6 - Gramsci and Italian Cinema

Summary

The memory and effects of Fascism, the war, and the Resistance were central to national concerns for postwar intellectuals of the Left, as seen in the films that were identified with the “golden age of neorealism.” To these anti-Fascist, pro-Resistance leftists, it was important to create films that focused on the necessity for cultural and political change. Such films challenged the genre approach, with its assumed escapist tendencies, its penchant for spectacle (identified also with Hollywood and Americanism), and its depoliticized concept of cinema. Neorealist filmmakers advocated an engagement with contemporary social problems in a cinematic language that was investigative. However, as David Forgacs indicates, of the 822 films that appeared between 1945 and 1953, “films by directors associated with neorealism in the widest sense accounted for … less than a third” of production. These films were largely unsuccessful commercially, “box office flops at home.” Their demise resulted in part from the return of Hollywood products, the ongoing intervention of the Roman Catholic Church through censorship, the consolidation of power by the Christian Democrats, and the economic encouragement of and support for films that promoted “positive” images of Italian life. Moreover, filmmakers themselves began to question the tenets and constraints of neorealism, seeking forms of cinematic expression that, directly or obliquely, addressed the advent of the consumer society and reexamined the political role of culture. In the films of the late 1950s and 1960s, also considered a “golden age” of Italian cinema, the preoccupation with cinematic style and the reintroduction of historical subjects became a source of investigation for many of the filmmakers who were, in greater or lesser ways, influenced by Gramscian thinking.