Italian Cinema Before Fascism

Before we get to discuss Italian Neo-Realism, a film movement of the late 1940s, it’s worth pondering the Italian film industry up until that point. The Italian film industry in the teens was one of the strongest film industries in the world. Particularly in the area of feature-length filmmaking, Italian cinema was pioneering. For example, it is very clear that D.W. Griffith saw the Italian superspectacles, like Cabiria (Giovanni Pastrone, 1914) and Quo Vadis?, before he began working on The Birth of a Nation (1915). Cabiria is in fact the Italian equivalent to Birth...; both are epic historical films about the foundational moments of the nation (the formation of the modern Italian nation-state and the Civil War, respectively).

Like most European film industries, the Italian industry was destabilized by the First World War and Hollywood’s rise to dominance. However, by the 1930s, the Italian film industry, now under the control of Fascism, was producing popular classical cinema. The most famous genre in this popular cinema are the so-called "white telephone films," light-hearted comedies so named because often they would feature comic dialogue delivered during conversations over modish white telephones.

Italian Fascist Cinema, 1922-1943

The history of Italian cinema is of course altered drastically by the rise of Fascism, under Benito Mussolini, in 1922. Despite the brutality of Fascism, Mussolini’s government instituted a few major institutional changes that would benefit the Italian film industry up until the present day. First, the government funded a state film school, the Centro Sperimentale della Cinematografia, only the second such institution in the world (the VGIK in the Soviet Union being the first). The Centro Sperimentale trained many of the major Italian filmmakers, and continues to do so to this day. The Fascists also built the Cinecitta Studios in Rome, spectacular facilities that, along with Hollywood and the UFA studios in Germany, represent the height of the studio mode of filmmaking.

However, Fascism of course had its detrimental effects on Italian film culture, as it did on all aspects of Italian life. For example, Mussolini, a shall we say somewhat unstable person mentally, was fond of issuing "Imperial Edicts," commenting upon things about Italian life that he did and did not like, turning these whims into official government policy. The most absurd example of this is his imperial edict banning Italian people from laughing at the Marx Brothers’ anti-fascist comedy, Duck Soup (1933)!

Guiseppe De Santis, an Italian film critic and filmmaker, suggests that Italian Fascist cinema is marked by its calligraphic style. Critic Hannah Arendt argues that a form of aestheticization dominates Fascist culture, as we can see in the Nazi worship of large groups of people arrayed into geometric patterns during the Nuremberg rallies. It is this sort of aestheticization that DeSantis attempts to describe in the Italian cinema when he talks of its calligraphism.

The Roots of Neorealism

The roots of Italian Neo-realism lie in three major areas:

1. Most directly, the film critic (soon to be Neo-realist scriptwriter) Cesare Zavattini’s 1942 call for a new cinema is a call for Neo-realism. In the midst of this call for a less calligraphic, more realist cinema, Zavattini argues that, "The ideal film would be 90 minutes of the life of a man to whom nothing happens."

2. One of the major sources of Neo-realism lies in French Poetic Realism, because of the training the Italian filmmakers had in the French film industry. For example, Luchino Visconti worked as an assistant to Jean Renoir on A Day in the Country (1936) and Michelangelo Antonioni worked as an assistant to Marcel Carne during the making of his early 1940s poetic realist masterpieces.

3. However, most importantly, Neo-realism could not have germinated without the loosening of the Fascist stranglehold over Italian cinema. In particular, Italian political life was vastly reconfigured during the summer of 1943. First, the Allied invasion of Sicily signaled the beginning of the end for the Italian fascists. Then, Mussolini was deposed by the members of his own Fascist party, due to his insanity-based incompetence. This resulted in a fragmentation of Italy into a new government in the South under Marshal Badoglio, which proceeded to switch sides and declare war on Germany, and a Nazi puppet state–The Salo Republic–set up in the North.

Ossessione as Proto-Neo-Realist Film

Also in 1943, the aristocratic Marxist Luchino Visconti made a gritty, sexualized adaptation of the American hard-boiled detective novelist James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice. Since Visconti could not secure the film rights to the novel, he called his film, Ossessione. The film’s gritty presentation of sexuality and murder makes the film a precursor to the Neo-realism that would flourish in the Italian film industry after the war. Thus, Ossessione is a "proto"-Neo-Realist film, representing a first foray toward Neo-realism, but being too aesthetically-aggressive to fit within that later tradition. It is this tension between realism and aestheticism that critic Peter Bonadella suggests is true of Italian cinema in the late 1940s, thus perhaps even suggesting that Ossessione belongs in the mainstream of the Neo-Realist tradition, though not many critics would agree with him.

An Extended Reading of Ossessione

1. First and foremost, Ossessione is a film whose visuals drip with a gritty presentation of raw sexuality. In this sense, the film seems to be predicting Italian Neo-realism.

CLIP: Ossessione (Luchino Visconti, 1943): Gino has sex with Giovanna while Bragana is away

2. But the film’s presentation of the grim fatedness of everyday life (akin in tone to German Expressionism and American film noir) makes it quite different from Neo-realism, which tends to represent the triumph of the human spirit (at least equivocally) at the end of the film.

CLIP: Ossessione: Ending (Gino is ironically arrested for the murder of Giovanna)

Ironically, the American film noir adaptation of The Postman Always Rings Twice, while using the noir style, has an ending which is thematically more akin to Italian Neo-realism than Ossessione’s fatedness: at the end of the Hollywood version, the character does achieve a sort of redemption and triumph over the brutality of fate, a softening that Visconti’s film refuses.

The Aesthetic Features of Italian Neo-realism

Typically, Italian Neo-Realism is discussed via its aesthetic features:

1. The use of "on-location" shooting (rather than shooting in a studio) to give the film the energy of everyday life on the street.

2. The use of post-synchronized sound ("dubbing") to allow the visuals of the film to be recorded as street life was occurring, unfettered by the difficulties of recording the sound at the same time.

3. The mixing of professional actors with non-professional actors, to give the film an added dose of authenticity, in which the people who have lived Neo-realism’s stories are able to directly translate those experiences to the film’s audiences.

CLIP: Paisan (Roberto Rossellini, 1946): "Joe" the MP and the Italian boy

In this clip, we see the above three aesthetic features: the boy buying "Joe" is shot on the streets of Naples, giving the film an energy derived from being in the midst of the chaos we are seeing; the narrator at the beginning of the film is dubbing the introduction to the story in post-production, long after the documentary footage of tanks marching into Naples has been shot; and the actor chosen to play "Joe" is not an actor, instead he is an American soldier who has remained behind in Italy after the war is over.

This use of an African-American non-professional actor is significant to the thematic meaning of the clip. Something has made the man remain in Naples after the war: to wit, American Jim Crow racist culture. The position of the person of color is thematized in the film, as the drunken Joe gets confused while watching the puppet play, thinking that the white Christian soldier is really attacking the Moor. This confusion between reality and illusion is one of the things that concerns Paisan, making the film, as Peter Bonadella argues, more formalist than traditional definitions of Italian Neo-Realism would lead us to believe.

The Narrative Features of Italian Neo-Realism

1. The Italian Neo-Realist films focus on their realist style, not on narrative per se. This is what many critics have used to critique Neo-realism as an art form. At a certain level, the films offer narrative cliches rather than compelling plots. This facet of Neo-realism emerges out of the scriptwriter Cesare Zavattini’s dictum that the ideal film would not have a plot, instead it would be 90 minutes in the life of a man to whom nothing happens. One can perhaps see this resistance to narrative played out in Zavattini’s script for The Bicycle Thief, about a man who spends the entire film looking for a bicycle which was stolen from him at the beginning of the film.

2. Most importantly, however, Italian Neo-realism features narratives which reference the contemporary national experience, in an attempt to purge the culture of its Fascist history. The American film critic Penelope Houston in fact defines Neo-realism through, "The driving urge to rehabilitate the national reputation." This is why, for example, so many of the Italian Neo-Realist filmmakers were proponents of Marxist Anti-Fascism. It is very important to note that not all cultures responded in this direct way to the legacy of Fascism. In Germany, for example, this sort of grappling with the national experience of Fascism was papered over for a whole generation, and not until the sons and daughters of the Fascists came of age in the 1970s, did German cinema grapple with the Fascist contamination of the German representational system.

CLIP: Rome, Open City (Roberto Rossellini, 1945): Ending (Fascists execute the priest because he is involved in the Resistance)

In this clip, we see two priests, one a Fascist collaborator and the other a Partisan resistance fighter shot by the Fascists. Thus, an aspect of Italian culture, its Catholic heritage is being produced as contaminated by Fascism, but also not completely so, as brave Catholic priests also stood up to the Fascist menace. In addition, as the children wander off into Rome, we see the architectural history of Rome laid out in the mise-en-scene in the background. This history–ancient Roman, Christian (the big dome is St. Peter’s basilica), and modern–has all been contaminated by Fascism, but not irreparably so.

When Rome, Open City was first released, it apparently caused a bit of confusion, having been shot while the war was still going on (using black market film stock). Spectators apparently were dumbfounded by the fact that Rossellini was able to get away with making such an anti-Fascist film under Fascist rule. The American film critic James Agee called this powerful ability of Rome, Open City, "the illusion of the present tense," and it is largely the film’s ability to cheat (that is, present a historical fiction while announcing itself as a present-tense documentary about these events) that gives the film such a powerful ability to resuscitate the national reputation so close to the historical events which contaminated that reputation in the first place.

The Ideological Features of Italian Neo-Realism

1. For me, the most important feature of Italian Neo-realism, politically, is its ability to blend two seemingly contradictory philosophical traditions: Humanism and Materialism. Humanism is a Renaissance philosophy which believes in the free will constitution of the individual Self. That is, what makes us human is our ability to choose who we are and how we will act. Most of Western philosophy since the Renaissance is built upon this principle of humanism. On the other hand, Marxism produces a critique of humanism through its materialist philosophy: that is, the Self is constructed by the material conditions into which that person is interpellated (called into being). Thus, a humanist analysis of, for example, the decision to get married would be: I choose to get married because I desire a meaningful relationship with another human being. However, a materialist analysis of same would be: I get married because I have been socially constructed by a patriarchal culture to think, since this is the normal thing to do, this is what I should do.

What’s intriguing ideologically about Italian Neo-Realism is that the films often seem to be mixing these two diametrically-opposed traditions. Take two examples of the work of one of the masters of Neo-realist film style, Vittoria De Sica. In each film–The Bicycle Thief and Umberto D–a character is besieged by oppressive class circumstances (needing a job and losing one’s home, respectively). And yet, these characters experience at the end of the films a redemption through a bond with another being (a child and a dog, respectively).

CLIP: Umberto D (Vittoria De Sica, 1952): Ending (Materialism attenuated by the humanist relationship between man and dog)

2. The politics of Italian Neo-realism is traditionally studied by emphasizing its Marxist, class-based critique of economic material conditions in post-war Italy. However, this neglects the way in which gender is a material condition of oppression as well. From this point of view, Italian Neo-realism does not come off as nearly so progressive. Positive representations of women in neo-realism are few and far between. The Bicycle Thief is almost exclusively focused on the father-son relationship. Umberto D’s women consist of a demonic apartment manager and the prositutes to whom she lets Umberto’s apartment. One exception to this is a Neo-realist film that is not studied nearly enough, Roberto Rossellini’s The Miracle.

CLIP: The Miracle (Roberto Rossellini, 1948): Ending (the ironic "virgin" birth)

Rather than emphasizing the gender politics of this strange story of a woman who is duped by a man into pregnancy, film history records the importance of the film via its status in a landmark censorship decision. When The Miracle was distributed in the United States, the American Catholic Church protested on the grounds that the film was sacrilegious, calling for a ban on screenings of the film. The Miracle Case, adjudicated in 1952, resulted in the Supreme Court ruling that motion pictures were in fact protected under the First Amendment, the first time this legal connection had been made.

The "Decline" of Neorealism

By the mid-1950s, Italian Neo-realism as an artistic movement was dying out. The reasons for this are complex:

1. Italian politics shifted against Marxism, as Italy joined the anti-communist Western European front against the Soviet Union. For example, in March 1949, Italy joined NATO. Then, the Andreotti Law was passed, resulting in the Italian government funding a loan program to support Italian cinema. This state funding was sent in the direction, not of Marxists, but to the center-right popular cinema.

2. The success of Italian Neo-realism in the American marketplace works against itself. In addition to being Marxist in class critique, the film’s also presented a raw form of sexuality uncommon in Hollywood films. In Hollywood, these films were marketed through their sexuality, not through their politics. Thus, as Italian Neo-Realism developed, the balance between Marxist social critique and sensuality shifted. Thus, a film like Bitter Rice (Giuseppe De Santis, 1948) emphasizes its sexy starlets, like Silvana Mangano, more than it does its critique of the social system.

3. The rise of the International Art Cinema works against Italian Neo-realism as a National film movement. Soon-to-be directing stars of the International Art Cinema like Michelangelo Antonioni and Federico Fellini had been working in Neo-realist cinema throughout the style’s development. However, as the International Art Cinema developed a global market, particularly in the United States, the need for a unified Italian national film style dwindled in importance. Filmmakers like Antonioni began embracing the modernist style of International Art Cinema, moving away from Neo-realist principles.

For example, David Cook calls Antonioni’s style one of "introspective neo-realism." As a film like L’Avventura indicates, Antonioni is really more interested in the interpersonal relationships between characters than he is in a larger social critique. Similarly, Federico Fellini moves away from neo-realism and towards modernism. In particular, his films become more and more obsessed with the nature of performance and the tensions between reality and illusion. His film La Strada, from 1954, represents a kind of transition in Fellini’s oeuvre. The film is shot in a neo-realist style, telling the gritty story of a woman who assists a strongman as they travel with their sideshow from town to town. However, at important moments, the film emphasizes the nature of performance, as when the strongman murders Richard Basehart and then continues with his show as if nothing has happened.

CLIP: La Strada (Federico Fellini, 1954): Anthony Quinn murders Richard Basehart

Fellini’s later films, like 8 ½ and Ginger and Fred will fully explore this modernist obsession with performance and illusion and completely do away with neo-realist style.

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This page was last updated on January 8, 2001

Questions or comments? Please phone me at (406) 994-6403 or send e-mail to:  metz@montana.edu

Walter Metz, Department of Media and Theatre Arts, Montana State University–Bozeman