A History of Italian Cinema de Bondanella y Pacchioni

Italian Film History, the Classical Tradition, and “Hollywood on the Tiber”
Italian film history in the postwar period has always been dominated by
the heritage of neorealism: for better or for worse, many of Italy’s greatest
directors, scriptwriters, and cameramen came of age during the neorealist period
(the first decade after the end of the war in 1945), and their subsequent careers
were often shaped by their attitude toward the cinema of social realism. One of
the most striking characteristics of Italian neorealist cinema, not counting its
interest in social themes and contemporary depiction of postwar economic
conditions, was a rejection of traditional film genres—highly scripted historical
epics, romantic melodramas, and costume dramas that were set in a distant and
often literary past. Yet toward the end of the 1950s, a version of one of Italy’s
most traditional film genres—the epic film set in a classical past—became
redefined as the “peplum,” 1 the “neomythological film,” 2 or the “sword and
sandal epic,” creating a genre that gained mass audiences and often made
impressive showings at the box office all over the world. These films would
become the staple fare of drive-in theaters in America, a standard feature of
popular entertainment everywhere—standing in clear opposition to the content
of most of the “art films” associated with Italy’s best neorealist directors—and
would even eventually become a target of satire and parody because of their
often exaggerated interpretations of classical mythology, their sometimes poorly
dubbed prints intended for foreign consumption, or their often impoverished
production values and camp scripts or costumes. 3 Of course, Italy had
exercised its influence abroad with the enthusiastic reception of silent epic films
set in antiquity, such as Guazzoni’s Quo Vadis? or Pastrone’s masterpiece,
Cabiria , whose protagonist Maciste resurfaced in the peplum era—along with
Hercules, Ursus, Samson, and other renowned strongmen of steel who were
favorite peplum characters. And during the Fascist period, as well as in the
immediate postwar era, a number of important films set in classical times were
made in Italy, including Gallone’s Scipio Africanus: The Defeat of Hannibal
and Blasetti’s Fabiola (1949), a love story between the daughter of a Roman
senator and a gladiator.
Most, if not all, such films set in the classical period either aimed at a
historically accurate depiction of the ancient past or attempted to inject romance
and melodrama into ancient history, in the tradition of Italian grand opera and
theater. Moreover, in the 1950s, the phenomenon of “Hollywood on the
Tiber”—the arrival of Hollywood film studios and directors shooting in Italy to
reduce production costs—revived a custom that had begun in 1923 when the
original Ben-Hur , directed by Fred Niblo, filmed some scenes in Rome before
completing shooting in America. The high point of American production in
Italy was reached with a number of Hollywood films that were either partially
or completely filmed in Italy. Mervyn LeRoy’s Quo Vadis? (1951)—a remake
of a tale adapted from a novel that had been shot by Guazzoni in the silent
period—may be said to have launched the postwar mania for films set in the
classical period and for Hollywood production in Italy. Although it lacked the
widescreen technology that would mark most of the Hollywood epics and the
Italian peplums, it boasted an enormous cast and huge sets constructed at
Cinecittà. Robert Wise’s Helen of Troy (1956) was shot in Rome in widescreen
color. William Wyler’s Ben-Hur (1959), a remake of the silent original that
earned eleven Oscars, displayed a famous chariot race sequence that was, at the
time, the largest film set ever constructed. (That celebrated race had been
preceded by an equally complicated chariot race in Guazzoni’s Messalina in
1923). The international box-office appeal of Wyler’s epic film provided instant
advertisement for the technical and artistic prowess of Rome’s Cinecittà.
The film that best characterized the “Hollywood on the Tiber” epoch and
the rise to prominence of the paparazzi, the gossip-magazine photographers who
preyed upon the scandalous exploits of American movie stars in Italy, was
Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s Cleopatra (1963), a film whose production moved from
England to Cinecittà and whose costs spiraled out of control to become the most
expensive motion picture ever made to that date. The torrid love affair between
the stars Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton remains one of Hollywood’s (and
Rome’s) most legendary movie love affairs. During the same year Don
Chaffey’s Jason and the Argonauts was made in Italy, featuring the justly
praised special effects by Ray Harryhausen, which stand in sharp contrast to
those of many Italian peplum productions of the period, whose shoddy
production values could have used Harryhausen’s touch to raise their filming
standards. One of the last and best examples of American epic films about
classical antiquity shot both at Cinecittà and in Spain was Anthony Mann’s The
Fall of the Roman Empire (1964), a film that included a scale model of the
Roman Forum and an all-star cast of Sophia Loren, Stephen Boyd, Alec
Guinness, James Mason, and Christopher Plummer. As so many other
traditional film epics from Pastrone’s Cabiria to the present have done, Mann’s
film profited from the historical expertise of one of the era’s most popular
historians: Will Durant.

A History of Italian Cinema de Bondanella y Pacchioni

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

A History of Italian Cinema de Bondanella y Pacchioni

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

A History of Italian Cinema de Bondanella y Pacchioni

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Italian Film History, the Classical Tradition, and “Hollywood on the Tiber”

You might also like