Filming the Nation

Jung, Film, Neo-Realism and Italian National Identity

Donatella Spinelli Coleman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9781135718114
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Italian neo-realism has inspired film audiences and fascinated critics and film scholars for decades. This book offers an original analysis of the movement and its defining films from the perspective of the cultural unconscious.

Combining a Jungian reading with traditional theorizations of film and national identity, Filming the Nation reinterprets familiar images of well-known masterpieces by Roberto Rossellini, Vittorio de Sica and Luchino Visconti and introduces some of their less renowned yet equally significant films.

Providing an illuminating analysis of film images across a particularly traumatic and complex historical period, Filming the Nation revisits the concept of national identity and its 'construction' from a perspective that combines cultural, psychoanalytic and post-Jungian theories. As such this book will be essential reading for all students and scholars of film and psychoanalysis.

Secondo tempo

Chapter 5

1942-1945

War and archetypes: an orphan nation with a legacy of murder

Lady Macbeth: Out, damned spot! out, I say! One; two: why, then ‘tis time to do't. Hell is murky! Fie, my lord, fie! a soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account?

(Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 1)

Introduction

Italy entered World War II in June 1940. The expected brief engagement of the previously declared ‘non-belligerent' country was to last five long years and it would bring the collapse of Fascism, the humiliation of unconditional surrender and the confusion and uncertainty of unevenly shifted loyalties in the difficult transition to new Allies and to a new form of government.

The events leading to Mussolini's dismissal and subsequent arrest in July 1943 provide the context of production for three of the five films discussed in this chapter, a context which is profoundly transformed by the delayed signing of the armistice on 8 September of the same year. As the Allied invasion brought the fighting to Italian soil, the films produced between 1943 and the end of the conflict reflect the changes in both the political and physical landscape as the directors' lens is finally set to ‘objectively'¹ document the extent of the confusion, suffering and destruction experienced by a people who struggled to retrace and rebuild a worthy definition of nationhood.

For this reason the chapter is divided, according to chronological criteria, into two parts each with a conclusion that, drawn from the detailed analyses of the films of the period, reflects on the possible translation of the symbolic and mythological content of the films into the meaningful dynamic of a psychological process which, akin to the one leading to the emergence of individual ego-consciousness, suggests a direction for the development and/or reconstruction of a national identity. A description of the fallacious strategic choices that gradually isolated Mussolini, alienated him from his own government and attracted the resentment of the people who found themselves reluctantly fighting a war in the name of his personal ambitions, precedes the analysis of the films produced by the elected directors during these years.

In the period between 1939 and 1943 Rossellini directed three films thematically linked by a war subject and supportive, to a certain extent, of the fascist ideology. The film selected for a detailed analysis is Un Pilota Ritorna (A Pilot Returns, 1942), chosen because of its context of production close to that of Visconti's Ossessione (1943) and of De Sica's I Bambini ci Guardano (The Children Are Watching Us, 1943) released in close succession. Both Rossellini's and De Sica's films, although still suffering from the fascist legacy of sentimental rhetoric and idealized gender relations, display the unequivocal pull towards a realism which will become increasingly central and more consciously committed in the years immediately following the fall of Fascism. Ossessione, on the other hand, is recognized by most critics as the cornerstone of neo-realist production and, although based on the American novel The Postman Always Rings Twice (James. M. Cain, 1946) and undoubtedly influenced by French realism and by Visconti's Marxist ideals, it actually dared to bring to the screen the reality of an Italy that Fascism had long tried to negate.

While all three films deal with the difficulties or impossibility of heterosexual (as well as homosexual) relationships, the children's presence, central in De Sica and only brief in Visconti's and Rossellini's films, acquires value in relation to the events contemporary to the films' production. This value and its symbolic significance, together with that of the father's absence and the representation of motherhood, will be discussed in the individual analyses and brought together in the first conclusion.

The second part of the chapter, after a brief discussion of the difficult shifting of loyalties and of the rising and function of the Resistance movement during the last two years of the war, introduces the two films produced in this period: La Porta del Cielo (The Gate of Heaven, 1944) by De Sica and Roma Città Aperta (Rome Open City, 1945) by Rossellini. If the latter has become one of the most widely appreciated and discussed films of the Italian director, the former is often omitted from De Sica's filmography and rare available copies are only found in specialist archival collections. Nevertheless, the unwillingness to single out and dedicate privileged narrative attention to a central character, the running theme of solidarity and the focus on the vicissitudes of the working classes, on their poverty and on their true aspirations together with a predilection for non professional actors, should certainly identify this film as an example of neo-realism. The relationship between the Church and the Resistance and their attitude towards the past are discussed throughout both films' analyses, while the relevance of the images of suggested archetypal significance is argued first within the films' narratives and then given contextualized reflection in the conclusion. Moreover, the distinctive centrality of a decidedly Catholic iconography and the seemingly ideological predominance of a Christian perspective will be reviewed within a Jungian theoretical construct in order to then relate their symbolic value to the social substratum which shaped their emergence and to understand their function as catalysts of change.

1942-1943: leaving the Father's house

The immediate historical precedent

On 10 June 1940 Italy entered World War II on the side of Nazi Germany. Partially blinded by the possibility of easy territorial gains and partially misinformed as to the readiness, efficiency and technical competence of his army, Mussolini single-handedly decided the fate of a country clearly unprepared for a conflict of such proportions. Having appointed himself as ‘supreme military commander' and ignoring the king's constitutional claims to such position, Mussolini had taken full responsibility and, he hoped, full glory for his impulsive decision. Believing the war would only last another few weeks he hoped to manage a ‘defensive war' which, at the ‘cost' of a few thousand deaths, would earn him a place at the peace negotiations table (Mack Smith 1997: 403-405). However, as there was not an immediate threat of attack or invasion coming from either Britain or France, Mussolini found himself unable to justify rationally and strategically his bellicose intention. His call to arms became then a supposedly necessary reinstatement of the right to exist as a people as well as an ideological battle against the democratic forms of government he so despised and associated with corrupt capitalism. The words he used in the speech that announced the declaration of war set the scene:

Fighters of the land, the sea and the air, Blackshirts of the revolutions and of the legions, men and women of Italy, of the Empire, and of the kingdom of Albania.

Listen – the hour marked out by destiny is sounding in the sky of our country. This is the hour of irrevocable decision. The declaration of war has already been handed to the Ambassadors of Britain and France.

We are going to war against the plutocratic and reactionary democracies of the West, who have hindered the advance and often threatened the existence even of the Italian people.

(Benito Mussolini, speech declaring war on the Allies, 10 June 1940)²

Yet the fervour of a war fought in the name of class and ideology did not penetrate the spirit of an army which, notwithstanding the depiction in the fascist propagandists campaigns of an organized, courageous and well-armed body, was instead badly equipped, unmotivated and confused by orders of questionable military logic. Italian intervention began with the sending of troops to France in the hope of making an entrance before the signing of the armistice France had already asked for. But by the time the armistice with Nazi Germany was signed only a ‘slight penetration into Savoy had been made' by the Italians at a disproportionally great cost in lives and equipment with not much to show for it and none of the hoped for territorial gains. The failure of the African campaign, in the winter between 1940 and 1941, added to the disillusionment as the Italian troops were chased out of Egypt, one hundred thousand men were taken prisoner and the colonies of Eritrea, Somalia and Addis Ababa were lost (Mack Smith 1997: 407).

Rossellini's film Un Pilota Ritorna is the story of a pilot involved in an air attack on Greece which ends with his capture by the British. Notwithstanding the display of courage and abnegation attributed to the seemingly confident and competent Italian military, the film also represents the British enemy as gentlemanly and humane and the prospect of fighting the Greeks not as palatable as that of returning home. Indeed the Greek campaign was not a proud page of the history of Italy at war: with no other reason to invade than Mussolini's irritation at Hitler's sudden occupation of Romania, the badly timed attack ended within a few days with a full retreat and put Italy in the embarrassing position of having to ask for Germany's intervention (Mack Smith 1997: 407).

By January 1943 half of the armies Mussolini had sent to the Russian front in 1941 were lost and by July of the same year the Allies were finally landing in Sicily. Rossellini's last of the fascist war trilogy films presents an unusual aspect of the failing Russian campaign: the spiritual rescue of a Bolshevik woman who, thanks to the example and guidance of an Italian Catholic priest, is converted to Christianity. It is possibly not coincidental that all three of these pre-armistice films by Rossellini, although intended as supportive of the fascists war, display very little interest in military excellence and rather focus on examples of Italian moral and spiritual superiority: the clear and sacrificial answer to duty, the subordination of personal fulfilment to military economy and the power to redeem souls ‘lost' to Communism.

By the time of the Allies' landing, which marked the beginning of an advance on the mainland and confirmed the weakness of the Italian army, general discontent and feelings of disillusionment and diffidence towards Fascism had already materialized in the industrial cities of the north in the form of the ‘great strike wave during March 1943'. The strikes, only partially originating from the disappointment with the poor war performance, were also a reaction to more pressing physical conditions – bombing, shortages of food and fuel, inflation – and succeeded in alerting the industrialists to the need to turn to Britain and America and to sabotage war production (Ellwood 1985: 13). Yet, rather than being overthrown by oppositional revolutionary forces, the collapse of the regime was manufactured from within. Increasingly aware of both growing popular discontent and of the irremediable weakness of a practically systematically defeated army, a swelling group of fascist party leaders eventually considered the removal from office of Mussolini as the only hope for survival. When Rome was finally bombed by the Allies in July 1943, realizing that Mussolini would not take a stand to defend the country even at this disastrous stage in the war, the king, who had been quietly awaiting the opportunity to safely return power into traditional hands, made his intentions known to Marshall Badoglio and General Ambrosio, who then acted in his name. After a dramatic meeting of the Gran Consiglio a motion was approved to ‘limit' Mussolini's authority, and on 25 July the king quickly appointed Badoglio as premier and had Mussolini arrested (Mack Smith 1997: 413-414).

News of the fall of the regime and of Mussolini's arrest were greeted with unanimous popular rejoicing. Yet the war was not over and the newly appointed prime minister was not an anti-fascist, rather an army marshall who had supported Mussolini's efforts and who did not hesitate to use old fascist laws not only to severely repress subsequent strikes and demonstrations but also to dissolve the anti-fascist committees which begun to form in the main cities of the north and centre (Ellwood 1985: 14).

The fighting continued with Italy on the German side for another six weeks and the king, afraid of taking a clear stand against Hitler, delayed the signing of an unconditional surrender with the Allies who needed the co-operation of the Italians to secure their victorious penetration of the peninsula in order to push the Germans out and finally to eradicate Fascism. However, after signing a ‘short' version of the armistice on 3 September, Badoglio tried to disregard the agreed terms and withdrew the military support promised for the landing at Salerno, afraid of having to defend Rome alone. When Eisenhower, in response to Badoglio's change of heart, announced Italy's unconditional surrender – thus attracting a German response – Badoglio and the king fled to the South. On 29 September a full version of the armistice was signed. Immediately afterwards Eisenhower himself described the armistice as the granting of full control and as a ‘full capitulation by Italy' (Ellwood 1985: 39).

Change had again come for Italy through an agent different from the people who made up the nation, different from the people who worked, hungered, lived in fear and had, with weak fervour, obeyed a paternal voice whose authority without coherence had manipulated them into a near fatal illusion. The following films were produced between 1942 and 1943.

Un Pilota Ritorna (A Pilot Returns, 1942)

A mother's darling

Rossellini's La Nave Bianca (The White Ship, 1941) and Un Pilota Ritorna (A Pilot Returns, 1942) are part of what is called his ‘fascist war trilogy' (completed with L'Uomo della Croce (The Man with the Cross, 1943): a set of films supportive of Italian intervention and adulatory of a heroic Italian spirit. Each of the films concentrates on a branch of the military, respectively the navy, the air force and the armoured infantry.

Women's presence, in all three films, is peripheral. In both La Nave Bianca and Un Pilota Ritorna their participation in the war effort is more iconical than practical. In fact, it soon becomes evident how in these first three films of his directorial career Rossellini's policy is one of distancing and it suggests a sexual segregation justified by the practical urge for the specificity of roles required in war.

The first film tells of the wounded sailors of a warship and follows the men as they are transferred to a hospital ship. Before the enemy attacks their ship, the men skip through a photo album, more like a catalogue of women's faces. They are the war-godmothers who write to the soldiers in order to keep their hopes and visions alive. Falling in love with them is a safe concession to a sexuality which would otherwise function as a distraction from the discipline of war. The recognition by one of the men of his war-godmother as one of the nurses on board and the danger of emerging individuality is quickly contained by a reminder of the woman's changed role: ‘a nurse is the godmother of all who suffer and we must not make distinctions', a comment which emphasizes an anonymity already granted on both sides by the uniforms.

The comment, by forcing emerging individuality back into an anonymous collective, also transcends the contingency of the narrative and becomes an opportunity to understand an attitude towards women certainly influenced by two decades of insistent, if practically ineffective, demographic policy which had concentrated on singling out childbearing as a woman's destiny. Notwithstanding women's weak response to the regime's demands for intensively prolific marital unions, Mussolini's direct suggestions somewhat penetrated the cultural collective and psychologically conditioned the spontaneity of heterosexual relationship. The extreme emphasis on motherhood would have supported, if effective, a hypertrophy and an intensification in women of the maternal instinct which should lead, according to Jung, to unconsciously identifying man as an ‘instrument of procreation' and to regard him ‘merely as an object to be looked after, along with children, poor relations, cats, dogs, and household furniture' (C.W., Vol. 9i: para. 167). Despite women's statistically proven unresponsiveness, the powerful propaganda and the public rewarding of mothers of large families would point to men's auxiliary role in the process of procreation and produce the ‘effect' of the desired ‘hypertrophy' and intensification of the maternal instinct without necessarily finding correspondence in its existence.

In Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, Jung describes how this particular expression of the mother complex has as a consequence the development in women of an ‘Eros' exclusively functioning within the ‘maternal relationship while remaining unconscious as a personal one', a dangerous outcome as according to Jung ‘an unconscious Eros always expresses itself as a will to power' (C.W., Vol. 9i: para. 167). In a country where the Catholic Church could rely on state policies for the support of the maternal model of womanhood as the natural goal of female development, that danger is possibly more readily perceived. The consequences of such awareness will become clear in later films. Un Pilota Ritorna is exemplary of a separation made inevitable by technology and rendered physically visible by a war vehicle, the fighter aircraft, which takes men to heights and eventually to a freedom unavailable to women.

A pilot, captured during a bombing raid in Greece, meets and falls in love with a local girl who assists her doctor father. Her assistance is, however, never portrayed as indispensable: she takes temperatures, wipes sweat, tucks youngsters under blankets and shares comforting words but her refusal to choose marriage and to escape with the man she loves is not justified in reality, except in an acknowledgment of the impediment she would represent to the fulfilment of male duty. Before escaping on a stolen enemy aircraft the pilot gives the girl his father's gold pocket watch, his precious good luck charm (see Figure 5.1).

The remembrance gift she is given is supposedly that of a past to cherish and look after. Yet it also seals her fate to a life of imprisonment in waiting anonymity. It condemns her to the impossibility of choice, having been elected to represent an ideal of chastity, innocence and obedience to a worthy father and of dutiful wife to an improbable husband who has already imposed a limitation by describing her as a ‘sensible little woman'.

The watch is delivered to the girl soon after she has promised she will wait ‘forever'. Neumann in his analysis of the Great Mother Archetype suggests that ‘the Feminine is … the goddess of time' (Neumann 1963: 226), representing a wholeness which precedes the differentiation brought by consciousness. The response to the suggested timelessness of the girl's waiting is one of containment. The old ‘father's watch' forces the borderless maternal, the all-embracing and dangerously devouring feminine (characteristics of the Great Mother Archetype as discussed by Neumann) into the discerning specificity of the masculine. The acceptance of separation as a consequence of an obedience to a father (duty) whose requests can be difficult to understand might signal the imminent solution of an Oedipal journey, yet the offering to a mother figure of what is left of the paternal is forecasting a regression. It works as an attempt at pacifying a possibly castrating feminine (accidentally the girl assists her father in amputating a...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Primo Tempo
• Intervallo
• Secondo Tempo
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index