We Believed

Mario Martone staged his first show, “Faust”, in 1976, and two years later founded the Falso Movimento theatre company. In 1982 he gained considerable renown with “Tango glaciale”, which rounded off a cycle of productions that began with “Dallas 1983”, “Rosso Texaco” and “Controllo totale”: the protagonists are the urban fabric of the city and the individuals that populate it, while the music and images melt together in a cross-contamination that explores the possibilities offered by the languages of the different media. These ideas are picked up again in “Otello” (1982) and even more so in “Il desiderio preso per la coda” (1985) inspired by Picasso, “Coltelli nel cuore” (1986) inspired by Brecht, “Ritorno ad Alphaville” (1986) by Godard. In 1986 a new theatre group was founded, Teatri Uniti, for which he directed many works, from “Philoctetes (Filottete)” (1987) by Sofocles to Shakespeare’s “Richard II (Riccardo II)” (1993). Meanwhile, after experimenting with film in 1980 with a number of videos and trying his hand with a 16mm short film dedicated to 17th century Naples “Nella città barocca” (1984), Martone’s debut feature length film came in 1992 with “Death of a Neapolitan mathematician (Morte di un matematico napoletano)”: centred around the final days of Neapolitan scientist Renato Caccioppoli, who committed suicide, the film attracted critical applause and won the special jury prize at Venice. After the medium-length film of theatrical inspiration, “Rasoi” (1993), came “Nasty love (L’amore molesto)” (1995), an intense portrait of a woman set in a baroque, sensual Naples, with a remarkable support cast. In 1998 he directed “Rehearsals for war (Teatro di guerra)” – adapted from the stage play “Seven against Thebes (I sette contro Tebe)” by Aeschylus –a thought-provoking work that adroitly brings together the most disparate themes (the rivalry between actors, the mechanisms of power, the conflict tearing apart Sarajevo). Six years on, “The scent of blood (L’odore del sangue)” (2004) – an adaptation of the posthumous novel by Goffredo Parise – analyzes the disintegration of a cultured middle class couple, under the banner of debauched, dark eroticism: the film does not number among the director’s best because of its unwillingness to face full-on the difficulty of the situations and the troublesome long-windedness of the characters. With “Noi credevamo” (2010), the Neapolitan movie-maker produced a vigorous and original fresco of the Risorgimento epic. —RAI