| 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. Italy is widely considered one of the birthplaces of art cinema, and the stylistic aspect of Italian 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 as well as 12 Palmes d'Or, 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 were made in the main cities of the Italian peninsula.[7] [8] These brief experiments immediately met the curiosity of the general public, encouraging operators to produce new films and laying the foundation for the Italian film industry.[7] [8] In the early 20th century, silent cinema developed, bringing numerous Italian stars to the forefront.[9] In the early 1900s, 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. The oldest European avant-garde cinema movement, Italian futurism, emerged 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 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. It also engaged in censorship, and thus many Italian films produced in the late 1930s were propaganda films.
The end of World War II saw the birth of the influential Italian neorealist movement, which reached vast audiences 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 directors like Federico Fellini and Michelangelo Antonioni. Actresses such as Sophia Loren, Giulietta Masina, Claudia Cardinale, Monica Vitti, Anna Magnani 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 icons of the Western genre. Italian thrillers, or giallo, produced by directors such as Mario Bava and Dario Argento in the 1960s and 1970s, influenced the horror genre worldwide. 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.
The Cinecittà complex is the largest film studio in Europe, hosts the David di Donatello Awards, the most prestigious film award in Italy.[14] Presented by Academy of Italian Cinema, since 1956 a showcase of the best Italian cinematographic production.
The Venice Film Festival is the oldest film festival in the world, held annually since 1932 and awarding the Golden Lion.[15] 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 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").[16] As the official photographer of the House of Savoy,[17] 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").[18] In 1895, Filoteo Alberini patented his "kinetograph," a shooting and projecting device not unlike that of the Lumière brothers.[19]
The Lumière brothers commenced public screenings in Italy in 1896.[20] [21] Italian Lumière trainees produced short films documenting everyday life and comic strips in the late 1890s and early 1900s. The success of the short films was immediate. 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), and La gabbia dei matti ("The madmen's cage") (1896), all shot by Italo Pacchioni, who also invented a camera and projector, inspired by the cinematograph of Lumière brothers.[22] Although the general public were enthusiastic, initially the technology was snubbed by intellectuals and the press.[23] However, on 28 January 1897, prince Victor Emmanuel and princess Elena of Montenegro attended a screening at the Pitti Palace in Florence.[24] Interested in experimenting with the new medium, they were filmed in Florence and on the day of their wedding in at the Pantheon in Rome.[25] [26]
In the early 20th century, the phenomenon of itinerant cinemas developed throughout Italy.[27] 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 took 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.[28]
Between 1903 and 1909 the itinerant Italian cinema began assuming the characteristics of an authentic industry, led by four major organizations: Titanus (originally Monopolio Lombardo), the first Italian film production company;[29] the largest and among the most famous film houses in Italy,[30] founded by Gustavo Lombardo at Naples in 1904, Cines, based in Rome; and the Turin-based companies Ambrosio Film and Itala Film.[21] 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. Also popular during this period were films about historical figures, for instance Ugo Falena's Lucrezia Borgia (1910).
In 1905, Cines inaugurated the genre of the historical film. 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. The film, assimilating Manzoni's lesson of making historical fiction plausible, reconstructs the Capture of Rome on 20 September 1870. Dozens of characters from texts make their appearance on the big screen such as The Count of Monte Cristo and Giordano Bruno, among others.[21]
In the 1910s, the Italian film industry developed rapidly. In 1912, 569 films were produced in Turin, 420 in Rome and 120 in Milan.[31] Lost in the Dark (1914), a silent drama film directed by Nino Martoglio, documented life in the slums of Naples, and is considered a precursor to the Italian neorealism movement of the 1940s and 1950s.
The archetypes of the historical blockbuster genre were The Last Days of Pompeii (1908), by Arturo Ambrosio and Luigi Maggi and Nero (1909), by Maggi and Arrigo Frusta.[32] Enrico Guazzoni's 1913 film Quo Vadis was one of the first blockbusters, using thousands of extras and a lavish set design.[33] The international success of the film marked the maturation of the genre and allowed 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; it was the first epic film ever made and it is considered the most famous Italian silent film.[34] Pastrone's plan to adapt the Bible with thousands of extras remained unfulfilled, but Antamoro's Christus (1916) and Guazzoni's The Crusaders (1918) were notable films with Christian subjects.
Many films were devoted to the investigative and mystery formats. The most prolific production houses in the 1910s were Cines, Ambrosio Film, Itala Film, Aquila Films, and Milano Films. Classic narrative elements of the silent proto-giallo (mystery, crime, investigation investigative and final twist) constitute the structural aspects of cinematic representation.
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 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 model away from naturalism in favor of melodramatic acting, pictorial gesture and theatrical pose, all favored by the extensive use of close-up.[35] [36]
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. Ferdinand Guillaume became famous with the stage name of Polidor.[37] 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.[38]
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.[39] It influenced Russian Futurist[40] and German Expressionist cinema.[41] 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.[42] 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.[43]
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.[44] 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 were not released until several years after they were produced.[45]