The movie does not follow the plot of the Pirandello short story of the same name, but instead weaves together two separate narratives: the long and complicated journey of the author’s ashes after his death in 1936, and an adaptation of one of his final stories, The Nail (Il chiodo).
When Luigi Pirandello died, the fascist regime honored him with all the official tributes, including recognition of his Nobel Prize. Yet his final wish—to have his ashes buried in a rock in the countryside near his hometown of Agrigento—was denied. Instead, his remains were placed in a temporary tomb at Rome’s Verano cemetery. It wasn’t until 1947, after the fall of fascism, that Prime Minister Alcide De Gasperi authorized the repatriation of Pirandello’s ashes. An official from Agrigento was tasked with escorting the urn from Rome to Palermo, where a second funeral was held. But even then, the remains were not interred. Only in 1951, fifteen years after Pirandello’s death, were his ashes finally laid to rest in the Agrigento countryside, as he had wished.
The Nail
The film’s second part adapts The Nail, one of Pirandello’s final short stories. Set in Harlem, New York, it tells the story of Bastianeddu, a Sicilian boy who emigrated with his father despite his mother’s objections. Disoriented in the new world, he commits a senseless act of violence: during a quarrel with an older girl, he kills a girl his own age, Betty, someone he doesn’t even know, by striking her with a nail.