Abstract
After the war, in Italy, as in Britain, there was a moment of opportunity where the country could have effected major reforms and moved more broadly toward equality the moment called ‘The Italian Spring.’ The forces of the left pushing for major change, both in the society as a whole and in the film industry in particular, were stronger than in Britain and less aligned with the traditional power structure, producing both a government with strong socialist and communist participation and, in the cinematic realm, ‘Neorealism’. The failure of this moment can be seen in the society as a whole in the 1948 election victory of the party of the landlords and industrialists, the Christian Democrats (CD), and, in the film industry, in the passing of the Andreotti Law the next year which rationalized production and curbed the ‘excesses’ of filmmakers bent on social reform.
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© 2014 Dennis Broe
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Broe, D. (2014). The Wintering of the Italian Spring: From Neorealism to Film Noir via Verdi. In: Class, Crime and International Film Noir. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137290144_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137290144_4
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