California Italian Studies

Even though Mussolini’s famous definition of cinema as “the strongest weapon” implies a common ground between filmmaking, propaganda, technology, and warfare, a casual viewer of Fascist-era films would be hard-pressed to find explicit references to this interconnectedness. In fact, narrative films made at the time hardly ever dealt with the realities of the regime, to the point that in 1979 Carlo Lizzani spoke of Fascist cinema by calling it “an absence.” Nonetheless, the Fascist obsession with modernity and technological innovations emerges in different ways from most films produced during the Ventennio. Despite their surface-level optimism and faith in the process of modernization, many of these films betray the feelings of anxiety and uncertainty that accompanied the shift from tradition to modernity, reflecting the complexity of the regime’s own attitude towards these cultural modes. In particular, films shot on location in the colonial territories of Eastern Africa display an interesting ambivalence towards technology and the colonial effort itself: while their narratives are seemingly celebratory, the cinematic style they display reveals a more complicated relationship with the Fascist myth-making agenda.

This paper will examine four titles belonging to this body of films, grouped by Ruth Ben-Ghiat under the label of Fascism’s Empire Cinema, and will explore their portrayal of modernity by focusing on their representation of the relationship between technology and the human body. I will argue that these films reflect the contradictions intrinsic to the Fascist ideology of progress, and the technological mediation of the camera allows for this ambivalence to emerge without being explicitly stated. That is why, rather than adopting a cultural studies approach, I will employ film analysis as a tool to conduct historical research. I will depart from the film texts and, by analyzing the formal structure of some of their key moments, will locate the places in which feelings of uncertainty towards Fascist ideals of progress, strength, and masculinity ripple underneath a seemingly triumphal surface.