Document View

Bertozzi investigates how early Italian cinema used and represented the Italian city as a modern urban setting. He focuses on the realistic and actuality genres, in which the city presented itself as mere natural decor.

At its earliest dawning, Italian cinema displayed a remarkably historicist character. From the first Italian narrative film, La preso di Roma, [The Capture of Rome, Alberini&Santoni, 1905] up to 1915, Italian films established their domestic prestige and international distinctiveness mainly in the historical genre.1 Combining narrative morphologies and expressive techniques adopted from theatre, literature, painting, architecture and photography, Italian works recoded and re-visualised the nation's artistic traditions. The representation of the remnants of history allowed ventures in the exoticisms of the past, but also-and most importantly for my investigation - offered antique settings for the rendering of the present. This is because the city turned out to be the most natural of all historical settings both in Italian cinema and in non-Italian films produced before 1905.

In this essay, I shall investigate how cinema used and represented the Italian city as a modern urban setting. More specifically, I shall approach the realistic and actuality genres, in which the city presented itself as mere natural decor. Thus, I will not examine the city as a scene of past mythological or literary narrations.

Urban visions

In cinema's early years, the Italian city was a familiar optical attraction: its image had proliferated for decades in the painting tradition of vedutismo and, more recently, in the spectacles of precinematic devices.2 On the last Grand Tour of the 19th century, Lumiere's operators shot about one hundred views in Italy between 1896 and 1902. These films visualised sentimental geographies and suggestive travels informed by centuries-old literary and artistic traditions. The increasingly popular travel film genre duplicated and paralleled the common itineraries of flourishing bourgeois tourism. For cities like Venice, Naples, Pompeii as well as Rome and Florence, film views represented the familiar architectural and landscape attractions of the Grand Tour.

Overall, however, Lumiere's operators did not engage in a solid and coherent illustrative project. Important monuments were photographed Venice's Piazza San Marco in Pigeons sur la Place Saint-Marc (view no. 292) or the Grand Canal in Panorama du Grand Canal pris d'un bateau (no. 295) - while others were surprisingly neglected; there are no traces of Saint Peter's Cathedral in the quick Roman views nor of Piazza della Signoria in the Florentine films. Turin, instead, emerged visualised as a political capital and the official centre of national administration and military power, consonant with Lumiere's own ambitions toward cultural prestige and officialdom. Most views of the former capital of the Savoyard Kingdom concerned institutional events (inaugurations, public visits, commemorations), which were linked with symbols and figures of power.3 Lumiere's films showed parading veterans (Defile des veterans en costumes anciens: I. Vue de loin and II. Vue de pres, nos. 1069-1070), and military and physical exercises (Les gymnastes 6 Turin, no. 1057). Often, the subjects were King Umberto, Prince Victor Emmanuel and other royal figures parading before military platoons (Roi d'Italie et prince Victor passant to revue, n. 549), inaugurating monuments erected in their honour (nos. 1066-1070), or appearing at public events (Arrivee de Leurs Majestes le Roi et la Reine d'Italie, no. 1343 and La duchesse d'Aoste a l'Exposition, no. 1051 ).

Enlarge 200% Enlarge 400%

In general, the Lumiere views shot in Italy presented sombre and peaceful cities: urban stage sets for the solemn processions and auto-celebrating rituals of official powers. Italy's countryside and provincial scenery -- described by Piero Camporesi as 'the nation seen from the shops, squares, threshing-floors, pubs and convents' refectories '4 - remained invisible, and somewhat inconceivable to the eyes of the French operators. From the Lumiere views emerged a monarchic nation, cautiously moving toward modernisation. Perhaps the fairly widespread exhibitions of these urban films were the most advanced indicators of modernity in Italy at the time, preceding artistic avant gardes and political uprisings, while constituting events more democratic and accessible than the isolated international fairs (Turin) orthe increasing cosmopolitan tourism.

Blocked between positivist culture and an idealist heritage, Italian cities in the late 19th and 20th centuries did not develop according to rational planning. Efforts to upgrade Florence to the nation's capital and the ambitious modifications of Rome, Naples, Turin and Bologna - conceived on the model of Haussmann's Paris and Forster's Vienna - turned out in the end to be quite limited interventions. As simple breaches through the cities' ancient structures, they embodied an ambiguous, or at best imperfect, understanding of how modern innovations and national specificities could come together. This is why the first city views shot in Italy are historiographically relevant: they document people and urban settings invested in an antique and widely evoked genius loci, or spirit of the place (still intact in pre-WWI Europe) and, thus, they attest to past artistic and cultural realities that have since disappeared.

Enlarge 200% Enlarge 400%

The representations of these urban landscapes were often simple one-shot films.5 While being cinematic works, these views ought to be placed along the continuum of painting (vedutismo) and staging traditions, because these very traditions had been already adopted and popularised by pre-cinematic entertainments. I refer to the city as seen through Mondi niovi (perspective boxes), magic lanterns, dioramas, panoramas, stereoscopes and cosmoramas. Through these precinematic devices, casual visual travellers encountered and sampled realistic renderings of antique cities amidst their daily affairs.6 Their later cinematic counterparts continued this antique and motionless visuality by generating new places of memory and origin: Italy as 'the nation of a hundred cities'. As a stone stage and landscape, the urbs preserved the nation's history, passions and values. One of the merits of the city views was to contextualise modern Italian citizens among the ruins of their past. The architectural patrimony of the nation, however, did not lend itself to the dynamism promised by the new medium. Monuments remained still and rigid: only seaside views had moving waves. Landscapes of factories or other modern scenes were unusual; the same type of film was equally rare in the Lumiere's catalogue. Echoing picturesque tropes of local folklore and timeless archeology, the films' subject matters, from horseriding to local dances and suggestive panoramas, perpetuated a premodern and rather rigid Italy.7

Landscapes 'dal vero' and false modernities

Recently discovered films show that the imagery of a nation-in-formation pervaded hundreds of small actualities and 'documentaries' made by Italian and foreign companies. What we see in them is the political and cultural appeal of major urban centres, as well as the local pride of provincial towns. One decade into the new century, a precious and old-fashioned Italy emerged, untouched by the rhythm of modern industrialism.8

Emphasising an idea of architectural beauty, picturesque and romantic harmony with the environment, these films made use of several formal techniques: chromatic and split-screen effects, oval mattes, and pan and travelling shots. Major archetypes of bucolic naturalism were paraded: sunsets (Santa Lucia), mediaeval bridges (11 Pescara), villages perched on cliffs above the sea (Riviera di Levante). Yet, these views also juxtaposed old scenery with new objects of interest, like a hydroelectric power plant [Sulle rive del Pescara, On the Banks of Pescara, Cines, ca. 1910] or industrial complexes [L'industria della carta nell'isola di Liri, Paper Industry on the Island of Liri, Cines, 1910]. In their attempts to merge history and nature in a single aesthetically realistic atmosphere, these films also gave visibility to the lowerclasses. These representations provided the intertext for the later rendering of ceramicists, butchers, carpenters, and the very Italian, but rather surreal father figure in Pinocchio (fines, 1911).9 The urban landscapes and city squares represented in these actualities were charged with anthropological connotations: they spoke about the people, their activities, and the civitas inhabiting them.10

Enlarge 200% Enlarge 400%

A particular case is that of Naples. In the Southern city, apart from the actualities (film dal vero), fiction films as well adopted the urban setting to better express images and stories embedded within the city's rich vernacular culture. The most significant examples are two masterpieces of popular realism released in the 1910s: the now lost Sperduti nel buffo [Lost in the Darkness, Morgana Film, 1914] directed by Nino Martoglio and Roberto Danesi, and Assunta Spina [Assunta Spina, Caesar Film, 1915] directed by Gustavo Serena and featuring Francesca Bertini. The 'realist' films shot in Naples went on to embody Southern Italian culture, both in Italy and among immigrant communities in the Americas. In the end, the Neapolitan films evinced the words of architecture historian Cesare De Seta: 'the values of a community emerge in the web of representations the community chose to adopt and produce'.11

In other cases, the city came into view according to international (and not just local) currents, as in Rimini l'Ostenda d'Italia [Rimini, Italy's Ostend] and Bologna. Rimini combined the traditional privileging of local landmarks (Tempio Malatestiano by Leon Battista Alberti, the Augustan Arch and the I 9th century Theater Poletti) with cosmopolitan exoticism, glimpsed in the oriental design of the local cafe-chantant, the Hausmannian urban transformation, and the title reference to the more famous northern European city. Similarly in Bologna, despite the city's historical treasures, the film emphasises modern architectural interventions like the demolition of the old walls.

Enlarge 200% Enlarge 400%

As a result, in 1910s fiction films the Italian landscape appeared significantly different from the topographical visual tradition of earlier years (vedutismo). And the difference pertained to film form, which affected the very subject of representation. What occurred was a transformation from the static and sober illustrations of the Lumieres' Italian films to more dynamic renderings. For instance, in the films of the 191 Os, the city appeared more cosmopolitan, studded within modern symbols and objects. In the urban melodrama Come una sorella [Like a Sister, Itala, 1912], the city appears 'contaminated' by such modern icons as cars, crowds and advertisements. Likewise, in Giovanni Pastrone's Tigre reale [Royal Tiger, Itala, 1916] the heroine's suicide takes place at the Grand Hotel Theatre de l'Odeon, the realm of international encounters and passions.

While the aristocratic and art nouveau settings of these 'cosmopolitan films' served as stages for the decadent performances of D'Annunzio-like divas, an oppositional aesthetic emerged. Distant from modern symbolism, a new urban realism made its way in Italian cinema, confirming what Brunetta called 'the long wave of [its] realist vocation'. 12 New sections of cities gained visibility: the demolition of ancient walls (so prominent in previous artistic accounts and in Lumiere's films) opened the city's outer spaces to representation and the traditional gap between city and countryside narrowed. This new proximity of city and countryside was not a harmless or a balanced process: the former emerged as invading, appropriating, and subverting the character of the latter. By articulating the same topological contrast in terms of moral and family values, for instance, Gino Zaccaria and Dante Testa's Padre (Palace of Fame, Italo, 1912) took a dystopian position. The film shows how the evils of society derive from progress and modern vices: a rich industrialist's greed and parental hypocrisy are juxtaposed with the moral integrity of common people. Shots of the city from above visually emphasise the ideological contrast between palaces and factories on the one side, and taverns and sheds on the other. The urban territory is expanding and so are its modern forms of corruption.

The trope of the crossing of the city's limits appears in Febo Mari L'emigrante [The Emigrant, Itala, 1915]. On the eve of his departure for Latin America, a peasant visits the nearby city of Turin for last-minute shopping and is assaulted by two robbers. To his eyes, the cityscape is a different world, a place of inexplicable activities and innumerable dangers. The incident furthers his sense of geographical and cultural estrangement from the urban environment. Maciste (Itala, 1915) presents a different take on the city. The main character encounters urban crowds and isolated countryside settings with unproblematic ease. Similarly, in Maciste alpino [Maciste the Alpine Trooper, Itala, 1916], a few Italian prisoners who have fled their prison approach Turin. From their vantage point in a nearby forest, the city walls are patriotically shown as the embodiment of national civilisation. A more traditionally monumental city appears in Caccia ai milioni [Chasing millions, Cines, 1914], an amusing race among Rome's landmarks, including Cines' studios.

In a few Italian films of the 1910s, however, the city acquires a new complexity. The urban landscape becomes a frontier and an in-between territory, merging and contrasting new urban developments with the motionless countryside. Along old borders, new and expanding industrial peripheries blossomed, and with them popular quarters and presuburban middle-class residences, as well as railway lines and road intersections. These new and open urban spaces became the favourite setting of film comedians' dynamic narratives. For instance, in Cretinetti agente di assicurazioni (Foolshead, Life Insurance Agent, Itala, 1911 ), the tenacity of the insurance agent is stunning; to increase his business he repeatedly follows his clients across town by car, on top of house roofs, into their homes, all the while oblivious to the ensuing damage and destruction he leaves behind. Another hyperbolic portrait of urban devastation is realised in Andre Deed's La paura degli aeromobili nemici [Fear of Enemy Planes, Itala, 1915]. On the eve of the Great War, Deed imagines the bombardment of a city, a vision of the total annihilation of what for centuries had guaranteed order and stability.

Italy and urban culture

Through its specific expressive means, cinema contributed to the invention and articulation of new urban imageries. Filmic spaces differed from the previous optical renderings because they participated to a more complex syntax of images and perspectives. In chase or dramatic films, for instance, the dynamic representation of the city surpassed the static and comfortable simplicity of the one-shot tradition to better render the unsettling transformations of modern urban spaces. The result was the surfacing of a hypercity. For the first time, citizen-spectators were turned into 'omnipolitan' subjects, ones capable of an omniscient and multiperspectival vision of the city. Cinema opened up the closed enclaves of the old city into new public metropolitan experiences.

This sensibility is evident in II Grido dell Aquila [The Cry of the Eagle, Istituto Fascista di Propaganda Nazionale, 1923], which is considered the first truly Fascist film. Directed by Mario Volpi, the film expresses the wish for regional cultures to merge through the force of a new patriotic pride. The film transfigures local monuments into nationalistic symbols, converting picturesque landmarks into the homeland's archetypes: from Rome's Colosseum to Florence's Palazzo Vecchio, from Bologna's Due Torri and Turin's Mole Antonelliana, to the view of the Vesuvius and Milan's Duomo. Likewise, several images of carnival masks - another set of distinct regional references - pay homage to those who sacrificed themselves for the homeland - as an intertitle suggests. Freed from the Communist threat, the Italian people are shown marching over an Italian flag, with a nearby monument of the Unknown Soldier symbolising a spiritual and nationalistic regeneration. Piazza Venezia, Mussolini's favourite public venue, is shown in a series of split-screen images, intercut with regional monuments, factory workers, and Fascist icons (i.e. fasces, a cannon, and a plough). The film constitutes a precious early example of how an attempt to visually engineer Italy relied on references to the nation's historical landmarks.

The homologies between cinema and the city as two visual forms of spatial representation have been studied at length. If we try to understand what kind of city Italian cinema favours the answer can only pertain to the realm of history-which exceeds the genre form of historical film. Marsilio Ficino's famous Renaissance epigram 'every painter draws himself', quite popular in 15th and 16th century Florence, illustrates a modern notion of representation. Images do not just reveal objects and buildings, they also reveal their own makers and the circumstances of their own making. The principle that every representation is a form of self-representation is particularly true of images of the Italian city - a visual trope that both nationalised and globalised Italian identity and culture.

Once Italian cinema appropriated the city, it radically disrupted its centuries-old harmony and stasis. It also changed its spectators' unified sense of ancient local origins into a variety of identities, linked to the wider context of the nation and the ambiguous realms of modern progress. The city and the nation represented by the Lumieres, instead, was still a pacified one, and thus distant from the complex palimpsests of modern cities ... always susceptible to erasure or brought into different relations with emerging structures - social relations redefined spatially as habitat. The cinematic is thus a relation among changing sites where the production of memory for its inhabitants is also an issue of environment.13

After Lumiere, cinema's rapid and multiple takes fractured the urban denizen's traditional loyalties. These spectator-residents acquired numerous citizenships: first of all, a national one, which meant the suppression of localistic and regionalist attachments, but also an international one, due to art's universal appeal. Through a process of social, cultural, and imaginary re-vision, the Italian city became a medium through which its citizens would inhabit multiple neighbourhoods, develop wider identities and acquire new sovereignties.

Translated by Giorgio Bertellini