ITALIAN CINEMA
"NEO-REALISM is dead!" The glum, bom- bastic cry echoed from Italian critics at the end of De Sica's Miracolo a Milano. Always, in his previous films, hope and humanity had survived disaster: Sciuscia had had the saving symbol of the white horse; Ladri di Biciclette, ending in apparent despair, had at least re-united father and son. Now, the thickset young Totb had rescued his scare- crow companions from the police and the fur-collared plutocracy; but the outcasts had only quarrelled among themselves, and Totb's magic power had been lost. Now the only hope was another miracle, a broomstick to ride away on, high over the roof of the cathedral, to pie in a back-projected sky. Whether intended as a fling against the Church or as a vague gesture towards the box-office, the ending seemed outrageously unworthy of those fine, human, bitter films that Italy has produced since the war.
But the first enthusiasm which had greeted them was in any case growing more critical. Even Roma, Citta Aperta had had its absurd Mata Hari in black silk; and Rossellini gradually surrendered to the melodramatics of Germania Anno Zero. Luigi Zampa, in his later films, has betrayed more and more the slick sentimentalism which marred Vivere in Pace: Blasetti, with the crass Fabiola to his credit, has proved—if proof were needed —that Quattro Passi few le Nuvole was merely an insincere essay in the • current mode. Lattuada and De Santis explore with increasing cynicism the sensational possibilities of violence and sex; while for Castellani noise seems to have replaced intelligence. Of all the neo-realist directors, only Visconti and De Sica retain their stature: but Visconti has lately sought refuge in a costume drama, and De Sica pl.oduced a banal and mannered conversa- tion-piece in Stazione Termini.
The authentic rough edge which gave the neo-realist films their power was in some cases due to forced economy; but as Orson Welles recently pointed out, even those meagre budgets were sometimes exceeded. As capital has grown less cautious, more- over, the Italian film industry has once again expanded; and Cine-Citta, that fabulous Hollywood outside Rome, is now producing as many as 145 feature films a year. One cinema in Rome, and another in Milan, already have CinemaScope; others have panoramic screens; and some films have been produced in 3-D. Last year, Italy was the only country in the world where box- office receipts went up instead of down, and Italian television, still too expensive to be a dangerous rival, itself uses large numbers of films. This, together, with expanded exports, makes the commercial future look bright.
Aesthetically, however, the picture is less rosy. Two current fashions—for hybrid international pictures, disfigured by dub- bing, and for episodic short-story films— scarcely favour good cinema, as witness the ineptitude of Mario Soldati's The Stranger's Hand, from a script by Graham Greene, and the fatuity of such omnibus films as Franciolini's Villa Borghese. Mam- moth spectacle, on the other hand, is a healthy reaction against the booming-voiced puppets of television: but too often Italian directors achieve only a stale repetition of their own pre-war output. Two recent operatic films—Francassi's Aida and Mata- razzo's Giuseppe Verdi—showed this all too clearly. The recording in each was superb: but visually both went right back to the earlj, 1930s, with acutely embarrassing act- ing, a leaden-footed camera, and a triumphal march in Aida produced by endless play- backs of the same few feet of film.
One has to look very hard for the genuine heirs to neo-realism; but two names already stand out. The first is Luigi Comencini: the second Federico Fellini. Comencini has recently made Pane, Amore e Fantasia, a peasant comedy which reveals a minor Anna Magnani behind the well-known con- tours of Gina Lollobrigida; while Fellini, with his slight but subtly amusing I Vitelloni, has lent national currency to a piece of Neapolitan slang. I vitelloni, ' the big calves', are the pale plump corner boys of the lesser bourgeoisie in Naples, scrounging and loafing their way through life with a helpless smile and a shrug of the overcoat. Their world is less stark than that of the neo-realists: its sunny fatalism demands no miracles. Perhaps it is significant that Vittorio De Sica, after a return to his acting career in the films of Franciolini, Max Ophuls, and Comencini, has now gone south to direct L'Oro di Napoli, from the book by Giuseppe Marotta. Marotta's sharp but gentle stories epitomise this more genial spirit: one wonders how it will fuse with .De. Sica's deeper sense of tragedy. Perhaps we shall say, after all: "Neo- realism is dead: viva it neo-realismo!"
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