L'Archivio del Diavolo
by Pupi Avati
Giuseppe “Pupi” Avati (born 1938) played clarinet in a jazz band, until Lucio Dalla joined the group and Avati realised that he would never shine alongside the more brilliant musician. Music’s loss was cinema’s gain. Avati has directed over forty movies, often acting also as scriptwriter. He has filmed several well-regarded dramas and comedies – one could mention Storia di ragazzi e di ragazze (1990), La Seconda Notte di Nozze (2006), featuring soprano Katia Ricciarelli in her movie debut, Il Papà di Giovanna (2009), and Lei Mi Parla Ancora (2021). His filmography, however, is punctuated by horror films, a genre which he has returned to at roughly ten-year intervals, starting with the low-budget cult movie La Casa delle Finestre che Ridono (1976). Avati refers to the vein of horror he taps into as Gotico Padano, since it is influenced by the dark, foggy atmosphere and the superstitious folk beliefs of Northeastern Italy and the Val Padana.
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| Avati's first foray into Gotico Padano |
Pupi Avati’s latest cinematic venture in this genre is Il Signor Diavolo (2019), based on his own novel. Set in the village of Leo Piccolo in the Veneto in 1952, it tells of an investigation into the murder of Emilio Vestri Musy, a teenager from a noble family, who is killed by fourteen-year old Carlo Mongiorgi, who believes that Emilio is none other than the devil. The case implicates persons close to the Church and the Democrazia Cristiana, at a delicate political juncture in post-war Italy. Furio Momenté, a lowly official of the Justice Ministry is sent to conduct an “unofficial” investigation, in the hope that he can steer the official inquiry away from controversy. The plot moves ambiguously between “rational” Gothic, where supposedly otherwordly events turn out to have logical explanations albeit clouded by superstition, and full-blown “supernatural” Gothic.
The novel, L’Archivio del Diavolo, Avati’s third, is a sequel to Il Signor Diavolo. Avati wrote it during the first Covid lockdown. I had bought it soon after its publication in early 2021 but only got down to reading it recently. I enjoyed its dark atmosphere but, to be honest, I found it rather disappointing.
Let me start by saying that not having read the first instalment (in what appears to be a planned trilogy or tetralogy), put me at a disadvantage straight away. The novel basically sees the investigation reopen, after fresh gruesome discoveries at the village of Lio Piccolo. It has several references to facts which occur in Il Signor Diavolo and although knowledge of the previous novel is not essential, I found that not having read it made it more difficult to follow what is already quite a convoluted plot.
Like its predecessor, L’Archivio del Diavolo is described as un romanzo del Gotico maggiore (“a novel of the high Gothic”) and Avati delights in the tropes of the genre, both as to content and form. From a “content” perspective, most of the action takes place either at night, or else in dark corridors and underground environments (the “archive” of the title is in a basement which can be reached only through a creaking lift; the crypt of the Church at Lio Piccolo yields shocking surprises). There’s the presence of corrupt police officials and priests of dubious morality (typical of both first-wave and “political” gothic); apparitions which may or may not be ghostly, and an obsession with death, burial and decay.
From a formal perspective, the narrative is split into brief chapters, each continuing the story from the perspective of one of the characters. There’s also a heavy reliance on the meta-literary concept of “found texts”. The novel is purportedly an anonymous manuscript, written at the time of the events, but revealed only in 1980. It is preceded by a dramatis personae and is dutifully annotated with biographical details of each new character which appears. And to add to the formal complexity, there are two other threads which reappear between other chapters. One thread consists of alleged submissions made anonymously by the readers of a magazine describing their “vivid dreams”, some of which, mysteriously, reflect events in the story hinting at some form of “collective memory” of the dramatic events of Lio Piccolo. Another thread consists of the chapters of a novel about the death and burial of Nikolai Gogol, and the theft of his skull, a novel which one of the characters, a guard at the Ministry, is writing in his spare time.
While,
for an aficionado of the Gothic, it is fun to pick out the tropes of the genre,
I ultimately found that all these disparate elements only served to muddy the
waters. The story itself could have worked just as well (if not more
effectively) if it had been recounted as a more straightforward political
mystery/thriller with a folk horror vibe. The attempt to package this as a “work
of a high Gothic” by including meta-literary intellectual games may be interesting,
but ultimately breaks the flow of what could have been a much more gripping novel. That said, I look forward to the next
(final?) instalment in this series and hope that it will provide a sense of
closure and change my mind about this ultimately frustrating read.
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