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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
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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 

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