Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-m6dg7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T13:00:42.238Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Disappearing acts: disability, gender, and the memory of Fascism in Italian film

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 April 2017

Sarah Patricia Hill
Sarah Patricia Hill*
Affiliation:
School of Languages and Cultures, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand
*
*Email: sally.hill@vuw.ac.nz
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Benedetto Croce’s description of fascism as ‘a moral illness of our time’ provides a useful starting point for thinking about the phenomenon of cine-revisionismo storiografico and the representation of Fascism and fascists in Italian cinema. In many films from the post-war period and beyond, the metaphor of moral illness is literalised in portrayals of fascist characters who are shown as mentally or physically sick or disabled (often confusing the two), in contrast to the otherwise healthy and wholesome body of Italians. Addressing the conflation of physical and moral impairment in three 1960 films that grapple with the memory of Italy’s Fascist past – Roberto Rossellini’s Era notte a Roma (Escape by Night), Carlo Lizzani’s Il gobbo (The Hunchback of Rome), and Florestano Vancini’s La lunga notte del ’43 (It Happened in ’43) – this article argues that in these films, bodies that do not conform to an able-bodied male norm function as lieux de mémoire that permit both the expression and containment of painful memories of the Fascist period.

Italian summary

La descrizione del fascismo come ‘malattia morale’, avanzata da Benedetto Croce, rappresenta un utile punto di partenza per riflettere sul fenomeno del cine-revisionismo storiografico e della rappresentazione di fascismo e fascisti. In molti film del dopoguerra, la metafora della malattia morale viene resa letterale, somatizzata, attraverso ritratti di personaggi fascisti con malattie o disabilità mentali o fisiche (spesso confuse le une con le altre), messi in contrasto con un’italianità altrimenti sana ed integra. Attraverso l’analisi della fusione tra disabilità fisica e degrado morale in tre film del 1960 – Era notte a Roma (Roberto Rossellini), Il gobbo (Carlo Lizzani) e La lunga notte del ’43 (Florestano Vancini) – questo articolo sostiene che, in questi film, i corpi che divergono dal prototipo della mascolinità normo-dotata fungono da lieux de mémoire, permettendo sia l’espressione che la repressione delle dolorose memorie del periodo fascista.

Keywords

disabilityItalian filmhistory and filmhistorical memoryItalian fascism
Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Italy , Volume 22 , Special Issue 2: History and Memory in Italian Cinema , May 2017 , pp. 155 - 166
Copyright
© 2017 Association for the Study of Modern Italy 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Asch, A., and Fine, M. 1988. “Introduction: Beyond Pedestals.” In Women with Disabilities: Essays in Psychology, Culture and Politics, edited by M. Fine, and A. Asch, 1–7. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Barnes, C. 1997. “A Legacy of Oppression: A History of Disability in Western Culture.” In Disability Studies: Past Present and Future, edited by L. Barton, and M. Oliver, 3–24. Leeds: The Disability Press.Google Scholar
Ben-Ghiat, R. 2005. “1‘Unmaking the Fascist Man: Film, Masculinity, and the Transition from Dictatorship.” Journal of Modern Italian Studies, special issue on Italian masculinity, 10 (3): 336–365.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bonicelli, V. 1961. Review of Era notte a Roma. In Il nuovo spettatore cinematografo, February III, 2 (19): 155–156.Google Scholar
Bosworth, R.J.B. 1998. The Italian Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives in the Interpretation of Mussolini and Fascism. London: Arnold.Google Scholar
Brizio-Skov, F. 2004. “Italian Post-War Cinema: 1945–1953.” In Reconstructing Societies in the Aftermath of War: Memory, Identity and Reconciliation, edited by F. Brizio-Skov, 29–50. Boca Raton: Bordighera Press.Google Scholar
Darke, P. 1998. “Understanding Cinematic Representations of Disability.” In The Disability Reader: Social Science Perspectives, edited by T. Shakespeare, 181–197. London: Cassell.Google Scholar
Davis, L. J., ed. 2013. The Disability Studies Reader. Routledge: New York and London.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Grazia, V. 1992. How Fascism Ruled Women: Italy 1922–1945. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Focardi, F. 1996. “‘Bravo italiano’ e ‘cattivo tedesco’: riflessioni sulla genesi di due immagini incrociate.” Storia e memoria 1 (1): 55–83.Google Scholar
Forgacs, D. 1999. “Days of Sodom: The Fascism-Perversion Equation in Films of the 1960s and 1970s.” In Italian Fascism: History, Memory and Representation, edited by R.J.B. Bosworth, and P. Dogliani, 216–236. London: Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fox, A. M. 2004. “‘But, Mother – I’m – Crippled!’: Tennesee Williams, Queering Disability, and Dis/Membered Bodies in Performance.” In Gendering Disability, edited by B. G. Smith, and B. Hutchinson, 233–250. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Garland-Thomson, R. 1997. Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Hill, S. P. 2014a. “A Family Affair: The Depiction of Disability in Contemporary Mainstream Italian Cinema.” Modern Italy 19 (2): 169–181.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hill, S. P. 2014b. “La disabilità fuori dal mito: La rappresentazione della disabilità nel cinema italiano indipendente.” In Un nuovo cinema politico italiano? Vol. 2, edited by W. Hope, L. D’Arcangeli, and S. Serra, 211–220. Leicester: Troubador.Google Scholar
Lichtner, G. 2013. Fascism in Italian Cinema. Basingstoke: Palgrave.Google Scholar
Marcus, M. 2008. “Pina’s Pregnancy, Traumatic Realism, and the After-Life of Open City.” Italica 85 (4): 426–438.Google Scholar
Mitchell, D., and Snyder, S. 2001. Narrative Prosthesis: Disability and the Dependencies of Discourse. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Monceri, F. 2012. Ribelli o condannati? ‘Disabilità’ e sessualità nel cinema. Pisa: ETS.Google Scholar
Paoli, M. 2012. “Carlo Lizzani’s Il gobbo (1960): A cinematic exploration of socially ‘engaged’ post-war criminality.” The Italianist 32 (2): 214–237.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Renzi, R, ed. 1960. Era notte a Roma di Roberto Rossellini . Bologna: Capelli.Google Scholar
Rizi, F. F. 2003. Benedetto Croce and Italian Fascism. Toronto and London: University of Toronto Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shakespeare, T. 1999. “Art and Lies? Representation of Disability on Film.” In Disability Discourse, edited by M. Corker, and S. French, 164–172. Buckingham: Open University Press.Google Scholar
Siebers, T. 2008. Disability Theory. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Turner, D. M. 2012. Disability in Eighteenth-Century England: Imagining Physical Impairment. New York and London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar