Hello to all, with the approval and the review of Sorairo I will post this Italian cultural (movie focused) update:
A Musket and A Book: Italian culture under Mussolini, by Andrew Landers
In the early 1940s, the Italian movie industry saw a period of growth, bolstered by state investments focused mostly over the construction of the Roman studios of Cinecittà, which with its 400,000 square meters was and still is today the largest studio in Europe. Cinecittà, while being built to be a major hub for the national movie industry was also part of a general project of architectural development across Rome, the most successful achievement being the 1942 Universal Exposition quarter, more known as EUR. The peculiarity of this exposition, which would be visited by almost 28 million of people (which due to the war would be regarded as a success), and with prominent features being the great “Mussolini Arch” and the “Palace of the Italian Civilization”, was to be planned as a permanent living and administrative quarter, and core of a more modern urban area at the doors of Rome, as it happened after the War.
Returning to Cinecittà, the studios effectively revitalized the production of Italian cinema and helped to increase their overall quality. The complex even started to get interest from foreign movie producers, attracted by the appeal of the site. However it faced cold indifference from the Italian government, which at the time intentioned to use Cinecittà exclusively for Italian movies. In fact, despite Mussolini growing distant to Nazi Germany and slowly beginning rapprochement with the Western Allies, he was still unwilling to abandon autarchic principles. This meant prominent Italianization towards whatever was foreign, because it was easy to insert Party propaganda
To lead this effort, more than the Partito Nazionale Fascista (PNF) was needed, as it had its own events to deal with. Those were organized by the extravagantly creative secretary Achille Starace, in a way which stimulated the irony of the Italians to no end, to the point both Mussolini and Ciano grew annoyed and removed the man, toning down such activities. Film was left to the ministry of popular culture (Ministero della Cultura Popolare, more well known as Minculpop), at the time lead by one of Ciano’s scions, Alessandro Pavolini, when the Duce reshuffled his cabinet to reduce the presence of the pro-German faction. The Minculpop was in charge of every asset of Italian culture, controlling it in order to prevent strays from the official Fascist guidelines, and the control of the movie industry was one of its top priorities. This was in part due to the will of Mussolini, notoriously attracted by the potential of mass media and in part because the Minculpop was the owner of the Istituto Luce, the company which organized all the cinejournals in Italy.
Interestingly enough, the Minculpop, being so omnipresent towards whatever was identified as cultural, had its authority slipping towards the EIAR, which was the monopolistic radio editor of the country. The EIAR in fact was owned by the Ministry of the Postal Service and Communications, which while obviously adhering to the lines of the Minculpop, remained protective of its service. The autonomy of the EIAR towards the Minculpop started to become more prominent when the company started its early experimental television transmissions to a very selected and small audience in 1939, limiting the influence of the ministry over the programmation. Despite the War slowing those experimentations, EIAR would steadily improve and develop its television service and, after the reorganization law of 1944 which changed its name to (Radio Audizioni Italiane), would start its official television programming in 1946.
Returning to the Italian movie industry of the 1940’s, the slow thaw towards the West allowed a renewal of imported movies from Britain, France and the US, albeit the Minculpop severely restricted this import, by approving or refusing certain movies, cutting scenes from others, and generally imposing a dominant Italianized translation, especially over the naming of the characters but also over certain foreign elements to Italian culture, sometimes even imposing revised scenes. Such nationalistic setting would start partly to change when in 1942, during the Exposition, after a long negotiation with the American producer Selznik, was finally released Gone with the Wind (Via col Vento) in Italy, despite the various doubts of the Minculpop. Giving the peculiar subject of the movie, the ministry only limited to change some names in the Italian version, the most noticeable being the main female protagonist Scarlett O'Hara becoming “Rossella” O'Hara, and without particular cuts (the only censured scene being the one where Scarlett/Rossella would shot to the renegade Yankee soldier, with Melania removing her nightgown to clean the pool of blood left by the dead man – the scene would be restored decades later in the first televisive rehearsal of the movie); released with an unusual more costly ticket to the Italian theaters it became the most viewed movie in Italy for 1942, even Mussolini arriving to admit privately to have seen a masterpiece: more than being displeased by this American cultural success, the Duce revealed to Ciano he was more determined to promote the creation of an Italian answer able to stand on par with it. Gone with the Wind received even a special award at the Movie festival of Venice of that year.
Aside from Gone with the Wind, for the rest of 1942 and for 1943, the Minculpop still refused to accept all American or British movies while imposed censorships or modified them heavily during the translation and revision phase. Also, in a single occasion the entire Italian government arrived to protest vehemently and called to the scandal: it was over
Pinocchio of Walt Disney. Encouraged by the success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, Disney decided to make his second animation movie based on the tale of Carlo Collodi, but instead of writing a plot adherent to the original story, the pool of writers appointed created a story going far off the original. Naturally, when the Minculpop examinated the movie, there were plenty of reasons to immediately ban it without appeal. Articles started to appear in Italian newspapers against Disney and the movie, criticizing the story in every detail: the setting being a Swiss or Austrian alpine village, Pinocchio dressed like a Tyrolese boy, the turquoise fairy becoming a blonde woman with wings and indecent trasparent clothes, how Pinocchio came to life, Mangiafuoco becoming a full villain, the role of Jimminy Cricket, and so on. The attacks were surely nasty, and arrived in America, with the Italian ambassador complaining to several journals, especially about Disney refusing to even consider to contact Italian experts of Pinocchio’s tale, creating a total different story from Collodi’s one, damaging the image of the book and the legacy of the author. Disney defended himself claiming the right to adopt free artistic freedom, and in the end it all came on Disney being sued in an American tribunal by Collodi’s nephew, Paolo Lorenzini, supported by the Italian embassy, with both sides agreeing to the end over a compromise asked by the same producer (Disney feared the jury would have acknowledged Lorenzini’s claim over the unasked production rights to him over the movie and pay therefore a relevant sum, in a moment the company wasn’t in good waters because the war stunted the potential profits of Pinocchio). Disney would agree on public excuses towards the Lorenzini family and the Italian people, put a revised overture specifically stating the movie was “freely inspired by the book of Carlo Collodi”, paying yearly royalties to Paolo Lorenzini, but could release the movie in Europe whenever would be accepted. When Pinocchio, slightly revised, would be redistributed in Europe after the war, it would get more success and allow the Company to float again financially, but Italy denied distribution for decades still and managed to impose this decision to its allies as well. However Disney was able to distribute his next movies, Dumbo, Bambi and Fantasia in the Roman Alliance countries without excessive issues, and at the time of Cinderella the past attrition with the Italian Government was finally at their back.
At the end of 1943, however, the Minculpop’s ideological orientations received a shakeup. The Hungarian Jewish Exodus arrived in Slovenia, then the SS invaded Slovenia with the aid of the locals. In the urgent meetings of the Great Council, despite the united determination to get back at the Slovenians, the policy of extreme Italianization fell under review. The Minculpop got several critics over the handling of such policy, and this caused the political downfall of Pavolini from the ministry. While Mussolini didn’t arrive to openly criticize the work of the Minculpop, forced Italianization suddenly wasn’t perceived as a top priority, and certainly even lower after the siege of Trieste. A more moderate wing started to emerge in the ministry, which looked with more favour to Balbo and his more open aptitude towards Anglo-American culture rather than Ciano (Pavolini was one of his supporters he managed to settle in a moment the cabinet and prominent positions in the party were mostly suggested by the son-in-law of the Duce; to the point the government of the time was ironically called by some Italians to be “the Ciano government”). Restrictions towards Hollywood movies progressively became less severe, translations more faithful to the original versions, and now the Minculpop was less hostile to the idea to open Cinecittà to foreign producers.
The political shift in the Minculpop, especially in time of war, modified the needs of the ministry towards the Italian private movie companies. Naturally, war-themed and patriotic movies along with historical ones where Italians would always win became a top priority; but the Minculpop’s would now be less restrictive towards comedies, dramas, love stories and generally towards subjects considered distracting – as long as they kept within certain limits, of course. This would gradually allow to a rising generation of Italian movie directors and writers to be more experimental in their work, without worrying much of extreme reactions from the Minculpop – forms of “avant-gardism” were much more tolerated in Fascist society, if looking towards new modern and innovative ideas. The same Mussolini, charmed by futurist ideas in his youth, would have been supportive of the direction the Italian movie industry would soon take, if nothing else because he began noticing the people's fond response to it.
Perhaps one of the most important films of the era was Roberto Rossellini’s “Trieste città aperta”, made in 1945 in the same city which at that date was still mostly in ruins, considered as a perfect stage for the narrative of the same story. The movie took place at the end of 1943, when Trieste started was besieged by the SS and the Hungarian Jews prepared their defenses. An Italian veteran officer of the Balkan wars remained in the city to organize a group of Italian partisans, avoiding capture from a SS patrol by seeking refuge with a typograph, who was planning to marry his lover, a widow with a child. The Catholic priest who should have celebrated the wedding helped to hide Jewish partisans and was their courier, avoiding the SS inspections. However after a new raid the officer managed to escape while the typograph was captured, and while loaded on a truck, his fiance ran towards him only to be gunned down by the Germans in front of her child and the priest. Barely escaping, the typograph and the officer sought refuge with the widow’s sister, who was a dancer who performed for the invaders, along with her roommate who was a former lover of the officer. Consumed by hatred, the woman would denounce the officer to the SS in exchange of a pouch of drug, leading to the capture of the officer and the priest while they were meeting. The priest would be shot while the officer died under torture refusing to surrender information for the SS. The movie would end with the typograph and the widow’s son joining the Jewish resistance to continue the fight for their city.
The movie would receive great success in Italy and outside of it, for the story but also for the way it was filmed “in the place”. 'Trieste Città Aperta' would mark the start of the period known as “neorealism” in the Italian movie industry.
