Made in Italy
DQ visits Naples to get a close-up look at the detailed design behind Sky mafia drama Gomorra – Le Origini (Gomorrah – The Origins), and meets production designer Fabrizio D’Arpino and costume designer Olivia Bellini to learn the secrets of their work.
Inside the walls of a compound in Ponticelli, south-east of Naples in the looming shadow of Mount Vesuvius, dozens of classic cars line up row upon row.
Maseratis and Alfa Romeos sit next to Mustangs, taxis and other vehicles of every colour. There are also trucks, mopeds and a bright yellow school bus, as well as a white ambulance and a blue van adorned with the label ‘Carabinieri.’ The latter pair have blue lights affixed to their roofs.
Sitting in the Neapolitan sunshine, they are among more than 300 vehicles used in the production of Gomorra – Le Origini (Gomorrah – The Origins), a prequel to Italian mafia series Gomorrah that has tasked its design team with recreating 1970s Naples and its Secondigliano suburb.
A building on the site holds further clues to the work that has been done in making the series as authentic as possible. The area has been transformed into numerous workspaces, from prop store and carpentry workshops to costume warehouse and makeup station, where the main cast and supporting artists – more than 5,000 extras have worked on the series in total – are all readied for their scenes.
“We have undertaken a complex task of adaptation and construction, so we have set up this department to be able to manage these transformations, which have been common to practically every set,” says production designer Fabrizio D’Arpino, speaking as DQ visits the set of Origins in May last year. During the course of production, he has overseen up to 70 different locations used during filming.
“It became much more extensive when we tackled scenes on the street where all the shops, street furniture and air conditioners had to be adapted, as well as creating iconic locations that were fundamental to the narrative.”
Recently debuting on Sky in Italy and soon to launch in the UK, Gomorrah – The Origins explores the early years of the Camorra godfather, Don Pietro Savastano, who featured in the original series that ran for five seasons between 2014 and 2021.
Pietro is a tough city kid who grew up in the poorest parts of Secondigliano. He and his friends survive any way they can, riding their mopeds around town and committing petty theft. But Pietro has a big dream: to become like Angelo ‘A Sirena,’ the king of the neighborhood. When he manages to get in the graces of the young boss, he finds himself caught in a power game far beyond him, leaving him wondering whether this dark, violent criminal life is really what he wants or if his love for Imma can save him from such a fate.
Click to enlarge these photographs from DQ’s set visit
Produced by Sky Studios and Cattleya, the show’s cast includes Luca Lubrano as Pietro, with Tullia Venezia, Fabiola Balestriere, Francesco Pellegrino, Flavio Furno, Antonio Incalza, Junior Rancel Rodriguez Arcia, Mattia Francesco Cozzolino and Antonio Del Duca. Distributor Beta Film has already sold the six-hour series to HBO Max in Germany and Turkey, SBS in Australia, StudioCanal in France, ORF in Austria, TET in Latvia and Nova in Greece.
Beyond telling the story of a young Pietro, the series is further connected to its predecessor through director Marco D’Amore, who starred in Gomorrah as Ciro Di Marzio. He’s also co-writer and artistic supervisor on Origins, partnering with fellow director Francesco Ghiaccio and creators Leonardo Fasoli, Maddalena Ravagli and Roberto Saviano, who all collaborated on Gomorrah. The series is based on Saviano’s book of the same name.
In imagining Origins, D’Arpino and costume designer Olivia Bellini blended historical fact with clues from the original series, and even referred back to Saviano’s source material, to build a visual palette created with its young protagonists in mind.
In one room at the production base, numerous shop and bar signs are on display, as are various examples of furniture used in the series, artwork and a pair of motorised rocking horses. There are even coffins, standing upright next to a blue felt-topped poker table. On another side of the room is a green-topped roulette table.
Click to enlarge these photographs from DQ’s set visit
A doorway leads to the other half of the building, which has been converted into an extensive costume department with endless rows of clothes racks carrying dozens of outfits for the main characters and the many supporting artists. A purpose-built corridor also displays numerous Polaroids taken of the cast in character and costume, with mannequins displaying some of the finished outfits.
“There has really been an enormous effort, because we have taken care of everything – the costumes, the hair, the makeup. We really put a lot of care into it, and I have to thank my team, because without my team, I couldn’t have done the work I did,” Bellini says. “There was also difficulty in finding all the material needed to [depict] completely different worlds.”
That work included ageing new clothes and balancing the “archaic” styles of some older characters from the 50s and 60s with the contemporary, America-inspired looks of its younger characters.
“As far as my work is concerned and the care I put into it, the work on colour is fundamental,” Bellini says. “For me, the important thing was to work with colour. I wanted to separate myself from everything that is black, which characterises the contemporary a little more, and bring myself closer to that playful dimension that Fabrizio talks about, to give the world of younger people the colour of life, of adolescence, of hope, of light. This era was incredible in terms of colour.”
Click to enlarge these photographs from DQ’s set visit
For Pietro in particular, the series will follow his “evolution” from a member of a good family to his involvement in something more sinister. His modest upbringing is demonstrated by Bellini through his wardrobe filled with second-hand clothes – “boring ones from family members.”
“It was a time when people were poor and didn’t change their clothes every day; whereas Angelo, for example, someone who is very well off, has three different jackets and is more glamorous,” she says.
“The most beautiful aspect of our work is the possibility of being creative and, at the same time, to be scholars, to be experts. We are creating fabrics that look like those of the 70s but no longer exist.”
South of the unit base, a stone’s throw from the waters of the Gulf of Naples, DQ finds production in full swing outside a group of farm buildings that the show’s protagonists – young and old – call home.
“It is a house where they live. Many families live there. It is a space for various activities, [but] almost decrepit,” D’Arpino explains. “Large walls have been carved and rebuilt using other materials, and a huge amount of painting work and a whole series of constructions have made it so.”
Telling a new story in a familiar world, the designer saw an opportunity to showcase numerous different environments found within the same city in the 1970s. As a result, Gomorrah – The Origins stands out for being set in a location like nowhere else.
He adds: “This era in Naples is different from a generic 1970s era in other Italian and European cities. We are in a past that many people probably know, given the various reinterpretations, but in our own way of seeing things.”
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tagged in: Beta Film, Cattleya, Fabrizio D’Arpino, Gomorra – Le Origini, Gomorrah – The Origins, Olivia Bellini, Sky, Sky Studios