Le quattro giornate di Napoli

Whereas ’O SOLE MIO represents the first, and decidedly more melodramatic and intimate cinematic treatment of the Four Days of Naples, the eponymous Nanni Loy epic shot sixteen years later stands as the definitive take on this historical event. For a start, Loy follows the historical timeline faithfully. After the 1943 Italian armistice, various leaderless remnants of the Italian army around Naples scramble into the city. Several Italian officers desert their posts and flee in panic. German invaders quickly overrun the city and start wreaking havoc, destroying property and rounding up male citizens for deportation to German labor camps. Unlike the cowardly officers, the people of Naples refuse to bow. Aware that the Allies are close and liberation imminent, they revolt against the Germans and, over four bloody days of rebellion, manage to expel the occupiers before the Allies even arrive. Nanni Loy’s restless camera depicts all these events as a hymn to the movement of the masses – as one single, extended action sequence that glorifies the collective antifascist hero and a neorealist monument to the concept of urban guerrilla warfare. Nominated for an Academy Award, LE QUATTRO GIORNATE DI NAPOLI was also released in the States where some of the critics – baffled by the film’s violent immediacy and sense of authenticity – went so far to call it a documentary.