The story is quite simple: a young sailor - who represents the writer himself, namely Jack London, being the novel largely an autobiographical one- he falls in love with a young, beautiful and educated girl of a bourgeois family
The book is set in the San Francisco of the early 1900s , while the film is set in Naples and surrounding Campania in an indeterminate age , even if there are so many references to reconstruction of Italy after the www2
Martin, engrossed in knowledge, starts reading mountains of books and begins to write stories with the intention of elevating his social status and thus being able to marry Ruth His novellas are published, he achieves success, money, recognition as a writer, Ruth who had left him begs him to forgive her, ... but at the height of success instead of being one happy and accomplished person he becomes a cynic man, no longer believes in his passions and loses his enthusiasm. What happened ?
To understand this turning point it is necessary to know the political / social thought of Jack London; the history of love between the two young people is only a pretext, while the intention of the writer is to put in highlight and criticize other ideas and values:
The soundtrack is very beautiful and suggestive: these are light music songs in vogue in Italy in the '50s and '60s , while the photographic narration of the story borders on poetry; often the main narrative is interspersed with old documentaries or clips of amateur videos that give the sense of poverty and of the hard life of the post-war years in Italy, the years that represent our roots, the basis of our current development
Martin, engrossed in knowledge, starts reading mountains of books and begins to write stories with the intention of elevating his social status and thus being able to marry Ruth His novellas are published, he achieves success, money, recognition as a writer, Ruth who had left him begs him to forgive her, ... but at the height of success instead of being one happy and accomplished person he becomes a cynic man, no longer believes in his passions and loses his enthusiasm. What happened ?
To understand this turning point it is necessary to know the political / social thought of Jack London; the history of love between the two young people is only a pretext, while the intention of the writer is to put in highlight and criticize other ideas and values:
- individualism is the first one; it is certainly a good thing to be able to rely on yourself, but if you are driven to excesses produces people who completely lose interest in the needs of the others and who are not able to see beyond their own personal interest
- The capitalist system, in the beginning of the 1900s in the hands of a minority of people, creates masses of low-paid workers, subjected to arduous work and in practice reduce people to a fate of slavery
- We also have a criticism of the educational system whereby knowledge is reduced to "status symbol ", while on the contrary culture should help people to improve and grow themselves
The soundtrack is very beautiful and suggestive: these are light music songs in vogue in Italy in the '50s and '60s , while the photographic narration of the story borders on poetry; often the main narrative is interspersed with old documentaries or clips of amateur videos that give the sense of poverty and of the hard life of the post-war years in Italy, the years that represent our roots, the basis of our current development