Four parts of this series have been dedicated to Italian sign language as it exists in real life: its history, the most well-known gestures, the pitfalls for visitors, and the peculiarities of Naples. To close, it is worth casting an eye over a stage on which this language is deployed with particular deliberateness: the screen. Few film cultures in the world use the body and hands so purposefully as an independent storytelling device as the Italian one, and it is precisely this connection that seemed worth exploring as a final note.
Fellini: the gesture as opera
No director has staged Italian gesticulation with such theatricality as Federico Fellini. In films such as La Dolce Vita and Otto e mezzo, his characters move almost like dancers: every hand movement is exaggerated, almost operatic, a conscious break with any form of restraint. Fellini himself grew up on the Adriatic coast, in a culture where expression was never permitted to be quiet, and he transferred this expressiveness directly onto the body language of his performers. His camera often lingers on sweeping arm movements, on hands thrown into the air, on fingers conducting an entire scene as though the gesture itself were the true protagonist and the dialogue merely its accompaniment.
Neorealism: gestures of poverty and dignity
The directors of Italian Neorealism in the years following the Second World War took an entirely different approach, above all Vittorio de Sica with Ladri di biciclette and Roberto Rossellini with Roma, città aperta. As the Cineteca di Bologna has documented in its programme on post-war film history, gestures here serve not exaggeration but authenticity, frequently filmed with non-professional actors whose hand movements are untrained and all the more genuine for it. A helplessly open palm, a resigned shrug, a brief rubbing of tired eyes: these small, unobtrusive gestures speak of poverty and post-war hardship more powerfully than any spoken line. Neorealism thus revealed the other side of the same language, not the loud, sociable version of the piazza, but the quiet, exhausted version on the margins of society.
Totò and the Commedia all'italiana: the gesture as punchline
In the Italian film comedies of the 1950s to 1970s, the gesture itself became the punchline. Few mastered this as brilliantly as Totò, the Neapolitan comedian whose entire body, his hands and face in particular, became an instrument of humour. An exaggerated Mano a Borsa, the classic Neapolitan "What do you want?" gesture, a theatrical shake of the head, a lightning-fast sequence of contradictory hand movements: in Totò's hands, the everyday language of gesture was pushed to the very edge of caricature, and it was precisely this that made it funny. Sophia Loren, Marcello Mastroianni, and many other stars of the era also deployed gestures with deliberate comic timing, often a fraction of a second before or after the actual punchline of the dialogue, to sharpen the joke still further.
Gomorra: the language of the street without exaggeration
A radically different approach was taken by Matteo Garrone in his 2008 film Gomorra and the series that followed. Here the gesticulation returns to the Naples of this series, though raw, spare, and menacing, far removed from any comedic excess. A brief nod that decides between life and death, a casual hand movement signalling an order to violence, an almost motionless posture communicating pure control: in this world, gestures are often minimal, yet every single one carries enormous weight. Garrone deliberately dispensed with the expansive, loud version of Neapolitan gesticulation in order to show how the same language can also whisper, coldly and with control, quite unlike the warm, market-square register that many associate with Naples.
A language that outlives the screen
These four very different examples, from Fellini's excess to the quiet dignity of Neorealism, from Totò's punchlines to Garrone's menacing restraint, reveal just how flexible Italian sign language truly is. The same roots that were traced in the first part of this series all the way back to Greek antiquity continue to carry entirely different registers to this day, from opera to whisper, from comedy to menace. When I first stood in Naples some years ago and tried to read the gestures of two strangers at a bar, I had no idea how many layers were concealed within that silent language. From October, I shall be living in the midst of it myself, in Pozzuoli, just a stone's throw from Naples, and I am very much looking forward to recognising, in daily life, all that this five-part series has brought together: at the bar, at the market, in conversation with new neighbours.
