For the series «Cinema di Carta» of the Sicilian publisher Algra, Franco La Magna’s volume «Giovanni Verga and the“ punishment of God ”has recently been published. For a history of the relationship between cinema and fiction ». The essay retraces the stages of the complex dialogue of Verga’s works with the seventh art in particular and with representation in general, up to parody, documentary, television. A weaving of encounters that is lined with better-known and lesser-known names. Made of memories and testimonies. Passages and returns. All intertwined around characters that have now entered the collective imagination. Statuary and reluctant. With their immediately evocative characters of precise human types that have become legend. Verga’s writing met the gaze and reading of very different directors. Each has made it a renewed and distinct means of expression. Because the lenses change. And perspectives change. Also in relation to the progress of time. Yet the hard core, the significant knot remains the same. Rendered with precision and fidelity or disguised and revisited. Today, the pages of this essay and their documented notes are an invitation to reflect on the great, hypnotic love that cinema had for Verga’s works.
A fatal attraction that is easily explained: the faces of Verga seem born for the cinema. They are leather, earth, blood. Crushed sun. Unexpected candor. Fury that falls in the dust. Lives not “in” strong colors, but “in” strong colors. Of blaring drunkenness like rage and sleepy rage like drunkenness. Men and women with hearts open to the scene, finely crafted wooden puppet at the tip of a knife. Not cerebral as in Pirandello, Verga’s attitude is instinctual, sensitive. Fervent heartbeat, direct drive, rough heartbeat. Raw like hand-woven linen. Smelling of oregano that runs along the paths. Urticant like the nettle that dominates the uncultivated. Musical as a proverb. Bewitched mixture that is an irresistible attraction for representation. In fact, “mise en abîme” which triggers itself. Inevitable dramaturgical detonation. Unmediated emotional supernova. Disruption of the conscience that goes beyond the hand that writes.
Advance for key moments. And it would be a serious mistake to think that this is simply the search for the highlight. Of the sensational effect. There is nothing simple here. Rather, we find ourselves spectators of a sudden rise. The clear formation of a state of affairs. And, to follow, the clear emergence of a friction. A clash of glasses. A look that is too short or a pause that is too long. In this aesthetic setting, everyday life is crowded with symbols. The campaigns come alive with forebodings. The seasons become constellations to be deciphered, marked by rural rituals. And everything speaks. As much as human beings and even more than them. A talk that comes from the bottom of the sand quarry. From a touch of the bell. From the devoted attention of a dog. From the rhythmic step of a donkey. From a sudden gust. Full and empty. The crowd and the endless going of the burnt and lonely plain. The sea. The gray stone stairs. It is not a landscape of half measures. Between the terracotta laughter and the high-pitched whistles that protrude into the air. In the dark thunderstorm roar that is a pause suspended in the continuity of the devouring and pictorial summer. And everywhere, that impatient light that invades the eyes and confuses and that on certain days, certainly marked by destiny, seems to generate a temporary and unexpected blindness. Steep surfaces and slippery edges where each edge is sharp. Narration that remains a tightrope to the extreme. And that suddenly breaks and falls back. I remember that it worries and gives in to the patience that comes back, realigns, slows down.