High Concept Filmmaking, Italian Style
TORONTO – Davide Minnella’s latest film Out with the Truth is being called a “high concept” film in Italy, and a “fresh approach” to filmmaking. It recently screened at the Rome Film Festival and is scheduled to hit theatres on November 6th. But some are suggesting that it might well be demarcating a new era in Italian cinema. Time will tell, but it is a notable departure from the typical Italian storytelling approach, trademarked by Italy’s Neorealist masters of the 1940s.
Out with the Truth tells the story of a family of five, who reveal their secrets on national television for a one-million-euro prize. Offered a million euros in exchange for their damning confessions on air, they agree to risk the sanctity of their family and reputation for money. It’s a reality show on film, highlighting the age of media exposure and our obsession with the private lives of others. But what makes this a high concept film?
The term high concept was coined by Paramount Pictures executives in the 70s, Barry Diller and Michael Eisner – the Chairman and President respectively. They used the term to describe projects with a unique hook that could be pitched with one sentence.
The idea was to broaden the audience to secure investor interest. Simple plot driven films that could be easily marketed. The paramount duo produced films like Grease, Indiana Jones, Star Trek, and Saturday Night Fever.
Italian films on the contrary, focused primarily on story and character. Whether it was down to budget constraints or a different approach to storytelling, Italian films prioritized realism over artifice. Italian audiences – since the 1940s – have grown accustomed to watching films with loose episodic structures, conversational dialogue and obtrusive camera work. Films that for better or worse favoured realism over spectacle.
It was an approach that created decades of classic films, and often inspired some of Hollywood’s best filmmakers – Cassavetes, Kazan and Scorsese to name a few.
Yet Minnella’s Out with the Truth mirrors the Hollywood approach, and may in fact inspire filmmakers in the peninsula with similar sensibilities. Like Diller and Eisner who cut their teeth as Program Directors at NBC and CBS, Minella put in 25 years as a television writer, working on reality and talent shows.
“I was tasked with collecting testimonies from the people who would enter the television studio. I found myself facing people who put their lives in my hands”, Minella explained at the Rome Film Festival.
“So I asked myself, what would happen if I put them in a television studio and told them, faced with a million euros, would you be willing to tell the truth?”. With that question, his high concept film was born.
Images courtesy of PiperFilm
Massimo Volpe is a filmmaker and freelance writer from Toronto: he writes reviews of Italian films/content on Netflix
