Lo sguardo antropomorfico di Matteo Garrone. L'imbalsamatore e Ossessione

This article proposes a formalist and comparative analysis about Matteo Garrone's L’imbalsamatore (2002) and Luchino Visconti's Ossessione (1943). The essay aims to investigate L’imbalsamatore not only as reference to neo-realistic practices but also, textually, as reactivator of the first noir in the Italian Film History, Ossessione. This film, in fact, lights the secret, narrative and visual framework of Garrone’s film. So Neorealism, the greatest season of national cinema, in L'imbalsamatore isn’t a quotationist homage, according to postmodern logic; Ossessione becomes a ghost of the modern past that turns back in the neo-modern present. L’imbalsamatore deeply assimilated the lesson of cinematic modernity and its cognitive challenge to make a political discourse based on the ruined spaces and the excessive bodies.