This document provides guidance for analyzing key scenes from the film Gomorrah. It outlines the aims and objectives of the scene analysis, which are to recap prior learning, improve understanding of the text, and develop knowledge of the meanings behind the text. Students are instructed to annotate shots from the film based on how they provoke audience perspective or meet/challenge gangster film expectations. Quotes from critics praise the film for departing from gangster film norms and shattering romantic myths about gangsters. Students are directed to watch interview clips and answer questions to analyze how the film represents a difficult, urban environment through its use of film language.

1. Key Scene Analysis
Thursday 15th January 2015
FM4:
Varieties of Film Experience – Issues and Debates

2. Why?
Aims & Objectives
• YOU WILL re-cap prior
learning.
• YOU WILL improve your
understanding of the text by
analyzing 3 key scenes.
• YOU WILL also develop your
knowledge & understanding
of the meanings behind the
text.
• Review the learning.
AO1
Demonstrate knowledge and
understanding of film as an
audio-visual form of creative
expression together and
AO2
Apply knowledge and
understanding, including
some of the common critical
approaches that characterise
the subject, when exploring
and analysing films.

3. Starter –
Re-cap Prior Learning
YOU MUST annotate the shots
from the text and establish HOW:
• It ‘provokes an audience into
taking a particular characters
point of view’
• It meets OR challenges the
spectators expectations of a
Gangster film.
Extension – YOU COULD
compare the shot to something
you have seen that is similar from
the other principle texts.
Toto – Actor name?

4. FM4 – Exam Expectations

5. • What impact does this have on the spectator?
• Is this scene “flawed by sentimentality” (WJEC) towards the young adolescent male
protagonist Toto?
Robert Bly (1986) argues that in Contemporary Western Society we do not have a “test
for maturity” – however all young, adolescent males embark on a “rite of passage” to
becoming a man

6. Robert Bly (1986)
• “...boys are initiated into the tribe of men to
take their rightful places as heads of families,
patriarchal leaders”
Where is this ideology presented in Gomorrah?

7. Similarities?

8. Kenneth Turan Los Angeles Times –
“..a gangster film that departs from the
glamorising norm…a vividly panoramic film
about a pitiless world of criminality”
Film Quarterly – Summer 2009 – Michael Covino

9. 2. “..Gomorrah has been hailed as shattering
any romantic myths we may yet harbour
about Gangsters”
Summer 2009 – Michael Covino

10. Do you agree?

11. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MN7-tepnIfY
Style of filming that is characterized
by stories set amongst the poor.

12. Key Scene Analysis
YOU MUST – using the handout – answer the questions in relation to the key scenes
we are going to be watching.
YOU SHOULD complete the Film Language boxes as well to help you gain a better
understanding of HOW Gavin Hood uses Film Language to construct the
representation of the characters and a “difficult urban environment”.
‘Gommorah’ (2008)
Dir: Matteo Garrone
Starring: Gianfelice Imparato, Simone Sacchettino, Salvatore Abruzzese and Maria
Nazionale
Written by: Roberto Saviano (Book)

13. Feedback
Key Scene Analysis
‘Gommorah’ (2008)
Dir: Matteo Garrone
Starring: Gianfelice Imparato, Simone Sacchettino, Salvatore Abruzzese and Maria
Nazionale
Written by: Roberto Saviano (Book)

14. Feedback

15. • Go to the FM4 – Section A Page of the Blog.
• Scroll down to the Gomorrah section
• Watch the interview with the author Roberto Saviano and complete the tasks by
EITHER printing out the document and answering the Questions by hand OR Type
up your answers electronically.

16. Feedback

17. What have you learnt?

18. PLENARY – 3 minutes
YOU MUST evaluate HOW
the text represents a
Difficult, Urban environment
in no more than 30 words.
Extension – YOU COULD
refer to specific examples
from the text.

19. Homework
Produce a “Comparison Alley” of the ‘Contextual Issues’ (Themes & Issues –
Social, Political, Cultural) surrounding the 3 films we have studied so far – e.g.
and
Violence – Poverty – Children and Crime – Power – Prospects – Escapism – Director
Opinions/Critical Opinions – e.g “..transport our audiences into a World of radical
contrasts” (Gavin Hood) – “Decency”
Due: Next Lesson – Monday 19th January