naples in
the 1600s, and his Le mani sulle
città 1963, about systemic corruption in
post-war Naples. As well, she uses parts of her own Una domenica di novembre (1981) that
deals with the Bourbon dynasty
that ruled the Kingdom of Naples before its annexation
into united Italy. There are also interviews
with the ex-mayor of Naples as well as with the current
one, with journalists and with people on the street. The
waste problem in Naples is seen as a metaphor of the
potential collapse of rampant consumerism everywhere.
The director says elsewhere that she thinks the city is
getting a bum rap from the world press. The same thing
happens in other places, but you just don’t read about
it all the time. (Without denying “potential collapse of
rampant consumerism,” I’m not so sure about that.
Wertmuller, more than any other living Italian director,
as her films show, is in love with the visual that
stuns, shocks, and delights; thus, she loves Naples. She
has spent time and resources in helping to restore the
beauty of the city, so maybe she gets a pass on that
one.) There are three
possibilities: (1) It’s the fault of the camorra (the Neapolitan
version of the mafia; (2) It’s the fault of the central
Italian government; (3) It’s the fault of the fatalism
in Neapolitans that accepts corruption and anarchy. Or
maybe it’s all of the above. Well, since the “mob” is into everything, at least some
of the fault must be theirs. After all, for many years
they sold cheap dump sites near Naples to northern
firms—sites that are now full. The second point rests on
the fact that Naples, the old capital of its own
kingdom, has never recovered from being beaten in the
1860/61 war of Italian unification and then plundered by
the victors, the government of the new Italy. There still is no trust of the central
government; thus, you are left with an “every man for
himself” atmosphere, in which greed and corruption
flourish. That third point is
more difficult to deal with. Mark Twain wrote in The Innocents
Abroad that
Obviously, times
have changed since the 1860s when that was written,
but today in Naples the contrast between the villas of
Posillipo and the slums of Scampia is still marked to
a degree found in few places in Europe. Even earlier,
when Vincenzo Cuoco was
writing about why the French-imposed Neapolitan Republicof 1799 failed, he said:
Are there still two
different peoples who call themselves “Neapolitans”
after all these years— centuries!? Yes,
and the existence of an entrenched underclass in
Naples is
a bigger problem than the garbage, but that is a topic
for another documentary. The existence of the
underclass, however, does breed “fatalism, corruption
and anarchy,” a situation not conducive to efficient
social services, so maybe that third point is not
irrelevant. Actually, “Munnezza e Bellezza” has somewhat of an upbeat ending: new train stations, new science labs, the improvement in the status of women in Naples. etc. Wertmuller has heard the oft-ground political axe that says if we spend money restoring that beautiful statue over there (bellezza) we won’t have enough to solve urban problems (munnezza). She rejects that, and, brother, so do I.
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