07/05/2025 - Elisabetta Sgarbi brings to the big screen a novel by one of the fathers of the Italian noir, Giorgio Scerbanenco, in a sophisticated adaptation which retains its literary quality

“I’ve never taken in thieves hunted by the police”, muses the thoughtful Celestino (Tommaso Ragno), one of two children alongside his writer-sister Carla (Michela Cescon) sired by the jovial former orchestra director Antonio Reffi (Renato Carpentieri), who owns a magnificent villa on cold and foggy Ginestra Island in the middle of a lake. It’s January in the Sixties in the sophisticated film noir L'isola degli idealisti, which was written (in league with Eugenio Lio), directed and produced by Elisabetta Sgarbi, based on the homonymous novel by the Milan-based author born in Kiev, Giorgio Scerbanenco. Previously selected to compete in Rome Film Fest in October 2024, the film will be released in cinemas on 8 May via Fandango.

Celestino finds himself addressing a pair of young hotel thieves who are being hunted by the police, who have taken refuge on the island, and who have now been caught unawares by watchman Giovanni (Tony Laudadio) and his Dobermann Pangloss: arrogant gambler Guido (Renato De Simone) and sensual Beatrice (Elena Radonicich). A former doctor who’s obsessed with a violin player, spending his time staring at pictures of her in Super8, pensive Celestino offers them a strange deal in the conviction that he can change their lives. He won’t report them to Commissioner Carrua (Vincenzo Nemolato), who’s already on their tracks, if they agree to take part in a “re-education” experiment. Secretly hiding from a shady lender called Monsiù (Antonio Rezza), the pair willingly accept his offer with the intention of manipulating the family and stealing what they can from that villa dripping in artworks.

As one of the most influential writers of Italian noir - notably thanks to his famous quadrilogy about Duke Lamberti - Scerbanenco has seen a wide range of movies spawned by his books. Death Occurred Last Night by Duccio Tessari is considered one of the best examples of Italian-style noir, Naked Violence by Fernando Di Leo was one of the first and most faithful adaptations of Scerbanenco’s atmospheres, while the famous film Caliber 9, dating back to 1972, became a classic Italian crime film (with a soundtrack by Ennio Morricone) which went on to have a profound impact on the film noir imaginary.

Written between 1942 and 1943, stumbled upon by its heirs and only published in 2018 by La Nave di Teseo, which was founded by Elisabetta Sgarbi herself alongside Umberto Eco, L'isola degli idealisti only sowed the seeds of the social harshness and tension, expressed in cutting dialogue, for which his later novels were so celebrated. The character of Celestino is but an outline of what Duke Lamberti turns out to be: a doctor struck off for carrying out euthanasia who helps the authorities with their most difficult investigations. But the director no doubt chose him for his distance from pure noir and for his tendency to pit the comfortable middle classes against a generation of “homeless and lawless people” with the idealistic and illusory pretext of offering them redemption, whilst also shifting his gaze onto the charming and ambiguous female figure of Beatrice and the women who live on the island, in metaphorical isolation. Rather than flaunting the ferocious urban realism characterising other movies based on Scerbanenco’s work, this film is a reflection on responsibility and on the possibility of change and becoming something different, in a game of role play whose literary provenance is purposefully preserved.

L'isola degli idealisti was produced by Bibi Film and Betty Wrong together with RAI Cinema.

(Translated from Italian)