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The age of innocence? Child narratives and Italian Holocaust films

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 January 2016

Giacomo Lichtner
Giacomo Lichtner*
Affiliation:
School of History, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand
*
∗Email: Giacomo.Lichtner@vuw.ac.nz
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Abstract

This article critically assesses the use of children as narrators in two recent Italian Holocaust films: Roberto Benigni's La Vita é Bella (1997) and Ettore Scola's Concorrenza Sleale (2001). The analysis places the films and their choice of narrator in the context of the child in European Holocaust film and argues that the child's perspective, often used to qualify the actions of adult characters and cast a questioning or even accusatory gaze on them, is used in these Italian films to perform the opposite function. Focusing on cinema as a site of memory and as a site of emotions, the article suggests that Italian filmmakers use children to infantilise the audience, induce pity rather than reflection, and discuss Italy's role in the Holocaust while reassuring audiences of the life-affirming, democratic and humanitarian values of post-war Italians. This political and historiographical use of the child's emotions not only reinforces the need to insist on the revision of the brava gente myth, but also invites a thorough reconsideration of the complexity of the relationship between the historical film and the emotions.

Keywords

ItalyemotionsFascismHolocaustcinemachildren
Type
Articles
Information
Modern Italy , Volume 17 , Issue 2: Special issue: Emotions , May 2012 , pp. 197 - 208
Copyright
Copyright © Association for the study of Modern Italy 

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