Elio Petri and the Legacy of Italian Political Cinema, Part 1
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Below To Each What He Articles The Director who Must (not?) be Forgotten Deserves (A ciascuno il suo) The Director who Must (not?) be Forgotten: Elio Petri and the Legacy of Italian Political Cinema, Part 1 ‘“Servant? I’m nobody’s servant!” Dirk Bogarde advances the proletarian position…’ The great political dilemma of our time is that we By Larry Portis – that is, those of us who aspire to some fun- damental democratic transformation of social Keywords: Elio Petri, Italian relationships in contemporary societies – live in cinema, political cinema, neo- the backwash of earlier political upheavals. This is true throughout the western industrial-capi- realism, post-fascism, class, talist countries. More speci!cally, social move- pop art, the 1960s ments and political protests germinated after the Second World War and then culminated in www.!lmint.nu | 17 Articles The Director who Must (not?) be Forgotten Below The Assassin ‘Petri fused political analysis and !lm art more successfully […] than any director before or after.’ examples of pseudo-revolutionary activism in classe operaia va in paradiso (1971) and Todo modo the late 1960s and early 1970s that continue to (1976) he combined social criticism and political be markers structuring political perceptions. The commitment with an exploration of existential evolution of political !lm-making is part of this subjectivities in individuals. In other words, he history and the little-remembered Elio Petri is tended to go beyond political denunciation and its most important director. Petri fused political ‘psychological’ studies by showing that we can- analysis and !lm art more successfully and com- not understand one dimension of reality without prehensively than any director before or after. showing how different dimensions are interre- Somebody had to do it. What I mean is that lated. In doing this, he was considered the equal, Petri’s accomplishments emerged naturally out at the very least, of Federico Fellini, Marco Belloc- of social conditions and political preoccupa- chio, Bernardo Bertolucci, Michelangelo Anton- tions. There is no need to assert that the man ioni, Pier Paolo Pasolini and the other prominent was mysteriously imbued with special gifts in directors of his day. But during the rather sectar- accordance with some romantic conception of ian years of political contestation not everyone artistic genius. understood his accomplishment. Or perhaps Here is an overall assessment of Petri’s work, some understood all-too-well. By the end of the made after an intense recent viewing and 1970s times were changing, and then Petri sud- reviewing of it at the Mediterranean Film Festival denly died in 1982 at the age of 52. in Montpellier, France.1 Elio Petri, I say on this Well, so much hyperbole must be justi!ed. publication’s website, is ‘arguably the best of More importantly, it must be explained. It must Italian “political” !lmmakers’ (Portis 2009). Petri, be done both in terms of what Petri did and of spawned by the post-war wave of Italian neo- how speci!c historical conditions contributed realism (he was Guiseppe De Santis’s directing to the genesis of his work. assistant), made and released his !rst feature During the early post-war period, the case of !lm in 1961 (The Murderer/Il Assasino) starring Italy is exceptional. Italy was unique in experi- Marcello Mastroianni. Over the next twenty encing two periods of dramatic political change years, he made a dozen !lms that startled critics within the !rst thirty years following the defeat and public alike. In !lms like The Tenth Victim/La of fascism. No other European country was liber- decima vittima (1965), We Still Kill The Same Way2/A ated, or liberated itself to the same extent from ciascuno il suo (1967), Investigation of a Citizen more than twenty years of fascist political domi- Beyond Suspicion/Indagine su un cittadino al di sopra nation. Only the situation in France was compara- di ogni (1970), The Working Class Goes to Heaven/La ble. But France’s liberation, after four years of Nazi 18 | !lm international issue "" Articles The Director who Must (not?) be Forgotten occupation, proved to be more quickly ‘manage- accommodate his ideas to the realities of the able’ than Italy’s. Of course the CIA intervened in fascist regime as did, for example, Rossellini the political affairs of both countries in order to and De Sica, born respectively in 1906 and 1901. marginalize their Communist Parties and contain More importantly, this major !lm-maker had radical tendencies. In Italy, however, the result of a singular destiny, one linked in a remarkable twenty years of political frustration born of sup- way to the political and cultural contradictions pressed social aspirations and con#icts produced of Italian society during the post-war period. an exceptional wellspring of commitment and Petri’s father was an artisan metal worker who idealism. Neo-realism in the Italian cinema was met Elio’s mother when she worked as a wait- the powerful fruit of these frustrations. ress in her father’s milk bar. The second period of political effervescence Given these social origins, Petri was perhaps in Italy occurred during the 1960s and 1970s, lucky to have been an only child. As such, he although it might be more accurate to say that was sent to a good, Catholic school where his this period was the logical continuation of the classmates were from the privileged classes. !rst. During both periods, the Italian politi- There he received the beginnings of a classi- cal scene was more volatile than elsewhere cal education. But his formal education ended because progressive and reactionary forces early, his adolescence coinciding with the war alike realized the struggle remained critical. A and the fall of the fascist regime. In 1944, at the generation passed under fascist government age of 15, he began to read Marx and became a simultaneously produced deeply rooted fas- !lm buff. In the maelstrom of the liberation of cist sentiments on the Right, and long-lasting Italy he joined the Communist Party and wrote fear and hatred on the Left. There could be no about the cinema for its newspaper, L’Unità. In consensual papering-over of the recent past, as 1950, he began to work for Giuseppe De Santis, there was in France. becoming his !rst assistant. Thus began a long ‘Neo-realism’ is more accurately understood apprenticeship with this major director of the as a will to infuse political struggle into Italian neo-realist school. It was both a practical and !lm. Roberto Rosselini’s Rome, Open City/Roma città intellectual education. It made Petri a cultivated aperta (1945) and Paisà (1946) announced not so intellectual, but one who never received univer- much social realism as cinematographic interven- sity instruction. tion in political debate. Other !lms, those that Petri’s social origins are of primary impor- seem to !t more conveniently into the category of tance in any attempt to understand his !lms. social realism (such as Vittorio De Sica’s unavoid- Politically, his parents had a great and complex able Bicycle Thieves/Ladri di biciclette (1948) might be in#uence over their son. Petri described his better understood as a highly normative, politi- father as a fervent support of Soviet Commu- cally coded depiction of the structural dysfunc- nism and his mother as a fervent Catholic. A tion of capitalist society. The depiction of chronic major in#uence over the child was his paternal unemployment and the injustice and despair it grandmother, a strong-minded woman who engenders are calculated efforts to incite ani- hated fascism with a passion. What are the mosity towards the system of social relations implications of this proletarian childhood? First, and its institutional framework. Alternatively, we it means Petri’s social origins differed signi!- can understand these political !lms of Rosellini cantly from those of other prominent Italian and De Sica as being inspired by the immediate directors known for their ‘neo-realist’ or politi- context of fascism’s demise and the exhilaration cal !lms. of liberated social and political discourse. But Petri was bound to be a social ‘mis!t’ and thus whether born of momentary enthusiasm, political beset by a kind of cognitive dissonance in rela- opportunism or ideological commitment, such tion to his peers in the profession. Thanks to this !lms are political interventions. situation, he was relatively immune to the kind of appropriated ‘leftism’ that distinguished the Who was Elio Petri? quasi-majority of his colleagues. His familiar- ity with the world of the working class allowed He is of the !rst generation of post-fascist a critical distance, a capacity not to accept !lm-makers. Born in 1929, Petri never had to politically correct dicta. During his lifetime, this www.!lmint.nu | 19 Articles The Director who Must (not?) be Forgotten distance tended to make him enigmatic to other are Michelangelo Antonioni (1912–2007) and intellectuals and artists. His exposure to, or Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922–75). Antonioni, son rather the necessity of interacting with differ- of wealthy landowners, made !lms centred ent social milieus on a practical, existential basis on existential dilemmas in which individuals lent him subtlety in dealing with questions of were faced with making decisions in situations interests and values, of idealism and politics. over which they had very limited control. In this sense, Antonioni’s !lms can be considered Petri in relation to his ‘social’, but there is a careful, or perhaps con- ditioned, avoidance of any assertion of political fellow directors conviction or will. It is perhaps to Antonioni’s credit that he never attempted to depict the Social class perspectives weigh heavily in lives of the poor and downtrodden.