the universe will surprise ya

Catch up Wisptober Day 8: Cuckoo

“To understand Matteo JWHJ 0715 (born Matteo Scioccihezze), one must to understand that, as a young queer man growing up isolated in Catholic post-war Italy, he mentally retreated from the legacy of Mussolini’s Italy and into that of Gabriele D’Annunzio (1863–1938) and his anarcho-utopian pirate commune-state of Fiume.

At the end of WWI, the town of Fiume (now Rijeka in Croatia) was annexed by Gabriele D’Annunzio: a superstar poet, daredevil pilot, war hero, and libertine—and the self-appointed champion of Italian irredentism.

The town became a haven for ‘artists, bohemians, adventurers, anarchists (D’Annunzio corresponded with Malatesta), fugitives and Stateless refugees, homosexuals, military dandies (the uniform was black with pirate skull and crossbones later stolen by the SS), and crank reformers of every stripe (including Buddhists, Theosophists and Vedantists).’

Matteo’s earliest works, the short films collectively titled ‘Tales of the Dog’, feature narrated lines recited directly from D’Annunzio’s poetry. These mark the end point of a period in the young artist’s life where he looked to Fiume as a lost paradise of tolerance, much as some queer artists of the Romantic Era idealised Ancient Greece. But Fiume was more complicated than Matteo initially understood at the time, and his family’s personal history would later magnify a changed relationship to what turned out to be an ahistorical, imagined utopia.

Matteo was only five years old when his older brother Macarero died during the Four Days of Naples, when antifascist partisans and local resistance fighters liberated Naples from the occupying Nazi forces. Matteo’s memories of a half-forgotten, heroic older brother contrasted sharply with his living father, whose rejection of his queer son yielded the iconic surname change from ‘Scioccihezze’ to that of Matteo’s license plate, ‘JWHJ 0715.’

Many in the fascist movement looked to Fiume as foundational. Even the aesthetics of modern fascism have Fiume at their roots: black shirts and balcony speeches were products of D’Annunzio’s artistic flair. Fascism had killed his brother and dominated his country. For Matteo, a Marxist, the recollection of his early seduction by the myth of Fiume forever deepened his understanding of human nature. His greatest work is haunted by the admixture of poetry, romantic anarchism, proto-fascism, and violence that distinguished D’Annunzio’s disastrous utopia.

This Fiume connection is necessary to understand the undercurrent of nauseated fascination that typifies the director’s engagement with the fascist national mythology of ‘belonging.’ It gives scenes like the gunfight in Pompeii or the kitchen stabbing their lurid, nightmarish treatment. When Matteo combines violence and historical or intimate settings—symbolising the fascistic appeal to tribalism as security —they are presented with the alluring yet repugnant sensuality of an overripe fruit in a still-life.

Goncharov’s yearning for acceptance is portrayed as fundamentally repulsive because it is pursued by violent domination. The character’s happy ending would be acceptance in his Italian context and achieving a bisexual polyamorous relationship with Katya and Andrey. Yet Goncharov consistently rejects all opportunities to pursue this through any means but brutality. To Goncharov, the possibility of escaping the cycle of violence is more frightening than either violence or his current alienation: the only safety he believes in comes from the violent subjugation of others.

Other gangster movies deal with the instability of love or power bought with violence. The average viewer usually feels safely distanced from that moral message. Goncharov looks like any other mob movie, but its unflinching portrayal of human yearning for acceptance as a motivation for violence is unique.”