The Motion Picture Industry: Neo-Realist Art and Box-Office Pressures
by LUIGI BARZINI, JR.
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THE Italian cinema industry is today one of the liveliest in the world. It is rich with experimental ideas which are often copied by its competitors in other countries. It is quick to tell the bold, sincere, sometimes brutal stories which deserve to be told but which timid producers elsewhere avoid like poison.
At the same time, the Italian motion picture industry is almost dead. It lives under an oxygen tent —kept alive by the money that inexperienced investors lose each year, by Government handouts, enormous loans which can never be repaid, and by the fact that producers owe back salaries to actors, directors, and writers who go on working anyway. It is safe to say that at least 80 per cent of the pictures made each year in Rome do not recover the cost of the negative. Very few hit the jackpot. These few pack in the crow ds in Paris, London, New York, and Moscow. They win the Oscars.
The reasons for this paradox are many and deeprooted. They might be traced to such complex factors as the relative cultural weight of the various Italian classes, the difference in development between the industrialized North and the backward South, and the love for improvisation and dislike of regimented activities in the Italian character. All this becomes clear if we examine the two kinds of Italian films which enjoy a steady success and which may be considered safe investments.
The first kind is known to the trade as “Neapolitan" movies, for the simple reason that most of them are made in Naples by small local producers. They are not masterpieces, contain no new ideas, and are never shown in first-run houses or sent abroad. They win no prizes and no critical acclaim. They only make money. They are usually shot in a few weeks on extremely small budgets by shrewd little producers who watch every lira.
The formula for these pictures is more or less standard. There is, first of all, a Mot her — a whitehaired, miserable, and possibly starving widow, who can fill with pity the hardest heart in any audience. There is a Son, misled by life, who has made one or two mistakes. Often he is in jail, for having unwittingly committed a crime or for hav ing been falsely accused, lie goes through great trials before he understands his errors and is finally freed. He is of course strengthened by his Mother’s love, and also, but to a lesser extent, by that of a tender Girl, with big black eyes and curly black hair, who waits for him, repels other suitors, and trusts him. He marries her at the end of the picture, which is regularly interrupted by sentimental songs in Neapolitan dialect, accompanied on the guitar.
The photography is dirty and uncertain, much inspired by the kind of sentimental picture postcards which soldiers and peasants buy in tobacco shops — smooth and shiny photographs of young men and girls sweetly holding hands in the moonlight, under wisteria arbors, or in a canoe. The cutting is amateurish and hysterical, the acting heavy, the dialogue obvious, the synchronization approximate, the direction without nuances.
The producers of these “Neapolitans” are practically unknown. One of the most successful was, in partnership with his brothers, a former owner of a country trattoria. They went bankrupt because they loved the food and ate more of it than the customers. This particular producer is a hearty, fat, jovial, and sanguine man of primitive education. Another money-making entrepreneur heads an outfit called “Sant’ Antonio Proteggimi Film,”or Saint-Anthony-Prolect-Us Film Company. Most of these operators had all sorts of jobs before striking it rich in the movies. But they all have a sure knowledge of the popular mind, with its romantic longings and love of heartbreaking stories.
Famous among these producers is a former cameraman who made his start on a shoestring by buying leftover pieces of virgin film at bargain prices. Often the camera had to be reloaded in the middle of a scene, and the actors were kept frozen in their positions until shooting could continue. This resulted in strange jumps in the finished picture, but the producer (who was also cameraman and director) pointed out that his public was accustomed to such things — all the pictures they had ever seen were old ones, which had been repeatedly cut and repaired. His films, like all Neapolitan productions, were shot with old silent cameras and dubbed with sound afterwards.
His methods for cutting costs were legendary. His wife’s shoulders were often used as moving support for the camera. The actors were recruited among the unemployed lor a few lire and meals. Crowd scenes were real crowd scenes, and when he wanted a railway compartment scene, he would get on a train with his actors and shoot whatever he needed through an open newspaper with a hole in the middle.
These Neapolitan pictures are successful because they are tailored to the intellectual and financial capacities of their public — the poor Southern provinces, itinerant farm workers, the peasants, and, in general, simple people starved for entertainment, who cannot identify with the Hollywood imports they sometimes see, and who would not pay a cent for an Italian masterpiece, telling them the sad and diffused story of poor and desperate people like themselves.
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THE second kind of film which presents good possibilities of success is the great international project. A good example of this type was War and Peace. Shot in Italy by an American director, it had a cast of many nationalities and was a collaboration between an Italian producer and an American firm. The Hollywood outfit supplied money (blocked lire from rentals of American films here, which may only be spent in Italy), big names, authority, international distribution, and the experienced knowledge of the reejuirements of a world-wide market. The Italian producer, Dino De Laurentiis,supplied everything else: sets, costumes, landscapes, bit players, extras (including the Italian Army), make-up men, horses, supporting actors, artists, designers, architects, experts, and technicians of all kinds.
De Laurentiis is a self-made man, a Neapolitan with a sure flair for movie making and a Napoleonic ability to improvise brilliant and unexpected solutions. He is also, in his way, good at shaving pennies. He understood a long time ago that one of the principal problems of the industry was the wealth of its creative capacities in relation to the poverty of the Italian market. What he needed was a larger public. At first, working alone, he tried making pictures which would be popular abroad. He then combined with foreign, mostly French, producers to make films that could be distributed in two similar markets. In the end he turned to Hollywood. The final result, of course, was more or less an American film. Only the details were Italian —the architeeture and taste of the sets, the fit of the uniforms, the impeccable craftsmanship of props, the style of character actors and extras, and the photography of secondary scenes. Still, such joint ventures help to keep Italian studios busy through lean times, and prevent a general collapse.
Following De Laurentiis’ lead, more and more pictures for a world-wide market have been made, with varying degrees of foreign participation. Some have succeeded; a few have failed. And now that Hollywood urgently needs “spectaculars" to compete with television, the outlook for the Italian industry is a little brighter.
Between the Neapolitan shoestring productions and the colossal historical reconstructions costing several millions of dollars, there is the no man’s land of uncertainty, danger, and crisis. Here we find the films which have given the industry its prestige abroad, and here the financial risks are the greatest. This is the treacherous ground where the chances of failure are almost ten to one. The reasons are many.
The first Italian postwar pictures were homemade, economical affairs. The total outlay rarely went higher than forty or fifty million lire. But now all costs have risen. Even a modest film can rarely be made for less than a hundred and fifty millions. But the domestic market cannot normally be counted on to pay back more than a hundred millions. Only a big local success or a good export agreement can fill the gap. Thus, producers have been forced to modify the original Italian formula. They must try to play safe. What could be afforded in the small-budget enterprise — the daring novelties, the unpopular story, the poetical mood, the crepuscular photography, the tenuous and subtle direction, the disregard for technical perfection, in short everything that made the Italian pictures of the “neo-realist" period the great hits they were — all this can no longer be risked today. Films must now please too many people for producers and directors to be lighthearted or for writers to be sincere.
Nowadays a picture must have the backing of distributors and theater owners from the start. They know what the mass public will like. But these people (and the banks which advance the money) rely chiefly on names — the biggest possible names for every available job. They want a famous writer, a celebrated director, a cast of well-advertised stars known to the public. This narrows the field to a small group which is always busy — too busy to do perfect work. Sooner or later there is a failure, and then the big name connected with it is washed up. And these big names are expensive; they push their salaries as high as the traffic will bear. This pyramids costs, increasing the backers’ risk and hence their caution.
The financial mechanism of the Italian industry also has its defects. Loans are available from a State bank, which administers a fund replenished with the taxes foreign films must pay to be shown in Italy. These loans are liberal and easy to obtain, but strangely enough, this has been one of the causes of the present crisis. All a producer needs, to get a loan of as much as a hundred million lire, is two or three millions with which he can buy a story, make a first payment on the screenplay, sign a contract with a director and actors, and shoot the first scene.
But then the picture often turns out to be a flop, leaving a wake of unpaid and unpayable debts. What does the producer do next? The only way he can get himself afloat again is to start another picture. But now everything must be scrimped because the creditors are at the studio door. It is a descending spiral of increasing risk and mounting debts.
The problem of censorship must also be considered. Officially, there is no censorship in Italy; it is expressly forbidden by the Constitution. But, as is true in most countries, the Government may refuse permits for the showing or exportation of a picture which is morally unsuitable, or defamatory to Italy, its institutions, or to religion. This vague threat is more paralyzing than an open censorship would be. If there were official censors, texts or scenes could be submitted to them and changes made at little cost . As things are, producers dare take no chances, and pictures become more and more insipid and unrealistic. Today Hollywood is almost as frank as Rome was in 1945 and even treats some subjects which Italian producers would not attempt.
There are too many inexperienced and incompetent producers in Italy, too many gamblers playing for a jackpot. And there are too many theaters: about 17,000, not counting parish theaters — proportionately more than in the United States. Then too, people no longer go to the movies as much as they used to: rising prosperity has given them motor scooters and little automobiles. Finally, there is the competition of television.
These are the factors underlying the paradoxical situation in which the liveliest of all movie industries is at the same time on its deathbed, only kept alive by desperate efforts. Yet what is more surprising than its agony, has been its capacity to maintain an international reputation and to avoid ultimate catastrophe for so long. Each year it still produces at least one great picture which wins the Oscars, is applauded by all the eminent critics, and packs the crowds in everywhere.
Among the most successful are those written and directed by Federico Fellini, a man in his early forties, the husband of Giuliett Masina, who always plays a leading part in his creations. Fellini insists on the absolute control of his work, from the first conception of the idea to the final dubbing of sound on the finished film. He is the author of I Vitelloni, the epic of idle young men in a provincial town; La Strada, the tale of open-air, vagrant show people, and now of The Nights of Cabiria, the poetical adventures of a prostitute in Rome. This last picture was stopped by timid Government officials for months, until Fellini showed it to his friend Cardinal Siri of Genoa, who thought it was a touching and Christ ian work of art. It was awarded the 1958 Oscar for the best foreign film.
Another man who painstakingly creates his pictures from beginning to end is Renato Castellani, who made Two Cents Worth of Hope, the last great neo-realist film, a moving story of two penniless lovers in Southern Italy. It usually takes Castellani over two years to prepare for shooting.
A characteristic example of the industry’s paradoxical condition is Vittorio De Sica. He plays comic roles (the elderly roue, often wearing a monocle) for big fees in shabby commercial pictures all over Europe in order to earn ihe money with which he directs his own splendid and usually financially unrewarding films. They are written by Cesare Zavattini, who is perhaps responsible for the success of more Italian postwar pictures than any single man. When Zavattini’s stories are shot by other directors, they are never as fine as when handled by De Sica and, vice versa, when De Sica shoots another man’s story, the result is seldom as admirable. “We are coffee and cream,”says Zavattini.
The Italian film industry is still alive because it has craftsmen, artists, cameramen, writers, directors, and actors who believe in the movies, who love them, and who keep on trying. They are among the best in the world. They willingly work for the offbeat project, the unusual undertaking — sometimes for almost nothing, or for a share of profits. Like poets or struggling novelists who keep on writing in spite of discouraging rejections from publishers, Italian movie people go on stubbornly expressing their ideas in celluloid. They have something to say. In a complex and expensive industry they try to do what Italians have been doing in artistic undertakings for centuries; they carry on regardless of profit . As a matter of fact, they can be at their best when doing just that, pursuing the almost impossible achievement with little means beyond their own personal passion. Norman Douglas once spoke of the Italians’ “charming mixture of inefficiency and enthusiasm.”It still produces a few great masterpieces at the price of many noble failures.