Abstract
He felt a singular relief and, perhaps more than relief, astonishment, when he realised that the printed news on the yellow paper of seventeen years before aroused no appreciable echo in his mind His reaction, he felt, was like that of a man who, having a bandage over a deep wound for a very long time, makes up his mind at last to take it off and discovers, to his surprise, that the skin, in the place where he had expected at any rate to find a scar, is clear and smooth, without a mark of any kind. Looking for the paragraph in the paper, he thought, had been like removing the bandage; and to find himself unaffected by it was to find himself cured. How this cure had been accomplished, he could not have said. But there could be no doubt that it was not merely time that had produced this result. Much was owing to himself, too, to his own conscious will during all those years, to escape from abnormality and make himself like other men. (A. Moravia, The Conformist, trans. A. Davidson, London, 1952 (originally published in Italian, Milan, 1951), p. 70)
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Notes
R.A. Rosenstone, Visions of the Past: The Challenge of Film to our Idea of History, Cambridge, MA, 1995, p. 199
cf. also R.A. Rosenstone (ed.), Revisioning History: Film and the Construction of a New Past, Princeton, 1995.
For my own version of this matter, see R.J.B. Bosworth, The Italian Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives in the Interpretation of Mussolini and Fascism, London, 1998.
P. Nora, ’Between Memory and History: les lieux de mémoire’, Representations, 26, 1989, pp. 7–25.
Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, Harmondsworth, 1954, pp. 24–5.
It was Heidegger who advised portentously that memory keeps us whole in our essential being: ‘It is an ingathering of thought. To what? To what holds us.’ See V. Schwarcz, ‘Stranger No More: Personal Memory in the Interstices of Public Commemorations’, in R.S. Watson (ed.), Memory, History, and Opposition under State Socialism, Santa Fe, 1994, p. 59.
P. Nora, ‘Between Memory and History: les lieux de mémoire’, p. 8.
P. Nora (ed.), Les lieux de mémoire (3 vols), Paris, 1984–92. An abbreviated English-language version is now available as P. Nora (ed.), Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past, New York, 1996.
An abbreviated English-language version is now available as P. Nora (ed.), Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past, New York, 1996.
See, notably, E.T. Linenthal, Preserving Memory: The Struggle to Create America’s Holocaust, New York, 1995; J.R. Gillis (ed.), Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity, Princeton, 1994.
There is also a direct Italian imitation of Nora, even if the essays involved vary hugely in quality and the editor does little to bring the work together. See M. Isnenghi (ed.), I luoghi della memoria: simboli e miti dell’Italia unita, Bari, 1996; I luoghi della memoria: strutture ed eventi dell’Italia unita, Bari, 1997; Iluoghi della memo-ria: personaggi e date dell’Italia unita, Bari, 1997.
J.E. Young, The Texture of Memory: The Holocaust Memorials and Memory, New Haven, 1993, p. x.
See, e.g., S. Brandt, ‘The Memory Makers: Museums and Exhibitions of the First World War’, History and Memory, 6, 1994, p. 97.
For a typically uneven example, see A. Dalle Vacche, The Body in the Mirror: Shapes of History in Italian Cinema, Princeton, 1992.
M. Sineux and F. Vitoux, ‘La storia al cinema: conversazione con René Allio, Marc Ferro, Philippe Joutard, Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie’, in G.M. Gori (ed.), La storia al cinema: ricostruzione del passatol l’interpretazione del presente, Rome, 1994, p. 84.
In terms of simple numbers, film audiences peaked at 513 million in 1976. Legislation permitting private TV stations thereafter resulted in a major diminution of cinema goers who totalled only 161 million in 1983. Private TV did proffer a staple diet of films and so film-watching was actually on the increase, though now more people probably watched ‘bad’ movies than in the past. For the numbers, see, e.g., R. Buss, Italian Film, London, 1989, p. 15.
This point is well made about the films of Sergei Eisenstein but can readily be transferred to the Italian films dealt with here. D. Bordwell, The Cinema of Eisenstein, Cambridge, MA, 1993, p. 272.
C. Wagstaff, ‘Italy in the Post-war International Cinema Market’, in C. Duggan and C. Wagstaff (eds), Italy in the Cold War: Politics, Culture and Society, 1948–58, Oxford, 1995, pp. 100–1.
F. Zeffirelli, Zeffirelli: The Autobiography, New York, 1986, p. 84.
L. Micciché, Cinema italiano degli anni ’70: cronache 1969–78, Venice, 1980, p. 7 notes that, from 1970 to 1978, some 2000 Italian feature films were produced.
The ‘real’ politics of quite a number were probably summed up by the great comic actor (and, at least in his own eyes, heir to the Byzantine throne) Tot?), in 1963: ‘I’ll vote for one of the parties which stands for order [and thus for anti-communism].’ V. Paliotti, Totà: principe del sorriso, Naples, 1972, p. 166. To-0’s own politics, in turn, do not necessarily mean that his audience did not sometimes read his films ’subversively’.
Cf. the not dissimilar views expressed by P. Bondanella, ‘Recent work on Italian cinema’, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, I, 1995, p. 107.
For an endorsement of the film’s canonical status, see P.A. Sitney, Vital Crises in Italian Cinema: Iconography, Stylistics, Politics, Austin, Texas, 1995, p. 29.
It was accorded the Cannes prize of 1946. R. Armes, Patterns of Realism, South Brunswick, 1971, p. 67.
In this regard it was very much the exception of the neorealist genre. See, e.g., V. Spinazzola, Cinema e pubblico: lo spettacolo fzlmico in Italia, 1945–1965, Milan, 1974, pp. 7–11.
P. Brunette, Roberto Rossellini, New York, 1987, p. 41.
M. Liehm, Passion and Defiance: Film in Italy from 1942 to the Present, Berkeley, 1984, p. 59.
G.P. Brunetta, ‘Stati Uniti e Italia: storia di una colonizzazione cinematografica dalla liberazione alla guerra fredda (1945–1954)’, Risorgi-mento, II, 1981, pp. 205–23. Pius XII told a delegation from the US: ‘The eyes and the ears are like roads which lead directly into a man’s soul. Oh what good the cinema can do even though the spirit of the Devil, always at large in the world, wants to pervert it to his own ends’ (p. 212).
F. Chabod, Lezioni del metodo storico, Bari, 1976, p. 57.
But cf. R. Ben-Ghiat, ‘Fascism, Writing and Memory: The Realist Aesthetic in Italy, 1930–1950’, Journal of Modern History, 67,1995, pp. 641–6, 655–8, for the hidden equivocations of Moravia’s past.
L. Emmer and E. Gras, ‘The Film Renaissance in Italy’, Hollywood Quarterly, II, 1947, p. 356.
C. Lizzani, Il cinema italiano, 1895–1979, Rome, 1979, p. 107. It marked, Lizzani averred rhetorically, the abandonment of rhetoric in Italian life (p. 108).
R. Samuel,Theatres of Memory, Vol. I. Past and Present in Contemporary CultureLondon, 1994, p. 318.
As cited by E. Rhode, ‘Why Neo-realism Failed’, Sight and Sound, 30, 1960–1, p. 27.
Quoted by M. Marcus, Italian Film in the Light of Neorealism, Princeton, 1986, p. 19.
R. De Felice, Rosso e nero, Milan, 1995, p. 8.
R. Rossellini, ‘The Intelligence of the Present’, in S. Roncoroni (ed.), Ro-berto Rossellini: The War Trilogy, New York, 1973, p. xvi.
Italians were scarcely unique in their preference for silence. For my exploration of other forgetting, see R.J.B. Bosworth, Explaining Auschwitz and Hiroshima: History Writing and the Second World War 1945–1990, London,1993.
See, e.g., G. Lambert, ‘Italian Notes: Signs of a Predicament’, Sight and Sound, 24, 1955, p. 147;
P. Pintus, Storia e film: trent’anni di cinema italiano (1945–1975), Rome, 1980, p. 43. Andreotti was Sotto Segretario dello Spettacolo in the De Gasperi governments. The Ufficio centrale per la cinematografia, which issued permits for film production, had been located in the Prime Minister’s office since May 1947. Another leading 1950s advocate of censorship was Oscar Luigi Scalfaro. Cf C Lizzani, Il cinema italiano, p. 221. The US censors agreed about the moral dubiety of Umberto D.
See G. Lambert, ‘Further Notes on a Renaissance’, Sight and Sound, 22, 1952, p. 65.
J. Doniol-Valcroze and J. Domarchi, ‘Visconti Interviewed’, Sight and Sound, 28, 1959, p. 145.
D. Mack Smith, Italy: A Modern History, Ann Arbor, 1959. Laterza of Bari would make it available in Italian in a cheap paperback edition.
For an example, see P. Pintus, ‘Dossier Rossellini: quando la critica si divise’, Bianco e Nero, XLVIII,1987, pp. 6–25.
A. Bazin, ‘Cinema and Television: an Interview with Jean Renoir and Roberto Rossellini’, Sight and Sound, 28, 1958, p. 27.
E. Lussu, Sardinian Brigade, New York, 1967 is the English-language version.
R. Rossellini, ‘Un cinema diverso per un mondo the cambia’, Bianco e Nero, XXV, 1964, p. 16.
For an early example, cf. Florestano Vancini’sLa lunga notte del ’43 (1960) based on a story by Giorgio Bassani. See D. Ward, ‘Fascism and Resistance in the Films of Florestano Vancini’, Italian Culture, 10, 1992, pp. 227–42.
For one English-language exploration, see S. Piccone Stella, ‘“Rebels without a Cause”: Male Youth in Italy around 1960’, History Workshop Journal, 38, 1994, pp. 157–78.
Gramsci had, of course, been ‘saved’ from Stalinism by being locked in a Fascist prison. See G. Liguori, Gramsci conteso: storia di un dibattito 1922–1996, Rome, 1996 and, more specifically,
M. Landy, Film, Politics and Gramsci, Minneapolis, 1994.
L.Autera,‘Cuneo’66:l’antifascismoquotidiano’,Bianco e Nero,XXVIII, 1967, pp 22–8. It was in 1966 that Italians overcame what had often seemed their deprecation of film history to establish theArchivio Nazionale Cinematografico per la storia della Resistenza. Its directing board eclectically included F. Parri (President), G. Garrone, G. Quazza and others.
See N. Ivaldi, ‘Convegno di studio sui documenti cinematografici della Resistenza, l’Antifascismo e la Deportazione’, Bianco e Nero, XXX, 1969, pp. 73–6.
R.T. Witcombe, The New Italian Cinema: Studies in Dance and Despair, London, 1982, p. 77. Perhaps Bertolucci’s most memorable, or oedipal, line is ‘every man is a mother-fucker’.
G. Crowdus and D. Georgakas, ‘Luna and the Critics: an Interview with Bernardo Bertolucci’, Cineaste, X, 1979–80, p. 29.
In English, see T.J. Kline, Bertolucci’s Dream Loom: a Psychoanalytic Study of Cinema, Amherst, 1987.
For the most detailed study, more adept at theory than history, see R. Burgoyne, Bertolucci’s 1900: a Narrative and Historical Analysis, Detroit, 1991.
J.J. Michalczyk, The Italian Political Filmmakers, Rutherford, 1986, p. 114.
For a placement of the film in this regard, see R. Bosworth, ‘Bernardo Bertolucci, 1900 and the Myth of Fascism’, European History Quarterly, 19, 1989, pp. 37–61.
In English, see A. Moravia, The Conformist, London, 1951;
E. Fromm, The Fear of Freedom, London, 1942. Fromm’s evidence was drawn from Nazi Germany and ignored Italian Fascism.
B. Bertolucci, ‘The Conformist: an Interview with Marilyn Goldin’, Sight and Sound, 40, 1971, p. 66.
D. Georgakis and L. Rubenstein, Art Politics Cinema: The Cineaste Interviews, London, 1985, p. 35.
P. Bondanella, Italian Cinema from Neorealism to the Present, New York, 1983, p. 306. In 1973 Bertolucci would at once start work on 1900, but a series of complications, including legal ones, delayed the film’s screening until the second half of 1976.
C. Wagstaff, ‘Bernardo Bertolucci: Intravenous Cinema’, Sight and Sound, 63, 1994, p. 21.
I. Calvino, The Road to San Giovanni, London, 1993, p. 70. Calvino claimed to have been converted out of Fascism through his fondness for Hollywood movies and had fought in the Resistance in the ‘01mo detachment’ (pp. 47; 56–7; 78). In 1900, the peasant hero, played by Gerard Depardieu, was named Olmo.
For a useful account of the fluctuations in intellectual sympathy for the PCI, see N. Ajello, Il lungo addio: intellettuali e PCI dal 1958 al 1991, Bari, 1997.
It was at this time that Bertolucci, troubled by criticism, urged that critics ‘should review only those films they like’. G. Crowdus and D. Georgakas, ‘Luna and the Critics: an Interview with Bernardo Bertolucci’, Cineaste, X, 1979–80, p. 28.
F.T. Rony, ‘The Last Emperor’, Film Quarterly, XLII, 1988–9, p. 51.
T. Rayns, ‘Bertolucci in Beijing’, Sight and Sound, 56,1986–7, p. 39. Such subsequent films as The Sheltering Sky (1990) and Little Buddha (1993) would further Bertolucci’s detachment from political commitment.
C. Zavattini, La notte the ho dato uno schiaffo a Mussolini, Milan, 1984, p. 194. Later the brothers would say that, in their youth, they had been inspired into film-making by seeing Rossellini’s Paisà.
B. Torri, ‘La notte di San Lorenzo: la favola e la storia’, Bianco e Nero, XLIV, 1983, p. 107.
It was the film of a book. G. Ledda, Padre Padrone: The Education of a Shepherd, London, 1979 is the English-language version.
See, e.g., D. Ehrenstein, ‘Your own Reality: an Interview with Paolo and Vittorio Taviani’, Film Quarterly, 47, 1994, pp. 2–6.
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Bosworth, R.J.B. (1999). Film Memories of Fascism. In: Bosworth, R.J.B., Dogliani, P. (eds) Italian Fascism. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-27245-7_7
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