Naples Reduced ad absurdum: Sergio Corbucci’s La mazzetta (The Payoff, 1978)

Abstract

Adapted from the first novel by Raymond Chandler’s Italian translator Attilio Veraldi, The Payoff (La mazzetta, 1978) is a relatively unusual attempt at hybridization between crime (mainly hard-boiled) fiction and comedy, made at a time when Italian cinema industry was drastically changing. My paper starts off with an analysis of the film’s adaptation strategies, then moves on to focusing in particular on the peculiar way the city of Naples appears in the film and on its implications for the private/public dichotomy explored by the film as well as by Chandler’s novels. Thereby, and by referring briefly (in order to better frame The Payoff historically) to Neapolitan Mystery (Giallo Napoletano, 1979), directed by Corbucci in the wake of The Payoff’s success, I will try to identify the film’s oblique relation to crime genre, and particularly to the hard-boiled genre Veraldi had tried to replicate in Neapolitan territory.