Cinema of Italy
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The history of Italian cinema began just a few months after the Lumière brothers had discovered the medium, when Pope Leo XIII was filmed for a few seconds in the act of blessing the camera.
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[edit] Early years
The Italian film industry took shape between 1903 and 1908, led by three major organizations - the Roman Cines, the Ambrosio of Turin and Itala Film. Other companies were soon to follow in Milan and Naples. In a short period of time, these early companies attained a respectable production quality and soon were selling films abroad as well as inside Italy.
One of the first Italian filoni (sub-genres) was the historical film: the first work in the genre was Filoteo Alberini's La presa di Roma, 20 settembre 1870 ("The Capture of Rome, September 20, 1870"), filmed in 1905. Other films portrayed famous historical figures such as Nero, Messalina, Spartacus, Julius Caesar and Cleopatra. Arturo Ambrosio's Gli ultimi giorni di Pompei (1908, "The Last Days of Pompeii") quickly became famous, so famous that it was remade by Mario Caserini in 1913. In the same year Enrico Guazzoni directed the widely appreciated Mark Antony and Cleopatra.
Actresses Lyda Borelli, Francesca Bertini and Pina Menichelli were the first "divas" (stars), specialising in passionate tragedies. Francesca Bertini became the first "star" of cinema, as well as the first actress to appear on film partly naked.
Other filoni featured social themes, often based on published literature. In 1916 the film Cenere (Ash) was based on Grazia Deledda's book, and interpreted by the theatre actress Eleonora Duse (also famous as Gabriele D'Annunzio's lover).
[edit] Cinecittà
Meanwhile, Fascism had created a board of judgment for popular culture. This administration suggested, with Mussolini's full approval, the creation of some important structures for Italian cinema. An area was founded in southeast Rome to build ex novo a town exclusively for cinema, dubbed the Cinecittà. The town was conceived in order to provide everything necessary for filmmaking: theaters, technical services, and even a cinematography school for younger apprentices. Even today, many films are shot entirely in Cinecittà. At the same time Vittorio Mussolini, the son of the dictator, created a national production company and organized the work of the most gifted authors, directors and actors (including even some political opponents), thereby creating an interesting communication network among them, resulting in several famous friendships and, beyond that, stimulating cultural interaction. Notable directors that worked at Cinecitta include Roberto Rossellini, Federico Fellini and Michelangelo Antonioni among many others.
[edit] Neorealism
Italian cinema had only a small price to pay for dictatorship. With the approaching war, many works were produced for propaganda purposes, as is the case in many countries at-war. Nevertheless, in 1942, Alessandro Blasetti produced his Quattro passi fra le nuvole (Four Steps in the Clouds), which is the story of a humble employee, considered by many as the first neorealist work.
Neorealism exploded soon after the war, with unforgettable works such as Rossellini's trilogy and with extraordinary actors such as Anna Magnani, as an attempt to describe the difficult economic and moral conditions of Italy and the changes in public mentality in everyday life. Also, because Cinecittà was occupied by refugees, films were shot outdoors, on the devastated roads of a defeated country. This genre soon also became an important political tool, although in most cases directors were able to keep a distinguishing barrier between art and politics.
Poetry and cruelty of life were harmonically combined in the works that Vittorio De Sica wrote and directed together with screenwriter Cesare Zavattini: among them, Sciuscià (Shoeshine, 1946), Ladri di biciclette (The Bicycle Thieves, 1948) and Miracolo a Milano (Miracle in Milan, 1950). The sad, bitter Umberto D. (1952), the touching story of a poor old man with his little dog, whom life forces to beg for alms against his dignity in the loneliness of the new society, is perhaps De Sica's masterpiece and one of the most important works in Italian cinema. Baptized with a heavy polemic with government, that would have censored it for alleged anti-national sentiments, the film was not a commercial success and since then it has been shown on Italian television only a few times. Yet it is perhaps the most violent attack, in the apparent quietness of the action, against the rules of the new economy, the new mentality, the new values, and it happens to have at the same time both a conservative and a progressive view.
[edit] Pink neorealism and comedy
It has been said that after Umberto D. nothing more could be added to neorealism. Whether because of this, or for other reasons, neorealism effectively ended with this film. Following works turned toward lighter atmospheres, perhaps more coherent with the improving conditions of the country, and this genre has been called pink neorealism. It was this filone that allowed better "equipped" actresses to become real celebrities: the encouraging figures of Sophia Loren, Gina Lollobrigida, Silvana Pampanini, Lucia Bosé, Barbara Bouchet, together with other beauties like Eleonora Rossi Drago, Silvana Mangano, Claudia Cardinale, and Stefania Sandrelli populated the imaginations of Italians just before the so-called "boom" of the 1960s. Soon pink neorealism was replaced by the Commedia all'italiana (Italian Comedy Style), a unique genre that, born on an ideally humouristic line, talked instead very seriously about important social themes.
At this time, on the more commercial side of production, the phenomenon of Totò, a Neapolitan actor who is acclaimed as the major Italian comic, exploded. His films (often with Peppino De Filippo and almost always with Mario Castellani) expressed a sort of neorealistic satire, in the means of a guitto as well as with the art of the great dramatic actor he also was, like Pier Paolo Pasolini would have shown. A "film-machine" who produced dozens of titles per year, his repertoire was frequently repeated. His personal story (a prince born in the poorest rione of Naples), his unique twisted face, his special mimic expressions and his gesture, created an inimitable personage and made this man one of the most beloved Italians in his own country.
Italian Comedy is generally considered to have started with Mario Monicelli's I soliti Ignoti (Big Deal on Madonna Street) and derives its name from the title of Pietro Germi's Divorzio all'Italiana (Divorce Italian Style, 1961). For a long time this definition was used with a derogatory intention.
Vittorio Gassman, Marcello Mastroianni, Ugo Tognazzi, Alberto Sordi, Claudia Cardinale, Monica Vitti and Nino Manfredi were among the stars of these movies, that described the years of the economical reprise and investigated Italian dress, a sort of self-ethnological research.
In 1961, Dino Risi directed Il sorpasso, now a cult-movie, then Una vita difficile (A Difficult Life), I Mostri (The Monsters, also known as 15 From Rome), In nome del Popolo Italiano (In the Name of the Italian People) and Profumo di donna (Scent of a Woman).
Monicelli's works include La grande guerra (The Great War), I compagni (Comrades, also known as The Organizer), L'Armata Brancaleone, Vogliamo i colonnelli (We Want the Colonels), Romanzo popolare (Popular Novel) and the Amici miei series.
[edit] Peplum (aka Sword and Sandal)
With the release of 1958's Hercules, starring American bodybuilder Steve Reeves, the Italian film industry suddenly had an entree into the American film market. These films, many with Mythological or Bible themes, were cheap costume adventure dramas, and had immediate appeal with both European and American audiences. Besides the many films starring a variety of muscle men as Hercules, heroes such as Sampson and Italian fictional hero Maciste were common. Sometimes dismissed as low-quality escapist fare, the Peplums allowed burgeoning Direttores, such as Sergio Leone and Mario Bava, a means of breaking into the film industry. Some, such as Mario Bava's Hercules at the Center of the World are considered seminal works in their own right. As the genre matured, budgets sometimes increased, as evidenced in 1962's Sette Gladiatore (Gladiator Seven in 1964 US release), a wide-screen epic with impressive sets and matte-painting work. It should be noted that most Peplum films were in color, whereas previous Italian efforts had often been black and white.
[edit] The Spaghetti Western
On the heels of the Sword and Sandal craze, another genre, the Spaghetti Western began to achieve great success, not only in Italy, but throughout the world. These films differed from traditional westerns not only in that they were filmed in Italy on low budgets, but also by their unique, vivid cinematography.
The most important and popular spaghetti westerns were those of Sergio Leone, whose Dollars Trilogy, consisting of A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, which also featured Clint Eastwood and scores by Ennio Morricone, came to define the genre along with Once Upon a Time in the West.
Also considered spaghetti westerns is a genre of film that married the traditional western ambiance with the comic tradition of the Commedia all'italiana. Included among such films are Lo chiamavano Trinità... and ...continuavano a chiamarlo Trinità, which featured Bud Spencer and Terence Hill, the stage names of Carlo Pedersoli and Mario Girotti, respectively.
[edit] Auteurs
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Italy produced many auteurs throughout its history, including Federico Fellini, Joe D'Amato Bruno Mattei Ruggero DeodatoRoberto Rossellini,Vittorio De Sica, Michelangelo Antonioni, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Bernardo Bertolucci, Mario Bava, Marco Ferreri, Ermanno Olmi,Umberto Lenzi, Sergio Leone and Luchino Visconti. These directors works often span many decades and genres. Nowadays auteurs are Marco Bellocchio, Nanni Moretti, Gianni Amelio and Paolo Sorrentino.
[edit] Sophia Loren Wins Academy Award
In 1961, Sophia Loren wins the Academy Award for Best Actress for her exquisitely devastating role as a woman who is raped with her adolescent daughter in World War II in Vittorio De Sica's Two Women. She became the first actress to win an Academy Award for a performance in any foreign language, let alone Italian.
[edit] Thriller/Horror "Giallo"
This Italian gore style is known collectively as "Giallo", which means yellow in Italian.
During 1960s and 70s, Italians filmmakers Mario Bava, Riccardo Freda, Antonio Margheriti and Dario Argento developed horror films (belonging to the Giallo genre) that soon become classics and influence the genre in other countries. Representative films include: Black Sunday, Danza macabra, Reazione a catena, L'uccello dalle piume di cristallo, Profondo rosso and Suspiria.
Following the 1960s boom of shockumentary "Mondo films" such as Gualtiero Jacopetti's Mondo Cane, during the late 1970s and early 1980s, Italian cinema became internationally synonymous with violent horror films. These films were primarily produced for the video market and were credited with fueling the "video nasty" era in the United Kingdom.
Directors included Lucio Fulci, Joe D'Amato, Umberto Lenzi and Ruggero Deodato. Some of the most notorious films faced legal challenges in the United Kingdom, after the Video Recordings Act or 1984, it became a legal offense to poses a copy of such films as Cannibal Holocaust and SS Experiment Camp. Italian films of this period are usually grouped together as exploitation films.
Italian studios were charged with stepping over the line in many countries with the late 70s series of Nazi exploitation films, which were inspired by American movies like Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS. These included the notorious but comparatively tame SS Experiment Camp and the far more graphic Gestapo's Last Orgy. These films showed, in great detail, sexual crimes against prisoners at concentration camps. These films are still banned in the United Kingdom and other countries.
[edit] The crisis of the 1980s
Between the late 1970s and mid-1980s, Italian cinema endured a long period of crisis. During this time, "art films" became increasingly isolated, separating from the mainstream Italian cinema.
Among the major artistic films of this era were La città delle donne, E la nave va, Ginger and Fred by Fellini, L'albero degli zoccoli by Ermanno Olmi (winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival), La notte di San Lorenzo by Paolo and Vittorio Taviani, Antonioni's Identificazione di una donna, and Bianca and La messa è finita by Nanni Moretti. Although not entirely Italian, Bertolucci's The Last Emperor, winner of 9 Oscars, and Once Upon a Time in America of Sergio Leone cannot be ignored.
At the same time, "trash films" reached great success with the Italian public. Films of little artistic value, these comedies reached their popularity by confronting Italian social taboos, most notably in the sexual sphere. Several actors, including Lino Banfi, Diego Abatantuono, Alvaro Vitali, Gloria Guida, Barbara Bouchet and Edwige Fenech owe much of their popularity to these films.
Also considered part of the trash genre are a group of films that have the ragionier Fantozzi, a comic personage invented by Paolo Villaggio; this character had a great impact on Italian society, to such a degree that the adjective fantozziano entered the lexicon. Of the many films telling of Fantozzi's misadventures, the most notable were Fantozzi and Il secondo tragico Fantozzi.
[edit] 1990 to today
A new generation of directors has helped return Italian cinema to a healthy level since the end of the 1980s. The sign-bearer for this renaissance is Nuovo Cinema Paradiso, for which Giuseppe Tornatore won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film in 1990. This victory was followed two years later by another, when Gabriele Salvatores's Mediterraneo won the same prize. Another exploit was in 1998 when Roberto Benigni won three oscars for his movie Life Is Beautiful (La vita è bella) (Best Actor, Best Foreign Film, Best Music). In 2001 Nanni Moretti's film La stanza del figlio (The Son's Room) received the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.
Other recent films of note include: Jona che visse nella balena directed by Roberto Faenza, Il grande cocomero by Francesca Archibugi, Il mestiere delle armi by Olmi, L'ora di religione by Marco Bellocchio, Il ladro di bambini, Lamerica, Le chiavi di casa by Gianni Amelio, Io non ho paura by Gabriele Salvatores, Le fate ignoranti, La finestra di fronte by Ferzan Özpetek, La bestia nel cuore by Cristina Comencini.
[edit] See also
- List of Italian movies
- List of film directors from Italy
- List of actors from Italy
- List of actresses from Italy
- History of cinema
[edit] References
- Bacon, Henry. 1998. Visconti: Explorations of Beauty and Decay. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
- Ben-Ghiat, Ruth. 'The Fascist War Trilogy'. Forgacs, David , Lutton, Sarah and Nowell-Smith Geoffrey. Eds. Roberto Rossellini: Magician of the Real. London: BFI
- Bernardi, Sandro. 2000. 'Rosselini's Landscapes: Nature, Myth, History'. Forgacs, David , Lutton, Sarah and Nowell-Smith Geoffrey. Eds. Roberto Rossellini: Magician of the Real. London: BFI
- Bondanella, Peter. 2002. The Films of Federico Fellini. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-57573-7
- Bondanella, Peter. 3rd edition. 2002. Italian Cinema: From Neorealism to the Present. New York and London: Continuum
- Celli, Carlo, Cottino-Jones, Marga. 2007. "A New Guide to Italian Cinema". New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
- Cherchi Usai, Paolo. 1997. ' Italy: Spectacle and Melodrama'. Nowell-Smith Geoffrey Ed : Oxford History of World Cinema. Oxford : Oxford University Press.
- Clark, Martin. 1984. Modern Italy 1871-1982. London: Longman
- Forgacs, David. 2000. 'Introduction: Rossellini and the Critics'. Forgacs, David , Lutton, Sarah and Nowell-Smith Geoffrey. Eds. Roberto Rossellini: Magician of the Real. London: BFI
- Forgacs, David , Lutton, Sarah and Nowell-Smith Geoffrey. Eds. 2000. Roberto Rossellini: Magician of the Real. London: BFI
- Indiana, Gary. 2000. Salo or The 120 Days of Sodom. London, BFI
- Kemp, Philip. 2002. 'The Son's Room'. Sight and Sound. Vol 12 No 3 March p56
- Landy, Marcia. 2000. Italian Film. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
- Mancini, Elaine. 1985 Struggles of the Italian Film Industry during Fascism 1930-1935 Ann Arbor: UMI Press
- Marcus, Millicent. 1993. Filmmaking by the Book. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press
- Marcus, Millicent. 1986. Italian Film in the Light of Neorealism. Princeton: Princeton University Press
- Morandini, Morando. 1997. ' Vittorio de Sica' . Nowell-Smith Geoffrey Ed : Oxford History of World Cinema. Oxford : Oxford University Press.
- Morandini, Morando. 1997. 'Italy from Fascism to Neo-Realism'. Nowell-Smith Geoffrey Ed : Oxford History of World Cinema. Oxford : Oxford University Press.
- Nowell-Smith, Geoffrey. 2003 3rd edition. Luchino Visconti. London: British Film Institute
- Nowell-Smith, Geoffrey. 2000. 'North and South, East and West': Rossellini and Politics. Forgacs, David , Lutton, Sarah and Nowell-Smith Geoffrey. Eds. Roberto Rossellini: Magician of the Real. London: BFI
- Rohdie, Sam. 2002. Fellini Lexicon. London: BFI
- Rohdie, Sam. 2000. 'India' Forgacs, David , Lutton, Sarah and Nowell-Smith Geoffrey. Eds. Roberto Rossellini: Magician of the Real. London: BFI
- Rohdie, Sam. Rocco and his Brothers. London: BFI
- Sitney, P. Adams. 1995. Vital Crises in Italian Cinema. Austin: University of Texas Press. ISBN 0-292-77688-8
- Sorlin, Pierre. 1996. Italian National Cinema. London: Routledge
- Wagstaff, Christopher. 2000. 'Rossellini and Neo-Realism'. Forgacs, David , Lutton, Sarah and Nowell-Smith Geoffrey. Eds. Roberto Rossellini: Magician of the Real. London: BFI
- Wood Mary. 2002. 'Bernado Bertolucci in context': Tasker Yvonne: Fifty Contemporary Filmmakers. London: Routledge
- Wood, Michael. 2003. 'Death becomes Visconti'. Sight and Sound, May 2003 Volume 13 Issue 5 , pp 24-27
[edit] External links
- european-films.net - Reviews, trailers, interviews, news and previews of recent and upcoming European films (in English)
- http://www.activitaly.it/activcinema_eng/activcinema_eng.htm - Italian cinema. The best Italian movie
- Cinema Italia Stills & Posters Gallery
- from the British Film Institute, (gallery navigation is on the left).
- Terrore Italiani: Detective Fiction and the Giallo
- http://www.italyatlantafilms.com - Italian film festival held from February to November in Atlanta.
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