Liminal Figures, Liminal Places
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LIMINAL FIGURES, LIMINAL PLACES: VISUALIZING TRAUMA IN ITALIAN HOLOCAUST CINEMA A Thesis Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for The Degree Masters of Arts in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Camilla Zamboni, B.A. Graduate Program in French and Italian ***** The Ohio State University 2009 Master’s Examination Committee Professor Dana Renga, Adviser Professor Charles Klopp Professor Heather Webb Copyright by Camilla Zamboni 2009 ABSTRACT My intention in this study is to provide insight into the problem of representing the trauma of the Holocaust in Italian cinema. In the tradition of Neorealism, in which filmmakers investigated socio-political issues of contemporary and historical Italy, the paucity of Italian films that deal with the Final Solution is remarkable. I will explore this contradictory attitude of Italian filmmakers towards a particularly obscure and unpleasant past, and while focusing on the ambiguous filmic representations of the Shoah, mainly through the study of liminal figures (in particular the Muselmann and the kapo) in a selection of Italian Holocaust films. My study will be divided into 4 chapters. It will include an introduction, in which I will briefly examine the notion of trauma from a critical perspective and introduce the idea of liminality. Then, I will examine five Italian films (Kapò by Gillo Pontecorvo, 1959, The Night Porter by Liliana Cavani, 1974, Seven Beauties by Lina Wertmüller, 1975, Look to the Sky by Roberto Faenza, 1993 and Life is Beautiful by Roberto Benigni, 1997) which depict the Holocaust experience, and will focus my attention on the ambiguous figures produced by the concentration camp experience. ii DEDICATION La traumatica esperienza dell’Olocausto è sempre stata parte della storia della mia famiglia. Il padre di mia madre, Guglielmo – nonno Memo per i nipoti, è stato prigioniero a Dachau per due anni. Tutt’altro che reticente a parlare, nonno Memo ha sempre cercato di raccontare tutto ciò che la sua lucida mente ricorda dell’esperienza di guerra. Dalle sue parole si è formata la mia coscienza di un trauma profondo che ha coinvolto milioni di persone nella mia terra d’origine, e che ancora oggi causa dolore. Ciò che più mi stupisce, ogni volta che ascolto nonno Memo parlare dell’esperienza nel campo, sono i dettagli: mi sorprende come un uomo di 92 anni possa ricordare perfettamente alcuni termini, correlati alla vita nel campo e necessari per sopravvivere, in tedesco, lingua che non ha mai studiato. Altri dettagli completano un bagaglio di ricordi incancellabili; la descrizione sin troppo precisa della stazione dei treni, l’episodio che costò a nonno Memo un mese di frustate legato ad un palo nella Appellplatz, i nomi (o numeri) di amici e nemici. Nonno Memo fa parte di quei sopravvissuti che vogliono parlare, che sentono il bisogno di trasmettere i loro ricordi per evitare che la gente dimentichi e le storia si ripeta. Questo studio sulla rappresentazione del trauma è il mio impegno a portare avanti la storia di nonno Memo, che è la storia di milioni di persone che sono morte senza poter raccontare la loro versione dei fatti. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my adviser, Professor Dana Renga, for her incredible encouragement and aid during this process. In the first year of my Masters at The Ohio State University, Professor Renga’s survey course about gender in Italian cinema created the initial spark of interest that has brought me to the process of writing this thesis and to pursue my studies in Italian and Film at the PhD level. Her interest and vast knowledge of the subject matter helped me to shape this project, from narrowing the topic to directing me towards new and interesting sources and into final revisions. Both of the other members of my committee, Professor Charles Klopp and Professor Heather Webb have also helped me greatly in the two years I spent at The Ohio State University. They each have been great instructors, who gave me the opportunity to broaden my knowledge of Italian literature and encouraged me to explore new topics of interest in my study. Finally, I would like to thank all of my friends and family members who have been encouraging and patient. I am particularly grateful to my father Marco and my mother Annalisa for their love from Italy, and Salvatore and Donna for their kind words and endless support. This has been a very instructive experience, which I will treasure in my future as an individual and as a scholar, and I know it would not have been possible without the support and encouragment of these individuals. iv VITA June 29, 1983……………………………….. Born – Verona, Italia 2006………………………………………… Laurea in Japanese Language and Literature, University Ca’ Foscari in Venice 2007 – present……………………………… Graduate Teaching Associate, The Ohio State University FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: French and Italian v TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract..................................................................................................................... ii Dedica....................................................................................................................... iii Acknowledgements................................................................................................... iv Vita............................................................................................................................ v Chapters: 1. Introduzione: Luoghi e figure liminali nel cinema italiano sull’Olocausto ........................................................................................................................1 2. Standing on the Threshold: Liminality in Gillo Pontecorvo’s Kapò and Alain Resnais’ Night and Fog………………………………………….12 3. Guilty Memories: Liminality in Liliana Cavani’s The Night Porter and Lina Wertmüller’s Seven Beauties…………………………………….. 27 4. Afterword: Roberto Faenza’s Look to the Sky and Roberto Benigni’s Life is Beautiful…………………………...……….. 47 Works Cited………………………………………………………………………... 55 Filmography………………………………………………………………………... 59 vi CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION: LIMINALITY IN ITALIAN HOLOCAUST CINEMA “Solo una retorica schematica può sostenere che lo spazio [che separa le vittime dai persecutori] sia vuoto: non lo è mai, è costellato di figure turpi o patetiche, che è indispensabile conoscere se vogliamo conoscere la specie umana.” - Primo Levi, I sommersi e i salvati “Auschwitz is something else, always something else. It is a universe outside the universe, a creation that exists parallel to creation. Auschwitz lies on the other side of life and on the other side of death” - Elie Wiesel In 1978, Elie Wiesel claimed in the pages of New York Times that “the Holocaust [is] the ultimate event, the ultimate mystery, never to be comprehended or transmitted" (Wiesel 2). With these words, Wiesel, a survivor of Auschwitz and Birkenau concentration camps, expresses the peculiar difficulty that characterizes the transmission of Holocaust memory since 1945. Dominick LaCapra in Writing History, Writing Trauma maintains that trauma has come to occupy a central position 1 in modern debates, especially after World War II. He notices that “trauma and its symptomatic aftermath pose particularly acute problems for historical representation and understanding” (LaCapra 9), thus underlining the traumatic event as a twofold obstacle for memory and testimony. First, trauma hinders a precise representation of trauma and requires a new language or code in order to be accurately expressed; second, a traumatic event usually eludes the audience’s comprehension. The difficulty that the Holocaust and its consequences create in the process of remembering and witnessing has been widely discussed and expressed: Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub defined the Shoah as an “event without a witness” (Felman 80), and Nadine Fresco (quoted also in Felman and Laub’s work) called the trauma of the camp experience a “gaping, vertiginous black hole” (Fresco 418), an expression also used by Carlo Celli1 in his chapter on Gillo Pontecorvo’s Kapò. Primo Levi in I sommersi e i salvati blames the incomplete testimony on memory, which he defines “strumento meraviglioso ma fallace”, particularly if “falsificata” by a traumatic event (Levi 13). To the “lenta degradazione” (Levi 15) of individual memory, Henry Rousso opposes “carriers of memory, [or] any source that proposes a deliberate reconstruction of an event for a social purpose” (Rousso 219). According to Rousso, the collective memory of a nation can be perpetuated through different vectors: officials, i.e. the institution of public ceremonies and celebrations2, organizational, cultural and “scholarly.” Cinema, in particular, has assumed a central position in recent years as a 1 “narrative black hole”. Carlo Celli, Gillo Pontecorvo: From Resistance to Terrorism (Lanham, MD: The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 2005) 34. 2 A good example is the recent (2000) institution in Italy of the “Giorno della Memoria” on January 27th, in order to remember the liberation of Auschwitz 2 way (a vector) to create proximity with a past that is more and more distant. As a cultural and scholarly vector, due to its capacity to reenact and interpret facts according to a personal or documentary logic, cinema becomes a medium that “makes events remote in time seem suddenly close, [...] unlike most works of history or even novels” (Rousso 240). However, as Annette Insdorf explains in Indelible Shadows, the fundamental objective in confronting Holocaust memory is to find “an appropriate language for that which