Fifty years of Italian cinema (1955)

31 is the central theme of even the « naturalistic » films, and the denouement is brought about, whether bloody or peaceful, by bourgeoise methods. Films of fabulous artistocratic homes are called « bourgeoise » , while films of poorly dressed humble folk, living in hovels are called « naturalistic ». Those films drawn from stories dear to great masses of people for their simple and sentimental feelings were called « popular » films, and were often anti-bourgeoise in their healthy, confident and uncomplicated understanding of life. Excluded as yet from the country's national life, the people appear only in books, on the stage or on the screen. As early as 1914, however, there was already the beginning of a « social cinema », which was to deal with the disinherited of the earth and various pressing social problems of the day. A pioneering work of this genre was the previously mentioned Lost in the Dark (1914), which foreshadowed the French film of the thirties (Quai des Brumes, etc.) with its harbor pubs, derelicts, suburban inns, hired rooms and tawdry village music halls. Of this work, Luigi Chiarini has stated that its use of montage for ironic contrast long antedated the Soviet use of this same device in the mid-twenties. (In this respect, the Italian cinema can be said to have been the school for the French « naturalists » and the Zola-ites, themselves). Lost in the Dark was directed by Nino Martoglio, an exiled .Sicilian writer of the naturalistic school. Luxurious and poverty stricken interiors are contrasted, as well as characters in dinner jackets and others in rags. Here the author's (Bracco) rhetoric is transformed into a trenchant and conclusive style. In every respect, Lost in the Dark must be considered one of the early masterworks of the Italian cinema. Even in the case of the « social » film, however, the term is not meant to be either polemical or vindictive in tone. The term, as always, refers to the background of the film, its setting, as we have said, so that Za la Mort's films, too — in which brothels frequently were depicted — were called « social ». Though Europe was locked in mortal combat by this time, 1915 saw a new flood of films, as though nothing, not even a world war, could stop this « eighth art », the cinema, from its vigorous growth. There was an adaptation by Assunta Spina of a drama by Salvaotere di Giacomo (the title of which I cannot find) in which the image of Francesca Bertini still shines in my memory... Another of Di Giacomo's works for the theatre, A San Francisco (In San Francisco) was adapted for the screen, as were works of Go ff redo Cognetti, not to mention the harvest of Neapolitan films suggested by the songs of Ferdinando Russo, Libero Bovio, E. A. Mario and Carlo De Flaviis. In 1916, the naturalistic film, hastened on its way by the acid bucolicism of Pirandello, already having done homage to Zola with an adaptation of Therese Raquin, now turned to Cavalleria rusticana by Verga, with, of course, Mascagni's score. Sometimes the music was played by a « live orchestra », sonetimes behind the screen by a phonograph. Mascagni wrote an original score for L' Arnica (The Friend), too (« a tragic idyll which the genius of Mascagni has adorned with haunting melodies »). Leoncavallo's Pagliacci was also filmed and presented with the opera's music. We must at this time mention Cenere (Ashes), not because it was an important film (in truth it was a disastrous failure) but because it starred the great Eleonora Duse. It was a