Anthropological Anxieties: Roberta Torre’s Critique of Mafia Violence

Abstract

Throughout most of the 1980s and 1990s, film critics in Italy repeatedly declared Italian cinema to be dead or dying. Lamenting the passing of an era in which the national cinema had enjoyed worldwide prestige, these commentators offered a scathing dismissal of “il cinema carina,” the blandly appealing yet ultimately shallow films that they identified as the dominant trend among an emerging generation of Italian directors. In a cinematic environment perceived as deficient in innovation and artistic vision, it is hardly surprising that the bracing originality of Roberta Torre’s Tana da marire (1997), an exuberant, stylistically complex musical about the Mafia, attracted immediate critical attention upon its release. Set in the crime-ridden streets of Palermo and performed by a nonprofessional cast, this vibrant production was the first feature directed by Torre, a young Milanese filmmaker currently living in Sicily, whose previous experience was in documentaries and short subjects. While the film’s flamboyant aesthetics and grotesque humor won rave reviews, a small number of dissenting voices took objection to its lighthearted approach to Mafia violence. Tana da marire thus marked the director’s emergence as an innovative if potentially controversial presence on the Italian filmmaking scene.