“There’s places where you go to that once is enough. And then there’s Napoli.” That’s John Turturro speaking, in the quirky actor-director’s first documentary. He describes “Passione,” accurately, as a musical adventure. The film, much like 1999’s “Buena Vista Social Club,” a doc that explored the music of Cuba and to which Turturro explicitly compares his own, surveys the sound of the 2,800-year-old Italian city. It opened this weekend at the West End Cinema.
He’s been there many times himself, both for work (a play) and for pleasure. He was approached to do “Passione” after the success of his 2005 film, “Romance and Cigarettes,” a New York-set musical starring James Gandolfini, Susan Sarandon and Kate Winslet that he says people really “got.” He plunged into the project with pleasure. “I worked with journalists and musicologists for two years, while I was doing other things,” he reports. He listened to thousands of songs. “Naples is the granddaddy to many musical cities: Detroit, New Orleans, Havana.” Some of its traditional melodies are centuries-old. “It’s a fascinating place. This was the most fun experience I’ve ever had working on a film,” says Turturro, whom you’ll also see on-screen in “Transformers: Dark of the Moon”
Much of that is likely owed to the people of Naples. There are wealthy areas of the city, of course, but there’s also a lot of poverty and even natural disasters — it’s close to two volcanic regions. “People are still quite vibrant in the face of all of this. It reminds you what it is to be alive,” Turturro says. “In America, people, myself included, always have their foot on the gas.” In Naples, people really take the time to enjoy, say, “a fantastic cup of coffee.”
The film opens with one of its most colorful citizens. A rather large woman in a yellow track suit welcomes us to Naples, and then commences a dance. “She’s a street person. She was bothering me,” Turturro laughs. So he finally said, “You keep interrupting the film, so why don’t we just film you?”
“Passione” showcases a very diverse group, from street people to professional musicians, some well-known there, some up-and-coming. “They’re great musicians, but above all, great storytellers. It comes out of their souls and the ground they’re standing on,” Turturro says, with a bit of awe. The film is a mix of past and present, with almost two dozen musical numbers in between. In one, a man sings a passionate song of longing on the beach. The director wondered how ordinary people enjoying the sun would respond. “The guy has a problem, he’s singing about it, it’s no big deal,” he says with a chuckle. “They were almost like perfect extras.” He asked a local why there wasn’t more of a reaction. The response? “This is normal for them.”
“It is the biggest musical city in a really musical country. A lot of famous operas were premiered at the San Carlo opera house in the 1700 to 1800s,” he says. He’s enjoyed screening the film in his native New York. “It’s nice to share something that is expanding and not reductive.”
For the Italian-American actor, “Passione” is something of a homecoming. “If you’re Italian-American, you don’t know what you are, because you’re a mixed bag, there are so many influences there.” Turturro’s Sicilian mother was musical, an amateur jazz singer. “She sang for the love of it,” he says. “My mother’s not alive now, but I really felt her over my shoulders in this movie.”
