Fifty years of Italian cinema (1955)

45 cent of other fictionalized documentaries, such as Uomini sul fondo (Men in the Depths) and Alfa Tau, and it gave promise of the « neo-realism » to come. The Betrothed was a worthy and impressive example of good spectacle, deftly handled by Camerini, and proof that Italian directors could work with success in this field which was practically the exclusive domain of the imposing American and British production. By 1942, Italy was slipping toward catastrophe, but its film industry produced one hundred and twenty films ! New directors appeared on the scene. Among them were Alberto Lattuada with his Giacomo I'idealista (James the Idealist) and Luchino Visconti with his superb Ossessione (Obsession), an adaptation of James Cain's novel «The Postman Always Rings Twice ». Blasetti amazed critics and the public with Quattro passi fra le nuvole (Four Steps in the Clouds) showing a world that had appeared a negative and extraneous factor to everyone. Camerini transferred one of Thomas Hardy's short stories to the screen, and, in Storia d' amove (Love Story) gave another indication of his taste and poetic feeling. Visconti's Obsession and Blasetti's Four Steps in the Clouds were filmic revelations which brought to a close an experiment which had lasted twelve years. Luchino Visconti was a young representative of film culture with superior training, having been Renoir's assistant on line Partie de Campagne (A Day in the Country) and Les bas fonds (The Lower Depths). Obsession, the film with which he made his debut as a director, was conceived with unique realism and frankness, a complete departure from all that Italian films had been in recent years. It strode off boldly and alone along untrodden paths. In a decadent regime where political control was the omnipresent problem, Visconti finally had the courage to defy the risks and unknown perils attendant on his daring undertaking. Obsession completly ignored the possibility of adverse criticism that might come its way because it flouted conventional story-telling methods. Indeed, it went much further and virtually challenged the film world and the political meddlers as well as the suffocating pretensions of an official censorship that no one had ever dared defy. Obsession was a foretaste of what a free Italian cinema could be ; a preview of the potentialities of artists working unshackled, it was an honest look into the face of reality. Blasetti's startling Four Steps in the Clouds found its bitter-sweet story in every-day life. In an exceptionally felicitous screenplay it tells of the problems and adventures of ordinary men and women who have no intellectual writer at hand to solve their problems, and so they resolve them alone, with the gusto and common sense of unpretentious people. Then came 1943, the year of tragedy. Seventy-two films were produced, but none are remembered. Perhaps the fearful events with which the fascist regime was brought to its catastrophic end overshadowed anything else that happened in that fateful year. Out of ruins and mourning, the Italian cinema was reborn, more alive and vital than ever. The fascist period must thus be considered, as has been suggested, a phase of incubation and preparation. The Experimental Center not only prepared new actors and technicians, but during those years it promoted study and research, duly documented in the files of Bianco e Nero, then edited by Luigi Chiarini. The GUF (Fascist University Groups) had also been training schools for young film people. And from the GUF came one of the most diligent Italian film critics, the late Francesco Pasi