Public History, Private Memories: Historical Imagination in the New Italian Cinema 1988-1999
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NOTE This online version of the thesis has slightly different page formatting from the print version held in Griffith University Library. The content is otherwise exactly the same. Public History, Private Memories: Historical imagination in the New Italian cinema 1988-1999 Tiziana Ferrero-Regis 2003 Public History, Private Memories: Historical imagination in the New Italian cinema 1988-1999 Tiziana Ferrero-Regis B.A. (Honours) Film, Media and Cultural Studies, Griffith University Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy February, 2003 i Abstract The concern with the following arguments started during a study of national and international cinemas, from the desire to account for a cinema that internationally was doing well, but was undervalued domestically. The aims were to account for the renewal of Italian filmmaking from 1988, the New Italian cinema, and understand the conditions behind this renewal. The thesis identifies in the historical theme and in the recurrence of features from Italian cinema history elements of coherence with previous cinema production. The first consideration that emerges is that a triangulation between a new generation of filmmakers, their audience and recent history shaped the recovery of Italian cinema from 1988. A second consideration is that no discussion of Italian cinema can be separated from a discussion of that which it represents: Italian society and politics. This representation has not only addressed questions of identity for a cohort of spectators, but on occasions has captured the attention of the international audience. Thus the thesis follows a methodologic approach that positions the texts in relation to certain traditions in Italian filmmaking and to the context by taking into consideration also industrial factors and social and historical changes. By drawing upon a range of disciplines, from political history to socio-psychological studies, the thesis has focussed on representation of history and memory in two periods of Italian film history: the first and the last decade of twentieth century. The concern has been not so much to interpret the films, but to understand the processes that made the films and how spectators have applied their knowledge structures to make meaning of the films. Thus the thesis abstains from ascribing implicit meanings to films, but acknowledges how films project cultural contingencies. This is because film is shaped by production conditions and cultural and historical circumstances that make the film intelligible. As ii Bordwell stated in Making Meaning, "One can do other things with films besides 'reading' them" (1989, p. xiii). Within this framework, the thesis proposes a project that understands history film within the norms that govern Italian filmic output, those norms that regulate conditions of production and consumption and the relation between films from various traditions. iii Acknowledgements This thesis could not have been completed without the assistance of many people and institutions. I thank my supervisor Dr Anthony May for having assisted me with wise suggestions and thought provoking input. His patience in reading the many drafts that I presented to him is invaluable. I should also acknowledge Prof. Tom O'Regan for having organised a peer group of students who regularly met and discussed drafts and ideas under his experienced guidance. I should thus mention Maureen Burns and Kitty VanVureen for their sharp, albeit constructive, criticism. I would also like to thank the staff at the Griffith University Library, especially the interlibrary loan section. They have politely put up with my many requests of "urgent" loans. I should thank Prof. F. W. Kent of Monash University for awarding an Australian Foundation for Studies in Italy scholarship. This scholarship has been fundamental in financing a long study period in Italy to collect data and archival material from which my work has greatly benefited. I would also like to thank the people from Italian institutions and universities that have helped in my research. These people are Mrs Diana Tocci of ANICA in Rome, Franco Imperiali and Miss Simonetta Quatrini of the Cineteca Luigi Chiarini at the Scuola Nazionale di Cinema in Rome (ex- Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia), Prof. Giampietro Mazzoleni, Prof. Gianni Canova, and the library staff at the University IULM in Milan. A special thanks goes to the people who dedicated some of their time and kindly accepted to be interviewed. These people are Sig.ra Luciana Castellina, President of ItaliaCinema, Rome; Cristiana Paternò, ItaliaCinema, Rome; Enzo Monteleone, Rome; Maurizio Colombo, Marketing Director, Medusa Film, Milan; Kiko Stella, Milan; and Miss Carole André-Smith of Cinecittà Studios. A special thanks goes to my friend Annabella Miscuglio for her hospitality in Rome. Access to her video library, especially iv to Roberto Rossellini's La prise du pouvoir par Louis XIV, was invaluable. I would also like to thank my dear friend Fausta Bizzozzero for her hospitality in Milan and her dedication in sending me books from Milan, and finally the comrades at the Centro Studi Libertari Giuseppe Pinelli, Milan, for their assistance in researching material on the Resistance. My last heartfelt thanks goes to my dearest Morgana for putting up with me during the process of writing and to Craig, who so patiently fixed my idiosyncrasies with English prepositions. An earlier version of Chapter Four under the title "The industry, the ideology of 1968 and the New Italian cinema" was presented at a seminar organised by the Italian Studies department at Griffith University on October 2000. A condensed version of the same chapter was presented at the Conference American Association for Italian Studies 2001 in Philadelphia at the University of Pennsylvannia between 19-22 April 2001. The essay published in the April 2000 issue of Convivio, with the title "Italian Frictions and Fiction - Film, History and Politics in Lamerica" contains some points of analysis of the New Italian Cinema that can be found in Chapter Four and also some early thoughts on the institutionalised functions of the history film that are developed in this thesis. My essay on Italian cinema's self-reflexivity in the 1990s, television and memory was published on the on-line journal Transformations, n. 3, May 2002. These reflections have been included in Chapter Six. Also, some material from Chapter Five was presented at the 11th Biennial Conference of the Film and History Association of Australia and New Zealand held at Flinders University in Adelaide from November 28 to December 1 2002. Note: All translations in the thesis from Italian into English are mine, except where noted in footnotes. v Contents Abstract i Acknowledgments iii Contents v Statement of Authorship vi Introduction 1 Part One - History and Aesthetics 1. Film, history and the construction of a national discourse, 1870-1914 30 2. The industry of history: the changing face of the filmic spectacle 62 Part Two - The Power of Violence and Comedy 3. Memories of the Resistance in the 1990s: the moral question of violence 105 4. The legacy of 1968 and the New Italian cinema 157 Part Three - Good Survivors, Good Television 5. Italian Holocaust films after Schindler's List 204 6. Memories of cinema, cinema on television's terms 247 Conclusion 287 Appendix 1 - Interviews 297 Appendix 2 - Tables 324 Filmography 329 Bibliography 341 vi Statement of authorship This work has not previously been submitted for a degree or diploma in any university. To the best of my knowledge and belief, the thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made in the thesis itself. ............................................................. 1 Introduction Traditionally, critiques of Italian cinema have separated its history into well defined epochs.1 As Lizzani pointed out, each cinema epoch is seen as antithetical to the previous (1982, p. 287). However, in his Il cinema italiano Lizzani argued that despite the full autonomy of the various historically defined periods, there is a thread between the different cinemas (1982, p. 287). In this light, this thesis examines continuities and differences between the cinema produced in the 1990s, generally defined as New Italian cinema, and the cinema immediately preceding it. Changes that came about in the 1970s took effect in the 1990s, when a triangular relationship between filmmakers, audience and the past provided conditions for a reflexive cinema to emerge. The foci of this thesis are paradigmatic continuities and shifts in the Italian contemporary historical imagination through their cinematic representation. Its objective is to establish firstly the continuity of the institution of cinema in the 1990s against historical and political discontinuities, and secondly, the recognition of the New Italian cinema as a legitimate expression of Italian contemporary reality. Between 1988 and 1999, a substantial number of films concerned with representations of the past were produced. This period starts with the release of Nuovo Cinema Paradiso (1988), itself a marker for the industrial recovery of the Italian cinema, and ends with the year 1999-2000 budget.2 That year registered a decrease in production and the lowest market share for the domestic cinema in ten years.3 Some of the history films produced in this period have enjoyed international recognition, awards 1 Italian cinema is separated into silent cinema (1895-1929); the fascist era, from 1929 to the end of the Second World war; neorealism, which is conventionally compressed between 1945 and 1951. Art cinema, the Italian comedy and the spaghetti-western are genres that emerged with the economic miracle. The cinema of directors such as Bernardo Bertolucci, Liliana Cavani, Paolo and Vittorio Taviani, Marco Bellocchio is seen as a first break from the previous generation of neorealist directors. 2 The Italian cinema season is one of the shortest in the world, from September to the following March. From an economic point of view, the year budget goes from September to the following August.