Dal veneto minore ai fasti imperiali: il documentario italiano tra realismo e propaganda (1925-1945)

of the images of World War II and of the Resistance, and the silent and hidden face revealed by many documentaries, in primis those of Francesco Pasinetti. The candidate’s subject of the research is the evolution of Italian documentary cinema from the ‘30’s to mid-40’s with a few partial references of the production of the ‘20’s. This is because a large part of the examined documents come from the Archives of the Luce Institute, which, from 1926-27, optimized the typologies of audio-visual products and communication strategies that this research, as well as a large part of the reference bibliography, has demonstrated to be almost unchanged over the considered years. The introduction underlines how, from the ‘30’s, the apparent absence of masters, as elsewhere were Flaherty, Grierson or Ivens, or of a unifying school, as a result gives a critic storiography’s skeptical position to the documentary production and the poor amount of studies over this subject. The following chapters deal with the movies in question. The films are analyzed, as can be foreseen, from a diachronic point of view, but, above all, by pointing out their different purposes or requests: from the cinema archives’ educational-informative documentaries to the most clearly propagandistic ones, even concerning war, made by Luce, and, starting from 1938, by Incom. A chapter of the thesis was devoted to the auteur documentaries, particularly Cines’ under the direction of Emilio Cecchi (we analyzed the films by lasetti, Bragaglia, Poggioli, Vergano, Barbaro, Perilli, Gabriellino D’Annunzio who wanted to discover, among other things, the locations of archeology and art): we tried to demonstrate the exceptionality of these materials and a few others, such as I cantieri dell’Adriatico by Umberto Barbaro or Il pianto delle zitelle by Giacomo Pozzi Bellini, in comparison with a remaining propagandistic production or a production in which Luce does not use the important names that it has. The second part of this chapter is devoted to the quality documentary and is related to the production of the so-called Fascist “left” (made up of young academics, a few of them already secretly anti-Fascists), whose battle, above all, during the first years of World War II, aims at affirming a realistic view that, abandoning the conventions and falsenesses of the old way to make a show, opens the gate to the popular world, to the Italian society like it is and not like the myths and the slogans of the regime in the contemporary propagandistic documents represent it. Particular attention was paid to the documentaries made in Northern Italy, from Gente di Chioggia by Basilio Franchina to Comacchio by Fernando Cerchio, and, above all, by Francesco Pasinetti, author to whom the greatest attention was devoted in this work and, in particular, to his relationships with the Fascist culture and the city of Venice of which he is the most detailed and inspired poet. The largest part of the examined documents is relevant to the newsreels and documentaries of the Institute Luce with a Venetian location to outline, not only the relationship between film and propaganda or film and poetical needs of a specific director, but the modes by which the cinema could interpret the Italian territory and, specifically, this region. A few important figures: 250 records (the word indicates the single references of the Archives and, therefore, can be used either for newsreels or documentaries or film libraries) from Belluno (meant as a chief town and province), 370 from Padova, 50 from Rovigo, 100 from Treviso, 960 from Venice, 290 from Verona, 120 from Vicenza. The analysis of such a rich group of materials allowed us to identify a series of recurrences (also deductable by numbers) in the objects and modes of the communication of newsreels and allowed to compare them with those of other regions or other forms of communication. This comparison was particularly interesting in the case of Venice, a city suspended between formalism and worldiness of the Luce newsreels, between the historical strength The candidate’s subject of the research is the evolution of Italian documentary cinema from the ‘30’s to mid-40’s with a few partial references of the production of the ‘20’s. This is because a large part of the examined documents come from the Archives of the Luce Institute, which, from 1926-27, optimized the typologies of audio-visual products and communication strategies that this research, as well as a large part of the reference bibliography, has demonstrated to be almost unchanged over the considered years. The introduction underlines how, from the ‘30’s, the apparent absence of masters, as elsewhere were Flaherty, Grierson or Ivens, or of a unifying school, as a result gives a critic storiography’s skeptical position to the documentary production and the poor amount of studies over this subject. The following chapters deal with the movies in question. The films are analyzed, as can be foreseen, from a diachronic point of view, but, above all, by pointing out their different purposes or requests: from the cinema archives’ educational-informative documentaries to the most clearly propagandistic ones, even concerning war, made by Luce, and, starting from 1938, by Incom. A chapter of the thesis was devoted to the auteur documentaries, particularly Cines’ under the direction of Emilio Cecchi (we analyzed the films by lasetti, Bragaglia, Poggioli, Vergano, Barbaro, Perilli, Gabriellino D’Annunzio who wanted to discover, among other things, the locations of archeology and art): we tried to demonstrate the exceptionality of these materials and a few others, such as I cantieri dell’Adriatico by Umberto Barbaro or Il pianto delle zitelle by Giacomo Pozzi Bellini, in comparison with a remaining propagandistic production or a production in which Luce does not use the important names that it has. The second part of this chapter is devoted to the quality documentary and is related to the production of the so-called Fascist “left” (made up of young academics, a few of them already secretly anti-Fascists), whose battle, above all, during the first years of World War II, aims at affirming a realistic view that, abandoning the conventions and falsenesses of the old way to make a show, opens the gate to the popular world, to the Italian society like it is and not like the myths and the slogans of the regime in the contemporary propagandistic documents represent it. Particular attention was paid to the documentaries made in Northern Italy, from Gente di Chioggia by Basilio Franchina to Comacchio by Fernando Cerchio, and, above all, by Francesco Pasinetti, author to whom the greatest attention was devoted in this work and, in particular, to his relationships with the Fascist culture and the city of Venice of which he is the most detailed and inspired poet. The largest part of the examined documents is relevant to the newsreels and documentaries of the Institute Luce with a Venetian location to outline, not only the relationship between film and propaganda or film and poetical needs of a specific director, but the modes by which the cinema could interpret the Italian territory and, specifically, this region. A few important figures: 250 records (the word indicates the single references of the Archives and, therefore, can be used either for newsreels or documentaries or film libraries) from Belluno (meant as a chief town and province), 370 from Padova, 50 from Rovigo, 100 from Treviso, 960 from Venice, 290 from Verona, 120 from Vicenza. The analysis of such a rich group of materials allowed us to identify a series of recurrences (also deductable by numbers) in the objects and modes of the communication of newsreels and allowed to compare them with those of other regions or other forms of communication. This comparison was particularly interesting in the case of Venice, a city suspended between formalism and worldiness of the Luce newsreels, between the historical strength of the images of World War II and of the Resistance, and the silent and hidden face revealed by many documentaries, in primis those of Francesco Pasinetti.

Il lavoro di ricerca del candidato ha come oggetto l’evoluzione del cinema documentario italiano dagli anni Trenta alla metà degli anni Quaranta, con alcune parziali incursioni nella produzione degli anni Venti. Questo perché parte consistente dei materiali esaminati provengono dall’Archivio dell’Istituto Luce che, proprio a partire dal 1926/27, mette a punto tipologie di prodotti audiovisivi e strategie comunicative che anche questa ricerca, al pari di buona parte della bibliografia di riferimento, ha dimostrato mantenersi sostanzialmente immutate nel corso degli anni presi in considerazione. Dalle pagine introduttive in cui si sottolinea come una, almeno apparente, assenza fin dagli anni Trenta di maestri come altrove sono Flaherty, Grierson o Ivens o di una scuola unificante si traduca in una posizione scettica della storiografia critica nei confronti della produzione documentaria e in una conseguente scarsità di studi in materia, si passa ai capitoli di analisi dei film in questione. Film analizzati prevedibilmente in prospettiva diacronica, ma soprattutto evidenziando le diverse finalità o istanze di cui essi si fanno carico: dai documentari educativo-informativi delle cinemateche a quelli più dichiaratamente propagandistici e di argomento bellico prodotti dal Luce e, a partire dal 1938, dalla Incom. Un capitolo della tesi è stato dedicato anche alle manifestazioni del documentario d’autore, in particolare di quello della Cines sotto la direzione di Emilio Cecchi (si sono analizzati film di Blasetti, Bragaglia, Poggioli, Vergano, Barbaro, Perilli, Gabriellino D’Annunzio che vanno alla scoperta, tra le altre realtà, di località d’archeologia e d’arte): si è tentata di dimostrare l’eccezionalità, di questi e di pochi altri materiali, come I cantieri dell’Adriatico di Umberto Barbaro o Il pianto delle zitelle di Giacomo Pozzi Bellini, ad una produzione per il resto prevalentemente propagandistica o nella quale il Luce, sebbene attivo, non impegna le grandi firme di cui pure dispone. Il secondo nucleo di questo capitolo dedicato al documentario di qualità è quello legato alla produzione della cosiddetta “sinistra” fascista (composta da giovani intellettuali, alcuni dei quali già segretamente antifascisti), la cui battaglia, soprattutto durante i primi anni del secondo conflitto mondiale, è finalizzata all’affermazione di una linea realistica che, uscendo dalle convenzioni e dalle falsità del vecchio modo di fare spettacolo, spalanchi le porte al mondo popolare, alla società italiana così come è e non come, nei coevi documentari di propaganda, la rappresentano i miti e gli slogan del regime. Con un’attenzione particolare ai documentari realizzati nel Nord Italia, da Gente di Chioggia di Basilio Franchina a Comacchio di Fernando Cerchio, passando soprattutto per la figura autoriale cui è stata dedicata maggiore attenzione in questo lavoro di ricerca: quella di Francesco Pasinetti, in particolare nelle sue relazioni con la cultura fascista e la città di Venezia, di cui risulta essere il più attento e ispirato cantore. La parte quantitativamente più consistente dei materiali esaminati è, però, quella relativa ai cinegiornali e documentari dell’Istituto Luce di ambientazione veneta per delineare non più, o non tanto, il rapporto tra pellicola e propaganda o pellicola ed istanze poetiche di un determinato regista, quanto piuttosto le modalità con cui la cineinformazione ha saputo leggere il territorio italiano, e questa regione in particolare. Qualche numero indicativo: 250 record (termine che indica le singole rispondenze dell’Archivio, quindi utilizzabile tanto per cinegiornali che per documentari o materiali di repertorio) per Belluno (inteso come capoluogo e provincia), 370 per Padova, 50 per Rovigo, 100 per Treviso, 960 per Venezia, 290 per Verona, 120 per Vicenza. L’analisi di un così significativo corpus di materiali ha consentito di identificare una serie di ricorrenze (rilevabili anche numericamente) negli oggetti e nelle modalità della comunicazione cinegiornalistica e ha permesso di raffrontarle con quelle di altre realtà regionali o di altre forme comunicative. Raffronto, questo, che si è rivelato particolarmente interessante nel caso di Venezia, città sospesa tra l’ufficialità e la mondanità dei cinegiornali Luce, la carica storica delle immagini della seconda guerra mondiale e della Resistenza e il volto silenzioso e nascosto svelato da molti documentari, in primis quelli di Francesco Pasinetti.