Schroeter, at one time both a student in and of the city of Naples, has created a work monumental in its concern for the unending poverty (when not of finances, then of spirit) offered to Naples' vast underclass. The Kingdom of Naples tells of a Neapolitan slum community over a thirty-year period following the war, focusing on the disparate fortunes which lead one family member into the petit bourgeoisie, another into the proletariat, still another into prostitution; one to an early death, another to late madness. Schroeter focuses on a sister and brother, Vittoria and Massimo. The children of an avid churchgoing mother and an equally devoutly socialist father, Vittoria-so named because she was born at the moment of liberation-trades the promise of "victory" (over superstition, over poverty) for the cold kitsch of the middle classes, while Massimo becomes an industrial worker without even the false hopes of his sister. Other families make their own trades, their own compromises with poverty (one mother sells her daughter for a sack of flour) in this tale told in sixteen episodes, most based on true stories. In his first 35mm feature, Schroeter's intensely operatic style is filtered through realism (specifically, Italian neorealism); the filmmaker interrupts the action in the manner of Brechtian epic theater. But The Kingdom of Naples is no less passionate for this. At moments the film is as hallucinatory as its text is socially profound.