The overwhelming fluidity captivated and empowered me from the first moment of the film. For me, seeing Martin Eden was one of those cinematic experiences that had an elevating, almost life-changing effect on me. I believe the film will be of much interest for wide audiences, especially considering the renaissance of various Marxist ideas. Jack London’s original novel, which was adapted by writer-director Pietro Marcello, raises questions from a devoted socialist viewpoint – Martin Eden can be read as a critique of Spencerian or Nietzschean individualism. While shaping a dynamic dialogue with the novel, Pietro Marcello’s Martin Eden paves the way for new dimensions of interpretations.
A primer sign of this intention, the originally American story is adjusted to be set in Italy, resulting in an entirely different atmosphere and meanings. Marcello’s Martin is inconceivable outside of the specific conditions of the historical time and place – Italy was deeply and widely influenced by Marxism as the ideology spread around the country not only politically but as a universal attitude towards life to be taken by anyone, regardless of social class or education. While the relocation of the story adds new layers to it, with masterful manipulation, Marcello creates an utterly confusing set of time periods. This indeterminacy of time might produce a sense of distraction but it is easy to get used to in its close connection with the situation and characters. It is evidently exemplified for instance in the portrayal of the relationship between Elena and Martin – they represent different classes with different ideologies. This contraposition is powerfully emphasized by way of embedding them in different periods of history, so for that reason Elena looks and behaves like an aristocrat from the nineteenth century while Martin is a tough-minded worker from after the general breakthrough of Marxism. Costumes and habits appear as masks and routines not to hide and cover people behind them, but to highlight their ideological engagement. Manipulation with time periods is implied in other situations and with characters in the film too. Clarifying their position and status, being aware of the background of all the characters, Marcello arouses empathy for them all and it accords the audience with infinite freedom. The distinctive presence of cars or televisions, the great variety in the usage of archive footage and the pop-minimalist score puzzles the sense of a particular period and turns this specific story into a global and archetypical one.
As for the significance of transporting the story, Italy and especially Italian cinema is widely reflected upon in the film. An obvious example, on one of their dates, Elena and Martin go to a cinema to watch a romantic movie. Elena is attracted by its charms, but Martin, in rage, is repulsed because for him, it demonstrates Elena’s social purblindness and ignorance. He drags Elena to show the real citylife for her and it ends up to be their central conflict. The way the two scenes follow one another symbolizes with proud grandeur how neorealism and the outburst of Italian filmmakers’ long-intensified social interest liberated cinema from the falseness of Telefoni Bianchi. Some of the archive footage recalling Martin’s childhood also evoke the cinema of Vittorio De Sica and Giuseppe De Santis, the classroom scene in particular. Poor children in the school, an overage tramp who wants to learn, a close shot of a man with gappy dentil – the whole scene has a recognizable neorealist tone.
With his giant, muscular palms, his back leaned on the coarse, rusty iron of the ships, Martin Eden being a sailor is also quite emblematic. It also evokes neorealism and leftist Italian cinema generally, referring to the great importance of sea work in films like Stromboli (Roberto Rossellini, 1950) or Contadini del mare (Vittorio De Seta, 1955). Marcello’s presentation of the workers on the waterfront follows this documentary-like style as they effectively stare into the camera in tight close-ups. Emphasizing collectivism, close-ups of unknown people reoccur often as the style of the film stresses its own social engagement.
These faces matter most when we come to the inner dilemma of Martin Eden. He personally feels that he is betraying his own class by achieving his dream to become a writer and his relationships are all quite telling from that aspect. Elena marks the intellectual awakening of Martin as his first love and has a decisive position in his life but a real mentor figure for him is Russ Brissenden. Being an already successful writer he becomes a role model for Martin and introduces him to socialism as the only possible way for him to survive. Without deeply believing in it he encourages and supports Martin to fight for the masses, not for ideological reasons, but to save him from an undefined, crushing disappointment in life. His death is the final straw for Martin, he loses his faith in Elena and especially in himself. He returns to his previous lover Margherita. He despised and denied her for being illiterate but after all he chose Margherita to be his wife.
Besides reading the worldview of Martin Eden as a devoted socialist, who is seduced and broken by individualism, the film offers a chance to interpret his struggle even more complexly. Martin’s sincere and wild personality might be just too autonomous to be classified by sharply contrasted ideologies – his eventual downfall might not relate to the harmful impacts of individualism but to his undefeatable, godly restlessness. Martin does not seem to believe in socialism, which he expresses most significantly and directly at his last dinner in the Orsini house, where he clarifies his views for everyone. Of course, his argument is brushed away on a personal base, as he claims to be a devoted liberalist in a pure, Spencerian sense, the group who declares to be individualist refuses him because of his origin. To grasp the complexity of the ideas in the film, it has to be mentioned that Martin Eden might not be defeated by individualism, but by his own, overwhelming impetus. While in most cases this kind of contradiction originates in the notion of the artistic genius, Martin Eden himself denies being a genius, and insists the unity of his personality, even if he, in fact, went through some serious changes. From being a modest, curious boy whose remarkable physical power made him unique, he becomes a famous writer with intellectual problems, and this inner change has clearly visible external marks too. Luca Marinelli’s tough face has something gentle in it, his huge hands and body move in a feminine way, and this dichotomy makes his performance all the more unforgettable. Through these changes he remains the same – he was the smoothest of sailors and becomes the harshest of writers.
The structure of the film also refers to this unity as Martin starts his journey on a boat, and his story ends in the sea. In both cases, the visual style reaches even greater poetry, some shots almost seem to be borrowed from an astonishing avant-garde film. The last scene, with the apocalyptic news about the war, which cannot be identified because of the confused time, puts the story to another level of realism envisaged by Russ Brissenden. Martin Eden entering the sea also reinforces this elevated mood of the end, his suicide is not a crime but a reunion with himself.
Babos Anna 