We & Film
Part 2

2,627 words

Part 1

Il cinema è l´arma più forte.
-B. Mussolini

***

Artekrati

Italy had already enjoyed a famous and successful era of silent films, which were not based on slapstick comedy but on large-scale productions with ancient, mythological, Renaissance, and other historical themes (The Last Days of Pompeii, The Fall of Troy, Quo Vadis, Lucrezia Borgia, Dante and Beatrice, etc.). The undisputed highlight of this era is Cabiria (1914), a story from the Second Punic War, for which D’Annunzio, an advocate and proponent of the superman, wrote the subtitles and which, alongside the title character Cabiria, “born of fire,” introduced the prototype of all later “supermen”: a strongman named Maciste. Less than a year after the March on Rome, writer Calzo Bini founded the Cooperativa Cinematografica Fascista (Fascist Film Cooperative) to revive Italian post-war cinema, and in 1925 Mussolini himself initiated the creation of the state film institution Luce (Light). At that time, however, the fascists had quite different concerns, and so only conventional productions continued to be made (including a series of further stories about Maciste). [1] At the same time, French and especially American films were being imported on a large scale, so the Duce issued a decree in 1928 requiring all Italian cinemas to screen at least 10% of domestic productions. [2]

It was only at the very end of the 1920s, in a country stabilized by the Lateran Accords, that two films worthy of the “new Italy” emerged. The first was called The Sun (Sole, 1929), directed by Alessandro Blasetti, which, instead of a staged spectacle, offered a documentary view of people at work, specifically the Fascist-initiated campaign to drain the marshes. Abroad, critics wrote about the influence of the Soviet avant-garde, but also about the “celebration of the myth of work, the cult of masculinity and the statuesque beauty of the body,” which is also reflected in the subtitles of this silent film. The second is called Railway (Rotaie, 1929), which was subsequently dubbed (1931) and directed by Mario Camerini, who was undoubtedly influenced by German expressionism. Against the backdrop of a young couple travelling across Italy for two weeks, he composes a mosaic of everyday life, which is said to have had “the credible power of captured reality.” Both films, each in their own way, emphasize pure civic virtues, simple life, and honest work as a service to the homeland over the noncommittal entertainment or emotional and financial vicissitudes of individuals from “high society” staged in a fashionable setting. After the expensive blockbusters that marked the birth of Italian cinema, they gave Italian film a new impetus that would find its followers not only in the neorealism of the late 1940s and early 1950s, but for some Italian filmmakers, they would remain an acknowledged model for their authenticity even much later.

Blasetti paid further homage to a return to the land in Terra Madre (1930), but promising developments were once again almost halted by the global economic crisis, which did not spare Italy, caught in the midst of a transition from an economically liberal to a corporatist state. By the time the worst effects of the crisis had been overcome, sound film was already dominant. Starting in 1932, Italian cinema experienced a true rinascita. 

New partner: The State

1932 – As part of the Venice Biennale of Contemporary Art, the Mostra d’arte cinematografica, or “film festival,” is held for the first time. Today, it is the oldest film festival in the world, held in Venice.

1934 – The state-run Direzione generale della cinematografia (General Directorate of Cinematography, DGC) is established, headed by renowned expert Luigi Freddi.

1935 – The government, through the DGC, establishes the Ente Nazionale Industrie Cinematografichelle (National Film Production Council, ENIC) and, through it, introduces state support for cinematography: if a script is approved, the state covers up to 30% of the production budget; Italian film producers are also allowed to dub up to four foreign films without the usual fees; all this leads major Hollywood companies to withdraw from the Italian market, which significantly improves the prospects for domestic filmmakers; the Centro Sperimentale de Cinematografia (CSC) film school is established in Rome, headed by the outstanding Luigi Chiarini; The CSC launches the ambitious magazine Bianco e nero, which gains worldwide renown; in the same year, the Italian Amateur Film Club Festival is held for the first time in Florence to support young talent.

1937 – Benito Mussolini himself opens Cinecittà near Rome – a film city, i.e. a huge complex with 28 buildings, including 9 large studios; management is entrusted to engineer Carlo Roncoroni and, after his death (1939), administration passes directly to the state. Cinecittà fulfilled its role as a means of strengthening national self-esteem long after the war and faced American media imperialism until the end of the 1970s, when “Hollywood on the Tiber” – already on the verge of bankruptcy – was privatized by the government. However, some of the above-mentioned institutions are still in operation today (e.g., Luce).

Under these conditions, annual domestic film production naturally increased. In 1938, it reached 45 films, a year later 50, and in 1940, as many as 83 films were made. [3] In Europe, Italian cinema gradually dominated alongside German cinema, and the number of co-productions between the two countries also increased. Italian films of this period can be roughly divided into the following genre categories:

• Costume dramas, spectacular or sophisticated films, often based on valuable literary works, whose artistically refined shots have become known as Calligrafismo (calligraphy).
• Melodramas set amongst the upper class called “white telephones” [4] promoting traditional values in the context of modern society. Typical of these was, for example, the treatment of the topical issue of social mobility: a handsome young man has an affair with a woman from the upper class, only to discover that true happiness can only be found among his own kind… On the one hand, these films cultivate the morals of the lower classes, as they significantly influence the way people talk and behave, not to mention their appearance. On the other hand, they dampen the undignified modalities of social advancement “at any cost.” The ideological tension between the traditional and the modern, between the glorification of models and examples from the past and the professed or merely subconscious admiration for everything new, remains open throughout the entire fascist “twenty years.”
• Folk comedies, often with elements of community satire.
• Adventure and war films, whether historical or contemporary.

Of course, it is impossible to categorize the entire production so precisely. Some films contain varying amounts of two or even three of these “genres,” and directors did not specialize in one of them, but rather alternated between them and combined them. For example, Camerini, the author of Rails, made several film adaptations of literary works, including Alarcón’s The Three-Cornered Hat (Il Capello a tre punte, 1934) and Manzoni’s The Betrothed (I Promessi Sposi, 1941), and he directed several comedies with sharp observations of everyday life. He also directed The Great Appeal (Il grande apello, 1936), an action story set during the Second Italo-Ethiopian War.

Other examples would be Augusto Genina and Carmine Gallone, two other important directors from this period, who returned to their homeland in the mid-1930s after working abroad, mainly in Germany. In The White Squadron (Lo squadrone bianco, 1936), Genina combines an adventure story from an Italian colony in Libya with a love affair between an officer and a woman, while capturing the desert in a “calligraphic” style. Alcazar (L’Assedio dell’Alcazar, 1940), a drama from the Spanish Civil War (filmed by Czech cinematographer Jan Stallich), depicts the defense of the fortress of the same name, in which “nationalist” cadets heroically face the “internationalist” superior forces of the Reds for six weeks, while in the documentary Benghazi (1942), Genina shows the horrific acts of the Allies during the Italian campaign in North Africa. Gallone, in The Fall of Carthage (Scipione l’africano, 1937), comes up with an epic blockbuster set in the Roman Empire. Meanwhile, however, both directors were making “calligraphy” films, “white telephone” films, and comedies.

The same applies to Blasetti, who, after Sole e terra madre (The Sun and Mother Earth), created what was for a long time the most successful Italian film, 1860 (1933) – the year in the title refers to the year when Garibaldi and his “Thousand” landed in Sicily. Local peasants co-starred in the film, even in the leading roles, which added authenticity and once again heralded neorealism. The adventure film Aldebaran (1935) is set in the present day on an Italian navy ship, and Ettore Fieramosca (1938) is a monumental picture of late medieval wars and castles, also with a strong patriotic accent.

Blasetti achieved new artistic and audience heights with The Iron Crown (La corona di ferro, 1940), his third monumental historical fresco, which won the award for best Italian film in Venice a year later. A recent online review describes it as a mixture of Lang’s Nibelungen (artistic “Teutonism”), William Tell (the protagonist’s extraordinary skill with weapons), Macbeth (the tragic prophecy of the forest seer) and Tarzan (the son of a murdered king, abandoned as a child in the forest and raised by lions). [5]

Only a few of the dozens or hundreds of films produced were explicitly “fascist” or about fascists. The most frequently cited are Black Shirt (Camicia nera, 1933) by Giovacchino Forzano and Blasetti’s The Old Guard (Vecchia guardia, 1934), both celebrating ten years of the new state, the latter perhaps with an unintended critical edge, as it offers a comparison between the original revolutionary squadrismo, energetically activist and dynamic, and the growing bureaucracy of the regime. However, it is necessary to recall the position that Vittorio Mussolini held in Italian cinema: the Duce’s eldest son was first and foremost the editor-in-chief and contributor to the influential magazine Cinema, published by Luce, around which (and the CSC) a number of later filmmakers of neorealism “levitated”: screenwriters Giuseppe De Santis, Gianni Puccini, Mario Alicata, well-known communists as well as theorists Umberto Barbaro and Pietro Ingrao, and those ideologically aligned with them, such as Luchino Visconti, Zavattini, but also De Sica, Soldati, Lattuada, and Antonioni. [6] All of them skillfully adopted the fascist rhetoric of the “aesthetic revolution” on his page. It is therefore no surprise that the first truly neorealist film, Visconti’s Obsession (1943), emerged from this milieu during the war. [7]

Under the pseudonym Tito Silvio Mursino, Vittorio also wrote several film scripts, the best of which, based on his own experiences, was adapted for the screen by Michelangelo Antonioni, later celebrated director of the “tetralogy of emotions” (Il Grido; The Adventure; The Eclipse), and under the title Pilot Returns (1942) it was subsequently filmed by another giant of post-war neorealism, Roberto Rossellini (Rome, Open City; Paisà) as the third and final title of his “fascist trilogy,” preceded by The White Ship (1941) and The Man with the Cross (1942). [8]

Even earlier, Mussolini Jr. tried his hand at executive producer in Gallone’s The Fall of Carthage and even assistant director on Goffredo Alessandrini‘s Luciano Serra pilota (1938), which he co-wrote with Rossellini. (From Alessandrini’s rich and acclaimed filmography, we must mention at least Giarabub, probably the most impressive Italian war film of the time, a “hymn to death”. The title refers to an oasis in the Libyan desert held by Italian troops against the British.)

This shows that in “fascist Italy,” there wasn’t exactly strict “cadre control” in the film industry—why that was and how it backfired on the fascists is a question and topic for another article. [9] Secondly, it shows that the regime built up a system of institutions, equipment, and legislation that continued to benefit the entire country artistically and commercially for several decades, even after the social conditions changed. The cultural heritage that emerged from this system is still valid today.

Notes

[1] Mussolini was – not only because of his proudly protruding chin – jokingly compared by both his opponents and admirers to Macist.

[2] After 1935, this number increased to 30% and eventually to 50% of the mandatory representation of domestic production in Italian cinema programs. On the other hand, the fascist regime never attempted to completely suppress the enthusiasm that American films and “American things” in general aroused in a significant part of the Italian population (many of whom, after all, had relatives or neighbors who had emigrated to America). This admiration was often subconscious, but Vittorio Mussolini, for example, spoke quite openly about the “youthful and energetic” American cinema, considering it, at least in the works of Frank Capra, John Ford, William Wyler, and King Vidor, more suitable for Italian audiences than many European films inundated with 19th-century bourgeois stereotypes.

[3] For comparison: in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, 32 feature films were made in the same year. Italy reached its peak two years later, when it produced 120 feature films.

[4] The title comes – how could it be otherwise – from American films such as Male and Female (1919, dir. Cecil B. De Mille), in which white telephones were a sign of luxury among the upper classes.

[5] However, Dr. Goebbels did not like Blasetti’s film at all and was truly shocked by its “bad taste” after seeing it in Venice. The minister, himself once the author of an expressionist novel and a man with a great personal fondness for film, had always preferred modernity, technology, and novelty over the distant past and mythology.

[6] It seems that in these intellectual circles, at least since 1940 (i.e., since Italy entered the war alongside Germany), everyone, including convinced fascists, was critical of the reality of the regime.

[7] Obsession, an adaptation of the novel by American writer James Cain, The Postman Always Rings Twice, caused a real drama. The church was particularly offended, but Vittorio Mussolini did not like it either – he left the premiere with the comment: “This is not Italy.” Visconti set the rather banal story of a love triangle involving the murder of an inconvenient husband in an environment that contradicted the fascist image of a modern, dynamic, and revolutionary state: dusty roads with old gas stations, corner taverns with greasy dining rooms, shabby rooms, third-class train carriages, peeling washbasins, dry dirty grass, tired faces. In fact, there is little realism in this “first neorealist film,” and the acting is still too theatrical, i.e., not very natural; although it was shot on location, everything is stylized in such a way that it almost seems as if Visconti was anticipating the mood of spaghetti westerns. The film was banned or withdrawn in some cities, but when Duce saw it at a private screening, he openly declared, according to Visconti, that “it is a work of art that must be shown.” Of course, this did not prevent its author from soon finding himself in prison as a resistance fighter hiding weapons, from which he was rescued by partisans.

[8] Even years later, Rossellini remembered Mussolini’s son as a “likeable young man.” However, unlike Visconti and Antonioni, he never identified with fascism, not even briefly or temporarily (see the Ponrepo program from February 2006, pp. 6 and 7). His “fascist” films strike a conciliatory tone towards both the “good” and the ‘bad’: the principle of “treating the wounded” regardless of their political affiliation (The White Ship), the priest’s efforts to find words of help and comfort for believers and atheists alike on the Eastern Front (The Man with the Cross), etc.

[9] Mussolini Jr. even invited Jean Renoir (who was directing his Tosca in Rome at the time), a member of the Committee for the Vigilance of Anti-Fascist Intellectuals and the Popular Front since 1934, who also shot semi-documentaries for the French Communist Party and, shortly before receiving the offer, criticized Italy in his film The Grand Illusion (1939) – Vittorio had it in his private collection – to teach at the Centro Sperimentale, where people like Umberto Barbaro were already showing Soviet films to students and translating them! The fascists apparently believed that the exchange of ideas in this exclusive environment could not influence the masses or the direction of the state (after all, even Stalin repeatedly invited Breker to Moscow, most recently after the war).

Translated by Ondrej Mann.