Cinema and Fascism Italian Film and Society, 19221943 [Paperback]

This study considers Italian filmmaking during the Fascist era and offers an original and revealing approach to the interwar years. Steven Ricci directly confronts a long-standing dilemma faced by cultural historians: while made during a period of totalitarian government, these films are neither propagandistic nor openly Fascist. Instead, the Italian Fascist regime attempted to build ideological consensus by erasing markers of class and regional difference and by circulating terms for an imaginary national identity.Cinema and Fascisminvestigates the complex relationship between the totalitarian regime and Italian cinema. It looks at the films themselves, the industry, and the role of cinema in daily life, and offers new insights into this important but neglected period in cinema history.

Steven Ricciis the Director of the Moving Image Archive Studies program at University of California, Los Angeles, where he also teaches in the Department of Film, Television and Digital Media and the Department of Information Studies.

List of Illustrations
Preface
Introduction

1. Amnesia and Historical Memory
Soulless Shadows : The Cinema under Fascism Didn't Exist
Cinema and Industrialization
Cinema and National Identity

2. The Political Economy of Italian Cinema, 1922-1943
Fascism Makes Cinematic History
The Impact of the Regime's Regulation(s)

3. Leisure Time, Historiography, and Spectatorship
Fascist Sports: Historical Narration and the National Body
Travel, Pleasure, and Class Difference

4. Italy and America: Fascination and (Re)Negotiation
Authorial States: Mussolini and MGM March on Rome
Partnership and Competition with Hollywood

5. The Fascist Codex
Fascist Heuristics: Major Codes of Readership
Dissolution of Fascist Order, Antifascism, and/or Neorealism

Epilogue. Resistance and the Return of the Local