Italian Cinema

From the unbridled sensuality of the orgy scenes in silent Italian cinema, through a topless Sophia Loren in a 1950s historical epic, to the erotic obsessions of Fellini and the more cerebral but still passion-centred movies of Antonioni, eroticism is ever-present in Italian cinema. And then there are the popular movies: the acres of tanned flesh (both male and female) on offer in the many sword and sandal epics of the Peplum era through to the inextricable mix of sexuality and violence in the gialli of such directors as Mario Bava and Dario Argento, in which death and sex meet in a blood-drenched, orgasmic coda.

Of course, there’s far more to Italian cinema: it is one of the most glorious and energetic celebrations of the medium that any nation has ever offered. For many years, this astonishing legacy was largely unseen, but the digitial revolution is making virtually everything available, from Steve Reeves’ muscle epics to long-unseen Italian art house movies.

The one characteristic that most of the great (and not so great) Italian movies have in common is the sheer individualism of the directors. And this applies to the populist moviemakers as much as to the giants of serious cinema. While Fellini, Visconti and Antonioni have rightly assumed their places in the pantheon, so have such talented popular auteurs as Sergio Leone, who was doing something with the Western that no American director would dare do, so radical was the rethink.

All the glory of Italian cinema is celebrated here in comprehensive essays, along with every key film in an easy-to-use reference format.

Barry Forshaw is one of the UK’s leading experts on crime fiction and film. His latest books are Euro Noir, Nordic Noir, British Crime Film and British Gothic Cinema. Other work includes Death in a Cold Climate: A Guide to Scandinavian Crime Fiction, The Rough Guide to Crime Fiction, and the Keating Award-winning British Crime Writing: An Encyclopedia, and the first biography of Stieg Larsson. He writes for various national newspapers, edits Crime Time (www.crimetime.co.uk), and is a regular broadcaster. He has been Vice Chair of the Crime Writers’ Association, and has taught an MA course at City University on the history of crime fiction.

CRITICAL ACCLAIM FOR NORDIC NOIR

‘Entertaining and informative companion... written by the person who probably knows more than anyone alive about the subject’

- The Times

‘Highly accessible guide to this popular genre’

- Daily Express

‘The perfect gift for the Scandinavian crime fiction lover in your life.’

- Crime Fiction Lover

CRITICAL ACCLAIM FOR BRIT NOIR

‘Unsurprisingly Barry Forshaw’s Brit Noir is a wonderful reference book that any self-respecting and serious connoisseur of crime fiction needs to have on their book-shelf.’

- Shots Magazine

‘Brit Noir is a book to dip into but also, as I did, to read from cover to cover. I’ve always considered Forshaw to be an honest reviewer and the book very much reflects his personality. It made the book a stimulating and, at times, amusing read.’

- Crime Pieces

‘UK critic-author Barry Forshaw long ago established himself as an authority on Englishtranslated Nordic mysteries, producing the guide Nordic Noir in 2013, which he followed up a year later with Euro Noir. Now comes Brit Noir: The Pocket Essential Guide to the Crime Fiction, Film & TV of the British Isles (Oldcastle/Pocket Essentials).’

- The Rap Sheet

CRITICAL ACCLAIM FOR EURO NOIR

‘An informative, interesting, accessible and enjoyable guide as Forshaw guides us through the crime output of a dozen nations’

- The Times

‘Entertaining, illuminating, and indispensable. This is the ultimate road map for anybody interested in European crime books, film, and TV.’

- Euro But Not Trash

‘An exhilarating tour of Europe viewed through its crime fiction’

- Guardian

‘Exemplary tour of the European crime landscape... supremely readable’

- The Independent

Also By Barry Forshaw

Nordic Noir

Euro Noir

Brit Noir

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My grateful thanks, for help and inspiration, to:

Dr Louis Bayman

Dr Fabrizio De Donno

Dr Nicoletta Di Ciolla

Christopher Fowler

Dr Pasquale Iannone

Kim Newman

Dr Giuliana Pieri

CONTENTS

Introduction

1.    Neorealism: Key Directors

2.    Personal Cinema: Fellini, Antonioni and Others

3.    Gialli and Horror: Bava, Argento and Co.

4.    The Italian Western: Sergio Leone and Sergio Corbucci

5.    Magpie Mayhem: Poliziotteschi

6.    Italian Cinema: The Films

7.    Into the Twenty-First Century

8.    Films since 2000

9.    Italian Crime Television after 1999

10.  Key Film Stars

Index

Plates

Copyright

INTRODUCTION

Is sexuality the key to Italian cinema? From the unbridled sensuality of the orgy scenes in silent Italian cinema through a topless Sophia Loren in a 1950s historical epic to the image of Silvana Mangano, her skirt provocatively tucked into her underwear in the neorealist classic Bitter Rice (Riso Amaro), up to the erotic obsessions of Fellini and the more cerebral but still passion-centred movies of Antonioni, eroticism is ever-present. And then there’s the popular Italian cinema: the acres of tanned flesh (both male and female) on offer in the many sword and sandal epics of the peplum era through to the inextricable mix of sexuality and violence in the gialli of such directors as Mario Bava and Dario Argento. The latter may be said to be the final exhausted sigh of Italian concupiscence: a full-on liebestod in which death and sex meet in a blood-drenched, orgasmic finale.

Of course, there’s far more to the genius of Italian cinema than this one motivating factor, and, while the industry may have been in abeyance for decades until its renaissance in the twenty-first century, its history represents one of the most glorious and energetic celebrations of the medium of cinema that any nation has ever offered. For many years, this astonishing legacy was largely unseen, but the DVD revolution has made virtually everything available, from Steve Reeves’ muscle epics to long-unseen Italian art house movies, the latter often known to cinephiles by name only. The element of social commitment, often a key theme in neorealism, gave way as the years progressed to delirious experiments with other genres (often with a strongly surrealistic overtone), but the one characteristic that most of the great (and not so great) Italian movies have in common is the sheer individualism of the directors. And this applies to the populist moviemakers as much as to the giants of serious cinema. While Federico Fellini, Luchino Visconti and Michelangelo Antonioni have rightly assumed their places in the pantheon, such talented popular auteurs as Sergio Leone have acquired a copper-bottomed following over the years, after the almost derisory reaction that their otherwise highly successful movies initially received – mainly due to the fact that Leone and co. were using a popular genre, the Western, and doing something with it that no American director would dare to do, so radical was the rethink.

With the astonishing contributions over the centuries to the world of the arts (notably painting) for which Italy was responsible, it was hardly surprising that early silent Italian films were shot through with the same visual richness as the great works of such painters as Veronese and Caravaggio. Italian silent cinema is best remembered as a great flowering of the epic and historical costume drama, notably the swarming, extras-packed Roman epic. The Taking of Rome (La Presa di Roma) in 1905 is often celebrated as the first important narrative movie, with its plot of the breaching of Porta Pia by Italian troops in the nineteenth century handled with great panache. A synthesis with the other arts was evident in the provision of music to accompany this film; this was, of course, the era of Respighi, whose highly coloured music is often disparagingly referred to as being like film music, as if that were the most deadly of criticisms.

The director Giovanni Pastrone (1883–1959) showed an exuberant grasp of cinema in The Fall of Troy (La Caduta di Troia, 1911), which demonstrated tremendous assurance in its use of massive crowds within equally massive sets. The same director’s Cabiria (1914), possibly the best known of all Italian silent films, and Mario Caserini’s The Last Days of Pompeii (Gli Ultimi Giorni di Pompei) in 1913 inaugurated a theme that was to recur in the grand days of the peplum epics. Few later versions of these tropes had quite the panache of Pastrone’s and Caserini’s work. Cabiria was extensively hand-tinted (a technique utilised most notably in the US with Lon Chaney’s The Phantom of the Opera), and the staging of such scenes as the one in which the heroine Cabiria is to be sacrificed to Moloch, the Carthaginian god, transcends the limitations of the silent era, and is still awe-inspiring even today.

Other elements that were to feature throughout the history of Italian cinema are also handled with great assurance here: elaborate special effects and cinematic trickery that create an operatic sense of scale from limited resources. Italian audiences of the day flocked to these immense epics, and it is a testament to their ambition that their characterisation is still more subtle than one would expect of the era (although it is necessary for modern viewers to grit their teeth through some semaphore-style silent film acting).

Cabiria also saw the arrival of an iconic figure who was to feature (along with his myriad progeny) in many muscleman films of the 1960s: the super-strong hero Maciste. In Cabiria, he was played by the non-actor Bartolomeo Pagano, a strapping Genoan dockworker who became a star after his appearance in the film. Maciste was a tremendous hit with audiences, and he later returned to fight against insuperable odds in many Italian epics of the 1960s, although his films would be retitled in the US and Britain as non-Italian audiences were not familiar with the character: Maciste often became Hercules or Goliath.

Rather like the British cinema, the Italian film industry enjoyed periods of success followed immediately by hardship and turmoil. A particularly swingeing economic crisis decimated the industry after the First World War, despite the fact that Italian films had been selling successfully in the American market. The films, however, continued to be made for appreciative local audiences, often built around the burgeoning star system, carefully cultivated by the filmmakers of the day. And while these stars (such as the charismatic Lyda Borelli) are little known today, the acting style employed is often surprisingly low-key and modern, as evidenced by Borelli’s seductive performance in Mario Caserini’s Love Everlasting (Ma l’Amore Mio Non Muore, 1913). The sexuality of the films of this era is often surprisingly up-front: The Serpent (La Serpe, 1919), Roberto Roberti’s erotic epic, is full of imagery that remains deeply sensuous even to this day. The silent era was dominated by celebrated actresses such as Maria Giacobini and Diana Karenne, with some equally charismatic male stars making an impression.

The other arts continued to influence the cinema, and often various movements – such as the Italian Futurists – attempted to utilise the medium for their own purposes. After Marinetti’s celebrated manifesto (which took the art world by storm when it appeared in Le Figaro in 1909), it was only natural that the Futurists would be fascinated by the apparatus of cinema, with their preoccupation with the interaction of movement, the human figure and machinery. The essay The Futurist Cinema (September 1916) made a strong plea for the cinema to embrace its essentially visual nature and become both impressionistic and dynamic.

Certainly, the darkest days of the Italian nation were the Fascist era, and if Italian cinema of the day simply provided no more than escapism, there were (inevitably) few chances for the directors to do much else. Various sloe-eyed Lolitas seduced their male co-stars, while Maciste battled various nemeses (both natural and supernatural). The dark days began in earnest in 1934 with the appointment of Luigi Freddi as head of the Direzione Generale per la Cinematografia, an organisation that was as sympathetic to the Fascist movement as Freddi himself. A fund for Italian filmmaking was created, and one of the key elements of Italian cinema also dated from this period: the now famous film complex Cinecittà, which no less a figure than Mussolini himself opened in April 1937. As Italy continued to be ruled by a Fascist government (from the 1920s to the 1940s), Mario Camerini became a key figure. His Rails (Rotaie, 1929) was a powerful study of love, which avoided dealing with the political realities of the period, as did Alessandro Blasetti’s Sun (Sole, 1929), now a lost film. Blasetti made an important historical spectacle with Palio (1932).

Looked at today, refreshingly few of the films produced during the Fascist period show the crushing political orthodoxy one might expect – there are far fewer, for instance, than the endless paeans of praise to Stalin made under duress by Russian directors after the communist revolution. But there were such films as Augusto Genina’s The Siege of the Alcazar (L’Assedio dell’Alcazar), which described a Fascist victory (Franco’s forces fighting the far greater numbers of a republican army). The award of a Mussolini prize hardly covered the film with glory, looked at from the post-Fascist era.

But on the horizon was Roberto Rossellini’s Rome, Open City (Roma Città Aperta, 1945), which added a new level of sophistication and ambition to the Italian cinema and took it far beyond the kind of material produced by the journeymen directors of Mussolini’s regime. Around the time of Il Duce’s fall, Rossellini produced such films as A Pilot Returns (Un Pilota Ritorna, 1942); while still recognisably a propaganda piece, the Rossellini of the future was clearly in evidence.

The aristocratic Luchino Visconti had been given a book that greatly impressed him: a French translation of James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice. From this he would make one of the great Italian films of sexuality and violence – Obsession (Ossessione, 1943) – and the inglorious recent past of the Italian cinema quickly receded. An explosion of filmmaking was in the offing, with all genres up for grabs. But the overriding preoccupation for most directors of the period, whether they were from working or middle-class backgrounds or had enjoyed a more aristocratic upbringing, as had Visconti, was the life of the common man. Some of the greatest films produced in Italy would result from this preoccupation, before audiences and directors tired of realism and yearned for colour, spectacle and unbridled sexuality. And as the film mentioned above demonstrates, the industry boasted filmmakers perfectly prepared to give audiences just what they wanted – even if their frankness and attitudes upset the all-powerful Catholic Church.

Finally, let’s talk about a death and a rebirth. Almost from the beginning, Italian cinema has had two coexisting strands, one respectable and one thought (wrongly) by many Italians to be meretricious and unworthy of serious attention: the ambitious, artistically serious film and the catchpenny exploitation movie in a variety of genres. While some of the finest auteurs have produced examples of the former, the field of Italian popular cinema might also be said to have launched some remarkable, unorthodox talents who quickly stretched the parameters of the area in which they worked, be it the muscleman ‘sword-and-sandal’ epic, the Western, the thriller or the horror film. It could be argued that the Italian exploitation cinema had simply shut up shop by the 1990s and only intermittently produced the kind of startlingly innovative imitations of American or British cinema that were once its sine qua non. However, in terms of what might be described as arthouse cinema, Italian filmmaking has enjoyed something of a rebirth in the first decades of the twenty-first century, although it still has some way to go to live up to the legacy of its glory days. Several immensely talented directors are producing work that (some would argue) is almost as accomplished as that of any of their great forebears – such as Paolo Sorrentino’s The Great Beauty (La Grande Bellezza, 2013). The final chapters of this revised edition celebrate both the new talents that have appeared since the year 2000 and those who had already established a reputation before the new millennium. No special pleading is necessary – Italian cinema at its best can still rival the most ambitious work being done anywhere in the world.

NEOREALISM: KEY DIRECTORS

Sexuality is certainly the wellspring of one of the key documents of Italian neorealism, Luchino Visconti’s Obsession (Ossessione, 1943). This sultry, highly eroticised version of James M. Cain’s novel The Postman Always Rings Twice made the Hollywood version with John Garfield and Lana Turner seem a very buttoned-up affair indeed – it was to be many years before Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange would put table-top intercourse back into the tale. Visconti’s Obsession (with Massimo Girotti and Clara Calamai) is a key film in the history of Italian cinema, as it functions on so many different levels. The director had been associated with the writers and filmmakers of the journal Cinema (which was, in fact, a project put together by Vittorio Mussolini, the dictator’s son) and he had already set down a manifesto that included a swingeing attack on standard Italian cinema of the day (entitled ‘Cadavers’) and that also articulated his feeling that the everyday life of men and women should be encapsulated in cinema, with a keen and subtle response to the locales in which human dramas took place. The Minister of Popular Culture, Alessandro Pavolini, had rejected a proposed film of a Verga short story, Gramigna’s Lover, as it did not conform to the rules of Fascist cinema. As a replacement project, Visconti considered Melville’s Billy Budd, later filmed by Peter Ustinov, but finally opted for a film based on a French translation he had read of Cain’s Postman, with its betrayal, sexuality and resolutely blue-collar characters. With the assistance of such colleagues as Giuseppe De Santis (who would later become a director himself), Visconti relocated the book to a sultry Italy, and took its classic tale of a couple who murder the woman’s husband for his money and then fall out in an orgy of what ultimately proves to be lethal squabbling and made it quintessentially Italian. The characters of Frank, Cora and Nick become Gino, Giovanna and Giuseppe Bragana (the latter characterised as an admirer of Verdi – an element that would not