The Malaparte house: film space and author architecture

Abstract

There is a rich and varied interrelation between architecture and cinema. Some houses and singular buildings acquire personality and almost become characters in certain films, both in the genre of cinema - the “haunted house” in the cinema of terror - and in author films. The house Malaparte of Capri has a very personal architecture and is located in a unique space that has been used, in different takes, as a filmic space that transcends the mere frame or container of stories; it is part of a house typology that defies gravity. The screen adaptation of the novel, by Curzio Malaparte himself, uses this house as the setting for some sequences, more due to its closeness to the writer than to the space itself or its place in the story. From a novel, Godard creates in ‘Scorn’ a text rich in layers and evocations that refer to the mythology of Ulysses while reflecting upon the impossibility of love and the survival of the couple.