2020/07/22 by Michael Guarneri · 1 citation
Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Social Sciences · #Cinema and Media Studies #European history and politics #Italian Fascism and Post-war Society
paper · doi:10.3366/edinburgh/9781474458115.003.0002
openalex publication_date 2020/07/22 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21
The chapter provides an overview of the history of the post-war Italian film industry from crisis to crisis, that is to say from the ground zero of 1945 (when the whole Italian film business had to be politically and economically reorganised, together with the rest of the war-torn country) to the ground zero of 1985 (the year in which, for the first time in almost three decades, Italian film production fell below the rate of 100 films made per year, as the culmination of a crisis that started in the mid-1970s). The chapter opens with an in-depth production history of <italic>I vampiri / Lust of the Vampire</italic> (Riccardo Freda, 1957), followed by an account of the 1958-1964 boom in the production of pepla, the historical-mythological adventures of the sword-and-sandal kind. Both cases (an isolated commercial failure the former; a short-lived box-office goldmine, or <italic>filone</italic> , the latter) are emblematic of the functioning of the Italian film industry between the early 1950s and the mid-1980s – a state-subsidised system mostly based on a constellation of medium, small and minuscule business ventures piggy-backing on popular genres/trends in the local and/or global film market.