| Cinema of Italy | |
| Screens: | 3,217 (2013)[1] |
| Screens Per Capita: | 5.9 per 100,000 (2013) |
| Distributors: | [2] |
| Produced Year: | 2018 |
| Produced Ref: | [3] |
| Produced Total: | 273 |
| Produced Fictional: | 180 |
| Produced Documentary: | 93 |
| Admissions Year: | 2018 |
| Admissions Total: | 85,900,000 |
| Admissions Per Capita: | 1.50 (2012)[4] |
| Admissions National: | 19,900,000 (23.17%) |
| Box Office Year: | 2018 |
| Box Office Total: | € |
| Box Office National: | € (23.03%) |
The cinema of Italy (pronounced as /it/) comprises the films made within Italy or by Italian directors. Since its beginning, Italian cinema has influenced film movements worldwide. Italy is one of the birthplaces of art cinema and the stylistic aspect of film has been one of the most important factors in the history of Italian film.[5] [6] As of 2018, Italian films have won 14 Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film (the most of any country) as well as 12 Palmes d'Or (the second-most of any country), one Academy Award for Best Picture and many Golden Lions and Golden Bears.
The history of Italian cinema began a few months after the Lumière brothers began motion picture exhibitions.[7] [8] The first Italian director is considered to be Vittorio Calcina, a collaborator of the Lumière Brothers, who filmed Pope Leo XIII in 1896. The first films date back to 1896 and were made in the main cities of the Italian peninsula.[7] [8] These brief experiments immediately met the curiosity of the popular class, encouraging operators to produce new films until they laid the foundations for the birth of a true film industry.[7] [8] In the early years of the 20th century, silent cinema developed, bringing numerous Italian stars to the forefront until the end of World War I.[9] In the early 1900s, artistic and epic films such as Otello (1906), The Last Days of Pompeii (1908), L'Inferno (1911), Quo Vadis (1913), and Cabiria (1914), were made as adaptations of books or stage plays. Italian filmmakers were using complex set designs, lavish costumes, and record budgets, to produce pioneering films.
The oldest European avant-garde cinema movement, Italian futurism, took place in the late 1910s.[10] After a period of decline in the 1920s, the Italian film industry was revitalized in the 1930s with the arrival of sound film. A popular Italian genre during this period, the Telefoni Bianchi, consisted of comedies with glamorous backgrounds. Calligrafismo was instead in sharp contrast to Telefoni Bianchi-American style comedies and is rather artistic, highly formalistic, expressive in complexity and deals mainly with contemporary literary material. While Italy's Fascist government provided financial support for the nation's film industry, notably the construction of the Cinecittà studios (the largest film studio in Europe), it also engaged in censorship, and thus many Italian films produced in the late 1930s were propaganda films. A new era took place at the end of World War II with the birth of the influential Italian neorealist movement, reaching a vast consensus of audiences and critics throughout the post-war period,[11] and which launched the directorial careers of Luchino Visconti, Roberto Rossellini, and Vittorio De Sica. Neorealism declined in the late 1950s in favour of lighter films, such as those of the Commedia all'italiana genre and important directors like Federico Fellini and Michelangelo Antonioni. Actresses such as Sophia Loren, Giulietta Masina and Gina Lollobrigida achieved international stardom during this period.
From the mid-1950s to the end of the 1970s, Commedia all'italiana and many other genres arose due to auteur cinema, and Italian cinema reached a position of great prestige both nationally and abroad.[12] [13] The Spaghetti Western achieved popularity in the mid-1960s, peaking with Sergio Leone's Dollars Trilogy, which featured enigmatic scores by composer Ennio Morricone, which have become popular culture icons of the Western genre. Erotic Italian thrillers, or giallo, produced by directors such as Mario Bava and Dario Argento in the 1970s, influenced the horror genre worldwide. Since the 1980s, due to multiple factors, Italian production has gone through a crisis that has not prevented the production of quality films in the 1990s and into the new millennium, thanks to a revival of Italian cinema, awarded and appreciated all over the world.[14] [15] [16] During the 1980s and 1990s, directors such as Ermanno Olmi, Bernardo Bertolucci, Giuseppe Tornatore, Gabriele Salvatores and Roberto Benigni brought critical acclaim back to Italian cinema, while the most popular directors of the 2000s and 2010s were Matteo Garrone, Paolo Sorrentino, Marco Bellocchio, Nanni Moretti and Marco Tullio Giordana.[17]
The country is also famed for its prestigious Venice Film Festival, the oldest film festival in the world, held annually since 1932 and awarding the Golden Lion;[18] In 2008 the Venice Days ("Giornate degli Autori"), a section held in parallel to the Venice Film Festival, has produced in collaboration with Cinecittà studios and the Ministry of Cultural Heritage a list of a 100 films that have changed the collective memory of the country between 1942 and 1978: the "100 Italian films to be saved".
The David di Donatello Awards are one of the most prestigious awards at national level.[19] Presented by the Accademia del Cinema Italiano in the Cinecittà studios, during the awards ceremony, the winners are given a miniature reproduction of the famous statue. The finalist candidates for the award, as per tradition, are first received at the Quirinal Palace by the President of Italy. The event is the Italian equivalent of the American Academy Awards.
The history of Italian cinema began a few months after the French Lumière brothers, who made the first public screening of a film on 28 December 1895, an event considered the birth of cinema, began motion picture exhibitions.[7] [8] The first Italian director is considered to be Vittorio Calcina, a collaborator of the Lumière Brothers, who filmed Pope Leo XIII on 26 February 1896 in the short film Sua Santità papa Leone XIII ("His Holiness Pope Leo XIII").[20] He then became the official photographer of the House of Savoy,[21] the Italian ruling dynasty from 1861 to 1946. In this role he filmed the first Italian film, Sua Maestà il Re Umberto e Sua Maestà la Regina Margherita a passeggio per il parco a Monza ("His Majesty the King Umberto and Her Majesty the Queen Margherita strolling through the Monza Park"), believed to have been lost until it was rediscovered by the Cineteca Nazionale in 1979.[22]
The Lumière brothers commenced public screenings in Italy in 1896 starting in March, in Rome and Milan; in April in Naples, Salerno and Bari; in June in Livorno; in August in Bergamo, Bologna and Ravenna; in October in Ancona;[23] and in December in Turin, Pescara and Reggio Calabria.[24] Not long before, in 1895, Filoteo Alberini patented his "kinetograph", a shooting and projecting device not unlike that of the Lumières brothers.[25]
Italian Lumière trainees produced short films documenting everyday life and comic strips in the late 1890s and early 1900s. Before long, other pioneers made their way. Italo Pacchioni, Arturo Ambrosio, Giovanni Vitrotti and Roberto Omegna were also active. The success of the short films was immediate. The cinema fascinated with its ability to show distant geographic realities with unprecedented precision and, vice versa, to immortalize everyday moments. Sporting events, local events, intense road traffic, the arrival of a train, visits by famous people, but also natural disasters and calamities are filmed.
Titles of the time include, Arrivo del treno alla Stazione di Milano ("Arrival of the train at Milan station") (1896), La battaglia di neve ("The snow battle") (1896), La gabbia dei matti ("The madmen's cage") (1896), Ballo in famiglia ("Family dance") (1896), Il finto storpio al Castello Sforzesco ("The fake cripple at the Castello Sforzesco") (1896) and La Fiera di Porta Genova ("The fair of Porta Genova") (1898), all shot by Italo Pacchioni, who was also the inventor of a camera and projector, inspired by the cinematograph of Lumière brothers, kept at the Cineteca Italiana in Milan.[26]
If the interest of the masses were enthusiastic, the technological novelty would likely be snubbed, at least at the beginning, by intellectuals and the press.[27] Despite initial doubt, in just two years, cinema climbs the hierarchy of society, intriguing the wealthier classes. On 28 January 1897, prince Victor Emmanuel and princess Elena of Montenegro attended a screening organized by Vittorio Calcina, in a room of the Pitti Palace in Florence.[28] Interested in experimenting with the new medium, they were filmed in S.A.R. il Principe di Napoli e la Principessa Elena visitano il battistero di S. Giovanni a Firenze ("Their real heights the Prince of Naples and Princess Elena visit the baptistery of Saint John in Florence") and on the day of their wedding in Dimostrazione popolare alle LL. AA. i Principi sposi (al Pantheon – Roma) ("Popular demonstration at the their heights the princes spouses (at the Pantheon – Rome)").[29] [30]
In the early years of the 20th century, the phenomenon of itinerant cinemas developed throughout Italy, providing literacy of the visual medium.[31] This innovative form of spectacle ran out, in a short time, a number of optical attractions such as magic lanterns, cinematographers, stereoscopes, panoramas and dioramas that had fueled the European imagination and favoured the circulation of a common market for images.[32] The nascent Italian cinema, therefore, is still linked to the traditional shows of the commedia dell'arte or to those typical of circus folklore. Public screenings take place in the streets, in cafes or in variety theatres in the presence of a swindler who has the task of promoting and enriching the story.[33]
Between 1903 and 1909 the itinerant cinema Italian film was quieting, until then considered as a freak phenomenon, took on consistency assuming the characteristics of an authentic industry, led by four major organizations: Titanus (originally Monopolio Lombardo), the first italian film production company[34] and the largest and probably the most famous film house in Italy[35] founded by Gustavo Lombardo at Naples in 1904, Cines, based in Rome; and the Turin-based companies Ambrosio Film and Itala Film.[24] Other companies soon followed in Milan, and these early companies quickly attained a respectable production quality and were able to market their products both within Italy and abroad. Early Italian films typically consisted of adaptations of books or stage plays, such as Mario Caserini's Otello (1906) and Arturo Ambrosio's 1908 The Last Days of Pompeii, an adaptation of the homonymous novel by Edward Bulwer-Lytton. Also popular during this period were films about historical figures, such as Caserini's Beatrice Cenci (1909) and Ugo Falena's Lucrezia Borgia (1910).
In 1905, Cines inaugurated the genre of the historical film, which in this decade gave a great fortune to many Italian filmmakers. One of the first of these films was La presa di Roma (1905), lasting 10 minutes, and made by Filoteo Alberini. The operator employs for the first time actors of theatrical origin, exploiting the historical argument in a popular and pedagogical key. The film, assimilating Manzoni's lesson of making historical fiction plausible, reconstructs the Capture of Rome on 20 September 1870.
The discovery of the spectacular potential of the cinematographic medium favoured the development of a cinema with great ambitions, capable of incorporating all the cultural and historical suggestions of the country.[24] Education is an inexhaustible source of ideas, ideas that are easily assimilated not only by a cultured public but also by the masses.[24] Dozens of characters from texts make their appearance on the big screen such as the Count of Monte Cristo, Giordano Bruno, Judith beheading Holofernes, Francesca da Rimini, Lorenzino de' Medici, Rigoletto, Count Ugolino and others.[24] From an iconographic point of view, the main references are the great Renaissance and neoclassical artists, as well as symbolists and popular illustrations.[36]
In the 1910s, the Italian film industry developed rapidly. In 1912, the year of the greatest expansion, 569 films were produced in Turin, 420 in Rome and 120 in Milan.[37] Popular early Italian actors included Emilio Ghione, Alberto Collo, Bartolomeo Pagano, Amleto Novelli, Lyda Borelli, Ida Carloni Talli, Lidia Quaranta and Maria Jacobini.
Lost in the Dark, silent drama film directed by Nino Martoglio and produced in 1914, documented life in the slums of Naples, and is considered a precursor to the Italian neorealism movement of the 1940s and 1950s. The only surviving copy of this film was destroyed by Nazi German forces during the World War II.[38] This film is based on a 1901 play of the same title by Roberto Bracco.
In the three years leading up to World War I, as production consolidates, mythological, comedy and drama films are exported all over the world. In the meantime, in the actor's field, the phenomenon of stardom was born which for a few years will experience unstoppable success. With the end of the decade, Rome definitively established itself as the main production center; this will remain, despite the crises that will periodically shake the industry, right up to the present day.
The archetypes of this film genre were The Last Days of Pompeii (1908), by Arturo Ambrosio and Luigi Maggi and Nero (1909), by Maggi himself and Arrigo Frusta. This last film was inspired by the work of Pietro Cossa who is iconographically based on the etchings of Bartolomeo Pinelli, neoclassicism and the show Nero, or the Destruction of Rome represented by the Barnum circus.[39] Followed by Marin Faliero, Doge of Venice (1909), by Giuseppe De Liguoro, Otello (1909) by Yambo and L'Odissea (1911), by Bertolini, Padovan and De Liguoro.
L'Inferno, produced by Milano Films in 1911, even before being an adaptation of Dante's canticle, was a cinematic translation of Gustave Doré's engravings that experiments with the integration of optical effects and stage action, and it was the first Italian feature film ever made.[40] The Last Days of Pompeii (1913), by Eleuterio Rodolfi, used innovative special effects.
Enrico Guazzoni's 1913 film Quo Vadis was one of the first blockbusters in the history of cinema, using thousands of extras and a lavish set design.[41] The international success of the film marked the maturation of the genre and allows Guazzoni to make increasingly spectacular films such as Antony and Cleopatra (1913) and Julius Caesar (1914). Giovanni Pastrone's 1914 film Cabiria was an even larger production, requiring two years and a record budget to produce, it was the first epic film ever made and it is considered the most famous Italian silent film.[42] It was also the first film in history to be shown in the White House.[43] [44] [45] After Guazzoni came Emilio Ghione, Febo Mari, Carmine Gallone, Giulio Antamoro and many others who contributed to the expansion of the genre.
After the great success of Cabiria, with the changing tastes of the public and the first signs of the industrial crisis, the genre began to show signs of crisis. Pastrone's plan to adapt the Bible with thousands of extras remained unfulfilled. Antamoro's Christus (1916) and Guazzoni's The Crusaders (1918) remained notable for their iconographic complexity but offered no substantial novelties. Despite sporadic attempts to reconnect with the grandeur of the past, the trend of historical blockbusters was interrupted at the beginning of the 1920s.
In the first and second decade of the 20th century came a prolific film production aimed at investigative and mystery content, supported by well-assorted Italian and foreign literature that favours its transposition into film. What would later take on the synthesis of the giallo, in fact, was produced and distributed at the dawn of Italian cinema. The most prolific production houses in the 1910s were Cines, Ambrosio Film, Itala Film, Aquila Films, Milano Films and many others, while titles such as Il delitto del magistrato (1907), Il cadavere misterioso (1908), Il piccolo Sherlock Holmes (1909), L'abisso (1910) and Alibi atroce (1910), breached the imagination of the first cinema users who demanded a greater offer. The popular consensus is remarkable to the point of encouraging the film industry to invest further production resources since these films are also distributed on the French and Anglo-Saxon markets. Thus directors among the most prolific in this field such as Oreste Mentasti, Luigi Maggi, Arrigo Frusta and Ubaldo Maria Del Colle, together with many others less known, direct several dozen films where classic narrative elements of the silent proto-giallo (mystery, crime, investigation investigative and final twist) constitute the structural aspects of cinematic representation.
Elvira Notari, the first female director ever in Italy and one of the premieres in the history of world cinema, directed Carmela, la sartina di Montesanto (1916). While in Palermo, Lucarelli Film produced La cassaforte n. 8 (1914) and Ipnotismo (1914), the Azzurri Film La regina della notte (1915), the Lumen Film Il romanzo fantastico del Dr. Mercanton o il giustiziere invisibile (1915) and Profumo mortale (1915), all films ascribable to the proto-giallo that multiplied in the following decades, becoming preparatory to the subsequent birth of the giallo.
Between 1913 and 1920 there was the rise, development and decline of the phenomenon of cinematographic stardom, born with the release of Ma l'amor mio non muore (1913), by Mario Caserini. The film had great success with the public and encoded the setting and aesthetics of female stardom. Within just a few years, Eleonora Duse, Pina Menichelli, Rina De Liguoro, Leda Gys, Hesperia, Vittoria Lepanto, Mary Cleo Tarlarini and Italia Almirante Manzini established themselves.
Films such as Fior di male (1914), by Carmine Gallone, Il fuoco (1915), by Giovanni Pastrone, Rapsodia satanica (1917), by Nino Oxilia and Cenere (1917), by Febo Mari, changed the national costume, imposing canons of beauty, role models and objects of desire.[46] These models, strongly stylized according to the cultural and artistic trends of the time, moved away from naturalism in favor of melodramatic acting, pictorial gesture and theatrical pose; all favored by the incessant use of close-up which focuses the attention on the expressiveness of the actress.[47]
The most successful comedian in Italy was André Deed, better known in Italy as Cretinetti, star of comic short film for Itala Film. Its success paved the way for Marcel Fabre (Robinet), Ernesto Vaser (Fricot) and many others. The only actor of a certain substance, however, was Ferdinand Guillaume, who became famous with the stage name of Polidor.[48]
The historical interest of these films lay in their ability to reveal the aspirations and fears of a petty-bourgeois society torn between the desire for affirmation and the uncertainties of the present. It was significant that the protagonists of Italian comedians never place themselves in open contrast with society or embody the desire for social revenge (as happens for example with Charlie Chaplin), but rather tried to integrate into a strongly desired world.[49]
See main article: Italian futurism in cinema.
Italian futurist cinema was the oldest movement of European avant-garde cinema.[10] Italian futurism, an artistic and social movement, impacted the Italian film industry from 1916 to 1919.[50] It influenced Russian Futurist cinema[51] and German Expressionist cinema.[52] Its cultural importance was considerable and influenced all subsequent avant-gardes, as well as some authors of narrative cinema; its echo expands to the dreamlike visions of some films by Alfred Hitchcock.[53]
Futurism emphasized dynamism, speed, technology, youth, violence, and objects such as the car, the airplane, and the industrial city. Its key figures were the Italians Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Fortunato Depero, Gino Severini, Giacomo Balla, and Luigi Russolo. It glorified modernity and aimed to liberate Italy from the weight of its past.[54]
The 1916 Manifesto of Futuristic Cinematography was signed by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Armando Ginna, Bruno Corra, Giacomo Balla and others. To the Futurists, cinema was an ideal art form, being a fresh medium, and able to be manipulated by speed, special effects and editing. Most of the futuristic-themed films of this period have been lost, but critics cite Thaïs (1917) by Anton Giulio Bragaglia as one of the most influential, serving as the main inspiration for German Expressionist cinema in the following decade.
The Italian film industry struggled against rising foreign competition in the years following World War I. Several major studios, among them Cines and Ambrosio, formed the Unione Cinematografica Italiana to coordinate a national strategy for film production. This effort was largely unsuccessful, however, due to a wide disconnect between production and exhibition (some movies weren't released until several years after they were produced).[55]