«Mixed by Erry», the film about the empire of the Forcella-born piece
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cinema
NoonMarch 1, 2023 – 09:43
Sydney Sibilia tells the true story of the Frattasio brothers, king of pirated cassette tapes
Of Antonio Fiore
Sydney’s film Sibilia was presented yesterday, out of respect for the genius loci, in preview in Naples. From where exactly in 1976 the adventure of a boy who wanted to be “only a DJ” started and who for a handful of years will find himself the head of the most powerful Italian record company, albeit illegal. The story of «Mixed by Erry» begins in Forcella. Raise your hand if you’ve never slammed a “Mixed by Erry” cassette into your cassette player: either he’s a liar or he wasn’t even born in the 1980s. All the others (but perhaps also Generation Z will appreciate it, if only as a work of modern art) will greatly appreciate the film by Sydney Sibilia presented yesterday, out of respect for the genius loci, in preview in Naples. From where exactly in 1976 the adventure of a boy who wanted to be “only a DJ” started and who for a handful of years will find himself the head of the most powerful Italian record company, albeit illegal.
History
It all begins in Forcella, where to make ends meet a “very honest” father produces tea by passing it off to the Railway as pure Scotch whisky: Frattasio’s three children, however, have bigger dreams. Above all Enrico, the middle one, very passionate about music. He would like to be a nightclub entertainer, but the competition is tough and the opportunities few. Until he, who cleans a record store, discovers the extraordinary talent of playing compilations of songs on cassettes: first for friends or girlfriends of the brothers, then for fans of the neighborhood, then for all of Naples, finally for the whole of Italy. All Mixed by Erry, all counterfeit, all in defiance of the law. From the stalls (where even the fake-fake ones appear, copies of the “original” fakes branded Erry) in Sanremo: the Frattasio brothers even manage to publish the collections of the festival at festivals that are still in progress. Until the inevitable, the clash with the Guardia di Finanza who arrested Enrico and his brothers in 1991, seizing dozens of clandestine laboratories and putting an end to the empire that three boys had created from scratch.
In jail
The game had become too risky; the audiocassette manufacturers, which even thanks to the Frattasios had made billions, leave Erry to his fate as a “pirate”, 4 years and 6 months sentence for forgery and so on. And it is from Erry’s entrance to Poggioreale that the film begins (produced by Matteo Rovere with Groenlandia and Rai Cinema) by Sibilia: who, in the Hitchcockian way convinced that a film is like life but without the boring parts, especially in the first half (in the second half the Scorsesian rhythm of «good guys» from the Neapolitan Bronx he goes limp a bit, but we love him anyway) creates a fluid, tight story, immersed in a Naples rebuilt with unbridled affection and fun. Others will rise up arguing that they are still counterfeiters, and that the romantic halo with which history cloaks them is not the height of political correctness; and that forgery, even if at the time perceived almost as a non-crime, was actually a very serious crime; and that music piracy allowed Camorra organizations to earn income worthy of smuggling and drugs… All right, Sibilia & C. easily navigate the problem by imagining that the clans, despite having smelled the deal of the century, then abandon it because they are distracted from fratricidal struggles (and the meeting, who knows if it actually ever took place, between the Frattasio Bros and the boss of Forcella with curly hair and a red sweater sitting on a sofa-shell in the Maradona era, will arouse many memories…) .
The American dream
But this film is not a treatise on sociology, but «it is essentially the story of an attempt at social redemption, to dream of a great American dream», as Sibilia recalled during the press conference at the Modernissimo which was also attended by the three young « brothers» Luigi D’Oriano (Erry), Giuseppe Arena (Peppe) and Emanuele Palumbo (Angelo) all semi-newcomers therefore not yet contaminated by the acting tics of TV drama, in addition to their «parents» Adriano Pantaleo and Cristiana Dell’Anna, very effective. But Francesco Di Leva should also be mentioned: for Sibilia the character “the most difficult to build: he is the captain of the Finance, the defender of intellectual property, therefore in theory the “good” of the story, but we gave him the characteristics of a “bad” ». The moustache, the dark glasses, the chewing gum: the sworn enemy of the piece, rightly convinced that – just to quote a success of Iglesias of those years – a pirate is not exactly a gentleman. But the heart of the film, like that of Sibilia’s other films that make up the trilogy (I can stop when I want and The Incredible Story of Rose Island) evidently beats elsewhere: that of the obstinate lovers of utopias or impossible missions. Stories of men dedicated to triumphant, Kiplinghian failures.
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March 1, 2023 | 09:43
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