The problem of the legitimacy or otherwise of the Resistance tradition in post-war Italy has been addressed in recent years mainly in terms of the role of the partisan struggle and its political legacy. This article aims to assess the tradition in terms of commemorative practices, rituals, artistic representations and monuments. It seeks to evaluate whether the Resistance gave rise to a civic religion that may be compared to those which existed in the Liberal period, based on the heroic struggles and figures of the Risorgimento, and the Fascist period, which drew on the feelings of loss and injustice that followed the First World War. It is argued that, although the Resistance lacked, prior to the 1960s, a high degree of official sponsorship, it did acquire some of the features of a civic religion. Its appeal was mainly limited to the regions administered by the Left which had seen a significant degree of Resistance activity in 1943-5. Even here, however, it was difficult to sustain the tradition as a key feature of community life during and after the economic boom: the eclipse of public culture, the decline of public mourning and the development of commercial leisure and mass culture all served to deprive it of meaning. Although intellectuals, politicians and ex-partisans reacted to this situation, the visual and rhetorical languages associated with the commemoration of the Resistance became increasingly divorced from everyday life and dominant social values.

This article examines the documentary series Combat film made by Leonardo Valente and Roberto Olla for Rai-Uno. Shown in April 1994, the series was based on film taken by the American army (1943-5) and provoked a national scandal when it was first shown. The article argues that in order to fully understand Combat film it is necessary to look at the overall design of the programme as well as its content. By concentrating on the ‘special’ shown on 5 April 1994 the author demonstrates how the revisionist message of ‘national reconciliation’ which underlies the programme is reinforced by a series of formal and technical strategies.

The incidence of partisans killing Fascists after the Liberation of Italy is a difficult and contested subject in the historiography of that period. This article addresses one particular case—the Schio killings which took place on the night of 6 July 1945—and examines different narratives of the event in the light of the ways in which the struggle for power played out between the Communists, the Allies and the centre-right has dictated the significance and commemoration of this incident and, by extension, of the Resistance itself. This discussion of narratives and the rhetorical struggle that has taken place to assert different forms of legality underlines the need to problematize categories such as ‘Fascist’, ‘Communist’, ‘victim’, ‘criminal’ and ‘justice’ in understanding the incident.

In the 1970s a group of ex-partisans founded the Resistenza Continua social movement. This article traces the origins and history of the movement and explores its contacts with other similar neo-Resistance groups. Though Resistenza Continua was clearly not a movement of great consequence, an analysis of it sheds a useful light on the strengths and weaknesses of the Resistance tradition.