Chapter 4 - Mussolini the Censor

Summary

Chapter 4, “Mussolini the Censor,” discusses his role in the theatrical censorship process, which he centralized in 1931 and presided over, directly and indirectly, for the decade that followed. It gives ample space to previously unexplored archival documents, including scripts as sent to and then modified by the censor, Leopoldo Zurlo, and to this official’s 1952 memoir. Reconstructing the management of hot-button themes and authors both native and foreign, unknown and famous (like Bernard Shaw, Pirandello, and the then emerging Vitaliano Brancati), the analysis covers the rules and their exceptions, censorship as it was stipulated on paper and what it looked like in actual practice. Juxtaposing these stories and analyses with statistical evidence, the chapter provides a comprehensive picture of the dictatorship’s theatre censorship that enables comparison – of fascism to the periods that came before and after, and of Italy to the world beyond its borders. The emerging image is of a process less unique and draconian but perhaps more unsettling than often imagined.