After World War II, a durable relationship developed and continued between far-left politics and Italian film making. If we rewind our minds back to prominent film figures such as Pier Paolo Pasolini, Luchino Visconti and Bernardo Bertolucci, or even fast forward to active film makers today such as Nanni Moretti, a trend emerges. Pasolini, Visconti and Bertolucci are openly Marxist figures, whilst Moretti is a vocal proponent of left politics and a vicious opponent of Silvio Berlusconi. Whilst Marxism – like feminism and psychoanalysis – has provided film theorists with a critical lens, it has also given film makers inspiration for on-screen narratives. Contemporary Italian cinema has proven this over and over again with film makers proving to be just as vocal as those working before them.
Italian cinema produced three key Marxist filmmakers after the end of World War II, all of whom were intensely interested in human crisis and socio-political commentary. Pasolini was part of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) and expressed his left-leaning views in various journalistic positions held. In the film industry, however, he expressed his politics to different degrees from feature to feature. Pasolini used his controversial film ‘Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma’ (1975) to critique Fascism, in ultra-gruesome detail. As a consequence, Pasolini confirmed his far-left political sympathies with audiences. Whilst Visconti was not as explicitly political as Pasolini, his work still maintained a keen interest in social crisis, a quality symptomatic of Italian neorealist film making. Unlike Pasolini, Visconti’s films were more concerned with themes of betrayal and trust and he even dabbled in the art of period film making, as can be seen in his films ‘Senso’ (1954) and ‘Il gattopardo’ (1963). If anything, his film ‘Rocco e i suoi fratelli’ (1960) reflects his Marxist politics most sharply, since it provides a vision of a struggling Milanese society. This filmic affiliation with the left in Italy has been strong for years. Bertolucci has also made tiring efforts to express his Marxist (and Freudian) leanings. In a similar (but nowhere near as controversial) way to how Pasolini expresses his left-winged politics in ‘Salo’, Bertolucci poetically condemns Fascist politics in his magnum opus ‘Il Conformista’ (1970). Much like Visconti’s neorealist work and Pasolini’s controversial subject matter, Bertolucci’s complex narratives are far-left and Freudian in ideology, but they are also concerned with the condition of humanity. Whilst all three figures are explicitly different in their communication of Marxist ideology, they are all filmic figures that we (and they themselves) associate with the left. This cinematic connection with left politics has continued into contemporary Italian cinema today. Recent filmmakers such as Nanni Moretti, for instance, use postmodern aesthetics and storytelling as a way of communicating his distaste towards current conservative Italian politics. This can be seen in recent films such as ‘Il Caimano’ (2006) and even in ‘Aprile’ (1998) a little over a decade ago.
The far-left has played a great part in shaping Italian film making and culture in both the 20th and 21st centuries. Ultra-conservative politics, however, has had its hand in crafting Italian film culture too. During the World War II period, Vittorio Mussolini led Italian film criticism and Benito Mussolini became involved with Cinecittà. The influence of far-right ideology on contemporary Italian cinema, however, has been nowhere near as strong as the far-left. Marxist ideology in European cinema, as Sergei Eisenstein and Jean-Luc Godard have shown, has been (and continues to be) a common lens through which film is made, viewed and politicised. Contemporary Italian cinema is no exception.
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