Historical and Cultural Trends in Early Twentieth-Century Italy
B
efore and during the first years of World War I (1914–1918), a spirit of intoler-ance toward the scientific and bourgeois interests of the nineteenth-century society was being spread by a new cultural movement called Decadentismo, which flourished in those times side by side with the pictorial and architectural style known as “Liberty.” The most visible proponent of this movement was Gabriele D’Annunzio (1863–1938), a very famous literary man who was strongly opposed to a bourgeois state, preferring the old aristocracy of birth and means, the only class that, in his view, had culture and sensitivity. He owed his popularity as a poet and playwright to his search for exhibitionism and the most self-serving type of individualism. D’Annunzio’s works and rhetoric contributed to create the myth of the superman that helped promote in literature and cinema the image of an all-powerful virile man and formulate the image of woman as sex object and totally dependent upon such a man. Naturally, such a myth was not ignored in fascist ideology, as we will see in Chapter 3.Italian Cinema in the Early Twentieth Century
Woman as sex object becomes the role that women play in several love-story films made in Italy mostly in the second decade of the twentieth century. As the Colos-sal genre was reaching international fame, another type of spectacular genre was becoming very successful on the national scene. It was called dramma passionale, a dramatic genre centered on a tormented love story often set in spectacular places (such as luxurious hotels or rich villas and palaces) and starring a high-class female protagonist of exceptional physical beauty and transgressive sexuality. This
type of film highlights the myth of the beautiful, sexy woman who uses her body, with its seductive movements and forbidden charms, to attract and conquer an otherwise-unattainable male and his social milieu. These female characters rep-resented the type of woman that was to be called later the femme fatale, played by women seductresses charged with the power to destroy the men attracted to them and, consequently, to be destroyed themselves in punishment, as the analysis of the character of Sophonisba in Cabiria has already shown in Chapter 1.
The dramma passionale genre was representative of the Decadentismo cultural movement and of its search for exhibitionism and sexual indulgence. In a social milieu dominated by such a cultural trend, a woman’s role was obviously confined to that of a sex object in man’s obsessive search for sexual self-fulfillment. Con-sequently, the femme fatale role became routine in the dramma passionale films.
Because of their irresistible sex appeal and its disastrous effects on the men fas-cinated by them, these femme fatales were mostly projected as erotic objects of male desire, and, as such, they became “spectacle” themselves. A suitable profes-sion for a woman of this sort would be that of an actress, who, by her very nature, enjoys being a spectacle. In Ma l’amor mio non muore (Love Everlasting; 1913), the protagonist (Elsa) is an actress. The female image that these dramma passionale films projected was so highly charged with emotional impact and endowed with beauty, seductiveness, and elegance that the women protagonists became beloved and desired not only by the male actors on the screen but also by the male specta-tors who crowded the movie theaters of the time. Also, female spectaspecta-tors were very attracted to dramma passionale films and desired to identify with their female pro-tagonists and partake of their sexual appeal and social superiority. These dramma passionale films were thus immensely popular at that time and helped give birth to the phenomenon of divismo, or star idolatry, especially regarding female actresses, or dive, who exercised an enormous appeal upon their audiences.
Divismo1 is not, therefore, the exclusively contemporary curse that plagues our social life and, most specifically, the life of contemporary actors and actresses as well as of politicians and social entrepreneurs. Divismo actually originated in Italy in the early twentieth century when cinema actors and especially actresses or dive suddenly became the idols of their spectators, who found themselves exposed for the first time to that new art form. The most fascinating objects of this new cult were some very popular actresses who were cast as the stars of the dramma passionale films,2 such as Francesca Bertini (in Gustavo Serena’s Assunta Spina (1915), Lyda Borelli (in Mario Caserini’s Ma l’amor mio non muore), and Pina Menichelli (in Giovanni Pastrone’s Il fuoco [The Fire; 1915] and Tigre reale [Royal Tigress; 1916]).
Because of their obvious show of seductiveness, these female characters trans-gressed the patriarchal codification of female behavior and often became sub-ject to punishment and suffering in order for the status quo, overturned by their subversive presence and its effects, to be reestablished. The prerogative of these femmes fatales is “excess,”3 signified especially by the transgressivity of their actions and by their overpowering sexuality. Since all the films that presented this type of female protagonist, made in the second decade of the twentieth century, were silent, such overpowering female sexuality had to be conveyed exclusively by visual representation of their bodies rather than through sound and voice. Consequently,
the camera tended to concentrate on the women’s active bodies and to linger on parts of them, such as the hands or arms in their waving movements, or on their heads violently jerking back and forth, on their eyes spasmodically rolling, or des-perately or knowingly staring at the audience off screen.
We have already seen this mechanism at work in Cabiria through the character of Sofonisba, whose seductiveness, formulated in terms of the overrepresentation of her physical attractiveness, was viewed as a threat by the Roman authority exclusively run by men. Afraid of the power she might have over the men in love with her, the Roman authority decrees that she is “evil” and punishes her with a prison sentence.
While Francesca Bertini is probably the best known diva of the time, I will approach chronologically the dramma passionale films chosen for discussion and will consider her later. Now I am going to concentrate on the films of the other two above-mentioned, equally popular dive, Lyda Borelli and Pina Menichelli, whose most important films are Ma l’amor mio non muore by Mario Caserini with Lyda Borelli, and Giovanni Pastrone’s Il fuoco and Tigre reale, with Pina Menichelli.
In these films, both actresses, in their femme fatale roles, belong to the high society and clearly show a very rich and sophisticated standard of life. Thus, they become the embodiment of woman as object of desire, producing pleasure in look-ing for the beholder and pleasure in belook-ing looked at for the woman.4 These women characters, in their exhibitionistic position, become spectacles to be admired and idolized; that is, they become dive.
Dramma Passionale Films
Ma l’amor mio non muore
In Ma l’amor mio non muore, Lyda Borelli plays the role of Elsa, the female protag-onist of the film. From the very beginning, she is framed as a many-sided female character. She is first presented as the affectionate and well-mannered daughter of a high military officer in Wallenstein, a small northern European country; at the same time, she is also projected as being involved with a dangerous man who turns out to be a spy and will eventually bring about her father’s shameful down-fall. After her father commits suicide, after unjustly being accused of high treason, Elsa arouses the audience’s compassion as a young victim of social injustice, left alone in the world and exiled from her own country. The sequences that show her dressed in black, in full-length shots, being escorted to the border by three military men and left on her own to wander in a foreign and desolate landscape create the condition for the audience to feel compassion for her as an innocent, suffering creature. Elsa, however, once in Paris, shows another side of her person-ality. She becomes a shrewd businesswoman who knows how to take advantage of her natural talent as a singer and of her physical attractiveness as a woman. In the sequences of her audition in a room full of men who are obviously enchanted by her many talents, the camera, by concentrating with medium-length and close-up shots on her physical beauty, clearly reveals Elsa’s readiness for playing the role of the erotic object of the desire of all the men around her, who are depicted as
totally fascinated by her. Her seductiveness is clearly projected by the overrepresen-tation of her body, displayed in abrupt physical movements carefully watched by her onlookers, who, with their own bodily countenances, reveal the uncontrollable sexual drive to which they are subject in her fascinating presence. In these sequences, then, Elsa already plays the role of woman-as-spectacle. Shortly afterward, she will become spectacle even more clearly when she is framed singing and dancing on a theater stage in front of many spectators who look intensely at her, some with large binoculars, and applaud her frenetically. Here, the camera is placed behind her in order to frame her on the stage from the back and her audience from the front.
This technique highlights the effect that she, as female spectacle with her beauty and natural talents, has on them, intensifying further her significance as spectacle by closely following the opening and closing of the stage curtains in front of and behind her.
Eventually Elsa is formulated as a femme fatale because of her transgressive sexual attraction toward the heir to the throne of Wallenstein, who becomes infatuated with her, even if she, besides being an actress and, consequently, a woman of ill repute, is still viewed in their country as a traitor’s daughter. This transgressive relationship provokes the consternation of the prince’s parents and of the official government agents who have discovered it. The prince, however, does not want to give her up; the film discourse, in order to reestablish the social order that Elsa has disrupted with her dangerously subversive sexual presence, has to find another way to get her out of the prince’s life and out of the narra-tive plot in order to eliminate the threat she represents. The dramma passionale genre, then, offers the proper means for disposing of this dangerous woman.
By overcharging Elsa with an uncontrollable, passionate temperament and an unusually overpowering love emotion, which compels her too to view herself as an obstacle to her lover’s social position and to self-destruct in order to disap-pear from his life, the film discourse turns her into a romantic heroine sacrific-ing herself for love. Thus, with a sequence of revealsacrific-ing shots focussacrific-ing on an overrepresentation of bodily movements and agonizing expressions, the camera quickly abolishes a very sick Elsa from the screen and from the prince’s life. The dangerous woman, by eliminating herself in a self-sacrificing death, offers the film’s discourse the opportunity to reestablish a patriarchal order where men with authority can continue to exercise their control over their world, away from the disrupting influence of dangerous women.
Because of this change, at the end, the film’s mood turns pleasantly harmoni-ous, as the spectators at this point feel empathy and compassion for Elsa who, by sacrificing herself for love, behaves just like a “good” woman is expected to in a patriarchal society. In this way, at the end of the film, the spectators react toward her in the same way as they had at the beginning of her story when she was pro-jected as a fatherless and exiled young woman.
This film is thus a very powerful example of the Italian dramma passionale film, which depicts woman endowed with excessive sexuality and with such an over-powering control over men that she becomes dangerous for them and disruptive for their lives. At this point, her own elimination is viewed by the woman herself as necessary in order to reestablish the traditional social order disrupted by the
uncontrollable power of her sexuality. The audience, thus, appreciates her for rees-tablishing such an order with her own sacrifice, which shows her acceptance of the overwhelmingly patriarchal message of the film.
Pastrone’s Il fuoco and Tigre reale
Equally significant examples of the dramma passionale genre are provided by G. Pastrone’s Il fuoco and Tigre reale, both starring Pina Menichelli in the female protagonists’ roles. Il fuoco derives its title and plot from a novel by Gabriele D’Annunzio, the most popular writer of that time. Even if the film is not a close adaptation of D’Annunzio’s work, it is influenced by D’Annunzio’s rhetorical style and spectacular representation.5 The title is clearly symbolic of the passion of love that develops here in three narrative parts, marking the different stages of the love story between a beautiful, rich, and successful woman poet from the city and a poor and naïve but talented painter from the countryside.
The first part is named La favilla, or “The Spark,” as it centers on the encoun-ter between the two and the immediate sexual attraction they feel for each other.
The second part is La vampa, or “The Blaze,” where the height of their passion is played out, while the third part, La cenere, or “The Ashes,” dwells with the end of their relationship and with the devastating effects, it has on the young man, who is unable to cope with his lover’s rejection. In each one of the three parts, the woman poet is clearly the one in control of the love relationship, playing thus both the erotic object of the young man’s desire and the shrewd initiator, activator, and eventual terminator of the relationship she had started to fulfill her own erotic desire. The camera is very careful in depicting the woman’s controlling role in the relationship, as it follows her closely in all her activities and initiatives while it is only minimally interested in catching the young man in revealing close-ups.
Pina Menichelli masterfully projects herself as an erotic object in the first two parts of the film, while in the last part she sets herself up as a cruel and danger-ous femme fatale who drives her lover mad with her indifference and refusal to recognize him. She dresses very elegantly and plays the role of an experienced and well-to-do, high-class city woman whose beauty and sophistication are hard to resist, especially for a poor and naïve young man who still lives with his mother in the country. The narrative indeed plays out extensively this conflict between city and country, connecting the two lovers and the binary polarities they repre-sent with the juxtapositions of experience/naïveté, richness/poverty, cruelty/good nature, and control/acceptance. This binary pattern creates a clear-cut gender differentiation. The woman, contrary to the traditional view of the city-country6 conflict, symbolizes the city and stands for experience, richness, cruelty, control, all of which are typically male qualities, while the man connotes the country and represents naïveté, poverty, good nature, acceptance, or mostly feminine qualities.
The film introduces this unusual pattern in the first sequences where a car, the woman poet’s car, symbol of urban technology, is riding on a small country road and defiling the peaceful, natural beauty of the countryside with the noise of its engine, the smoke of its exhaust, and the dust it creates on the unpaved country
road. This unfitting, obtrusive image of the car as symbol of city life prepares the audience for the appearance of the creature that will actually bring havoc to the peaceful serenity of a normal countryman. Indeed, when the car stops, the majes-tic and elegantly clad woman poet steps out of it, as she has come to the country from the city in search of inspiration. The camera follows her in medium- and full-length shots in her elegant, expensive attire, with a curious owl7 hat on her head, walking and then sitting on the grass with her notebook and pencil. Her presence there clearly visualizes her out-of-place condition and the conflict that exists between her and the natural backdrop where she has chosen to place herself momentarily. However, when the young painter is framed with similar shots on the same background, his presence clearly conveys the impression that he belongs there, with his modest appearance, inexpensive clothes, and rugged shoes.
The second part of the film deals with the sexual fulfillment of these two very dif-ferent lovers and cultures, which takes place in a neutral space, the owl castle, a space midway between city and country. The owl castle indeed combines the sophistica-tion and sumptuousness of the city in its interior with the serenity and tranquility of the country in its parklike exterior. In this way, both lovers feel at ease in this neutral environment, and their love burns naturally to its climax, until the woman, informed of her husband’s return, decides to put an end to their affair. She does not, however, communicate her decision to her lover, who is brusquely faced with the loss of her and of the beautiful dream of love, that he had naïvely believed could last forever.
The love affair at the owl castle does produce an artistic masterpiece—the young man’s nude painting of his lover—on which the camera lingers with obsessively long close-ups that underscore its mixed significance for both lovers. It will provide impor-tant proof of the woman’s controlling power in her city environment and in her lover’s life, as she will succeed in having the painting glamorously shown as a masterpiece in the city museum, thus instantly providing fame and success to its creator. At the same time, she will use this opportunity to break up their relationship, which has now become too dangerous for her social life in the city. For the young painter, his creation is his gift of love to her, but his main concern is to keep up their dream of love together, and he does not quite know how to react to his sudden notoriety.
The experienced city woman, on the other hand, knew that dreams usually end, and the dreamer has to wake up and face reality, a reality that is often cruel and painful. Indeed the full range of the woman’s cruelty and self-centeredness is revealed during the lovers’ last and only meeting in the city, when she publicly rejects him and maintains she does not even know him. In this sequence of scenes,
The experienced city woman, on the other hand, knew that dreams usually end, and the dreamer has to wake up and face reality, a reality that is often cruel and painful. Indeed the full range of the woman’s cruelty and self-centeredness is revealed during the lovers’ last and only meeting in the city, when she publicly rejects him and maintains she does not even know him. In this sequence of scenes,