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Cast members of mafia film head for jail
Actors in realist film Gomorrah have mafia links
Policemen inspect weapons seized during a crackdown on the mafia in Caserta, southern Italy, recently.
Rome: It has been hailed as the most realistic screen depiction of the mafia ever made, a gritty affair with an almost documentary-like quality that has been tipped for Oscar glory after winning second prize at Cannes. But if the Italian film Gomorrah does pick up any Academy Awards, its director, Matteo Garrone, may be without a cast member or two to cheer him on. Since the movie opened in Italy, two have been arrested and a third is being investigated over allegations of real-life mafia involvement.
To maximise realism, Mr. Garrone cast a number of locals from Naples’s most crime-ridden suburbs in several roles. Bernardino Terracciano (53), who plays Uncle Bernardino in the film, was seized on Saturday on suspicion of extorting protection money and having ties to the Casalesi clan, part of the Camorra mafia, which has terrorised small towns north of Naples this year in a campaign that culminated in the shooting of six African migrants on September 18.
His arrest follows that of Giovanni Venosa, who plays another boss in the film and who was detained in July on suspicion of playing the same role in real life. A third actor plucked from the streets of Naples to play a hit man, who is seen in the film bursting into a sun-tanning parlour and opening fire, is being investigated for drug dealing, the Italian newspaper Il Giornale has reported. Mr. Garrone has said he approached the film as if it were a “war documentary” where “the director is invisible” and which works “on an emotional level, not a rational level”. He cast theatrical actors alongside known cinema stars like Toni Servillo, combining them with a handful of Neapolitans with little or no acting experience hired on the spot, a formula he used in an earlier film set outside Naples, L’Imbalsamatore, or The Embalmer.
One actor in Gomorrah, a fruit and vegetable seller in real life who was cast as an aspiring mobster, made his first ever trip outside Naples to help promote the film in Cannes. After deciding to use Neapolitan dialect for the dialogue, Mr. Garrone then added subtitles in Italian for the film’s domestic release.
One murder scene filmed in a rough Naples neighbourhood was videoed by locals using mobile phones and circulated, prompting a police investigation. “I met bosses who showed me that footage on their cell phones and told me that in addition to carrying out hits, from now on they would film them too,” said Mr. Garrone.
The mob has long provided a rich seam for film-makers, and like mobsters around the world the Casalesi have been inspired by on-screen mafiosi, notably Al Pacino in Scarface. Walter Schiavone, a senior boss, gave an architect a video of the film and told him to build a replica of the villa in which Al Pacino is murdered by rivals. — © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2008
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