Napoli Napoli Napoli

Maverick American director Abel Ferrara went to Italy in 2009 to make this dispiriting, distinctly noncommercial documentary tour of modern Naples. Forget the “earthy” milieu of vintage Sophia Loren comedies made by Vittorio de Sica; Ferrara's Naples is a drug-plagued, violent, jobless, overpopulated slum. Along the way, Ferrera inserts bits and pieces of scripted narrative—two coked-up hoods carry out the assassination of a third, and a young streetwalker goes on her rounds—that largely just feel intrusive. But the majority of the material consists of interviews with addicts, convicts (mostly female), politicians, and prostitutes. Polymath Ferrara (appearing over the closing credits playing guitar for an audience of reformed junkies) serves up a fashionably leftist proposition that Naples' traditionally poor but functional Italian community went to hell thanks to occupying American G.I.'s in WWII, with their corrupting wads of dollars, as well as VIP visitor Charles “Lucky” Luciano, who breathed fresh life into the moribund local mafia. Today, the new high-rise public housing looks indistinguishable from the prisons holding various narco-offenders. An oddball combination of gritty travelogue and social commentary, this is a strong optional purchase. (C. Cassidy)