Cinema as a Place of Educational Practice during the Fascist Regime in Italy (1922-1943)

Abstract

The evolution of Italian cinema in the first half of the twentieth century is intertwined with the historical events that marked Italy in the period between the two world wars: the coming to power of fascism and the rise to power of Benito Mussolini. Its protectionist policy favored the growth of the film industry that, in few years, created new forms of representation and made cinema a popular and mass art with a great pedagogical impact. He defined cinema as “the strongest weapon” because, through a strategic use of moving images, it had the power to “rule the gaze of the spectators”. After the advent of the sound cinema, from the thirties, the political intervention of the regime promoted some initiatives that made the cinema a space of education able to orient opinions, tastes, values, attitudes, lifestyles according to the fascist ideology and influencing the collective imaginary to build consensus. It was a pedagogical program that used different strategies: supporting the culture; controlling the information with an ideological use of the media (radio, magazines, newspapers, cinema); promoting the propaganda through sport and school. However, this totalitarian program was never fully realized, since the cinema industry, despite the intentions of the regime, had his own life and not only survived it, but also reached its flowering in the golden season after Second World War. Therefore, the historiography interprets fascist politics regarding cinema as an “imperfect totalitarianism” unable to create its own aesthetics and to go beyond the simple imposition of prohibitions, censorships, incentives and pressures. It was a regime that, while looking for popular consensus, was giving a little freedom to the intellectuals, tolerating the most different and apparently opposite tendencies, but also laying the foundations for a future dissent. Italian cinema searched its own clear stylistic identity, experimenting and elaborating different styles: a direct and indirect propaganda, fiction films, escapist cinema, realistic films. This variety of styles makes the films produced during the fascist period an immense reserve of documents about the educational practices that greatly changed habits of Italian families, not only influencing but also educating their consciences.