This dreamy adaptation of the novel by American author Jack London (most renowned for The Call of the Wild) is relocated to the Italian city of Naples, during an unspecified bygone era.
When unskilled labourer Martin Eden meets Elena—the daughter of a wealthy industrial family—it’s love at first sight. As he becomes increasingly obsessed with this refined young woman, Martin embarks on an education—something hitherto precluded by his class—with hopes of becoming a writer and thus enabling their marriage. In the process, Martin finds support from an older friend—the left-wing intellectual Russ Brissenden—and becomes involved in socialist circles. So begins a journey of political awakening, destructive anxiety, and conflict with Elena and her bourgeois world.
Combining post-WWII identifiers—such as telephones, trains and a second-hand Olivetti typewriter—with costumes and nitrate footage from further back in time, director Pietro Marcello creates a lyrical, temporal weave of the 20th century, whilst celebrating the vitality of working-class Naples.
