cinema2020

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN FASCISM AND CINEMA

The question of the relationships between f. and cinema moves on a double terrain of analysis: that of the regime's use of new means of mass communication, and that of the complex and multifaceted relations it maintains with the world of culture. It is therefore a crucial question for an overall evaluation of the f., Its modernizing aims and abilities as well as its actual totalitarian nature. Moreover, modernization and totalitarianism represent the interpretative extremes within which the historiographic research on the subject has developed: from the separation of a clear Crocian ancestry between f. and culture, aimed at crediting the image of a regime based on the control and coercion of intellectuals (Bobbio 1973), to the inclusion of cinema as a component of the ' fascist consensus machine (Cannistraro 1975) as part of a more general recovery of the links between the history of f. and history of Italy (De Felice 1975), up to the articulation of the relationships between f. and mass culture in terms of institutional organization, professional corporatism, homogenization of training mechanisms (Isnenghi 1979; Turi 1980). Each of these three different interpretative visions leads to a different concept of culture: 'high', elitist and European in the first, 'low', functional and ideological in the second, 'mixed', plural and fragmented in the third. Specifically in the history of cinema, the interpretative key of a clear separation between fascist cinema and Italian cinema has been proposed in an organic way by one of the protagonists of that same story, Carlo Lizzani: "Italian cinema from 1930 onwards (Italian cinema which, as we said, bears the imprint of Blasetti and Camerini) is today a clear story for us, a transparent and meaningful parable. It is the story of how the middle class, mass base of fascism, 'lent' its ideology, its illusions, its dreams and its myths to the ruling regime "(Lizzani 1960, 1992³, p. 45). In this case, auteur cinema is treated as a story in itself, essentially internal and self-referential, determined by the double relationship with the parallel evolution of European and American cinema and with the national cultural tradition. In other words, it is a story separate from that of state cinema, exemplified by the documentaries of the Istituto Nazionale Luce and functional to the official propaganda of the regime, both from that of the more strictly commercial cinema, inspired by the so-called genre of white telephones (so called because of its attention to the luxurious furnishings of high-bourgeois domestic interiors) and to a lesser literature of mere escape. Precisely the absence of a full-bodied and significant precedent, comparable to that which the season of Expressionism had represented in Germany, had determined in Italy a much lower quality level than this commercial cinema compared to its German counterpart. Vice versa, the search for a poetics closer to reality and daily life (that cultural world 'lent' by the middle class to f.) Led the best directors of the period to escape early from the riverbed of the

Lizzani's interpretation, deliberately content and unwilling to investigate the economic and industrial implications of cinematographic art, was contrasted in the seventies with a different reading, marked in depth from the point of view of a militant and committed cinematographic critic. According to this reading, also the films of Alessandro Blasetti and Mario Camerini- instead of showing an implicit opposition to the fascist ideology - they were contaminated by the dominant atmosphere and limited themselves to proposing the different variants of the same narrative scheme, founded on the parenthesis of a transgressive holiday closed by a rapid return to order and a prompt restoration of balances and social hierarchies (Carabba 1974). Entrusted to the reconstruction of petty-bourgeois affairs and environments rather than epic mythologies, this conservative and traditionalist message ended up acquiring a far more insidious and pervasive penetration capacity than that put in place by cinema closer and functional to regime propaganda. Between the opposing visions of Lizzani and Carabba runs the same space that exists between an older generation, interested in ennobling their cultural origins by separating them from those of the fascist regime, and a younger generation, striving for self-assertion through criticism or the condemnation en bloc of the connivances and co-responsibility of their fathers. As E. Garin remarked at the time, "not having thoroughly conducted a ruthless analysis, at all levels, even on the field of culture, was a serious fault of this post-war period, which was at first too prone to moralistic condemnations parallel to indulgent compromises, then too prone to global, rhetorical and unrealistic refusals "(Garin 1974, p. XX). self-affirmation through criticism or the condemnation en bloc of the connivances and co-responsibility of one's fathers. As E. Garin remarked at the time, "not having thoroughly conducted a ruthless analysis, at all levels, even on the field of culture, was a serious fault of this post-war period, which was at first too prone to moralistic condemnations parallel to indulgent compromises, then too prone to global, rhetorical and unrealistic refusals "(Garin 1974, p. XX). self-affirmation through criticism or the condemnation en bloc of the connivances and co-responsibility of one's fathers. As E. Garin remarked at the time, "not having thoroughly conducted a ruthless analysis, at all levels, even on the field of culture, was a serious fault of this post-war period, which was at first too prone to moralistic condemnations parallel to indulgent compromises, then too prone to global, rhetorical and unrealistic refusals "(Garin 1974, p. XX).

In the mid-seventies, a conference held in Pesaro in 1974 and a review held there the following year became the interpreters of an overall re-evaluation of the cinema of white telephones (see comedy), revised in anticipation of the neorealist phenomenon especially in the sense of a non-ideological and non-literary attention to bourgeois interiors, glimpses of social life and characters far from the regime's imperial and bellicist rhetoric (Italian cinema under fascism, 1979; Midas, Quaglietti 1980). The conservative and traditionalist nature of the environments staged by this cinema corresponded to an atavistic and profound identity of the Italians: talented, smart, romantic but always lovers of their own particular and therefore ultimately very far from the 'new man' that the f . he would have liked to build. It does not seem a forcing to underline both the chronological coincidence and the assonances of this type of revaluation - against which Lizzani protested from the columns of the "Corriere della Sera" (December 31, 1976) - with the more comprehensive historiographic revision linked to the name of R. De Felice. In fact, this revision was based on an interpretation of the Mussolini dictatorship as an attempt to accelerate the modernization of the country, in which the contradictions of Italian history and society were mixed: through a physiognomy from time to time industrialist and ruralist, the regime built a relationship of hegemony over the most dynamic parts of civil society (the middle classes), up to gaining active consent. But it would have been this profound intertwining with the nation that aroused the same subjects from within the regime (the exponents of 'left-wing fascism' such as G. Bottai and A. Grandi) destined to cause its fall. Not too dissimilar, in the cinema of white telephones the kinship with the coeval and best French cinematography (Marcel Carné, Jean Renoir) was emphasized up to configure it as the expression of a tacit anti-fascist branch, from whose branch the blooms of the neorealist film and comedy would then blossom Italian. It was during the 1980s that - on the basis of that third more general historiographic vision, more articulated and attentive to the mechanisms of organization and transmission of mass culture in the Fascist era - a less univocal and more differentiated approach gradually took over. theme of relationships between f. and cinema. It is no coincidence that this new approach has often been linked to Anglo-Saxon research, and the United States in particular. At the center of it is in fact a reading of cinema as a mass cultural consumption and therefore as a mirror and at the same time a projector of lifestyles, myths and stereotypes of common sense. In the relationship between cinema and f. therefore a mass culture is placed as an element of mediation and combination which is at the base of the social structure and is the result of the intertwining of different factors: official regime ideology, popular folklore and age-old subaltern cultures, stratified mentality of class and community , contingent dynamics of the socio-economic condition, civic and solidarity traditions (Hay 1987). Cinema is an artistic creation and therefore an internal product of contexts, filiations and cultural and intellectual relationships, but it is also a means of mass communication and therefore a product intended for different audiences (young people, women, families) to interpret their personal and collective identities. In this effort to decipher the society to which it is addressed, cinema is never merely a passive reflection of reality nor merely pure and simple evasion. Rather, it constitutes "a mosaic of myths involving the family, work, social rise, youthful heroism, sacrifice, imperial dream, sexual conflict, love and leisure and, more particularly, of strategies often unaware of the naturalization of experiences to create a sense of 'how things are' "(Landy 1986, pp. 27-28). Although it did not presuppose a fascist viewer in the more strictly ideological sense of the term,

According to this vision, through cinema a reciprocal relationship was built between the fascist regime and the middle class: within which, that is, each "lent" - to use Lizzani's expression - something to the other. As one of the protagonists of that time, Sergio Amidei, says, "one cannot speak of fascist cinema, but of Italian cinema" (Le cinéma italien, 1990, pp. 17-18), because, to put it in the words of a another witness such as Alberto Moravia, "cinema of the fascist era unconsciously reflected the social situation of Italy under fascism, that is, a small bourgeoisie of rural origin, peasant, who believed in the myth of ancient Rome and the Renaissance" (Le cinéma italien, 1990, p. 194). The same overall question of consent to the regime comes out redefined in more complex and multifaceted, less univocal and undifferentiated terms. The modernizing hegemony of f. it cannot be reduced to induced and compulsive false consciousness, but it is not even a homogeneous and suffocating totalitarian cloak: it knows areas of shadow, plots and plural articulations.

To evaluate this dynamic in historically more precise terms, it should be remembered that the starting point, at the beginning of the 1920s, was that of a serious crisis in Italian cinema, determined by the ruthless competition of the Hollywood majors and the unexpected recovery of the variety linked to the big names of O. Spadaro, R. Viviani, L. Fregoli, E. Petrolini (Brunetta 1991, 1995²). In the aftermath of the march on Rome, the Mussolini government showed concern about control over the morality of the films in circulation, but appeared far from conscious use of film production. A few dozen films were released every year, which relentlessly went back into international consideration in the face of the contemporary works of Fritz Lang, Sergej M. Ejzenštejn, René Clair, Charlie Chaplin. L' the only success destined in some way to cross the boundaries of the national audience was Augusto Genina's Cirano di Bergerac (1922), who creatively revisited the pre-war vein of period films; a director like Camerini was trained at his school. The stabilization process of the dictatorship was reflected in the establishment of the Istituto Nazionale Luce (November 1925) as a state body: since April 1926 the documentaries "of national and patriotic propaganda" produced by it (in the end, in 1943, there would have been about three thousand ) were shown in all the cinemas of the Kingdom. The regime therefore seemed to carve out a sphere of direct and conscious intervention in the modern sector of mass communication, with no purpose of support and orientation in the production of fiction (Argentieri 1979; Cardillo 1983). The latter continued to re-propose the lucky cycle of Maciste (the actor Bartolomeo Pagano, who impersonated him, was the highest paid of Italian silent cinema) and a serial and rhetorical 'Romanity' but without visible links with current events: Messalina (1923) by Enrico Guazzoni, Quo vadis? (1924) by Gabriellino D'Annunzio and Georg Jacoby, The last days of Pompeii (1926) by Amleto Palermi and Carmine Gallone (Martinelli 1980-81; Gori 1988). The only exception in this task sharing framework was the 1923 film The Eagle's Scream directed by Mario Volpe, which traced a line of continuity between the First World War and the march on Rome, and which however met a total failure of public and critics. who impersonated him, was the highest paid of Italian silent cinema) and a serial and rhetorical 'Romanity' but without visible links with current affairs: Enrico Guazzoni's Messalina (1923), Quo vadis? (1924) by Gabriellino D'Annunzio and Georg Jacoby, The last days of Pompeii (1926) by Amleto Palermi and Carmine Gallone (Martinelli 1980-81; Gori 1988). The only exception in this task sharing framework was the 1923 film The Eagle's Scream directed by Mario Volpe, which traced a line of continuity between the First World War and the march on Rome, and which however met a total failure of public and critics. who impersonated him, was the highest paid of Italian silent cinema) and a serial and rhetorical 'Romanity' but without visible links with current affairs: Enrico Guazzoni's Messalina (1923), Quo vadis? (1924) by Gabriellino D'Annunzio and Georg Jacoby, The last days of Pompeii (1926) by Amleto Palermi and Carmine Gallone (Martinelli 1980-81; Gori 1988). The only exception in this task sharing framework was the 1923 film The Eagle's Scream directed by Mario Volpe, which traced a line of continuity between the First World War and the march on Rome, and which however met a total failure of public and critics. Quo vadis? (1924) by Gabriellino D'Annunzio and Georg Jacoby, The last days of Pompeii (1926) by Amleto Palermi and Carmine Gallone (Martinelli 1980-81; Gori 1988). The only exception in this task sharing framework was the 1923 film The Eagle's Scream directed by Mario Volpe, which traced a line of continuity between the First World War and the march on Rome, and which however met a total failure of public and critics. Quo vadis? (1924) by Gabriellino D'Annunzio and Georg Jacoby, The last days of Pompeii (1926) by Amleto Palermi and Carmine Gallone (Martinelli 1980-81; Gori 1988). The only exception in this task-sharing framework was the 1923 film The Eagle's Scream directed by Mario Volpe, which traced a line of continuity between the First World War and the march on Rome, and which however met a total failure of public and critics.

Only at the end of the 1920s did a new vein of colonial argument emerge, the best product of which remains Kiff Tebby (1928), epic of the Italian military mission in the land of Africa, which consecrated the international success of Camerini (Brunetta, Gili 1990). Sole (1929) was dedicated to the 'internal front' of the major reclamations of the Pontine marshes, directed by a young 'militant intellectual' of the regime, A. Blasetti. The revaluation of the peasant world, of which the film stood as a conscious spokesman, seemed very far from the aggressive and populist rhetoric of M. Maccari's Strapaese and his magazine "Il Selvaggio": rurality was not seen as the antithesis of 'modernist civilization ', and dell' man exalted the collective ability to fight against nature rather than to defend and preserve it passively. Almost an industrialist counterpoint to Blasetti's film was Camerini's Rotaie (1930), apologist for the ethics of factory work as opposed to the debauchery of gambling, in which echoes and suggestions of Soviet cinema also reverberated.

Camerini and Blasetti were linked to the 'rebirth' of Italian cinema. At the end of the 1920s, the projection rooms returned to crowd, regaining the lost ground in favor of the variety. But every year there were more than a thousand securities imported from abroad (and mainly from the United States) compared to the few dozen resulting from national production. It was at this juncture that the regime's active intervention matured. On June 18, 1931, law no. 918, the first of organic support to the sector, which allocated 10% of the proceeds to production: "the Government" - claimed G. Bottai, then Minister of Corporations - "wanted to help the industry to resist the foreign industry that leads on our market those films of variety, fantasy, imagination that constitute a powerful attraction for the public. I rarely go to the cinema, but I have always found that the public invariably gets bored when the cinema wants to educate it. The public wants to be amused and it is precisely on this ground that we want to help the Italian industry today "(Brunetta 1991, 1995², p. 191). The support from a nationalist and anti-American point of view for film production therefore did not alter the background of the division of tasks established with the foundation of the Istituto Luce: propaganda in newsreels, evasion in cinema And it is interesting to note that the fascist initiative avoided the adoption of protectionist measures (still in 1938 almost two thirds of the proceeds would go to Hollywood films) and of control filters on national production. Private production houses multiplied: to the reconstituted oneCines (which inaugurated the first sound systems in May 1930), directed by Stefano Pittaluga and then by Emilio Cecchi, were joined by Caesar, Titanus , Lux. In 1934 the Tirrenia Film plants opened. Those were the years when the star of Luigi Freddi, a former journalist correspondent from the United States and director of cinematography at the Ministry of Press and Propaganda (Freddi 1948), was rising. Under his leadership, the state initiative supported the private one: the investments of the National Film Industries Authority increased, and from February 1934 the Entertainment Corporation organized actors and authors of theater and cinema, alongside the Fascist Federation of show businessmen established in 1926. Under the slogan "cinematography is the strongest weapon", Cinecittà was inaugurated in April 1937. With ten stage theaters built on the outskirts of Rome at the gates of Cines, destroyed in 1935 by a fire, it was the largest European production complex: from January 1940 it was managed by Freddi himself. Italian production increased, and from 45 films in 1938 to 85 in 1940: 55 of them left Cinecittà. The receipts of Italian films rose from just over 10% in 1938 to over 50% in 1942; American ones fell in the same period from almost two thirds to just over a fifth (Savio 1975 and 1979; Corsi 2001).

But the quality also grew. In the summer of 1932 the first edition of the Venice International Film Festival was held, where the works of René Clair, Joris Ivens, Frank Capra, Jean Renoir (awarded in 1937 for La grande illusion, La grande illusion, which however it sparked attacks by the regime for its anti-militarism). In October 1935 the Experimental Center of Cinematography, directed by Luigi Chiarini, had been opened in Rome, where most of the directors who would have established themselves after the war were trained and the magazine "Bianco e nero" (Laura 1976) was christened. The panorama of Italian cinema remained dominated by the figures of Blasetti and Camerini. The first brought to the screens the theatrical comedy of Ettore Petrolini (Nero, 1930) and re-read the Risorgimento myth in a populist key with 1860 (1934), where the point of view of the Sicilian subaltern classes - also explained by the use of dialect - was functional to the presentation of the process of national unification in the key of "concordant inter-class participation" (Brunetta 1991, 1995², p. 220). The blasettian vein of homeland history expanded with Ettore Fieramosca (1938) and La cena delle beffe (1942), famous for the bare breasts of Clara Calamai, up to Quattro passi tra le clouds (1942) which - with the screenplay by Cesare Zavattini - marked the passage to a more lyrical theme of escape from reality. In The Men, Who Rascals ... (1932) Camerini inaugurated a vein of satire of the dreams of greatness and the daily miseries of the petty bourgeoisie, who availed himself of the acting of Vittorio De Sica (Il signor Max, 1937). It would have been the latter, passed behind the camera, to overturn the brilliant approach in moral criticism with Children look at us (1944), where the loss of childhood innocence reflected the impending tragedy of the war and resulted in condemnation of the world of adults. Less successful were films more directly attributable to regime propaganda, such as Blasetti's Vecchia Guard (1935), C. Gallone's Scipione l'Africano (1937), who attempted to ennoble the imperial myth with great use of means, or L siege of the Alcazar (1940) by A. Genina, dedicated to the rhetorical celebration of the Francoist uprising. Much luckier was instead Luciano Serra pilot (1938) of Goffredo Alessandrini, who consecrated Amedeo Nazzari to national star through a more intimate and psychological interpretation of militarist mythology as an instrument of individual redemption. The bulk of the production focused on the genre of white telephones, which reproduced Hungarian theatrical texts flatly and shone due to the absence of sex, politics and history, interpreting the dream of social ascent of a qualunquista and particularistic middle class: One thousand lire per month ( 1939) by Max Neufeld was the most representative example (Bolzoni 1988).

It was in this plural and multifaceted framework that an explicit realist and classist approach penetrated the French cinema of Marcel Carné, Jean Renoir and Julien Duvivier. "We want to bring our cameras" - wrote in "Cinema" in 1941 Giuseppe De Santis and Mario Alicata - "in the streets, fields, factories, ports of our country: we too are convinced that one day we will create our more beautiful film following the slow and tired step of the worker returning home "(Brunetta 1991, 1995², p. 212). The major fruit of this instance was Luchino Visconti's Obsession (1943): a murky story of adultery, murder and punishment taken from the novel by J. Cain (The postman always rings twice, 1934), which provoked the reprobation of Catholic circles.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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