The Italian Cinema Book

Peter Bondanella, Peter Bondanella

• Publisher: British Film Institute
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781839020247
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Italian Language
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

THE ITALIAN CINEMA BOOK is an essential guide to the most important historical, aesthetic and cultural aspects of Italian cinema, from 1895 to the present day. With contributions from 39 leading international scholars, the book is structured around six chronologically organised sections:
THE SILENT ERA (1895–22)
THE BIRTH OF THE TALKIES AND THE FASCIST ERA (1922–45)
POSTWAR CINEMATIC CULTURE (1945–59)
THE GOLDEN AGE OF ITALIAN CINEMA (1960–80)
AN AGE OF CRISIS, TRANSITION AND CONSOLIDATION (1981 TO THE PRESENT)
NEW DIRECTIONS IN CRITICAL APPROACHES TO ITALIAN CINEMA
Acutely aware of the contemporary 'rethinking' of Italian cinema history, Peter Bondanella has brought together a diverse range of essays which represent the cutting edge of Italian film theory and criticism. This provocative collection will provide the film student, scholar or enthusiast with a comprehensive understanding of the major developments in what might be called twentieth-century Italy's greatest and most original art form.

PART ONE

The Silent Era

Introduction

Peter Bondanella

It is too easily forgotten that the cinema was initially a European, not a Hollywood invention. Between 1895 and the outbreak of the Great War, Italy’s silent cinema gained enormous audiences all over the world, particularly with its production of historical epics boasting what would later become the proverbial ‘cast of thousands’, and by diva films starring sensual and enchanting actresses (rivals of Hollywood ‘vamps’ such as Theda Bara). In terms of international influence, Italian silent film was far more important and consequential than were the Italian films produced between the birth of the Italian sound film in 1930 and the end of the fascist era in 1945. Despite the almost universal international distribution of the best of Italian silent films in the second decade of the twentieth century, only a handful of films are now available on video or DVD. Even the film historian must travel to various film archives or film festivals devoted to silent cinema in order to see more than a very small percentage of the total output of the Italian film industry from this initial period. It has been estimated that of the hundreds of films produced, roughly one quarter has been preserved partially or completely.

In the essays in this first section, Giorgio Bertellini outlines the international influences that helped to give birth to the native Italian cinema, particularly those from France and the US. Foreign markets often dictated the kinds of films that were profitable for the native industry and when such markets dried up, the Italian industry fell upon hard times. John P. Welle focuses upon the rise of the specific kind of Italian stardom its silent films produced, visualised through the print media of divismo and the emergence of Italian film periodicals during this period. Between 1907 and 1920, Italy produced ninety film periodicals, an astounding figure that grew to some 200 by 1931 when soundtracks to films became the norm. Some of these periodicals reached audiences of tens of thousands of readers, and these fascinating documents tell us much about early film culture. Some of the most highly regarded avant-garde artists, novelists, playwrights and drama critics were regular contributors to these numerous publications, a great many of which (like so many of Italian silent films themselves) have received little critical attention.

Angela Dalle Vacche and Jacqueline Reich focus attention on the most important commercial and artistic genres during this period: the diva film; comedies; and epic films. Their analyses demonstrate that well before the popularity of auteur films, silent genre films of the comic, historical or adventure variety made up a fundamental part of industrial production even before the introduction of sound; they also prefigure the post-World War II success of such genre films as the peplum, the Western and the commedia all’italiana. Although it is difficult to underestimate the impact of the Italian diva film upon international film culture in the silent period, it may well have had less of a lasting influence on world cinema than Italy’s comic and historical works.

1 Silent Italian Cinema

An International Story¹

Giorgio Bertellini

Rather than an unmistakable index of distinct national features, the emergence and development of silent cinema in general resulted from dense international exchanges of talents, film-making styles and business practices. In this regard, the case of Italian film culture is perhaps more peculiar than emblematic. Even before the beginning of the domestic production of fiction films, which occurred only in 1905 – that is, ten years after the Lumières publicly presented the cinématographe – foreign elements were affecting Italian film culture through the manufacturing and distribution in Italy of films about Italy. This was not a novel phenomenon. It largely upgraded centuries of comparable image-making practices through a new technology of reproduction. After 1905, foreign cultural influences and expectations continued to inform the national film scene of production and exhibition at many levels. They affected the development of key genres (i.e. historical epics, literary adaptations, comedies, actuality films and southern melodramas), popular themes (antiquity, the Renaissance, natural disasters, crime), film-making and distribution formats (i.e. serials), casting practices of performers and technicians (i.e. comedian André Deed and cinematographer/operator Segundo de Chomòn) and even avant-garde poetics and experimentations.

At the core of how foreign factors variously affected Italian cinema’s international character and address was the idea of Italy as an exotic place that entertained a distinct cultural and even anthropological relationship with history. For decades, the ‘voyage to Italy’ was a familiar and well-practised tradition that in paintings, prints, photographs and illustrated tourist guides had relied on two preferred aesthetic modes – antiquity and the picturesque. Such resilient vectors of representation provided the impetus behind Italian silent cinema’s golden age between 1908 and 1914 – namely, its tremendous worldwide success in sheer numbers (about 6,000 titles, out of about 10,000 for the entire silent era); and aesthetic taste. In more antagonistic fashion, the same purported relationship with the past animated a host of anti-passatist positions – inferior only in number and popular appeal – centred on futurist, anti-decadent and anti-antiquarian stances. This oppositional aesthetic mode informed scattered experimental, and overtly modernist, productions, including Anton Giulio Bragaglia’s futurist Thaïs (Thaïs, 1916), André Deed’s feature-length comedy L’uomo meccanico (The Mechanical Man, 1921) and Corrado D’Errico’s experimental Stramilano (Supermilan, 1930). It also affected the cultural halo of certain stars (i.e. Elettra Raggio) and informed the critical work of individual writers, i.e. Bragaglia’s Fotodinamismo futurista (Futurist Photodynamism, 1911). Unsurprisingly, these efforts gained little notoriety, at home and abroad – an indication of the influential role of foreign expectations in the domestic and international positioning of Italian silent film culture.

BEGINNINGS

Between 1896 and 1905, the vast majority of films produced and exhibited in Italy were of foreign origin – mostly French, American and British. Film-making in Italy followed the grand visual tradition associated with the Grand Tour, which had been relying on domestic and international networks of individual artists, printmakers and photographers as well as educated consumers. Between 1896 and 1904, the very mobile and efficient Lumière film operators shot more than 100 ‘views’ (vues) in the peninsula. Other foreign operators included Thomas Edison’s former chief engineer, W. K. L. Dickson; British photographers Birt Acres and Henry Short; and the British film pioneers Charles Urban and George Albert Smith. Their films revealed choices of touristic and political relevance consonant with the desire for popularity and the recognition of the new medium’s educational value. Film-makers focused on inaugurations, public commemorations and military parades held in Turin and Rome, and known urban and natural landscapes. Particularly famous were the Lumière tracking and panning views of Venice, such as Panorama de la Place Saint Marc pris d’un bateau, Venise (Panorama of St. Mark’s Square Taken from a Boat, Venice, 1896), obtained by placing a camera on a moving gondola.

In Naples, film-makers opted for the picturesque angle rather than the political or archaeological view, showing volcanic eruptions (Vesuvius and Mt Etna) and scenes from nature.

For Italians, foreign films’ focus on famous landscapes, monuments and individuals fostered dynamics of national self-exploration and display. Before 1905, early Italian cinematographers, whether affiliated with major foreign firms, particularly Lumière, or working independently as photographers, duplicated this fashionable taste for national history and geography. Their names may not be well known, but their impact was significant because they combined their technical, scientific or journalistic interests with their influential role as local exhibitors. In their nonfiction films, Francesco Felicetti and Filoteo Alberini in Rome, Giuseppe Filippi and Italo Pacchioni in Milan, Vittorio Calcina and Roberto Omegna in Turin, Luigi Sciutto in Genoa, Rodolfo Remondini in Florence, Giovanni Troncone in Naples, Raffaello Lucarelli in Palermo and even Luca Comerio, the famous photojournalist based in Milan, but active all over Italy and the world, corroborated familiar notions of touristic and national relevance by filming renowned urban locations and actual events of momentous and solemn significance, including state funerals and ceremonies, army parades and religious celebrations. Between 1896 and 1905, Italian non-fiction productions amounted to about 160 titles, a fraction of the more than 2,500 foreign travelogues and actualités that had been made in Italy during the same period. The difference in number did not imply a change in subject matter, which remained cultured and cosmopolitan. Initially, in fact, the individuals involved in making, exhibiting and viewing Italian films were members of the aristocracy and urban bourgeoisie. When the film industry began to aspire to a broader social appeal, it followed a known geographical divide variously affected by foreign forces.

Panorama de la Place Saint Marc pris d’un bateau, Venise (1896)

In the northern regions around the Po Valley, films gained a wider circulation thanks to the established circuits of Italian and foreign itinerant exhibitors known as ambulanti who operated independently or within travelling circus shows. Their competition with permanent movie theatres enhanced films’ interclass recognition and small-town popularity. In the south, except for Naples, full-fledged movie theatres were scarce, located only in major centres. As a result, not until the mid-1910s did southern Italian film patronage expand beyond urban, middle-class limits, when filmmakers successfully co-opted local stage and musical talents to exploit their domestic and international appeal.

PRODUCTION

Italy’s first film factories were located in the nation’s political and industrial centres – Rome, Turin and Milan – where worldly noblemen and resourceful entrepreneurs intertwined financial and cultural goals. The transnational pattern of development of these companies was fairly similar. Their founders and managers journeyed abroad, mainly to France, to buy the newest equipment and to familiarise themselves with established modes of production or with larger film markets. Then they built new, large studios, attracted foreign artistic and technical personnel, particularly from the giant Pathé Frères, and opened distribution offices abroad. They were very quickly successful in the domestic market and even more so internationally, mainly with comedies, Shakespearian adaptations and dramatisations of French melodramas or revolutionary narratives. Distinct national recognition came with historical epics – often adapted from international bestselling novels. Although the very first fiction film, La presa di Roma: 20 settembre 1870 [The Capture of Rome, 20 September 1870, 1905], addressed a key episode in Italy’s state formation, the subject of the most successful Italian films of the pre-World War I period was not t...