The King of Laughter

Naples at the start of the twentieth century. Eduardo Scarpetta is the highest earning man in the city's theatre, performing comedies he writes himself in his own house to full rooms. His private life is a theatre too: his wife, his mistresses and his children by different women live in the same house or the same circle, and whose son is whose is not openly discussed. Then he stages a parody of a tragedy by Gabriele D'Annunzio and is taken to court. Mario Martone directs. Toni Servillo plays Scarpetta. The trial is the central matter. D'Annunzio was the most powerful literary figure in Italy at the time, and whether the parody constituted an infringement was argued in court; the question of the limits of imitation in art comes out of it. The second line is the family. Among Scarpetta's illegitimate children is Eduardo De Filippo, who became one of the most important figures in Italian theatre, and the film keeps him at the edge as a boy. Toni Servillo does not make the character likeable. Scarpetta is selfish, vain, and counts everyone around him as part of his own success. The stage sections are the best thing in it; the Neapolitan theatre of the period, its audience and the order of the wings are built in detail. It screened in competition at the 2021 Venice film festival. Who it is for: viewers interested in Italian period film and in theatre history. Who it is not for: there are many characters, the family relations are tangled, and outside the trial the narrative has no clear direction.