The Camorra player, the missing series of Giuseppe Tornatore arrives

In 1985 Giuseppe Tornatore he was making his first film, The Camorra with Ben Gazzara, inspired by the investigative book by Joe Marrazzo. Then a giant of film production, Goffredo Lombardo of Titanus, took the future Oscar winner under his arm. The 30-year-old challenged himself by simultaneously shooting the film and the TV series, which never aired. At the Rome Film Festival two of the five episodes were presented, in a restored and re-edited version by the same Tornator.

«At the time it was a risky operation and ahead of its time: we were in 1985 and the fever of seriality was still far away”observes the director of New Cinema Paradiso, «I agreed to shoot the series too because it was the only way I could make the film I wanted. Unfortunately The Camorra it didn’t have an easy life due to the hot topics it dealt with and disappeared from circulation a few weeks after its release in cinemas”, says Tornatore, “the distributors never aired the series and then it was lost in the warehouses”.

Today, after almost forty years, The Camorra – the series comes back to life and will soon be released on one of the channels Mediaset. For the time the film, which was based on Cutolo’s life, was a shock: it was about camorra, killings, political collusion, prisons and crime. «Until then, few titles had been made about the Camorra. There was The Godfather by Coppola on the mafia and some other examples”, explains Tornatore, “The book by Joe Marrazzo it told how it was born and evolved a criminal organization. Tackling such a powerful topic seems to me an act of courage and denunciation”.

When the film was released «it was well received by critics, but the first ones arrived complaints from Cutolo and the councillor Ciro Cirillo»continues the director, «The Camorra disappeared from the theaters and after nine years of hearings the court acquitted us. Lombardo was disappointed, but wasn’t surprised because he considered it a burning film which also spoke of collusion between the Camorra and the secret services.” The cinema that has dealt with this matter “has helped us to understand it better and fight it with more awareness”, he is convinced Tornator who hasn’t signed a TV series since then.

«I have no prejudices, I came close a couple of times», he states, and the director also confesses that he occasionally glances at “serial” titles: «I’m not obsessed, I’ve seen the first True Detective And The Queen of Chess». Gomorrah instead? «Only the film of Garrone and I loved it”. On artificial intelligence, Tornatore is more direct: «It is rough applied to creativity».