When Cynthia asked me if I would give a brief introduction to this evening's films I thought that at least I would get off lightly as far as La Strada was concerned – all I'd have to say was, "Hey – Fellini – La Strada – new print – wow! Sit back and enjoy... " And then one of my colleagues on the committee told me that she'd been chatting with someone who'd been really enthusiastic about tonight's event but who'd said, "So what's La Strada, then? Who's Fellini?" I suddenly realised that the heroes of my misspent film going youth were not quite as iconic as I'd assumed them to be.
So, fasten your seat belts while I take you on a whirlwind and, it must be said, entirely idiosyncratic tour of the history of Italian cinema, the development of neo-realism, Federico Fellini's place within the genre and why La Strada marks such a significant break from its tenets.
Not much attention is paid to pre-Second World War Italian movies
these days outside of Film Studies courses, but there had been
successful film production in Italy since the Lumière
Brothers' invention had burst onto the cultural scene. The
first short films, mainly documentary in character, date back to
the end of the 19th century. As the technology improved, however,
the Italian film industry began to develop the genres which
characterised its output. To begin with, the dominant genre was
the historical, or costume, film, often based on a literary work,
highly melodramatic in style, with large casts of extras and
extravagant cinematography. The spectacular nature of these
silents guaranteed their success, not only in Italy but
throughout the rest of Europe and in America as well. Comic
films, which would develop into the genre of commedia
all'italia, and which I'll talk about more in the
introduction to Luna e l'altra, were originally short
fillers between such spectacles. By the late 1930s, melodrama had
overtaken the costume drama as the most popular genre. Known as
telefono biancho (white telephone) films, and
characterised by minimal direction and the absurd excess of
luxury emphasised in set, costumes, and furnishings, they were
churned out by Cinecitta, Europe's largest studio,
which began production in 1937.
Third in the popularity stakes was the adventure genre – the most original example of which was the "Za la Mort" series created by the actor-director Emilio Ghione. Lastly, there was a brief flowering of a "Realist" genre in the '30s, inspired by Socialist-Realist literature and the beginnings of Soviet Realist cinema.
In 1922 Mussolini seized power. To begin with, the Fascist regime paid little attention to the film industry, which had been going through something of a slump – Italian films had been so successful in the United States before the First World War that the fledgling Hollywood industry set out to copy them. This was definitely not good news, because when the war ended the market became flooded with Hollywood films – which nearly wiped out the native industry. However, a growing awareness of the propaganda potential of cinema led the Fascists to take active steps to assist its revival: in 1926 L'Unione Cinematografica Educativa (LUCE) was founded to produce state funded documentaries and newsreels. In 1931 legislation was passed to plough back 10% of box office receipts into the industry. The world's first film festival was established in Venice in 1932. 1933 saw further legislation to guarantee that 1/3 of all films shown in Italy were Italian productions. In 1934 the post of Direzione Generale per la Cinematografia was created to oversee and co-ordinate film production and the following year Ente Nazionale Industrie Cinematografiche (ENIC) was established to control film distribution and exhibition. 1936 saw the foundation of Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, the national film school and in 1937 Cinecitta, then Europe's largest studio, began production and doubled Italy's film output in its first year.
The Fascist regime obviously "encouraged" the making of
political propaganda films within this framework, most of which
extolled nationalism, either through the dramatisation of
historical events or representations of military life and
warfare. However, the 1930s saw the development of different
kinds of film genres: Verismo or Realism, aimed at close
observation of real life, and Formalism, which emphasised the
importance of form over content, giving priority to how things
are shown rather than simply what takes place. One of the
outstanding directors of the first genre was Roberto Rossellini,
who made his debut with several war films; Alberto Lattuada, who
was often attracted to literary subjects
(such as Il mulino del
Po), was a leading Formalist. However, it was Luchino
Visconti's synthesis of Verismo and Formalism,
Ossessione, an entirely illegal adaptation of James M
Cain's novel The Postman Always Rings Twice, released
in 1942, which blazed the trail for the neo-realist revolution to
come after the war. Although this film is melodrama and a far cry
from the post-war social statements made by such classics as
Vittorio DeSica's Ladri di biciclette, the movie began
to feature some of neo-realism's defining
characteristics.
The phenomenon of neo-realism didn't suddenly burst forth in 1945 with Rossellini's Roma città aperta. Its literary antecedents can be traced back to the nineteenth century and its cinematic background to the previous decade. However, Italy's post-war social and economic conditions combined with its recent history and artistic heritage to inspire a handful of directors to make a handful of films in a style which would influence virtually every movie made anywhere thereafter. So what were the characteristics of neo-realism? Its most common attribute was location shooting and the dubbing of dialogue. The dubbing allowed for filmmakers to move in a more open mise-en-scène. Principal characters would usually (although not always) be portrayed by trained actors while supporting cast members would be non-professionals – the idea was to create a greater sense of realism through the use of real people. The rigidity of the non-actors was thought to give the scenes a more authentic power.
Although its message may not have been overtly political, it did have an ideology:
And stylistically:
Some critics say that the end came for authentic Italian neo-realism in 1948, with the defeat of Liberal and left-wing political parties in the polls. Moreover, income levels were surpassing pre-war levels, most Italians liked American cinema anyway and the vision of a desolate, poverty-stricken country outraged politicians anxious for democracy and prosperity. However, as Michelangelo Antonioni recalled in 1961 (in an article in the Italian publication Bianco e Nero), the direction of neo-realism had to change emphasis from external to internal reality: "… it seemed to me that perhaps it was no longer important to examine the relationship between the individual and his environment, as it was to examine the individual himself, to look inside the individual and see, after all he had been through (the war, the immediate post-war situation, all the events that were currently taking place and which were of sufficient gravity to leave their mark upon society and the individual), out of all this, to see what remained inside the individual."
The transitional film in this move to a
modified neo-realism is La Strada. Fellini's career in
cinema began when he met Roberto Rossellini in the shop that
Fellini and some friends had opened in Rome to sell quick cartoon
portraits and photographs to American GIs. From this meeting,
Fellini went on to co-operate with Rossellini on films such as
Paisa (1946) and to appear on screen in
L'Amore (1948). His first films as a director, Luci
della Varieta (1950) and Lo Sceicco Bianco
(1952) drew on his experience as a cartoonist and, undaunted by
critical rejection of the latter, he went on to make his
semi-autobiographical I Vitelloni (1953). With its social
observation and affectionate humour, it attracted international
attention, a success that ensured that he was given more
resources to make his next film – La Strada, in which
the larger social concerns of the neo-realists give way to a
treatment of individual needs and the tragedy of the human
condition when communication fails. Fellini maintained that
"[Neo-realism should embrace] not just social reality, but
spiritual reality, metaphysical reality, all that there is within
man."
La Strada is a
deceptively simple and poetic parable. While the first
neo-realists defined their characters according to social
circumstances, here the characters exist outside these confines
in an ambiguous time and place; where they saw only the wasted
land and the ragged people, Fellini looks up and sees that there
are stars. Not that he ignored the poverty of the period:
"La strada" means "the road," and takes place
in a hovel on wheels. The film is quite literally a road movie,
with a picaresque plot and its cast of travelling performers.
I'm not going to summarise the film – you're here to
watch it after all! I'll just quote Martin Scorsese who said
that the film showed "where the power of the spirit
overwhelms brute force", and go back to what I was
originally going to say: "Hey – Fellini – La
Strada – new print – wow! Sit back and
enjoy..."