REGNO DI NAPOLI
NEAPOLITANISCHE GESCHWISTER
Regno di Napoli is constructed as a family chronicle and is played out in and around a poor neighbourhood in the southern Italian city of Naples between the years of 1943 and 1972. It focusses upon brother and sister Massimo and Vittoria who, as their names imply (meaning «the great» and «victory»), become allegorical but ironic figures in the film. Allegorical because they embody wider social phenomena such as the conflict between politics and religion within the confines of the domestic sphere. Ironic because, despite the resilience these children demonstrate as they pass through life from childhood to adulthood, they are ultimately unable to rise very far out of the misery into which they are born in post-war Italy: perhaps a comment on Italy itself. Massimo and Vittoria become the material and mortal emblems of the eternal struggle against poverty. By adopting a style clearly influenced by Italian Neo-Realism, Schroeter cleverly uses these individual stories to parallel and comment upon wider historical events, as they occur in Italy over the period of the film. Schroeter makes use of a voice-over chronicler, who comments upon the wider historical context at two-yearly intervals, and won the 1979 German Film Prize for best direction for this remarkable film. (Michelle Langford)
- Romeo Giro - Massimo Pagano als Kind
- Antonio Orlando - Massimo als Jugendlicher
- Tiziana Ambretti - Vittoria Pagano als Kind
- Maria Antoniella Riegel - Vittoria als Jugendliche
- Cristina Donadio - Vittoria als junge Frau
- Dino Melé - Vater Pagano
- Renata Zamengo - Mutter Pagano
- Werner Schroeter
- Wolf Wondratscheck
- Thomas Mauch
- Tommaso Quattrini
- Werner Schroeter
- Ursula West
- Roberto Predagio
- Franco Calabrese
- Alberte Barsacq
Werner Schroeter, Peter Berling, Dieter Geissler, P.B. Cinematografica Rom
