This month's issue of Sight & Sound -perhaps the only British magazine I would die to work for- features an "Italian Cinema Special", with interviews to Luca Guadagnino and Tilda Swinton, respectively director and producer/star of I am love (out now), an account of the state of the seventh art in the Bel Paese, a thorough review of La Dolce Vita and what it represented and still represents in Italian cultural landscape, and a review of Marco Bellocchio's Vincere, a powerful biopic of Mussolini's life seen through the eyes of his mistress, Ida Dalser.
I devoured the section with the voracity and nostalgia of the expat craving for times long gone. Coming two days after watching Videocracy and a month or two after watching Fellini's masterpiece (shame on me, I know), the special left me with a bitter taste in the mouth. I have always underestimated Italian cinema, ignorant of the fact that some of our directors have made history. I have always underestimated the passionate storytelling that some of our filmmakers are capable of. I have always underestimated the richness in stories that are worth telling in our history, in our past, in our present, in our future. I have always underestimated the array of talents that work behind the screen: screenwriters, cinematographers, costume and set designers, make up artists, score creators. And for a moment I thought I could belong there, where things are first shaped, where dreams first materialize in drafts and sketches.
Despite this enthusiasm, a shady cloud hovers on Italy's cinema: "In a culture we love, we don't have a cultural policy," said Gomorra's producer Domenico Procacci, denouncing the lack of investments and funding. Still, some sparks of creativity and cultural provocation are lighting. If the tv offers the Italiano medio no hope, at least in the darkness of the cinema hall they can find the brightness of our crème de la crème artists.
And finally, La Dolce Vita, the movie that defined an era, the movie that still defines abroad a country. It feels so close to my heart now, even though I don't have the rest of the marvellous cityscapes of Rome. In his analysis of the film, Lee Marshall says: "the theme of men who are lost and know it, but are too lazy, cynical or self-hating to do much about it". He's scribbling my pain with his pen, typing my life with his fingers. He's pinpointing my plight of a middle-class unsatisfied girl, who still lives at her parents' expenses, wants to do everything and in the end lingers on doing just nothing. But that's another story.
La Dolce Vita brings to full circle this special section: all which epitomises Italy is portrayed in this film. Marcello, the bored journalist who dreams of being a writer; Paparazzo, the reckless photographer who treads upon people's feelings for a shot even when they're stricken by family tragedy; Emma, the nerve-racking woman who gives enduring love and forgives and struts and frets; the aristocrats and expatriate intellectuals, who enjoy a life of pleasure and idleness. And then the Catholic sketches, from the impressive opening scene with a Christ seemingly rock-star carried around on a helicopter hovering over the Vatican, to the fake miracle sequence, a stark critique of children's exploitation, media leeching, people's ignorance and, nevertheless, a beautiful meshing of awe, superstition and faith. And then the final scene, which is almost unintelligible. A sting ray has beached, the party guests go on the shore to stare at the "monster". Paola, the sweet teenage girl Marcello has met earlier on, is there as well, smiling at the man with naivety and sensuality at the same time.
Marcello represents the typical Italian man, wanting love, yet enjoying the hunt. In this respect, La Dolce Vita can be about the "sensuality of power and its masculinity", just as much as Vincere. "Italy gave the world its first camera-friendly dictator," argues Guido Bonsaver, author of the article The Great Seducer. Mussolini was definitely not the only one, I would add. Videocracy's images are still whirling in the back of my head and Lele Mora's words about how Berlusconi is obsessed with his image. And then I recall one the Prime Minister's neighbour in Sardinia, Marella, who talked about a little device Berlusconi has built in his villa for his entertainment: a sort of volcano that he activates with a wireless remote control. The man who rules our country: a 73-year-old who amuses himself by making a fake volcano erupt in his luxurious villa surrounded by bikini-clad ladies. Then the sequence shifts to another 73-year-old who has to make ends meet with a 500 euros pension, surrounded by anyone. Would it make an effective cinematic sequence?
And then the Prime Minister has the guts to say to people who criticise him for being detached from reality that they have no sense of humour, no joy for life. It's easy to say that when you're billionaire, can afford the triviality of hair and facial treatment to look younger than Madonna and can change people's career with a phone call. But there is still room for Resistance. Despite an unhealthy populism in Italy, a vice that has marred more than once our history and has made people blind before a persona's charisma, there are still corners where the imagination is free to dream again of a sweet life. Corners for poets and filmmakers to swim against the tide.
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