Italian Cinema

I

Introduction

Italian Cinema, historical development of the cinema in Italy. The first period of glory enjoyed by the Italian cinema was in the early 1910s when it pioneered the feature-length historical spectacular. Up to then the Italian industry had been a pale shadow of the French, borrowing from its more advanced neighbour not only ideas but also stars (Italy’s most popular early comedian, Cretinetti, was in fact a Frenchman, André Deed, who was known there as Boireau). However, with The Fall of Troy (1911), and even more with Gli Ultimi Giorni di Pompei (1913; The Last Days of Pompeii) and Cabiria (1914), Italian companies such as Ambrosio and Cines successfully projected an entirely new form of spectacular cinema on to the world market, including the United States. No less successful, at least for audiences at home, were melodramas starring the famous “divas” Lyda Borelli (Fior di Male, 1915) and Francesca Bertini (Assunta Spina, 1915).

World War I brought a sudden end to this brief period of glory. In 1919 a flood of imports from the United States brought the Italian industry to the verge of bankruptcy. Production dwindled throughout the 1920s and by the end of the decade only a handful of feature films was being made each year.

Matters improved in the 1930s. The coming of sound created a demand for Italian-language films, and the Fascist government, which had previously shown no interest in the cinema except as a vehicle for propaganda in newsreel and documentary, belatedly intervened to support the industry. Unlike its German counterpart, Italian Fascism did not attempt to stage-manage the cinema as a nationalistic spectacle. Although a few overtly Fascist films were made, beginning with Alessandro Blasetti’s Sole in 1929, for the most part the government contented itself with encouraging the industry to be economically self-sufficient. Massive new studios were built. Directors who had emigrated, such as Augusto Genina and Carmine Gallone, returned home, and the German-Jewish director Max Ophuls made the exquisite La Signora di Tutti in Italy in 1934. Comedies and melodramas were particularly popular, and in Mario Camerini (1935; Darò un Milione, which starred the young Vittorio De Sica) Italy produced a master of comedy to rank alongside Frank Capra or Preston Sturges.

II

Neo-Realism in Italian Cinema

After the fall of Mussolini in 1943 and liberation in 1945, an entirely new cinema came into being in Italy: Neo-Realism. With the studios at Cinecittà turned into a refugee camp, film-makers took to the street to tell stories about the Resistance or the pain of post-war everyday life. Neo-Realism emerged into public view with Roma, Città Aperta (Rome, Open City) by Roberto Rossellini, shot during the last months of World War II and released in September 1945, but the seeds of the movement had been germinating for a long time and it had a notable precursor in Ossessione (1943) by Luchino Visconti. Visconti went on to make La Terra Trema (1948; The Earth Trembles), a massive epic about the harsh life of Sicilian fishermen, while the director/scriptwriter team of Vittorio De Sica and Cesare Zavattini made Sciuscià (1946; Shoeshine), about two boys living off their wits in post-war Rome; the world-famous Ladri di Biciclette (1948; Bicycle Thieves); and Umberto D (1952), the story of a pensioner and his dog. Rossellini followed the success of Roma, Città Aperta with Paisà (1946), a film in six episodes about the Allied advance through Italy, and Germania Anno Zero (1948; Germany Year Zero), set in the ruins of Berlin.

Neo-Realism, though widely acclaimed and hugely influential, particularly abroad, enjoyed mixed fortunes with the public at home. La Terra Trema was released only in a cut version, with its Sicilian dialect dubbed into standard Italian; it did badly at the box office. Umberto D fared even worse. More popular were films such as Giuseppe De Santis’s Riso Amaro (1949; Bitter Rice), which mixed social content with elements of crime melodrama, and whose camera lingered on the thighs of the young Silvana Mangano striding through the rice fields. Faced with poor distribution and with outright hostility from a government concerned with the image of Italy being projected by their films, the Neo-Realist film-makers changed course, seeking success in the resurgent commercial cinema and in what was shortly to emerge as the international art film.

III

The 1950s and 1960s

Faced, as in the 1920s, with strong competition from Hollywood, the Italian industry embarked in the 1950s on a three-pronged strategy. Low-budget popular comedies and genre films were made for the domestic market, while for larger projects co-production agreements were sought with other European countries. Meanwhile, the Americans were encouraged to invest the profits from the Italian market in productions shot in Italy, the most famous of which was the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) film Ben-Hur (1959). Prestigious productions were planned for international distribution, culminating in 1963 with Visconti’s Il Gattopardo (The Leopard), financed by 20th Century-Fox. The enormous success of La Dolce Vita by Federico Fellini (1960) and the critical acclaim won by Otto e Mezzo (Federico Fellini, 1963; 8½) and the modernistic L’Avventura (1960) and L’Eclisse (1962; The Eclipse), both by Michelangelo Antonioni, placed Italy once again at the forefront of world cinema. A generation of new author-directors emerged, including Pier Paolo Pasolini (Accattone!, 1961); Bernardo Bertolucci, with Prima della Rivoluzione (1964; Before the Revolution); and Marco Bellocchio, with I Pugni in Tasca (1965; Fists in the Pocket), who took up important political and cultural themes in a highly personal manner.

The 1960s were also remarkable for the extraordinary worldwide success of a genre of film initially designed mainly for domestic consumption: the Italian or “spaghetti Western“. With Spanish or Yugoslavian landscapes standing in for the American West, spaghetti Westerns created a world of ritualized and almost abstract violent spectacle that found typical expression in the films of the genre’s master, Sergio Leone (Per un Pugno di Dollari/A Fistful of Dollars, 1964; Il Buono, Il Brutto, Il Cattivo/The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, 1966).

IV

Decline of Italian Cinema

In the 1970s Italian cinema as a distinct entity began to fall apart. Audiences and production levels declined. Leading directors were increasingly tempted by the lure of the international film, signal examples being Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris (1972, with Marlon Brando) and Antonioni’s The Passenger (1975; Professione: Reporter, with Jack Nicholson). Of the great masters of the post-war period only Fellini remained strongly rooted in an Italian background (albeit interpreted in a singularly idiosyncratic manner). The world of the Mafia, terrorism, and political corruption, however, continued to provide themes both for established directors such as Francesco Rosi, with Cadaveri Eccellenti (1975; Illustrious Corpses), and for a new generation of actor-directors such as Nanni Moretti and Roberto Benigni. The biting and often nihilistic satire of the so-called “new comics” is quite unlike the gentler “comedy Italian-style” popularized by actors of an earlier generation such as Marcello Mastroianni. It has also been less successfully exported—the glory days of Italian cinema have indisputably passed despite a slight resurgence in the international popularity of Italian cinema in the 1990s with films like La Scorta (Ricky Tognazzi, 1993) and Caro Diario (Nanni Moretti, 1994; Dear Diary). Directors such as Gianni Amelio (1994; Lamerica) have not enjoyed the international acclaim they deserve. Only Bertolucci has been able to capitalize on earlier success, notably with the Academy Award-winning The Last Emperor (1987) and most recently with Stealing Beauty (1996) and L'Assedio (1998; Besieged), though these are chiefly English-language films. At the 1999 annual Academy Awards Italian actor and director Roberto Benigni won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in La Vita è Bella (1997; Life Is Beautiful). The film, which he also directed, drew both acclaim and controversy for its story of a father using humour to shield his family from the horrors of a World War II concentration camp. Benigni's win marked the first time that the best actor award went to someone in a foreign-language production; the film also won awards for Best Foreign Film and Best Dramatic Score.