2 - L'uomo dalla croce: Rossellini and Fascist Cinema

Summary

Of the three films in Rossellini's so-called fascist trilogy celebrating the armed forces of the fascist regime, La nave bianca and Un pilota ritorna reflect the direct involvement of the Italian navy and air force. Only L'uomo dalla croce was shot without the direct collaboration of a branch of the Italian armed services, nor did Rossellini's friend Vittorio Mussolini contribute anything to its script, as he had done on Un pilota ritorna. However, Rossellini used the services of Asvero Gravelli, who, unlike Mussolini's son Vittorio, was an authentic Fascist ideologue who had been a leading exponent of an international fascist movement after the model of the Communist Internationale and who was closely associated with two major fascist journals, Antieuropa and Gioventù Fascista.

Rossellini himself had always explained his political background and first encounter with fascism by an anecdote recounting his father's remarks in 1922 when Mussolini first came to power. As Rossellini told the story, his father peered out the balcony at the celebrating black-shirted Fascists below who had just completed the famous March on Rome, and he remarked in disgust: “Children, remember that black hides dirt very well.” Like so many other members of the wealthy upper middle class and the aristocracy, his father's antifascism was more a matter of aesthetics than of passionate political commitment. It is clear that Rossellini was relatively unconcerned with the moral issues associated with the Fascists' hold on power in Italy until the war began to go very badly for Italy and, later, when his own life was actually in danger during the German occupation of Rome from September 1943 until the city was liberated in June 1944.