Italian Fascism's Empire Cinema
Italian Fascism's Empire Cinema

Author: Ruth Ben-Ghiat

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2015-02-11

Total Pages: 421

ISBN-13: 0253015669

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Ruth Ben-Ghiat provides the first in-depth study of feature and documentary films produced under the auspices of Mussolini’s government that took as their subjects or settings Italy’s African and Balkan colonies. These "empire films" were Italy's entry into an international market for the exotic. The films engaged its most experienced and cosmopolitan directors (Augusto Genina, Mario Camerini) as well as new filmmakers (Roberto Rossellini) who would make their marks in the postwar years. Ben-Ghiat sees these films as part of the aesthetic development that would lead to neo-realism. Shot in Libya, Somalia, and Ethiopia, these movies reinforced Fascist racial and labor policies and were largely forgotten after the war. Ben-Ghiat restores them to Italian and international film history in this gripping account of empire, war, and the cinema of dictatorship.

Landscape and Memory in Post-Fascist Italian Film
Landscape and Memory in Post-Fascist Italian Film

Author: Giuliana Minghelli

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-06-11

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 1135104816

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This study argues that neorealism’s visual genius is inseparable from its almost invisible relation to the Fascist past: a connection inscribed in cinematic landscapes. While largely a silent narrative, neorealism’s complex visual processing of two decades of Fascism remains the greatest cultural production in the service of memorialization and comprehension for a nation that had neither a Nuremberg nor a formal process of reconciliation. Through her readings of canonical neorealist films, Minghelli unearths the memorial strata of the neorealist image and investigates the complex historical charge that invests this cinema. This book is both a formal analysis of the new conception of the cinematic image born from a crisis of memory, and a reflection on the relation between cinema and memory. Films discussed include Ossessione (1943) Paisà (1946), Ladri di biciclette (1948), and Cronaca di un amore (1950).

Cinema and Fascism
Cinema and Fascism

Author: Steven Ricci

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2008-02

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 0520253566

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"This study considers Italian filmmaking during the Fascist era and offers an original and revealing approach to the interwar years. Steven Ricci directly confronts a long-standing dilemma faced by cultural historians: while made during a period of totalitarian government, these films are neither propagandistic nor openly "Fascist." Instead, the Italian Fascist regime attempted to build ideological consensus by erasing markers of class and regional difference and by circulating terms for an imaginary national identity. Cinema and Fascism investigates the complex relationship between the totalitarian regime and Italian cinema. It looks at the films themselves, the industry, and the role of cinema in daily life, and offers new insights into this important but neglected period in cinema history." -- Book cover.

Fascism in Italian Cinema since 1945
Fascism in Italian Cinema since 1945

Author: G. Lichtner

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2013-05-29

Total Pages: 364

ISBN-13: 1137316624

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From neorealism's resolve to Berlusconian revisionist melodramas, this book examines cinema's role in constructing memories of Fascist Italy. Italian cinema has both reflected and shaped popular perceptions of Fascism, reinforcing or challenging stereotypes, remembering selectively and silently forgetting the most shameful pages of Italy's history.

Re-viewing Fascism
Re-viewing Fascism

Author: Jacqueline Reich

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2002-05-07

Total Pages: 388

ISBN-13: 9780253215185

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When Benito Mussolini proclaimed that "Cinema is the strongest weapon," he was telling only half the story. In reality, very few feature films during the Fascist period can be labeled as propaganda. Re-viewing Fascism considers the many films that failed as "weapons" in creating cultural consensus and instead came to reflect the complexities and contradictions of Fascist culture. The volume also examines the connection between cinema of the Fascist period and neorealism—ties that many scholars previously had denied in an attempt to view Fascism as an unfortunate deviation in Italian history. The postwar directors Luchino Visconti, Roberto Rossellini, and Vittorio de Sica all had important roots in the Fascist era, as did the Venice Film Festival. While government censorship loomed over Italian filmmaking, it did not prevent frank depictions of sexuality and representations of men and women that challenged official gender policies. Re-viewing Fascism brings together scholars from different cultural and disciplinary backgrounds as it offers an engaging and innovative look into Italian cinema, Fascist culture, and society.

Re-viewing Fascism
Re-viewing Fascism

Author: Jacqueline Reich

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2002-05-07

Total Pages: 390

ISBN-13: 9780253109149

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When Benito Mussolini proclaimed that "Cinema is the strongest weapon," he was telling only half the story. In reality, very few feature films during the Fascist period can be labeled as propaganda. Re-viewing Fascism considers the many films that failed as "weapons" in creating cultural consensus and instead came to reflect the complexities and contradictions of Fascist culture. The volume also examines the connection between cinema of the Fascist period and neorealism—ties that many scholars previously had denied in an attempt to view Fascism as an unfortunate deviation in Italian history. The postwar directors Luchino Visconti, Roberto Rossellini, and Vittorio de Sica all had important roots in the Fascist era, as did the Venice Film Festival. While government censorship loomed over Italian filmmaking, it did not prevent frank depictions of sexuality and representations of men and women that challenged official gender policies. Re-viewing Fascism brings together scholars from different cultural and disciplinary backgrounds as it offers an engaging and innovative look into Italian cinema, Fascist culture, and society.

Fascism in Italian Cinema since 1945
Fascism in Italian Cinema since 1945

Author: G. Lichtner

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2013-05-29

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 1137316624

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From neorealism's resolve to Berlusconian revisionist melodramas, this book examines cinema's role in constructing memories of Fascist Italy. Italian cinema has both reflected and shaped popular perceptions of Fascism, reinforcing or challenging stereotypes, remembering selectively and silently forgetting the most shameful pages of Italy's history.

Fascism in Film
Fascism in Film

Author: Marcia Landy

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2014-07-14

Total Pages: 371

ISBN-13: 1400854725

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Through her study of the narrative themes and strategies of Italian commercial sound films of the fascist era, Marcia Landy shows that cultural life under fascism was not monopolized by official propaganda. Originally published in 1986. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Mussolini's Dream Factory
Mussolini's Dream Factory

Author: Stephen Gundle

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2013-12-01

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 1782382453

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The intersection between film stardom and politics is an understudied phenomenon of Fascist Italy, despite the fact that the Mussolini regime deemed stardom important enough to warrant sustained attention and interference. Focused on the period from the start of sound cinema to the final end of Fascism in 1945, this book examines the development of an Italian star system and evaluates its place in film production and distribution. The performances and careers of several major stars, including Isa Miranda, Vittorio De Sica, Amedeo Nazzari, and Alida Valli, are closely analyzed in terms of their relationships to the political sphere and broader commercial culture, with consideration of their fates in the aftermath of Fascism. A final chapter explores the place of the stars in popular memory and representations of the Fascist film world in postwar cinema.

Cinema after Fascism
Cinema after Fascism

Author: S. Craig

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2010-07-19

Total Pages: 203

ISBN-13: 0230109748

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Cinema After Fascism considers how postwar European films glance ambivalently backward from the postwar period to the fascist era and delves into issues of gender certainties and spectatorship. In this period of film, familiar structures of epistemology and historiography reappear as ghostly imprints on postwar celluloid, and the remnants of fascist subjectivity walk the streets of postwar cities. Through new perspectives on the films of Roberto Rossellini, Billy Wilder, Carol Reed, Alain Resnais, and Marguerite Duras, this book examines the ways in which filmmakers acknowledge the fascist past. Siobhan S. Craig reveals that the attempts to reconfigure the idioms of cinema are never fully naturalized and remain highly precarious constructions.