Zamora, Neri Marcorè and the social meaning of Fòlber

Translated by Angela Tagliafierro

Since the last April 04^th the cinemas have been showing Zamora, Neri Marcorè’s first experience behind the camera. He is not the only Italian actor to have parachuted into the film industry's most famous profession in recent times. As a matter of fact, before him, at the end of last November, the talented Paola Cortellesi brought the struggle and tenacity of Italian women after World War II to the screen with the must-see film There’s still tomorrow (C'è ancora domani).

Marcorè proves his artistic knowledge and his taste in this film about Milan and the Lombards. It is the epic of the young people who used to move, and still do, from the countryside or the near towns to the cities looking for a job or pushed by the circumstances. Scared and excited at the same time for leaving the warm nest to pour into a world of competition and work completely different from the one they were used to.

Marcoré decides to stress the deserved importance of an element which is now an essential feature of the Italian culture: the football, called fòlber in the film. This word has not been chosen by chance. As a matter of fact, the word is a neologism coined at the beginning of the seventies by the journalist and writer Gianni Brera, the one who firstly introduced the football in literature. By now three years ago, Tony Damascelli wrote in an article on ilgiornale.it:

Sofisti started to read, shaking his white-hair-head and blushing even more, subtitle, title and summary dictated by Gianni Brera for the death of Giuseppe Meazza: 'Blossomed in Lombardy from the confused (and rather battered) ethnos of the poor'.

“Peppìn Meazza was the fòlber”.

“He had slumped shoulders and cows' knees, but he had the feline wit of the juggler sleeping inside him, who would suddenly crack up, leaving opponents and the public stunned — With him, Italian football overcame the phase of provincial coarseness to rise to European level — At the 1938 World Cup, which Italy won again, he was called a grand peintre du football”.

The understanding of how much fòlber shaped and changed the life of most of the Italian people is the genius of the film. Our country had the Agnelli, the first to understand the potentiality of the football market, investing in the Italian players and, above all, looking for them abroad. It had Berlusconi, who used his team, Milan, to persuade a million of voters to vote for him. It had the Serie A, among the top 5 of the championship in the world.

As the film goes on, it shows some famous Italian people I was not expecting to see together (outside their comic groups): Giovanni Storti*, Ale & Franz, Giacomo Poretti, Giovanni Esposito, Antonio Catania and many others. To see them outside their iconic characters: Giovanni and Giacomo with Aldo, Ale & Franz on the bench of Zelig Circus**, Antonio Catania, who made us laugh and enthuse along with René Ferretti about 'boorish' Italian cinema in Boris, and I could go on, positively amazed me.

The choice of the lead actors, which Italian cinema always gets wrong, here instead is spot on; the chemistry created in the picture is strong and harmonious even when the scenes are tense or violent. Alberto Paradossi, Marta Gastini and Anna Ferraioli Ravel meet and clash on screen, succeeding in demonstrating how change in the lives of Italians is uncommon but very useful.

All the actors involved talk about Milan in the sixties, the setting, the continuous fog and the rain of the Po Valley, talk to the viewer authentically. The group of older people sitting at the bar with a newspaper and the Bianchino, talking about the football: their own football, with no need to be expert but claiming that 'he who shouts the loudest wins the confrontation'.

Much credit must be given to Roberto Perrone who in 2003 wrote Zamora, the novel of the same name on which this film is based. A screenplay, therefore, that is not original, but by its being unusual becomes original.

Zamora is still in cinemas and the advice is, without a doubt, to go and see it.

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* The following are Italian comedians. 

** An Italian TV show.