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The following introduction to the themes and history of Italian cinema was written by Journalist David Parkinson of the BFI in 2004. It was the best description I could find to breakdown the various stages and peaks of Italian cinema over the past century.
--CarlettoLA STORIA DEL CINEMA ITALIANO
On 11 November 1895, Filoteo Alberini patented the Kinetografo Alberini to shoot, print and project moving pictures. Unfortunately, the demonstration of the Lumières' Cinématographe to a paying audience in Paris just over a month later deprived him of his place in cinema history. However, Italy has still played a significant role in the development of the seventh art - a phrase that was coined in the early 20th century by theorist Ricciotto Canuda, who was among the first to recognise that film's potential far exceeded the mere recording of reality and novelty.The Italian film industry has enjoyed three major periods of international influence, thanks to its silent superspectacles, postwar neo-realism and new wave renaissance of the early 1960s. In between times, it has assimilated the technological advances and dramatic styles of foreign competitors - most notably Hollywood - and used them to shape such local trends as the "white telephone" entertainments of the 1930s, calligraphism, peplum, giallo, the "spaghetti" Western and an enviable diversity of comedies.
It has also remained uniquely Italian owing to a law passed by Mussolini in the mid-1930s, which stipulated that no film could be commercially screened unless it had been dubbed into the mother tongue. A growing number of co-productions in the 1960s and 70s meant that Italian cinema began to lose some of its national character, with local stars being overlooked in favour of Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider for Bernardo Bertolucci's L'Ultimo Tango A Parigi (Last Tango in Paris) (1973), Robert De Niro and Gérard Depardieu for the same director's 1900 (Novecento) (1976) and Dirk Bogarde and Charlotte Rampling for Liliana Cavana's Il Portiere Di Notte (The Night Porter) (1974).But the growing dependence of the new generation of film-makers on tele-funding has meant that Italian cinema is once again acquiring a distinctive voice that is increasingly being heard abroad.
BEGINNINGS TO SUPERSPECTACLES
Motion pictures captured the Italian imagination from the first demonstration of the Lumières' Cinématographe in Rome on 12 March 1896. The driving force was Filoteo Alberini, who not only founded the first production company (Cines) in Italy and opened the first purpose-built cinema (the Moderno), but who also directed the country's earliest dramatic film, La Presa Di Roma (The Fall of Rome) (1905). Five years later, Italian studios were churning out 807 short subjects a year, many of them inspired by classical mythology, ancient history and local literature. But slapstick clowns like Cretinetti, Robinet and Polidor were also hugely popular, as were melodramas starring divas Lyda Borelli and Francesca Bertini.Encouraged by intellectuals like Gabriele D'Annunzio, Italian films grew in sophistication and were noted for their use of location and natural light, staging in depth, long takes and the integration of character and environment. But superspectacles like Mario Caserini's Gli Ultimi Giorni di Pompei (The Last Days of Pompeii) (1913) and Enrico Guazzoni's Quo Vadis? (1913) were also famed for the sheer scale of their sets and casts of thousands. Giovanni Pastrone's 15-reel Cabiria (1914), which made a star of Bartolomeo Pagano as Maciste, gave Italian cinema international pre-eminence.
Filoteo Alberini's La Presa di Roma (1905)
Enrico Guazzoni's Quo vadis (1913)
Giovanni Pastrone's Cabiria (1914)
DUCE & LUCE
In 1914, Italy was the world's third largest exporter of films. But a combination of American dominance, increased costs, a relatively small domestic market and the coming of sound saw production drop from 371 features in 1920 to just eight a decade later. Stefano Pittaluga sought to buck the trend in the mid-1920s by buying up struggling studios in the hope of forming a film monopoly. He also sponsored Italy's first talkie, Gennaro Righelli's La Canzone dell'Amore (The Song of Love) (1930). His ambitious enterprise stalled with his death in 1931.
Despite labelling cinema "the strongest weapon", Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini was content to confine propaganda to the documentaries and newsreels produced by L'Unione Cinematografica Educativa (LUCE). Consequently, pro-Fascist pictures like Giovacchino Forzano's Camicia Nera (Black Shirt) (1933), Alessandro Blasetti's Vecchia Guardia (The Old Guard) (1935) and Giorgio Simonelli's Aurore Sul Mare (Dawn over the Sea) (1935) were relatively rare and politically restrained. However, he did use Carmine Gallone's Scipio L'Africano (1937) to help justify his invasion of Ethiopia.
Il Duce's more lasting contribution was the inauguration of the Venice Film Festival in 1932, the founding of the Centro Sperimentale film school in 1935 and the opening of the vast Cinecittà studios in 1937.
Enrico Guazzoni's Messalina (1923)
Gennaro Righelli's La Canzone dell'Amore (1930)
Carmine Gallone's Scipione l'Africano (1937)
WHITE TELEPHONE
Propagandist "black" films were heavily outnumbered by so-called "pink" pictures during the Fascist era. Mussolini wanted cinema to distract, amuse and uphold the consensus. Diversions like Nunzio Malasomma's musical comedy La Telefonista (The Telephone Operator) (1932) and Mario Camerini's Grandi Magazzini (Department Store) (1938) fitted the bill perfectly.There were costume pieces like Alessandro Blasetti's 1860 (1934) and contemporary melodramas like Ferdinando Poggioli's Sissignora (Yes, Madam) (1941). But audiences preferred comedies with a Hollywoodesque touch. Consequently, over half of the 639 features produced between 1930 and 1944 were light entertainments.Vittorio De Sica became a matinee idol in comedies of errors like Camerini's Il Signor Max (1937) and Mario Mattoli's Ai Vostri Ordini, Signora! (At Your Service, Madam!) (1939), while Isa Miranda headlined Goffredo Alessandrini's female variation on the theme, Una Donna Tra Due Mondi (A Woman Between Two Worlds) (1938).Invariably set onboard liners or in hotels or nightclubs, these telefoni bianchi or "white telephone" pictures gently mocked upper-class convention while celebrating the triumph of the commonplace. But a cosier style of bourgeois comedy emerged during the war in films like Blasetti's Quattro Passi fra le Nuvole (Four Steps in the Clouds) (1942).
Mario Camerini's Il Signor Max (1937)
Mario Mattoli's Ai Vostri Ordni, Signora! (1939)
Alessandro Blasetti's Quattro Passi fra le Nuvole (1942)
Poggioli's The Materassi Sisters (1943)
PROPAGANDA & PICTORIALISM
American films dominated the Italian box-office during the Fascist era. But in 1938, Mussolini banned them - not from any ideological standpoint, but because they were simply too expensive to import - and encouraged homegrown talent to fill the void.The war years, for example, witnessed the brief flourishing of meticulously composed literary adaptations like Mario Soldati's Piccolo Mondo Antico (Little Old-Fashioned World) (1940) and Renato Castellani's Un Colpo di Pistola (A Pistol Shot) (1941), which were dubbed "calligraphist" on account of their opulent pictorialism.The government resisted the temptation to flood the screen with propaganda, although Augusto Genina was hailed the nation's "warrior bard" for features like Lo Squadrone Bianco (The White Squadron) (1936). Even during the Second World War there was nothing overt about political allegories like Alessandro Blasetti's La Corona di Ferro (The Iron Crown) (1941). Indeed, combat pictures like Goffredo Alessandrini's Luciano Sera Pilota (Luciano Sera, Pilot) (1938) tended to be pessimistic with tragic finales replacing the patriotic heroism that typified most Allied flagwavers.Ironically, the Fascist industry provided the infrastructure for Italian cinema's postwar revival. Moreover, La Nave Bianca (The White Ship) (1941) and Un Pilota Ritorna (A Pilot Returns) (1942) also proved the training ground for one of its key post war figures, Roberto Rossellini.
Augusto Genina's The White Squadron (1936)
Fernando Mario Poggioli's Jealousy (1942)
Mario Soldati's Piccolo Mondo Antico (1940)
Renato Castellani's Un Colpo di Pistola (1941)
NEO-REALISM
The philosophical term "neo-realism" was appropriated in 1943 by theorist Umberto Barbaro to reiterate screenwriter Cesare Zavattini's suggestion that Italian cinema should repudiate the star system, studio artifice and plot contrivance associated with the escapist rhetorical spectacles of the Fascist era in order to focus on the poverty and pessimism of ordinary people. Luchino Visconti's Ossessione (1943) is usually credited with launching the vogue for pictures shot on location in natural light with mostly non-professional casts. However, neo-realism (which counted 19th-century verismo literature and French poetic realist cinema among its influences) had several precedents, including Raffaello Matarazzo's Treno popolare (1933) and, perhaps surprisingly, numerous LUCE documentaries.Film-makers in developing industries around the world (and even Hollywood), were inspired by such key works as Roberto Rossellini's war trilogy - Roma città aperta (Rome, Open City) (1945), Paisà (1946) and Germania anno zero (Germany, Year Zero) (1947) - Visconti's La terra trema (1948) and Vittorio De Sica's Sciuscia (Shoeshine) (1946), Ladri di Biciclette (Bicycle Thieves) (1948) and Umberto D (1952). But local audiences were less enthralled, prompting the passage of the Andreotti Law (1949), which legislated against films presenting an unfavourable picture of Italian life, while also offering subsidies for directors who avowed the neo-realist style.
Luchino Visconti's Ossessione (1943)
Roberto Rossellini's Roma, Citta Aperta (1945)
Vittorio de Sica's Ladri di Biciclette (1948)
Luchino Visconti's La Terra Trema (1948)
Vittorio de Sica's Umberto D (1952)
THE ROSE-TINTED FIFTIES
Despite its cinematic and intellectual influence, neo-realism only accounted for a fraction of the pictures made in postwar Italy. Moreover, the in-rush of movies that had been prescribed since 1938 ensured that Hollywood remained dominant at the box-office. Conscious of the need to boost local escapist production, the government offered a range of subsidies that were seized upon by unscrupulous purveyors of cheap quickies. But among the 1008 features made between 1945 and 1954, there were numerous melodramas and comedies that appealed to record audiences, if not always to the Catholics, Communists or critics.Giuseppe De Santis's Riso Amaro (Bitter Rice) (1949) laced its realism with Silvana Mangano's sex appeal, while Pietro Germi's In Nome della Legge (In the Name of the Law) (1949) exploited clichés and stereotypes for political ends. Even more populist was the neo-realismo rosa of Raffaello Matarazzo's Catene (Chains) (1949), which starred Amedeo Nazarri and Yvonne Samson and was seen by one in eight Italians.The dialect comedies of Macario and Totò also did brisk business, although they failed to emulate the international success of commedia all'Italiana hits like Luigi Comencini's Pane, Amore e Fantasia (Bread, Love and Dreams) (1953) and Mario Monicelli's I Soliti Ignoti (Big Deal on Madonna Street) (1958).
Giuseppe De Santis's Riso Amaro (1949)
Luciano Emmer's Domenica d'Agosto (1950)
Totò (Antonio de Curtis)
Luigi Comencini's Bread, Love and Dreams (1953)
Mario Monicelli's I Soliti Ignoti (1959)
ALTERNATIVE REALITIES
With output rising to 201 in 1954 and admissions peaking at 819 million a year later, Italian cinema seemed to be thriving before television and sport slowly began to erode its core audience. A new generation of divas including Gina Lollobrigida and Sophia Loren emerged alongside such debonairs as Marcello Mastroianni, Alberto Sordi and Vittorio Gassman, while numerous US stars appeared in the "runaway" projects that earned Cinecittà the nickname "Hollywood on the Tiber".The period also saw established film-makers seek to distance themselves from neo-realism. Luchino Visconti opted for operatic opulence in Senso (1954). Roberto Rossellini shifted from war and injustice to emotion and alienation in collaborations with his then-wife Ingrid Bergman, including Viaggio in Italia (Journey to Italy) (1954).Newcomers Michelangelo Antonioni and Federico Fellini also broke with traditional forms of linear narrative. Exploiting location to examine the urban angst of the bourgeoisie, Antonioni pioneered a cinema of solitude in Cronaca di un amore (Story of a Love Affair) (1950) and Le Amiche (1955). Fellini, on the other hand, developed a more personal vision that eschewed the satirical irony of I Vitelloni (1953) for the character-driven picaresque of La strada (1954), Il Bidone (1955) and Le Notti di Cabiria (Nights of Cabiria) (1956).
Luchino Visconti's Senso (1954)
Michelangelo Antonioni's Le Amiche (1955)
Federico Fellini's Le Notti di Cabiria (1956)
Roberto Rossellini's Il General Della Rovere (1959)
Luchino Visconti's Rocco e i Suoi Fratelli (1960)
A CINEMATIC RENAISSANCE
1960 was a watershed in Italian cinema history, thanks to the domestic and international reception accorded Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita, Michelangelo Antonioni's L'Avventura and Luchino Visconti's Rocco e i Suoi Fratelli (Rocco and His Brothers). If the latter harked back to neo-realism, the other two were as modernist as anything emanating from the French New Wave and they similarly unleashed a torrent of new talent.Like many Italian films in the 60s, L'Avventura was a co-production. However, as with La Notte (1961), L'Eclisse (1963) and Il Deserto Rosso (1964), it was very much the abstract, cerebral work of an auteur. Antonioni was prepared to foreground the filmic nature of his imagery through his use of long shots to integrate character and landscape and lengthy passages of minimalism to emphasise the action's dramatic and psychological significance.Fellini was equally innovative, but markedly more flamboyant, with Otto e Mezzo (1963), Fellini Satyricon (1969) and Amarcord (1973) resembling carnivals of memory and fantasy. Pier Paolo Pasolini eventually adopted an equally flagrant approach. His early features, Accatone (1961) and Il Vangelo Secondo Matteo (The Gospel According to Matthew) (1964), as with Francesco Rosi's Salvatore Giuliano (1962) and Mani Sulla Città (Hands over the City) (1963), highlighted that poverty remained throughout Italy, despite the so-called "economic miracle".
Michelangelo Antonioni's L'Avventura (1960)
Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita (1960)
Francesco Rosi's Salvatore Giuliano (1962)
Marco Bellocchio's I Pugni in Tasca (1965)
Pier Paolo Pasolini's The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1966)
SIXTIES GENRES: SWORDS, SANDALS AND SPAGHETTI
Over 2000 cinemas closed in Italy between 1955 and 1975 and as big-city venues began to monopolise imported and arthouse pictures, the remaining neighbourhood and small-town sites came to rely on genres with crossover appeal.Peplum or "sword-and-sandal" movies including Pietro Francisci's La fatiche di Ercole (Hercules) (1958) - starring former Mr Universe, Steve Reeves - recalled both the silent superspectacles of the 1910s and the CinemaScope epics the Hollywood studios had been producing at Cinecittà . However, the resort to sex and special effects culminated in parodies like Duccio Tessari's Arrivani i Titani (The Titans) (1961). Yet these comic-book takes on myth and ancient history have retained a cult following.Many peplum alumni moved into western all'italiano, among them Sergio Leone, whose Dollars trilogy (1964-66) and C'era una volta il West (Once Upon a Time in the West) (1968) - starring Clint Eastwood and Henry Fonda respectively and scored by Ennio Morricone - transformed it from a lowbrow genre full of sado-macho violence to one that celebrated and subverted Hollywood (and the odd Japanese samurai) convention and, thus, brought the "spaghetti western" international kudos and critical respectability.Moreover, Leone's knowingly stylised formula also inspired political, picaresque, macabre and comic variations in the Ringo, Django, Sartana and Trinity series.
Pietro Francisci's Hercules (1957)
Carlo Campogalliani's Maciste the Mighty (1960)
Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars (1964)
Sergio Corbucci's Django (1966)
Sergio Leone's C'era una volta il West (1960)
SIXTIES GENRES: GAGS, GANGSTERS AND GIALLO
A growing comic cynicism underpinned 1960s assaults on church and state, as well as battles of the sexes turning on marriage and status, satires on corruption and incompetence in the workplace, and farces concerning provincial insularity and national caricatures. Yet despite the disintegration of traditional communities and values exhibited in Pietro Germi's Divorzio all'Italiana (Divorce, Italian Style) (1961), the family remained - unlike elsewhere - the cornerstone of Italian life.Among the new directors who specialised in these sophisticated social comedies were Dino Risi, Lina Wertmuller and Ettore Scola. But there was also a demand for broader spoofs of spy, gangster and cop movies, starring the likes of Bud Spencer (Mario Girotti) and Terence Hill (Carlo Pedesoli).Taking their name from 1930s pulp novels that were published in yellow covers, giallo chillers like Riccardo Freda's I Vampiri (The Last of the Vampires) (1957) and Mario Bava's La Maschera del Demonio (Black Sunday) (1960) were notable for their brutality and lavish style. However, they were tame compared to such gore-spattered offerings as Dario Argento's Suspiria (1977) and cannibal movies (spun-off from Gualtiero Jacopetti ..mondo' documentaries) such as Lucio Fulci's Zombi 2 (Zombie Flesh Eaters) (1979), which had a major influence on the American nightmare movies of the 1980s.
Pietro Germi's Divorzio all'Italiana (1961)
Mario Bava's Black Sunday (1961)
Vittorio de Sica's Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (1964)
Dario Argento's Suspiria (1977)
Sergio Leone's Once Upon A Time in America (1984)
POLITICS: PAST AND PRESENT
It has been said that Italian cinema lives almost entirely in the present. Consequently, whenever a key phase passes all that remains is a vacuum. This was certainly true of the 1970s. Production levels remained high. But, as the old guard passed, only a handful of original talents emerged, among them Marco Bellochio, Ettore Scola, Marco Ferreri and Paolo and Vittorio Taviani. Moreover, audiences preferred television to the endless round of mediocre genre pictures, which were increasingly riddled with soft-porn interludes.However, an economic downturn and the threat to liberty posed by terrorism and the mafia did lead to a proliferation of political cinema.Gillo Pontecorvo's La battaglia di Algeri (The Battle of Algiers) (1966) considered the colonial question, while Bernardo Bertolucci examined the legacy of Fascism in Il conformista (The Conformist) (1970) and La strategia del ragno (The Spider's Stratagem) (1972). Elio Petri exposed legal and governmental corruption in Indagine su un cittadino al di sopra di ogni sospetto (Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion) (1969) and chronicled the class struggle in La classe operaia va in paradise (The Working Class Goes to Heaven) (1971), while ramifications of crime and civil unrest were highlighted in Francesco Rosi's Cadaveri eccellenti (Illustrious Corpses) (1976) and Tre fratelli (Three Brothers) (1980).
Bernardo Bertolucci's Il Conformista (1970)
Gillo Pontecorvo's La battaglia di Algeri (1966)
Petri's Indagine su un Cittadino al di Sopra (1970)
Marco Ferreri's La Grande Bouffe (1973)
Ermanno Olmi's L'Albero Degli Zoccoli (1978)
DIALECT AND NOSTALGIA
Italy experienced a tele-boom in the mid-1970s and cinema admissions plunged. With US blockbusters commanding 70% of the box-office, film-makers were forced to rely on the numerous TV channels for funding.Consequently, a reportage visual style emerged with its emphasis on dialogue and close-ups. This perfectly suited the dialect comedies of Carlo Verdone (Rome) and Abantantuono (Naples), who found fame alongside "nuovi comici" like Roberto Benigni (Il piccolo diavolo (The Little Devil), 1988), Massimo Troisi (Ricomincia da tre (Starting From Three), 1981), Maurizio Nichetti (Ladri di saponette (The Icicle Thief), 1989) and Nanni Moretti (Caro diario (Dear Diary), 1994).The impressive range of titles on TV and video also generated a fondness for bygone classics and films about the past, like Fellini's Intervista (1987), Giuseppe Tornatore's Il nuovo Cinema Paradiso (Cinema Paradiso) (1988) and Ettore Scola's Splendor (1988).Italian cinema currently produces around 100 features each year and regularly scores domestic triumphs such as Gabriele Muccino's L'ultimo bacio (The Last Kiss) (2001). But with only 800 cinemas in operation, mostly in the big cities, over one-third of these films go unreleased. With state subsidies being cut and Hollywood domination bound to continue, the future looks uncertain. But the revived vogue for actuality in the digital video era suggests there's always hope.
Carlo Verdone's Bianco Rosso e Verdone (1981)
Giuseppe Tornatore's Il Nuovo Cinema paradiso (1988)
Gabriele Salvatores's Mediterraneo (1991)
Michael Radford and Massimo Troisi's Il Postino (1994)
Roberto Benigni's La Vita e Bella (1997)