A master narrative in Italian cinema?

Andre Bazin wrote that when reduced to basic plot elements, Italian films are often structured like moralizing melodramas (264). Bazin was writing about the thematic debts that neorealism owed to the Italian professional cinema before World War II. But when the Italian film canon is examined in light of his comment, analysis reveals an oft-repeated narrative pattern that draws from deep-seated literary, historical, and cultural sources. The narrative commonplaces that consolidated during the early sound cinema of 1930s and continued in the neorealist period as noted by Bazin, have in fact been a continuing if not defining characteristic of the Italian cinema in the work of noted directors across genre divisions.

The idea of a master narrative in national cinema is most often associated with Hollywood rather than Italy. The recognition of the three act happy ending narrative as a defining characteristic of mainstream classical Hollywood is a foundation of the study and teaching of film (Bordwell 76; Crofts 26; Giannetti 329; Kolker 99). Scholars may have realized that narrativity is culture bound (Scholes 393), but there has been a lack of scholarly attention to potential master narratives in national cinemas outside classical mainstream Hollywood film. Much discussion of national issues in cinema rests on the assumption that classical Hollywood cinema is supranational and transcultural. This designation of the importance and dominance of Hollywood has caused other national traditions to receive scholarly attention for expressing a style in opposition to the Hollywood model. A Hollywood non-Hollywood polarity has even been identified as a corner stone of academic film study (Elsaesser 24).

Studies of national culture often cite Benedict Anderson's conception of the nation as an imagined community with origins in the educational policies and print media of secular cultural currents of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Since silent film was inherently universal due to its reliance on image rather than language, the separations between individual national cinematic traditions did not consolidate until the arrival of sound technology in the 1930s (Williams 1). This thesis regarding the importance of sound in the development of national cinemas seconds Anderson's affirmation of the centrality of print media in the creation of national cultures in the nineteenth century. The role of sound in the cinema is a logical extension of the part played by linguistic identity in the formation of separate cultural and national traditions. Sound in the cinema divided national cinemas by standardized tongues, koinai, which communicate to a body politic and cultural community familiar with the historical and cultural commonplaces of the nation in question. Cinema may have been somewhat universal before sound, but after sound it became more culturally specific as national film industries reeling from competition with Hollywood after World War I were able to offer a product that could find a niche in a national market. If national cinemas have developed allegorical patterns (Xavier 361) or national projections (Frodon 12), the consolidation of these attributes began in the early sound period.

The early sound period was also concurrent with a political climate in which many countries in Europe underwent right-wing political turnovers before the outbreak of World War II. (1) This global right-wing political tendency included a reliance on protectionism in trade that extended to cultural policies. National interests were emphasized politically, militarily, culturally, and industrially as an expression of prestige. The first Italian sound film was La canzone dell'amore by Gennaro Righelli (1931), although the first sound production was Alessandro Blasetti's Resurrectio (1931), released shortly thereafter. In Italy the appearance and diffusion of sound film coincided with the cultural and political moment of Mussolini's fascist regime. By the mid 1930s after the conquest of Ethiopia, the regime sought to foster a national cultural policy. Organizations such as the OND (Organizazione Nazionale Dopolavoro) and youth groups such as the Balilla were the cultural arm of the economic and political programs of autarky, or self-sufficiency, in defiance of League of Nations sanctions. Steps were taken toward creating a stable and vital Italian film industry with the establishment of studios at Cinecitta and the Venice film festival. The Minculpop (Ministero per la Cultura Popolare) encouraged the development of the Italian film industry under autarkic protectionism and trained many directors whose careers flourished during the post war period.

The autarkic backdrop and the socially reactionary politics of the regime created a climate for cinematic narratives that discouraged the breaching of class boundaries. A recurring narrative pattern of Italian film in the early sound period is a circular storyline in which a protagonist faces an obstacle and then has a series of adventures. This brings him/her back to the same situation and class status that began the story, after having acquired varying levels of wisdom. This circular and somewhat fatalistic narrative pattern, established during the early sound period of the Italian sound cinema as a seeming reflection of Italian society under the fascist regime, is still a staple feature of the Italian cinematic canon, as the examples below will illustrate.

Telefoni bianchi

A circular narrative is prevalent in the telefono bianco romantic comedies of the 1930s and '40s, particularly in the films of Mario Camerini starring Vittorio De Sica. In Camerini's films comedic elements derive from a masquerade in which roles are exchanged between different economic classes via the theft of a class-identifying object. In Gli uomini, che mascalzoni (1932), Bruno borrows his boss's luxury car in order to court Mariuccia. In Daro un milione/I'll Give a Million (1935), the millionaire Gold disguises himself as a pauper in order to woo his love interest. In//Signor Max (1937), Gianni assumes the alter ego of a member of the leisure class on a luxury liner in order to impress lady Paola. In Igrandi magazzini/The Big Stores (1939), Lauretta steals a set of clothes to impress Bruno. In each film, the plot is centered on the theft of a class-related object (car, camera, outfit), which makes the breaking of class boundaries credible. The imbalance is restored when the masquerade is discovered and the object returned for the preservation of class status quo (Celli 3). These films were party to a narrative current whose storylines featured an affected fatalona whose xenophile attitudes threaten a virtuous but naive male protagonist who eventually resigns himself to his original class status. Examples include the films of Mario Bonnard such as Io suo padre (1938) in which a fatalona played by Clara Calamai bewitches a young boxing champion, or Campo de' fiori (1943) in which Aldo Fabrizi's virtuous fishmonger is tempted to ignore class boundaries and reject the popolana played by Anna Magnani. In these films after a series of adventures the protagonist comes to his senses and accepts his original dass status. Another example lies in Alessandro Blasetti's Quattro passi fra te nuvole (1942), a drama in which a traveling salesman returns to his urban life after masquerading as a pregnant girl's husband in the countryside. The salesman takes temporary delight at his new role in bucolic surroundings before returning to his drab class and family obligations in the city.

Costume Dramas

The circular narrative pattern of the films described above in the early Italian sound cinema is not limited to romantic comedies or melodramas but extends to military adventure films and even historical dramas, the other genres most prevalent in Italian production of the period. Blasetti used a circular narrative in his military adventure films such as 1860 (1933) in which a couple divided by the Risorgimento return to their everyday life after Garibaldi's heroics at the battle of Calatafimi. Blasetti's Renaissance drama Ettore Fieramosca (1938) depicts Italian nationalist pride and military virtue at the sfida di Barletta. In the film the Italian knights may vanquish their French counterparts in individual battle but they do nothing to end foreign domination of the Italian peninsula. In each film the plot structure is circular with retention of former social and dass equilibriums.

Neorealism

Socially conservative narratives discouraging class-bounding continued in post-war Italian film. In his post war films De Sica relied on the circular narrative patterns and the plot convention devices of class masquerade and theft of a class identifying object from Camerini's romantic comedies of the 1930s. In De Sica's melodramas from the neorealist period such as Ladri di biciclette (1948) and Umberto D. (1952), the loss of status symbols (bicycle, dog) is presented from the perspectives of the owners but class status is retained when the films conclude.

Such circular story lines pervade other noted films of the neorealist period. Roberto Rossellini's Roma citta aperta (1945) begins with a scene of Don Pietro playing soccer with children at the church oratorio and ends with another scene of children walking into a panorama dominated by the dome of St. Peter's basilica, an expression of Catholic identity and continuity despite the death of the protagonist. The decision of the showgirl Marina to betray her partisan boyfriend Manfredi to the Nazi/ fascists is depicted as the result of her desire for higher social and economic status as symbolized by the telefono bianco ddcor of her upscale apartment. When the Nazi spy Ingrid removes the fur coat from a Marina trembling in shock at the sight of her agonizing boyfriend, the act signifies Marina's return to previous class and economic status. This plot twist recalls the narrative patterns of the romantic comedies of the '30s and the moralizing melodramas mentioned by Bazin. In these post war films collaboration with Nazi/fascism is an indication of an impulse to upset social status as in Camerini's undervalued wartime drama Due lettere anonime (1944) in which a couple reunites to restore class equilibrium after a period of betrayal, a plot structure shared by Aldo Vergano's II sole sorge ancora (1946). In Luigi Zampa's Vivere in pace (1947), a drunken German soldier temporarily suspends the violent course of events accompanying the German retreat in World War II, but after a tragic settling of accounts life goes on as before. In Luchino Visconti's La terra trema/ The Earth Trembles (1948) the hopes of 'Ntoni to improve his class status are dashed and he must accept subjugation before his landlords.

Strappalacrime

>From the examples above it may be argued that despite innovations in cinematic style, as Bazin noted, many films of the neorealist period have circular plots that echo the class rigidity of the telefono bianco period of the 1930s. A circular narrative structure continued beyond the neorealist period in melodramas such as Raffaello Matarazzo's Catene (1949) in which the misunderstanding between the husband and wife regarding her supposed adultery is resolved and their pair bond is restored by the end of the film. Alberto Lattuada's Anna (1951) is structured as a flashback in which the nun/nurse played by Silvana Mangano recalls the twisted love triangle that led her to religious vows. In Pietro Germi's L'uomo di paglia (1957) a family man has a tragic love affair that leads to the suicide of his lover. However the film concludes with his return to the safety of his family and class surroundings. These films of the Italian weepie or strappalacrime current are evidence that narrative circularity was not a phenomenon limited to art cinema destined for foreign distribution but also a staple of Italian popular film. For example Germi's other films include the comedy Divorzio all'italiana (1961) in which the plot reaffirms class and societal boundaries despite interceding adventures.

Art Cinema / I grandi registi

Narrative circularity, whether in structure or in character development, also pervades Italian art cinema. In Rossellini's Viaggio in Italia (1953) the protagonists' search for reconciliation ends without closure. Throughout his career Federico Fellini refused to end his films with the conventional intertext fine, because he felt that the stories of his protagonists' lives continued (Mollica 114). Aristarco noted a circular structure to Lo sceicco bianco (1952) in which newlyweds reconcile to receive a papal blessing as if their interceding estrangement had never occurred. La strada (1954) begins and ends with Zampano at a beach, first hiring and finally thinking about his assistant Gelsomina. In Le notti di Cabiria (1957), a naive prostitute repeats the same errors in her personal life to begin and end the film. In La dolce vita (1960) the protagonist Marcello remains in his vapid world of celebrity journalism despite the interceding tragedy of his encounter with the suicidal intellectual, Steiner. Amarcord (1974) is structured on the circularity of the calendar year. The film ends as it begins with the arrival of puffballs in the spring. Citta delle donne (1980) is a dream sequence that begins and ends with the protagonist on a train in the same situation that began the film.

Other important Italian directors contributed films with circular plots. In Michelangelo Antonioni's L'avventura (1960) the heroine returns to the indecision and anxiety of her life after the disappearance of her friend remains an unresolved mystery. In the last sequence of Blow Up (1966), the protagonist meets the same mime troupe that annoyed him at the beginning of the film, as if his discovery of a murdered corpse in a London park had never occurred. Lina Wertmuller's Travolti da un insolito destino nell'azzurro mare d'agosto (1974) revives the themes of class envy of the 1930s telefono bianco period with a plot in which an upper class lady is tempted by the earthy authenticity of a working class lover. As in the films from the 1930s, equilibrium and class positions are restored at the film's conclusion. Wertmuller's Pasqualino Settebellezze (1975), also has a circular narrative in which in the interceding adventure is a severe lesson in the social Darwinian horror of the Nazi Holocaust. In the end Pasqualino returns to his prewar existence as a Neapolitan guappo with his earthy worldview intact. Other examples of circular narratives by important Italian directors include Ettore Scola's C'eravamo tanto amati (1974). The film begins and ends with three repetitions of a sequence in which the working-class couple Antonio and Luciana, and their failed intellectual friend Nicola, spy on their nouveau riche friend Gianni in his luxurious Roman villa. Their collective and quizzical grunt, "Boh" reduces thirty years of experiences from the anti-Nazi/fascist Resistance to post war reconstruction to fatalistic acceptance of an unchanging and unchangeable world. In Francesco Rosi's Tre fratelli (1981), the three brothers temporarily reunited for their mother's funeral return to their separate, distant and unchanged lives. Even Rosi's Salvatore Giuliano (1961) begins as it ends with the police measuring and photographing Giuliano's assassinated corpse. The bandit revolutionary had no ultimate influence on a static Sicilian reality. Bernardo Bertolucci provides edifying examples of circularity with plots in which protagonists from privileged backgrounds flirt with radical political ideas before accepting their class status in the films' conclusions. Examples include Prima della rivoluzione (1962), Il conformista (1970), and even Novecento/1900 (1976) with Olmo and Alfredo fighting as old men in the sort of competition that began the film. Even The Last Emperor (1987) begins with a theme indicating circularity. Pu Yi's soul arrives as a butterfly in the opening sequence and departs in a similar manner in the film's conclusion, an opening and concluding image repeated in Roberto Benigni's recent Pinocchio (2002). In Giuseppe Tornatore's Il nuovo Cinema Paradiso (1988), the protagonist is returned to his Sicilian origins when he screens a montage of kisses cut from the films of his youth, affirming the essence of his character and cultural formation. In Tornatore's Malena (2000), an estranged couple returns to their village after the tragedies of the war. The wife reduced to prostitution during German occupation buys fruit in the closing sequences as an indication of her return to her pre-war class status.

Commedia all'italiana

The circular structure is also prevalent in Italian comedy in films starring figures such as Toto, Alberto Sordi, Paolo Villaggio, and even Roberto Benigni as further evidence that narrative circularity was a standard format for popular Italian films and not limited to art cinema or prestige productions. Examples include Neri Parenti's Fantozzi (1974) series starring Paolo Villaggio where the clumsy accountant Ugo Fantozzi retains his unhappy place with his firm and family despite the comic disasters he provokes. Despite Cioni's suicide attempt in Giuseppe Bertolucci's Berlinguer ti voglio bene (1979) and Dante's experience unknowingly impersonating a mafia boss in Roberto Benigni's Johnny Stecchino (1991), the protagonists of these films starring Benigni remain in unchanged social and physical settings in the concluding sequences.

This narrative circularity in Italian comedy could be explained by deeper influences from Italian literature and culture. The plot structure in the Italian theatrical tradition such as the commedia dell'arte is circular. In the basic plot scheme the interplay between stock characters like Pantalone, Pulcinella, and Arlecchino hampers the successful pair bonding of pairs of unwed youths. When the pairs of young lovers unite in the concluding act, the stock players return to their former state of equilibrium. This circularity of the commedia dell'arte has origins in classical theater and the carnival in which there is a return to pre-carnival time after a period of transgression. The idea of the influence of the commedia dell'arte on the commedia all'italiana film comedies of the 1950s and 1960s is a commonplace in Italian film studies. Films such as Mario Monicelli's I soliti ignoti (1958) have updated versions of commedia dell'arte stock characters and a circular narrative in which the efforts of the gang to rob an apartment leave them in the same condition as they began. The circus parades that ends Fellini's 8 1/2 (1963) or I nuovi mostri (1978) an episodic film by Monicelli, Dino Risi, and Scola recall these theatrical and cultural conventions. Besides the commedia dell'arte inspired works of Carlo Goldoni, narrative circularity is also a basic pattern in the works of later exponents in the Italian theater with examples that include Luigi Pirandello's Il fu Matia Pascal (1904) and Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore (1921), or Dario Fo's Non tutti i ladri vengono per nuocere (1950).

Spaghetti Western

Circular narratives in Italian film crossed genre boundaries in the post war period. In Sergio Leone's western Per un pugno si dollari (1964) the mysterious stranger Joe exits the town of feuding warlords just as he arrived, riding a mule accompanied by the bell-ringing of the town clown Pieripero. Leone actually ascribed the plot to a Goldoni source, 11 servitore di due padroni. This plot structure repeats in C'era una volta il West (1969) and Il mio nome e Nessuno (1973). Harmonica and Nobody, respectively, go on their ways after the interceding adventures are complete.

Instant Movie

An element of fatalism and narrative circularity is also a feature of the instant movie genre that appeared in Italy beginning in the early 1970s. In films such as Giuseppe Ferrara's Cento giorni a Palermo (1984), Il caso Moro (1986), Giovanni Falcone (1993), and Marco Risi's 11 muro di gomma (1991) politically controversial events in Italian current events and recent history were depicted in low budget films for domestic consumption. In these film attempts by protagonists to change or even understand Italian political and social reality meet with failure as power structures and class status are preserved.

Il nuovo cinema italiano

Circularity has also been a characteristic of more recent Italian films that have not enjoyed international distribution. In the political corruption expose Daniele Luchetti's Il portaborse (1996), the revelations of the idealistic protagonist do not change Italian reality; in fact his experiences reinforce the idea of inherent corruption in Italian politics. Roberta Torre's Tano da morire (1997), Paolo Virzi's Ovosodo (1997), Luciano Ligabue's Radiofreccia (1998), and Marco Tulio Giordana's I cento passi (2000) are all narrated as flashbacks in which the experiences of the subject/protagonists have little influence on the larger picture of life in Sicily, maritime Tuscany, or the Po valley, respectively. In Giuseppe Piccioni's Fuori dal mondo (1999) the brief encounter between a businessman and a nun who finds an abandoned baby ends with the child's adoption and the return to convent life and everyday business for the protagonists. In Virzi's Ferie d'agosto (1996) a brief vacation parenthesis reveals the contradictions and dissatisfactions in the lives of two extended families, which are once again repressed when the vacation ends.

Remakes / Adaptations

A tendency to recur to narrative circularity is also evident in cases in which Italian filmmakers adapt material from another national sphere. To cite only one example, De Sica and Cesare Zavattini were inspired by King Vidor's film The Crowd (1928) for their neorealist masterpiece Ladri di biciclette (Savio 490). Vidor's film has a happy ending and closure typical of three-act Hollywood dramas. The previously distraught family man returns home accompanied by his son after having overcome a period of unemployment and alcoholism provoked by the tragic death of his daughter. De Sica's film ends on a more somber and fatalistic note in accordance with Italian narrative circularity. As in Vidor's film, the intervention of the son saves the father but rather than the optimistic outlook one may expect of Hollywood cinema, De Sica's film ends with a sense of fatalism. In the final scene an anonymous crowd envelops father and son. The assumption is that the father will return to the unemployment lineup that began the film, his class and economic status unchanged.

Conclusions

Of course, the idea of Italian cinematic narrative circularity in the examples cited is not an absolute description of all Italian films. There are films by the directors mentioned above which do not fit a circular pattern. For example, Fellini's Il bidone (1955) and Antonioni's Il grido (1957) end with the tragic death of a protagonist. Other directors have little or no circularity in their narratives such as Pier Paolo Pasolini, with the possible exception of Il fiore delle mille e una notte (1974). Visconti's films like Morte a Venezia (1970) or La caduta degli dei (1962) also have tragic endings. However Visconti also made films that reinforce class and echo the narrative structure of the telefono bianco comedies of the 1930s. For example in Bellissima (1951) Anna Magani's character returns the familial and class situation that began the film. In Senso (1954), the countess returns to the security and boredom of her aristocratic life after eliminating her mendacious Austrian lover.

The resonance of circular and fatalistic narrative in Italian film could be a result of the preponderance of Italian artistic and cultural history. A list from UNESCO of world heritage sites once optimistically declared that over 50% of the world's art treasures are housed in Italy. Spain, the second place country in the report, had fewer places included on UNESCO's list than the region of Tuscany alone. Under the weight of such past artistic achievement, Italian narratives could be well expected to express skepticism about what humanists called exempla, the didactic function of history is to impart a lesson of moral education. Such a fatalistic attitude about the lessons of history is expressed in the Italian cinema in films such as Visconti's Il gattopardo (1963) or Monicelli's Il marchese del grillo (1981), a comedy in which Alberto Sordi plays a nineteenth-century Roman nobleman who at one point uses antique furniture for firewood to the chagrin of his friend, a soldier in Napoleon's army invading Rome. Sordi's Marquis responds to the French soldier's complaints by explaining Roman fatalism about the folly of human vanity, a point easily made in a city littered with the ruins of past empire to the representative of the French nation soon to suffer defeat. One may even speculate that since the Italian film industry is housed in Rome, a sense of Roman fatalism has pervaded the Italian cinema through narrative circularity.

Of course, there are literary sources of the circularity in the Italian cinema. In the novella tradition, Giovanni Boccaccio organized the Decameron (1349) with a cornice in which the narrators remain in the Florentine countryside after each day's storytelling has concluded. This structure also exists in the tales themselves such as "Andreuccio da Perugia" in which a naive protagonist enters and departs from Naples in the same economic and class condition as when he arrived despite a series of humiliating misadventures. Alessandro Manzoni's I promessi sposi (1840), often cited as the acme of the Italian historical novel, ends where it began, with the wedding plans of Renzo and Lucia. Giovanni Verga's I Malavoglia (1881), a noted example of Italian verismo and the source of Visconti's neorealist film La terra trema (1948), has a circular plot in which characters' efforts to improve their station come to naught. As in 1930s romantic comedies, class status remains unchanged despite interceding experiences. Tomasi da Lampedusa's Il gattopardo (1958), made into a film by Visconti in 1963, presents the essence of circularity with the fatalistic concept of De Pretian trasformismo, the idea that Italian political and social life is impervious to mutations despite changes in outer appearance.

National culture is a fluid concept, as attested by the affirmation of new or ancient identities during the post-colonial period. The imagined communities defined by Anderson flourished as urban concept in which the essence of a country's culture was seen an as authentic form under potential threat from foreign influences. Plot formats that echo established cultural commonplaces, such as the circularity derivative of the commedia dell'arte in the case of the Italian cinema or the three act closure of classical Hollywood cinema, solidify the cultural imprint of a film In an essentialist recursion through plot. In the case of Italy the circular narrative is evidence of deep seated and, perhaps, involuntary cultural and historical elements that manifested themselves in the early Italian sound cinema in the 1930s and have become a commonplace ever since. Given the numerous examples of circularity from the Italian cinematic canon cited above, a circular narrative pattern seems to be an imbedded characteristic of Italian production, even a master narrative.

If we accept the idea that there is a stubborn narrative circularity in the Italian cinematic tradition, there is no reason why patterns should not exist in other established or newly affirming cinematic traditions or even why a national cinematic tradition should be limited to a single narrative pattern. After all, modern nations, including Italy, house numerous regional identities that in some cases have been expressed in literature and film. If a plausible narrative pattern is defined for a cinematic tradition then the films in that tradition could be studied in terms of their tendency to follow, reject, or modify expected narrative patterns due to cultural borrowing resulting from colonial or hegemonic relationships. In the present period of increasingly global culture the traditional boundaries between national identities have become less rigid, raising the specter of increasing uniformity in cultural production. The recognition of national narrative patterns, beyond the three act classical Hollywood model, could actually discourage the penchant for cultural monotony through a theoretical validation of the numerous potential national narratives available for study of which the Italian cinema offers but one example.

NOTES

(1) Italy (1922), Spain and Turkey (1923), Albania (1925), Poland, Portugal, and Lithuania (1926), Yugoslavia (1929), Romania (1930), Germany and Austria (1933), Greece and Spain again (1936), and France (1940) all suffered fight-wing governmental changes in this period.

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CARLO CELLI

Bowling Green State University