It has often happened in the history of cinema that the narrative starting point came from fundamental texts, first of all the Bible. It also happened that the cinema has provided innumerable ideas for television and, recently, it also happens that television offers ideas for cinema. Last week we just wrote about The Place, which has fully taken up the script of a successful American TV series. Good ideas, however, always come from reality which, more often than not, surpasses any boundless imagination.
In recent days, a significant event was proposed which met with great success in theaters: the cinematographic preview presentation for only two days of the third Gomorrah TV series, inspired by the well-known novel by Roberto Saviano, broadcast tonight on Sky Atlantic. Two new episodes of the upcoming season were shown on the big screen. The fundamental ingredients that have decreed the fortune of this television product - sold all over the world, in over 160 countries - are always the same: excellent direction – first by Stefano Sollima and now by Claudio Cupellini and Francesca Comencini – impeccable screenplay, excellent cast (the usual Marco D'amore in Ciro di Marzio, Salvatore Esposito in Genny Savastano, Cristiana Dell'Anna in Patrizia Santoro and other excellent actors), tight deadlines, musical base always well coupled with the images, suggestive locations , lights and photography of great quality. All features that, of course, have been fully enhanced on the big screen.
On the merits of the events, we are in the full swing of a well-established narrative: war for organized gangs in the world of crime in Campania. Everything takes place in the suburbs, see once again the Vele di Scampia, as well as the historic ones in the center of Naples are evoked: Forcella first. Everything, as always, without the shadow of anything resembling Law or Justice. If ever a figure from the Forces of Order appears, as in one of the new episodes seen at the cinema, it is a border policeman who seems to close one or more eyes to illicit trafficking. Not only gang wars are told but also fierce generational conflicts, between fathers and sons, between old friendships shattered on the altar of economic interests and power, between ethnic groups, between human dramas still alive in the daily news.
In cinema, as in literature, in television, few invent something truly innovative, which did not exist before. The Gomorrah series still takes its place in the full swing of a social story where more or less organized crime is the absolute protagonist: see Romanzo Criminale as well as Suburra. But, in fact, nothing new: in past years it was the mafia genre that dominated the screens with The Godfather in the lead, to go back to the well-known films of the gangster movie genre which began at the dawn of cinema, where the mafias represented were Irish, rather Russian what Japanese. In short, the television or film genre we are talking about has enjoyed and still enjoys great fortune. It is legitimate to ask why, it is difficult to find an answer. You can try, however, from tonight on television for the next 12 Fridays.
