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. 

The Conformist (Il Conformista)

Dominique Sanda on the set of The Conformist (1970) with director Bernardo Bertolucci

THE CONFORMIST (Il Conformista)             A                    

Italy  France  Germany  (107 mi)  1970  d:  Bernardo Bertolucci           

restored in 1995 to (111 mi)

A marriage of direction and cinematography, this is one of the more sumptuously beautiful films in all of cinema, an extraordinarily stylized mix of sexualization and politics that become fused in a cinematic explosion, a candidate for one of the greatest films ever made, perhaps the singlemost influential movie of our times, without which we would not have Coppola’s APOCALYPSE NOW (1979), with the director insisting upon the same cinematographer after having seen this film, or THE GODFATHER (1971, 1974, 1990) saga, which utilizes the same luxurious richness of color along with similar attention to costumes and art design.  Along the lines of CITIZEN KANE (1941), Bertolucci’s film is a monumental collaboration of artistic expression on a grand scale, utilizing the breathtaking photography of Vittorio Storaro, the exquisite elegance of art director Ferdinando Scarfiotti, and the sublime 1930’s-era French costume designs by Gitt Magrini, not to mention a musical score from Georges Delerue.  One of the memorable central scenes of the film was even recreated in a Soprano’s (1999 – 2007) third season episode entitled Pine Barrens directed by Steve Buscemi.  Adapting a 1947 novel by Italian writer Albert Moravia, who also wrote the novel that inspired Godard’s CONTEMPT (1963), the author is known for his psychological realism and open treatment of sexuality that reflect the anxieties of contemporary times.  Moravia’s novel was inspired by the 1937 assassination of two of his cousins in Paris who had been working for the French resistance movement.  Opening in 1938 in Rome, the story concerns a central protagonist Marcello Clerici (Jean-Louis Trintignant), who identifies with the prevailing political group in power and tries to normalize himself behind a mask of fascist aristocracy, who is petrified at the idea he is a homosexual, making him feel different, like he has something to hide from the world.  While the reasons aren’t initially clear, we learn through flashbacks that he’s been traumatized by a childhood incident where he was sexually abused by a family chauffeur, Pasqualino “Lino” Seminara, Pierre Clémenti from BELLE DE JOUR (1967), where Clerici accidentally shot him with his own gun, continually thinking of himself afterwards as a killer and an assassin. 

The restless inner workings underneath the narrative continually altering the time structure hold an essential key to understanding what is a remarkable character study.  Tormented by memories of his childhood, history intrudes into Clerici’s real life, where the often repressed subconscious rises out of its hibernation with a powerful impact.  While the actual structure of the film may not have been determined until the editing room, Bertolucci adopts a complicated flashback technique, constantly shifting backwards and forwards in time, reflecting Clerici’s anxiety-ridden state of mind, as the director’s love for extended sequences are constantly interrupted by informative childhood flashback sequences that comment upon the present, where his family life was also marked by equally decadent and mentally unstable parents.  These experiences have left him feeling uneasy and uncomfortable in his own skin, where Clerici’s response to his clearly dysfunctional childhood is to hide from it by acting as normal as possible.  To this end, Clerici embraces Italian fascism and joins the Secret Service, where to be a conformist is to be a fascist.  It is not enough, however to join the ranks of the organization, as instead his role is to seek out anti-fascists, where he is assigned the job to assassinate his former teacher, leftist Professor Quadri (Enzo Tarascio), who has fled to Paris in exile where his powerful voice constantly railing against Mussolini must be silenced.  In contrast to the claustrophobic look of Italy, Paris is expressed as the city of freedom and openness, a veritable fashion center of the world suddenly bursting with a surreal use of color, an altered sense of reality, perfectly represented by the professor’s wife, Dominique Sanda as Anna, the French wife of an intellectual with lesbian tendencies, who represents glamor and beauty, everything Clerici refuses to be, as she is the exact opposite of the wife he chooses.  Stefania Sandrelli is Giulia, equally beautiful but a thoughtless, conventional-minded woman who avoids asking questions about his career, the most perfectly content middle class wife for Clerici who craves a traditional marriage, one whose entire background is grounded in family, church, position, and moral values.  Clerici uses his own honeymoon in Paris as the time and place to carry out his assignment, where the newlyweds take a train ride to Paris with the sunlight bursting through the window, accompanied by fellow Italian agent Manganiello (Gastone Moschin) who follows his every move throughout, handing him a gun with a silencer at the Italian-French border.     

Trintignant is such a perfect choice, immersing himself in the role, as he’s an actor who specializes in being an everyman who can pass through the streets unnoticed, yet exudes intelligence, remaining quietly thoughtful and reflective.  As Clerici he’s something of a ghost of a human being, carrying around his hidden secrets inside him that churn around in his anxious and unsettled frame of mind, like his secret attraction to Anna, who is introduced earlier in brief sequences, once in the fascist ministry and again in an Italian brothel, where she exists almost as a fantasy, an ideal woman who exists in a mystery.  Bertolucci’s recreation of Paris in the 30’s shows his love for such a grand period of cinema, reflected in the sensuality of the women’s costumes and their indulgence into Parisian glamor, where not everything is seen in a conscious way, but the continual brilliance of the atmospheric mood intercedes into reality.  In this vein, one of the strangest scenes in the film is Clerici’s Italian wedding party, called the “dance of the blind” sequence, which was initially cut in the Italian release, but was actually shot in an underground basement location where you can see the feet of people walking by through the street-level windows, a graphic representation of the subconscious.  In addition, it includes a large group of blind people in sunglasses, friends of Italo (José Quaglio), Clerici’s blind friend, a fascist that runs a radio station, a reflection of the blind populace that voted for Mussolini, yet the banquet scene is shot in an exotic party atmosphere with streamers and different colored hanging Chinese lanterns.  Clerici visits his parents before he leaves for Paris, where his mother is a morphine addict living in a decaying villa surrounded by unswept leaves blowing in the wind while his father is confined to an insane asylum, shown in an outdoor scene at the Palazzo dei Congressi, originally constructed for the 1942 world’s fair, but cancelled due to Italy’s involvement in the war.  Bertolucci utilizes the surviving architecture and décor of the period, where this EUR (Esposizione Universale Roma) district in Rome is a remnant of the architectural dream of Mussolini, as it was built to celebrate twenty years of fascism. 

Armond White from The New York Press, Before The Devolution | Manhattan, New York ... - NY Press      

Three geniuses teamed up to create The Conformist: director Bernardo Bertolucci, cinematographer Vittorio Storaro and designer Ferdinando Scarfiotti. Their 1970 collaboration was as momentous as the work of Welles & company on Citizen Kane, showing a new generation how to look at movies. This was quite a feat after the many high-art film innovations of the 50s and 60s. BSS synthesized it all—playing with edited time, color, space, form—and then upped the stakes: taking modern cinema back to the arch romanticism of the silent era. In 1970 no one had ever seen a color movie that was as much a visual phenomenon. And it’s still a knock-out. This week’s rerelease at Film Forum proves that The Conformist has been the single most influential movie of the past 35 years.

It came before the de-volution. Bertolucci, Storaro and Scarfiotti worked with the belief (now gradually eroding in the digitial-video age) that cinema was, foremost, a visual art form; that its richest meanings and distinctive impact were the result of images. Images designed to amaze, ideas expressed through illustration, emotion conveyed through the tonalities of light. All that is now taken for granted through today’s barbaric video practices where indie films look like home movies. Watching The Conformist is, more than ever, like being a starving man widening his eyes at a king’s feast. The mist-shrouded view of the Eiffel Tower, the stroboscopic train ride, the high-contrast scenes in a radio studio and many other memorable sequences reawaken one’s senses. You seem to taste “cinema” for the first time.

By the time Clerici contacts the professor in Paris, cineastes will appreciate that the professor’s address and phone number actually belonged to none other than French New Wave filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard.  While he’s immediately attracted to the professor’s wife, she’s more interested in spending time with Giulia, seen pampering her on a Parisian shopping spree throughout the afternoon while Clerici has his private meeting with the professor, reminding him of his college thesis on the myth of Plato’s cave (Allegory of the Cave), shifting the light in the room, becoming a standing shadow himself, beautifully visualizing a metaphor while commenting on the illusions of politics and sexual desire.  In the myth, enchained prisoners see reflections of themselves on the walls of a cave illuminated by a burning fire, mistaking their shadows for reality.  It’s a unique separation of light and darkness, between the divine and a human being, where light is a form of consciousness, while darkness reveals the unknown, something that must remain hidden.  Clerici’s privately repressed lust for Anna is revealed through peep-hole sequences, where he’s seen spying on her in various states of undress, where both she and the professor are aware of Clerici’s fascist sympathies and the danger he represents, where Anna’s pursuit of Giulia may largely be for the benefit of Clerici’s roving male eyes.  Both women dress extravagantly for an evening dinner and dance engagement, where the virtuosity of Bertolucci’s gliding camera style is especially evident in the operatic dance sequence bathed in a sensuous texture as the two women are entwined in a feverish, erotically charged dance that unleashes itself in an orgiastic frenzy.  This leads to a scene in the snowy woods the following day, exhibiting some of the most exquisite use of light and shadow in a motion picture, where the assassination attempt is eloquently photographed as cinematic art — glorious, powerful, and dramatically effective.  With sunlight streaming through the trees, the set-up itself is breathtaking to behold, where time literally stops when the optimum moment is at hand.  In the lingering stillness, the psychological intrigue accelerates through the agitated inner workings of the killer’s mind, with the viewer wondering where his sympathies lie, but the seemingly peaceful calm is broken by the decisive brutality of the events, turning into one of the more stunning scenes of the film. 

While the entire film is shot in a dizzying array of crisscrossing angles that parallel the freely moving flashback technique, it’s a fairly simplistic story told in a beguilingly complex manner, delving into all manner of Freudian psychosexual issues concerning a confused and cowardly man who has for years tried to be as inconspicuous as possible, vowing to “build a normal life” for himself, yet his very soul hinges on the thought of sexual panic.  The extreme aesthetic, with an elaborate color scheme, exotic use of light, and the grandeur of nature on display seem to taunt Clerici’s narrowly skewed interests, where the moral turmoil of his political and sexual confusion eventually become overwhelming, especially as time jumps ahead to the fascist defeat, which completely undercuts his fabricated life and everything he’s stood for, exposing his failures, along with others like him whose unquestioned following of a brutal regime allowed fascism to flourish.  In the aftermath of Mussolini’s death, when he suddenly sees the man on the street that he thought he had killed earlier in his life, Lino the chauffeur, still alive and trying to seduce another young man, he becomes unhinged, as if he has an internal explosion, publicly denouncing all his former friends as traitors, homosexuals, and murderous accomplices.  While the film is an indictment of hypocrisy and fascism, not to mention conformism as a means of finding a safe haven, it is also a tragic psychosexual descent into utter futility, as all his life Clerici’s constant desire to sacrifice his values and surround himself in a normal life of anonymity was based on the idea that he was different, that he was molested and abused, little more than damaged goods in an otherwise decent and moral society.  Liberation has always been conformity’s constant enemy, and now suddenly he finds himself alone in a world that makes no sense, where he’s a stranger literally to himself, unaccepted by the new prevailing order, refusing to identify with the collaborating enemy within, shaking his feeble, weak-willed spirit to the core, where his biggest fear rises to the surface and once again looms mysteriously over his life, powerless to turn away, lost in an ambiguous fog of illusion, paralyzed, helpless and impotent.