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For more information, please contact the WRAP Team at: [email protected] warwick.ac.uk/lib-publications 1 Hidden postcolonial conscience in Italian cinema: Attempts to autodefine ‘the Italian’ through representations of the Black Other in the commedia all’italiana Linde Maria Elise Luijnenburg A thesis submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Italian Studies University of Warwick, School of Modern Languages, December 2017 2 Table of Contents List of Illustrations p. 3 Acknowledgements and Declaration p. 4 Abstract p. 6 Introduction p. 7 1. La conosceva bene lui: Italian colonial history and its myths in historiography and cinema p. 48 2. “How do they show themselves?” Approaching the commedia all’italiana p. 97 3. “And on the other side, the bright look of innocence”: Lo sceicco bianco (and the problematic binary of genre and auteur) p. 141 4. “Blackness, darkness, shadow, shades, night”: Italianità as a performance in Il moralista p. 182 5. The framer is framed in Oggi, domani, dopodomani? p. 205 6. “L’illuminazione dal dubbio” in Riusciranno i nostri eroi a ritrovare l’amico misteriosamente scomparso in Africa? p. 238 7. Black Film? Amarcord, or Asarcurdem p. 264 Bibliography p. 293 Cinematography p. 328 3 List of illustrations p. 95, images 1-8, stills of Io la conoscevo bene (Antonio Pietrangeli, 1965) p. 173, images 9-27, stills of Lo sceicco bianco (Federico Fellini, 1953) p. 204, images 28-29, stills of Il moralista (Giorgio Bianchi, 1959) p. 230, images 30-45, stills of Oggi, domani, dopodomani (Eduardo De Filippo, Marco Ferreri, Luciano Salce, 1965) p. 255, images 46-63, stills Riusciranno i nostri eroi a ritrovare l’amico misteriosamente scomparso in Africa? (Ettore Scola, 1968) p. 291, images 64-67, stills Amarcord (Federico Fellini, 1973) 4 Acknowledgements To many people, and various institutions, I am thankful for their input and support during the writing process of this thesis. Jennifer Burns and Loredana Polezzi, my one and a half supervisors, I thank for their belief in the project to begin with - Jenny particularly, for her guidance during the process of writing and editing. Maria Bonaria Urban enthusiastically introduced me to the topic of Italian cinema approached from a socio-historical perspective, and Monica Jansen alerted me to the possibility of applying at Warwick. I am grateful to them also for being invigorating Incontri- and conference colleagues. The Royal Dutch Institute in Rome (KNIR) and the Dutch University Institute for Art History in Florence (NIKI) have kindly offered me several stays in Italy to conduct research. HRF awards funded various conference trips. I spent many delightful months in the cinematheque and the library of Centro sperimentale di cinematografia. This research was generously funded by a Chancellor’s scholarship. I thank the department of Italian Studies at Warwick, both its encouraging staff and the dynamic group of PhD candidates and postdocs, whose many activities I enjoyed tremendously, and with most of whom I have had the fortune of organising various projects. Thank you Gianmarco, Gioia, Georgia, Mary Jane, Goffredo, and Naomi, for sharing research interests and ideas, Valentina, Paola, and Masha for sharing more than an office space, and Elio, for sharing many metaphorical offices and homes. I enjoyed many talks, walks, and wonderful food in Venice with Bernard and Doesjika. You are welcome, Kiki. Finally, I thank my friends in the Netherlands, Italy, and the UK, and especially Olivia, Lex, Mildred, and Omama for the uncountable ways in which they support(ed) me. Hi, Philip. 5 Declaration I declare that this thesis is my own work and has not been submitted for a degree at another university. Inclusions of articles that have appeared in journals, as well as from a former dissertation at Master’s level, have been mentioned in the footnotes to the respective sections. 6 Abstract In the debate surrounding the possible displacement of Italian Fascism and an accompanying denial of memories of colonisation, some scholars assume that Italian filmmakers concentrated with few (predominantly auterurist) exceptions on the former colonised (countries) only after ca. 1980, a narrative which keeps alive two myths: that of a ‘backwards Italy’, and that of the italiani brava gente. Analyses of four commedie all’italiana suggest otherwise: In this study, I centralise several portrayals of characters that I identify as Black Others, in which we could recognise an embodiment of the former colonised. Physically and/or behaviourally contrasted to characters that are presented as italiani medi, these characters are marked as different from ‘Italians’ – illustrating italiani medi’s attempt to present themselves as white. I use this binary as a heuristic tool in order to unravel underlying patterns of binary oppositions that reconfirm prejudices and stereotypes stemming from the colonial period and its accompanying narratives, present in the Italian society at the time of the making of the films, many of which echoing in our current society. The connection between the four films (1952- 1968/73) makes way for a continuous dialogue surrounding constructions of italianità and several forms of o/Otherness, as portrayed through the comedic approach of the grotesque. The object of our ridicule turns out to be not a presumed Black Other in the minstrel tradition, but the character of the italiano medio, who continuously demonstrates a desperate need to construct out a physical Other from the imagined community of Italy; through the latter’s eyes, italiani medi can exist. As such, they are denaturalised as the norm. In every next film, the character identifiable as the Black Other gains in agency, in the end, framing, and dominating, the narrative of the italiano medio. 7 Introduction In 2015, I attended a conference in Florence, entitled Black Portraiture[s] II: Imaging the Black Body and Re-staging Histories.1 Hosted by New York University (NYU), the foundation for this conference was in 1994, when Villa La Pietra was bequeathed to the university. Upon their arrival, the NYU staff noticed the many blackamoors that were part of the art collection of the villa, and wondered about their place in history and the meaning of this. The sixth in a series of visual arts conferences inaugurated by Harvard University in 2004 with Bridging the Gaps, the conference Black Portraiture[s] II was a result of the questions the NYU staff asked in 1994, with the overall theme of discussing, deconstructing, and re-signifying ‘European’2 or ‘Western’ historical and visual arts narratives, which have both stereotyped and ridiculed on the one hand, and on the other hand marginalised, and often excluded completely, Black subjects, their narratives, and their cultural production.3 The presence of the aforementioned 1 <http://www.blackportraitures.info/> [accessed 21 November 2017]. 2 Describing the notion of eurocentrism, Ella Shohat and Robert Stam argue that when they refer to European, and Europeans, this includes the United States, Australia, ‘and elsewhere’, since they consider those places ‘neo-European’. When using the adjective ‘European’, I follow their definition. ‘Western’ is in quotation marks, since Western Europe, the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand are often referred to as such, whereas this geographical positioning is a matter of perspective. Ella Shohat and Robert Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism. Multiculturalism and the Media (London, New York: Routledge, 2014), p. 1. The focus during the conference, however, was almost exclusively on African-American cultures and traditions. 3 Following Lori L. Tharps, I use the capital B here when referring to Black people and characters (in the films that form the corpus of this research). In the mid 1920s, W.E.B. Du Bois demanded that book publishers, newspaper editors and magazines capitalize the N in Negro when referring to Black people. The argument was, that when speaking of a culture, ethnicity or group of people, the name should be capitalised. Tharps concludes that, ‘[i]f we’ve traded Negro for Black, why was that first letter demoted back to lowercase, when the argument had already been won? […] Black should always be written with a capital B. 8 blackamoors in the Italian villa is one illustration of this, as are the current discussions about, for instance, the Dutch tradition of Zwarte Piet,4 and the absence of African philosophers in British (and other European) university curricula.5 The conference, therefore, acknowledged and discussed from academic and artistic perspectives critical issues which can be considered ‘topical’, and are discussed in main stream media with often recurring terms such as ‘white/male privilege’, ‘political correctness’, ‘gender politics’, ‘Fortress Europe’, and ‘intersectionality’. Accompanying the conference, an art exhibition called ReSignifications, organised by Awam Amkpa, was held at Museo Bardini, in which Black art was confronted with, and oftentimes juxtaposed to, traditional conceptions of European art, which traditionally centralised white artists or art about white people.6 We are indeed a people, a race, a tribe. It’s only correct.’ I also capitalise Black to emphasise the distinction between the ‘colour’ black and the ‘culture, ethnicity or group of people’ that identify as Black. The capital B emphasizes that I refer to a conceptualisation of a group, not of the actual skin colour of the people described as such. See <http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/19/opinion/the-case-for-black-with-a-capital-b.html?_r=0> [accessed 21 November 2017].