Allegedly, the plot served as a mere pretext to hold together a series of vignettes, the film’s interests being mostly musical. We can only imagine Napoli, sirena della canzone, since only a small part of the footage survived. Notari’s films were sceneggiate, dramaturgic adaptations of popular Neapolitan songs, performed live by orchestras during the screenings. Unfortunately, the same radical qualities of her work made it also a target of Fascist censorship, which would ultimately force her to shut down the company she founded, Dora Films, at the time a leading Italian production house (Tomadjoglou 2013). The few films that survive her, testify to the stark realism and genuine affection she showed in depicting Napoli’s street life and characters – whose naturalistic style of acting made of Notari a forerunner of neorealism (Bruno 1998, 118). Notari, one of the first women filmmaker in history, dedicated most of her now lost work to her hometown, Napoli. Napoli, sirena della canzone spells the title of Elvira Notari’s final film (1929).
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