Parthenope

Director Paolo Sorrentino

Sorrentino with lead actress Celeste Dalla Porta

Sorrentino with cinematographer Daria D’Antonio

PARTHENOPE                      B+                                                                                               Italy  France  (136 mi)  2024  ‘Scope  d: Paolo Sorrentino

Are you aware of the disruption your beauty causes?                                                                    —John Cheever (Gary Oldman)

A visually mesmerizing cinematic puzzle that is thematically elusive, this is the second film Sorrentino has shot in Naples, his beloved home city, following the more autobiographical The Hand of God (È stata la mano di Dio) (2021), which won the Grand Jury Prize (2nd Place) at the Venice Film Festival.  Situated on the Bay of Naples in southern Italy, where Mount Vesuvius, a still-active volcano, can be seen off in the distance, the omnipresent force of the sea is the one constant that affects everyone in the city, beckoning with its mysterious allure.  In Greek mythology, Parthenope aroused the jealously of the goddess Aphrodite, who, as punishment, decided to turn her into a mermaid, and was one of the three sirens whose songs enraptured Odysseus, but when she failed to entice him to shore (he was tied to the mast), she threw herself into the sea and drowned, where her body washed ashore, where beauty, passion, and death intertwined to give rise to what we know today as Naples, which is sometimes called Parthenope after the siren, while one of the city’s universities is also named after her.  Inspired by the fleetingness of beauty and youth, the sensuality on display is nothing less than stunning, shot in ‘Scope by Daria D’Antonio (also born in Naples), who shot his previous picture, where every shot is a work of art, explored from all angles, while extraordinary costume and musical choices add more layers of emotional resonance to this intoxicating experience.  The film is one continual male gaze at the hypnotic beauty of a girl actually born in the sea, Parthenope (Celeste Dalla Porta in her movie debut), as we follow her, and her heightened presence, through different phases of her life from the 1950’s to the present day, much of it feeling like a dream projection of every man’s fantasy, also Sorrentino’s first film starring a female protagonist, given a mythic stature, a devotion to form over function, aesthetics over usability, making her seem more of an object of study than a compelling character.  Drop dead gorgeous, with esoteric shades of Fellini and Antonioni, radiant beauty is always the first thing you see, but there are also powerfully provocative undercurrents that hit viewers in the face, actually becoming contentious at times, where there is a Beauty and the Beast aspect of this film, which can be understood in a multitude of ways, with suggestions that beauty is only skin deep, that once young faces will change one day.  The maker of THE CONSEQUENCES OF LOVE (2004), Il Divo (Il divo: La spettacolare vita di Giulio Andreotti) (2008), This Must Be the Place (2011), 2014 Top Ten List #5 The Great Beauty (La Grande Bellezza) (2013), and Youth (2015), a director with a distinctive style, where seven of his eight features have premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, Sorrentino’s films have always been extravagant and dazzlingly stylish, showing a keen eye for detail, often revealing the moral rot lurking below the seductively glittering surfaces, with no one else making films like this, yet his latter films have grown more intensely personal, as the poetic lyricism of the film becomes something that needs to be experienced rather than understood, inviting different interpretations.  And this film is no different, bathed in luxuriousness, delving into the city’s 60’s and 70’s history, yet it’s harder to pinpoint just what’s going on under the surface, creating a mysterious unknown, surrounded by everpresent cigarette smoking, where a frequently asked question posed by different characters is “What are you thinking about?”  No answers are forthcoming until the very end of the film when Parthenope has aged, played by Stefania Sandrelli, who was such a prominent force of Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Conformist (Il Conformista) (1970).  This film is to Naples what THE GREAT BEAUTY was to Rome, both films opening with a quote by French novelist and physician Louis-Ferdinand Céline, “Of course, life is huge.  You get lost everywhere.”  

More than a conventional narrative, this film operates more as an abstract metaphor on the anthropological art of “seeing.”  According to Sorrentino, “Naples is a city that belongs to my emotions.  Every day, Neapolitans reinvent their lives, they decide that life should surprise them, and I want to tell it that way.”  Parthenope’s brother, Raimondo (Daniele Rienzo), says “It is impossible to be happy in the most beautiful place in the world.”  That same thing might be said of his younger sister, as all eyes follow her wherever she goes, a force of nature in her youth, dazzlingly beautiful, where Sorrentino puts viewers in her shoes, allowing us to experience her intoxicating allure and the effect this has on people, perhaps best expressed in this sequence, accompanied by the equally enchanting music of Polish composer Wojciech Kilar’s Exodus, PARTHENOPE Soundtrack Exodus - Wojciech Kilar YouTube (3:58), which is lush and liberating, creating an enormous amount of unresolved tension that can be disturbing, yet also awe-inspiring.  While there appears to be a parallel between myth and Parthenope’s story, encapsulated by the city of Naples itself, where the sun is always glimmering against the deep blue sea, her haunting beauty is described as “disruptive,” whose mere presence disrupts the world around her, where her stunning appearance is both her gift and her curse, as people become entirely consumed by her presence, having an overwhelming fixation with her, easily objectified, as men stop and stare, while women look on with envy or curiosity, becoming, in effect, our collective idea of beauty, leaving her struggling to find something real she can hold onto.  Yet despite all this attention, she remains emotionally inert, unable to truly grasp happiness or any meaningful intimacy, delving into the freedom of youth, the mystery of eroticism, a life full of possibilities that open up and then close, reflecting the impossibility of understanding “the other.”  It’s important to note that in this steamily romantic scene with two guys, one of whom is Sandrino (Dario Aita), the son of one of the many maids in the house where she grew up, Parthenope di Paolo Sorrentino | Clip dal Film YouTube (1:05), it’s startlingly reminiscent of a similar scene in Christophe Honoré’s Seventeen Times Cécile Cassard (Dix-sept fois Cécile Cassard) (2002), specifically this extraordinary dance sequence, 17 fois Cécile Cassard - Christophe Honoré Bande annonce YouTube (2:13), only in this case one of the two men vying for her love and attention is her older brother Raimondo, apparently blind to “the consequences of love,” where the platonic yet incestuous element is more than a little unsettling, like a Greek tragedy.  Sorrentino bashes the audience with these extreme contrasts, where euphoria is often mixed with intentional discomfort, as the world is always a bit off-kilter, where no judgments are made in a dream, yet that rapturous element lingers in every frame of this film, where the music offers its own interior commentary of heartbreaking melancholy that can be chillingly prescient and poetic, “Everything was already foreseen,” "Era già tutto previsto" di Riccardo Cocciante YouTube (4:15), which Sorrentino allows to play in full.  The inner life of this impenetrable protagonist remains distanced and highly ambiguous, which some may assume is superficially slight, a gorgeous empty vase with nothing inside, contending this is a shallow exercise, all surface with little substance, or is it instead a vessel waiting to be filled, where contradictory emotions can transform into something deeper than itself, as her life is meant to be mysteriously uncertain, resistant to easy interpretation, recalling what is arguably the most debated shot in Yasijirō Ozu’s career, as seen in Late Spring (Banshun) (1949), a sequence that cuts between Noriko’s face and an empty vase, where her mood changes significantly from joy to tears, while the vase remains unchanged and timeless, like the incessant waves of the ocean, YouTube (8:25).

Coming from a wealthy, well-cultured family with a staggering view of the water, Parthenope is a breathtakingly beautiful, free-spirited woman, where the film is comprised of segmented episodes of her life, including a carefree, picture-perfect Capri summer, where love is always in the air, going to exclusive parties, or an outdoor picnic with a rich businessman who persistently hovers above in his helicopter until she accepts his invitation, PARTHENOPE (2024) - Official HD Scene Clip - In Cinemas ...  YouTube (1:55), with fleeting encounters with various men who get drawn in by her physical charms, including her own brother Raimondo, Parthenope di Paolo Sorrentino | Clip dal Film YouTube (45 seconds), discovering the dizzying freedom in the art of seduction, where she may be a victim of her own beauty, as his obsessive infatuation leads to a fatal passion.  It was Goethe himself who immortalized the phrase, “See Naples and then die.”  Her more surreal experiences include a nighttime walk among the Spanish quarters populated by prostitutes and decay, or witnessing a gambling den that becomes a theater of “fusion” between two Camorra families, featuring a fearfully innocent, naked young couple having a public sex ritual that is little more than a spectacle.  At one point, she meets gay alcoholic American writer John Cheever (Gary Oldman) on holiday in Capri, who reminds her, “Beauty, like war, opens doors,” yet refuses to allow her to get drawn into his sordid world, defiantly telling her, “I don’t want to steal even a moment of your youth,” but perhaps, most significantly, her life turns by discovering her intellect, where knowledge becomes part of her mystery, developing a professional relationship with a sullen university lecturer, anthropology Professor Marotta (Silvio Orlando, from Naples), who acts more as a father figure than her own father, taking her under his wing and allowing her to excel.  After being discovered in a local hotel restaurant for her beauty, however, she decides to give acting a try, referred to an eccentric acting coach Flora Malva (Isabella Ferrari), whose face remains hidden behind a veil after botched plastic surgery, while also meeting an embittered film star, Greta Cool (Luisa Ranieri, from Naples), who despises Naples and excoriates Neapolitans, despite being from there, both embodying the soul crushing effects of fame and notoriety, with Parthenope deciding that frivolous life is not for her.  But nothing is more improbable than her blasphemous encounter with a lecherous Bishop (Peppe Lanzetta, from Naples)), whose less than pious debauchery expresses how little the church actually matters anymore, becoming more of a public spectacle than a matter of religious faith, asking her “Do you love too much or too little?”  Driven by a desire to understand miracles, once perceived as miraculous herself, she seeks to understand the very forces she embodies, a disruptive force that typically normalizes over time.  Puzzled by the swirl of contradictory behavior, where even the church is predatory, she returns back to the professor, Parthenope di Paolo Sorrentino | Clip dal Film YouTube (36 seconds), becoming his assistant, where a life of academia awaits, a world where beauty and superficialities have no place, whose essential foundation is built upon ideas, where she can have the same effect upon the next generation as the professor had on her, literally opening up her life in new ways, where teaching offers the possibilities of a new future, growing more introspective, studying the very mystery she once represented.  With an unexpected dose of magical realism that imposes a childlike vision of wonder, the film has a tendency to meander at times, jumping through various timelines, with Stefania Sandrelli inhabiting her later years, as youth has finally abandoned her, exposing greater self-awareness and vulnerability, something we haven’t seen before from her character, yet there’s something in her philosophical forthrightness that sticks with viewers, like knowing your worth and finding your authentic voice, or answering a question with a question, Parthenope di Paolo Sorrentino | Clip dal Film YouTube (36 seconds).  A hymn to beauty and eternity, a love letter to a city, yet more than anything this film is an epic journey, an existential treatise on the fragmentary moments that shape one’s life, where certain things remain in our memory while others simply vanish, drawing viewers into a sacred relationship with memory and the passage of time. 

Note

The film is dedicated to Luca Canfora, the film’s costume designer, who died under mysterious circumstances on September 1, 2023 as filming started to wrap up.  His body was found in the waters off the island of Capri, initially ruled a suicide, but his family expresses skepticism and disputes this contention, urging greater investigation, Death imitates art as film designer’s body washes up on shores of Capri. 

Mank

 

Gary Oldman and Herman J. Mankiewicz

 

 

             

Orson Welles in Citizen Kane, 1941

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Orson Welles on the set of Citizen Kane, 1941

MANK                        C                                                                                                                USA  (131 mi)  2020  ‘Scope  d:  David Fincher

This is a business where the buyer gets nothing for his money but a memory.  What he bought still belongs to the man who sold it.  That’s the real magic of the movies.                                     —Louis B. Mayer (Arliss Howard), co-founder of MGM

Among the most cynically cold films in the Fincher repertoire, making this dead on arrival, despite the interest in reviving unchartered territory, as there is literally no one in the entire picture worth caring about, becoming a glamorized caricature of what might have happened behind the scenes when movie moguls were changing the face of the industry, creating highly appealing spectacles of entertainment that eventually became part of the mainstream culture.  Despite the Hollywood implications, this is a wretchedly sad story about legendary screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman), older brother of Joseph L. Mankiewicz who wrote and directed the scathing account of Hollywood backstabbing in ALL ABOUT EVE (1950), revealing how alcoholism consumes a person and his entire career before eventually claiming his life, left with nothing but feeble notions, hallucinations, and delirious tremors that leave you a shattered figure of your former self.  While this hints at the truth behind the writing of CITIZEN KANE (1941), that becomes a mere afterthought in this film, as the man who would be king is king for a day, winning an Academy Award for screenwriting (shared with Orson Welles) before the industry turns its wicked wrath upon him and spits him out as yesterday’s news.  Among the more pitiful pictures in recent memory, a portrait of a sad and forlorn figure who is even sadder than the behemoth giant portrayed in the movie, the larger-than-life portrayal of Charles Foster Kane as William Randolph Hearst, influential newspaper publisher and media mogul.  Written by the director’s father Jack Fincher, a journalist who died in 2003,  (Mank (2020) - Transcript - Scraps from the loft), showing scant affection for Welles, as if still holding a grudge, becoming a poison pen letter to a corrupt Hollywood of the 30’s, a cesspool run by over-privileged business tycoons who cared only about lining their own pockets, where this film is seen as a feeble attempt to fight back against the powers that be, yet indulges in the miserably self-absorbed, continually glorifying the artifice, wallowing in its own pathetic cloud of inebriation, blind to the horrors of the Depression, instead providing a hollow yet glamorized view of the millionaire movie moguls that controlled the industry.  With the hyperliterate Mankiewicz a towering figure walking among them, engaging in witty repartee, known for his biting sarcasm and free-spirited love of drink and gab, even Hearst enjoyed his dazzling conversation, so he fits right into an industry overflowing with magisterial self-indulgence and wealth, pampered by all the pleasures money can bring.  When we see him holed up in the middle of the Mojave desert with a nurse and secretary recovering from injuries suffered in an automobile accident (his leg broken in three places), including provisions (alcohol laced with Seconal) fit for an army regiment, he’s essentially given 60 days to produce a screenplay for the first film of new Hollywood wunderkind Orson Welles, all under the supervision of John Houseman (Sam Troughton), with Mankiewicz dictating to his secretary Rita Alexander (Lily Collins) who then types up the manuscript.  While it’s slow going at first, as he’s not easy to warm up to, continually plying himself with alcohol, subject to blackouts, he quickly makes progress on what is easily the greatest thing he’s ever written, a sprawling epic work that examines the life of an American newspaper tycoon who becomes one of the richest and most influential men in America, yet behind the scenes is a different story, a punishing portrait of a wrenchingly lonely and isolated man, never seemingly satisfied with all his wealth and riches, told with flashbacks, becoming a collection of fragments compressed by time and space, and from multiple points of view, where the daring visual design is all Welles. According to Mankiewicz, “You cannot capture a man’s entire life in two hours, you can only hope to leave the impression of one.”

The script is subject to historical Hollywood controversy where there are questions of authorship, with film critic Pauline Kael writing a legendary New Yorker essay in 1971 entitled Raising Kane where she attributes Mankiewicz as the sole and exclusive author, suggesting Welles’ grandiose claim of co-authorship is a power play on his part, actively plotting to deprive him of any screen credit, contributing little, if any, to the actual writing.  Rebuffing Kael’s argument is longtime Welles friend and admirer Peter Bogdanovich, who published his own essay entitled The Kane Mutiny in a 1972 article for Esquire that point-by-point disputes Kael’s argument, suggesting her refusal to consult Welles lacked all principles of scholarship, resulting in egregious errors with blatant damage to his reputation.  With various other film critics chiming in, like Andrew Sarris, Jonathan Rosenbaum, and Joseph McBride, it appears relatively clear that Mankiewicz wrote the original draft by himself, yet signed a contract giving up any claim to credit, but then changed his mind, subject to various rewrites by Welles, who had complete freedom to make whatever he wanted, suggesting in the end it was a collaborative process, with both named as co-writers of the film.  For the most part, Fincher chose the version that gave the most credit to Mankiewicz and the least credit to Welles, who is barely onscreen and never seen writing a single word of the script.  After receiving a shared Oscar, Mankiewicz quipped, “I am very happy to accept this award in Mr. Welles’s absence because the script was written in Mr. Welles’s absence.”  Fincher’s film doesn’t go into any of those details, ignoring any backstory about how he was selected, fully absorbed in the writing of the original script, suggesting Mankiewicz was extremely proud of his work, but it got bogged down in lawsuits, which eventually affected not only the script but the commercial aspirations of the film, as it was effectively sabotaged at the box office by the movie moguls who at the time controlled what was shown in theaters, opening the door for Hollywood to undercut Welles’s ambition within the industry, targeted by the right-leaning Hearst organization, with the moguls viewing him with leftist contempt, destroying his ending to THE MAGNIFICENT ANDERSONS (1942) and reshooting a new ending, which officially ended any relationship Welles may have had with Hollywood, as he felt betrayed in every respect.  The Mankiewicz career trajectory was quite different, establishing his reputation in the 20’s and 30’s as a theater critic and Berlin war correspondent before becoming a script doctor in Hollywood, called upon to add spicy dialogue, offering splashes of humor, even helping shepherd in the new wave of German émigré’s fleeing the Nazi’s in Europe, including Fritz Lang in FURY (1936), helping him make the American transition to Hollywood by speaking fluent German.  His career ended by basically putting Welles on the map, but in doing so soured all his Hollywood connections, biting the hand that fed him, burning all his bridges in the industry, exemplified in a single bravura scene at the Hurst mansion, a costume dinner party at San Simeon where he shows up uninvited and completely plastered, a court jester standing up to power, going on a lengthy drunken outburst that is cringeworthy and will forever alienate him from anyone left in the business, but he does have the last word, unceremoniously vomiting at this ultra-lavish dinner party where he is eventually shown the door by the host.  If anything, Mankiewicz seems to have thrown his entire career away in continual episodes of bad taste, going on drinking binges where he performs the part of the buffoon, but in the end no one is laughing.

A pale comparison to Welles’ last film The Other Side of the Wind (2018), which is a behind-the-scenes look at some of the characters within the Welles theatrical troupe, exaggerated in all their pomp and glory, consumed by alcohol to the point of dysfunction, but Welles has so much more to offer than Fincher, whose film is strangulating in its own pretentiousness, creating an empty and meaningless experience.  Fincher tries to paint a portrait of Mank as a visionary, one that is hard to believe, as he was a man that seemingly admired both Hearst and Welles, and was just as much a maverick as Welles, with both rubbing elbows with the movie moguls, including Hearst (Charles Dance) along with his partner and muse, actress Marion Davies (Amanda Seyfried), where the wealth and richesse of Hollywood was their social class during the Depression, surrounding themselves in pretense and self-indulgence.  In fact KANE and MANK cohabit many of the same spaces, but no clips are shown in the film, instead Fincher searches for the origins of the inventive screenplay by replaying various episodes in the life of Mankiewicz, a Hollywood insider with access to fame and fortune, but a gambling impulse left him perpetually in debt, who likely sees things quite differently than the millionaire class of moguls.  When the banks closed during the Depression, Louis B. Mayer (Arliss Howard) tearfully asks his employees to take a temporary 50 percent pay cut, promising to make his workers whole when the banks reopen, but of course, no repayment ever occurred.  Mankiewicz refused to join the Screen Writers Guild, believing unions were for suckers, but in this case the workers were certainly duped out of their salaries.  Like KANE, much of this film is told in flashbacks, making multiple diversions, becoming bogged down in the trappings of the movie industry, shot digitally in black and white by Erik Messerschmidt, including multiple scenes in near darkness, where Mankiewicz breaks from the political crassness when the industry becomes a walking advertisement for political shenanigans, becoming a voice of liberal dissent in a room full of conservative Republicans, drawing a parallel between the glorious ideals of Upton Sinclair, a muckraking novelist and an outspoken socialist who the industry slays into submission through discrediting negative advertisements that play in theaters across the state when he ran for Governor of California promising to end poverty, turning him into the bogeyman, but his valiant idealism isn’t so far removed from Hearst himself as a young novice trying to have an influence in reshaping the world, or for that matter the brash new visionary upstart in Orson Welles.  Pity that Hearst had to use all his power to destroy young ambition in its tracks, where a shattered idealism becomes intertwined with his own unfulfilled ambitions, leaving a giant void in the heart of the empire, where his castle-like estate is a collection of museum-like art pieces collected from around the globe, but does any of it hold any real meaning?  What this film lacks is what pervades throughout KANE, a personal perspective, an inner drive, something to cut through the emotional coldness and deep cynicism of Mankiewicz, whose openly hostile remarks are contentiously sarcastic and absurdly flippant, but instead Oldman delivers a performance that never convinces, continually uttering glorified phrases that sound nothing like how people really talk, lacking warmth and any real personal connection to anyone, at one point exclaiming “every moment of my life is treacherous.”  In stark contrast, the ingenious script for KANE is legendary, originating in such a desolate place in the middle of nowhere, creating something akin to a revolutionary work.  For Mankiewicz, the confessional tone of the screenplay he wrote was his ultimate expiation.