Denouncing D'Annunzio but Missing Marx The Failure of the Neorealists as Organic Intellectuals

History 170a Kabir Husain

There have been, throughout the history of leftist agitation, a surprisingly large number of remarkable leaders. The particular idiosyncracy of the most successful Marxist organisers has been their marriage of theory and practice, their happy union of ideology with progress. A streak of opportunism has always run through such people, and the ability to be flexible and responsive to situations: Lenin, Trotsky and Cohn-Bendit come to mind. It was Antonio Gramsci who first placed Marxist theoreticians within Marxist theory, creating the notion of the organic intellectual. As with any other theory, it is best to attempt an application to understand it better. We ask, then, in the light of Gramsci's theories, did the Italian neorealists serve the function of organic intellectuals in postwar Italy through their films? We argue that such a position escaped them, despite the apparent intrinsic relationship of their filming style with the subaltern classes. In fact, those aspects that would seem to be their strength undermined their ability to function in this manner. The question asked, while simple enough in statement, is long in implication and it would be best to approach it procedurally. Our argument must necessarily draw from several distinct elements. To show that neorealist directors could not approach Gramscian intellectualism within their art, we must also show how and why – the three questions, as shall be seen, are intrinsically intertwined. The process has three facets: historical, analytic and aesthetic. First, we must describe the neorealist movement as the product of its times and the socio-political movements in

the immediate historical neighbourhood. Then, applying what history has taught us, we must analyse the directors in the light of their movement and their films. All the while, we must keep in mind that aesthetics – or rather, the general presentation of subject matter in neorealist film – provides our most compelling, yet hardest to interpret, evidence. First, of course, we must attempt to grasp the beast we are trying to tame. Gramsci's Organic Intellectuals Gramsci posited that every social class forms its own cadre of intellectuals, whose natural function is to develop and maintain a paradigm of thought which gives ideological purpose and direction to that class. When one considers the traditional dialectical approach to society, it appears that, at any point in time, there exist two groups. The first are the traditional intellectuals, in whom there is no power for revolutionary change. The traditional intellectual can only be a product of that particular historical epoch, without the ability to see how or even if history will transform into the next stage. His approach is pan-class, pan-stratum, justifying the prevaling ruling class. The traditional intellectual cannot lead the revolutionary class. Yet intellectuals are needed by that class. At every stage in history, they must seek to give itself not only organization but also an identity. This identity must contain certainty of ideological purpose. The task of forming this ideology lies with the 'organic intellectual' – an intellectual who exists within a new paradigm unique to the revolutionary class. The organic intellectual must break with the intellectual traditions of the current society to fulfill his purpose. He must form his own paradigms,

give it [his class] homogeneity and an awareness of its own function not only in the economic but also in the social and political fields. The capitalist entrepreneur creates alongside himself the industrial technician, the specialist in political economy, the organisers of a new culture, of a new

legal system, etc.1

Hence, an organic intellectual must focus his energies around the revolutionary class, superceding current paradigms and giving, at the very least, a revolutionary ideology to the struggling movement. Are these qualities observed in neorealist directors as expressed through their films? Neorealism certanly held itself to be that which had not come before: artistically new and revolutionary. Its use of the lower strata of society as an aesthetic tool found wide praise amongst critics. The question that we must ask, however, concerns the politics of these films. Are they revolutionary enough to be expressions of organic intellectualism through art? Before we actually answer the question, consider some responses by critics. Take De Sica's Ladri di Biciclette, a film widely known and watched. Whilst one critic proclaimed it “the only valid Communist film of the past decade”2, another judged it, “At best...reformist; at worst, it legitimizes the ideology of bourgeois liberalism”3. Clearly, an overview of critical literature on neorealism is unlikely to yield entirely consistent results, necessitating a historical approach. It would be prudent, however, to keep in mind the words of one critic, which succintly captures the polarisation in opinion on the subject:

Though Italian neorealist cinema has been called 'a revolutionary cinema in a non-revolutionary society', a re-reading might see those political adjectives reversed4

Historic 1 Gramsci, Antonio. Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, http://www.marxists.org/archive/gramsci/prison_notebooks/problems/intellectuals.htm 2 Tomasulo, Frank. Bicycle Thieves: A Re-Reading in Vittorio De Sica: Contemporary Perspectives, ed. Howard Curle and Stephen Snyder, 163 (Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2000). 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid.

The strength of any Marxist historiography lies in its particular trait of identifying trends in any aspect of history. Applying the same methods to neorealism yields an interesting result: the neorealist director's feet were planted firmly in trends that predated the Second World War, finding root in one vital factor: D'Annunzian rhetoric and the fascist Italy. With the arrival of the First World War, Italy experienced a unique occurrence in its history. Prior to 1914, Italy had placed itself firmly within the camp of the Triple Alliance, alongside Germany and the Hapsburgs. With the arrival of the War, however, Italy was soon to join ('intervene') on the side of the Entente powers. That of interest to us, and that which was so very unique, was the public outcry for intervention in the First World War, and the repercussions that were to follow. For Italy was reeling from internal difficulties. Long years of political indecisiveness and burdened bureaucracy had taken their toll upon the Italians. From those of a literary or journalistic nature came a protest against this dilution of the Italian spirit, that Mazzinian quality that had initially spurred Italian nationalism. Written in the strongest terms, and influenced heavily by the romantic movement, the allure of this call to greatness was hard to ignore. It was in this movement that Mussolini so famously parted with the socialists and began to affiliate himself with that that would eventually grow into fascism. The interventionist movement was responsible for more than just Mussolini's secession from the socialists. It also created conditions favourable for his later rise. Important to this cause, and vital to the terminology, at the very least, of our analysis, was the case of D'Annunzio and his raid on Fiume. The end of the War did not quite satisfy those who had called for intervention, and many thousands of disgruntled veterans were added to the political scene. National pride, so instrumental in the rallying of Italy to war, had been slighted even further by the perceived failure of the winning powers to grant Italy the spoils of war. Drawing from this wellspring of righteous nationalist spirit, the famous poet Gabriele D'Annunzio, along with the syndicalist,

Alceste de Ambris, captured the port of Fiume in an act consciously designed to enter the history books as an intrusion of romanticism upon the real world. The lasting consequences of this act, in terms of solid politics, were few but it characterised much of the sentiment prevalent in certain Italy at the time, sentiment with which an entire generation of Italians were familiar. The fiery, romantic language in which it found expression became known as D'Annunzian rhetoric – nationalist rhetoric cast within a poetic tone. It was the de facto language of fascist Italy, the mindset in which so many existed. As expected, this mindset found its way into the cinema of the era. Many films made during the period reflected fascist messages and viewpoints of current events, primarily those that fell under the genre of historical epic. The historical epic was uniquely suited, in fact, to D'Annunzian rhetoric, for it combined a glorified militaristic culture with a constant reminder that the Italians descended from noble and powerful stock. Filmmakers would put immense battles on screen (a technique not unheard of in contemporary popular cinema), wowing audiences with romanticised depictions of the Punic Wars, or of Scipio's campaign in Africa. The neorealist film, in its very essence, was a denunciation of this D'Annunzian trend in cinema. Spurning the poetic view of the Italian people, neorealism operated by producing films of a 'gritty' nature, focussing on the hardships of the streets, the coasts and the villages. Italians were no longer the strong, militaristic people of the idealised Roman empire, but instead those struggling from day-to-day, a sight both familiar and yet utterly alien when seen in the cinema. The neorealists made films with the intent of crushing the artistic divide between reality and their arts. The difference in intent, in fact, crossed the line between artistic and political. Neorealist cinema, in its rejection of D'Annunzian rhetoric, was in fact responding to a clear socio-political need: to reject the influence of the fascists. A great number of neorealists were, if not PCI-

affiliated Marxists, of leftist orientation: Luchino Visconti filmed La Terra Trema at the behest of, and partly with the funds of, the PCI. Men of such political affiliation would feel a compelling need to reject the fascist voice. But this need not apply to Marxists. Consider Rossellini's film Roma:Citta Aperta, that opened the neorealist books in the annals of cinematography. Roma: Citta Aperta blatantly politicises its portrayal of characters.5 The last example brings to the fore a very important aspect of our argument. In Roma: Citta Aperta, Rossellini makes a distinct effort to seperate the Italian from the fascist. The majority of Italians are instead oppressed, embattled...and, in large part, resisting the fascist aggression. This has both aesthetic and political dimensions; aesthetically, neorealism must result in a breakdown of the ideal of the fascist man – fascism could not survive without the rhetoric particular to it. But critics, and the directors themselves (upon reflection), have found a political dimension. Liberation from the fascist vision was only one side of the struggle – the neorealists were seeking to replace it by one of their own. Pan-Italianism was then a major goal of the neorealists, stemming from a politically, and not simply aesthetically, motivated denunciation of D'Annunzian rhetoric. By removing the camera from set pieces, mock battles and the riches of antiquity, the early neorealist directors were attempting to capture Italy. They set out to redefine an artistic – and intellectual – vision of Italy without the aggressive nationalism that had characterised the preceding decades. They turned (naturally, a Marxist might say) to the streets and the hovels, to the subaltern classes. So far, we have discussed neorealism in the light of wartime fascist rhetoric. Yet, only two of the great neorealist pieces were made during this period: Visconti's Ossessione and Rossellini's Roma: Citta Aperta. Certainly, this backgroud gave the neorealist directors the trends from which their art sprang, yet the great majority of neorealist cinema took subject matter 5 Hopping, Douglas. Representative Characterization and the Social Imperative in Roma, Citta Aperta. Unpublished.

from the postwar period. Moreover, with the end of the war and fascist censorship (limited though it was in the case of film6), directors suddenly gained much greater freedom in their art. As one critic said, “The...collapse of Fascism represented...[a return to a] more natural, freer and emotive internal critique”7. So, neorealist cinema practically exploded. De Sica recalled of the time, “We were bursting with an overwhelming desire to throw the old stories of Italian cinema out of the window, to place the camera into the mainstream of real life, of everything that stuck [sic] our horrified eyes”8. It seems that, even though the initial historical basis for neorealism (the need to reject D'Annunzian rhetoric) was dying, the neorealist filmmakers were so inspired by their technique that they were eager to apply it to postwar society. Let us turn our attention to these films. Analytic De Sica lived up to his words in his films, in which the camera consistently explored society and its relationship with its inhabitants. In his best recognized work, Ladri di Biciclette, a young worker loses his job and, correspondingly, his hopes for a better life. Caught within a cycle of desperation, society forces our protagonist to evolve from the victim to the thief, eventually comitting the same act of thievery that the cycle began with. By forcing us to see the same character on both sides of the moral fence, we cannot but free ourselves from focussing on individual moral judgements and consider the larger framework of a corrupt society. Symbolically, the only source of salvation in the film is the son, whose presence at the very end of the film saves his father from further indictment by society. The imagery of children as saviours, and hence as the hope for the future, is cast further into bleak despair with De Sica's other great neorealist work, Sciusia. The boys of this film 6 Mancini, Elaine. Film Weapons For and Against the Regime in Oxford Art Journal Vol. 2, No. 2. 55. 7 Landy, Marcia. Remembrance of Things Past in Vittorio De Sica: Contemporary Perspectives, ed. Howard Curle and Stephen Snyder, 91 (Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2000). 8 Vitti, Antonio. Giuseppe De Santis and Postwar Italian Cinema, 21 (Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1996)

quickly lose the innocence Antonio's son possesses in Ladri di Biciclette, with the death of one at the end of the film quickly dispelling any doubts as to the depths to which society has fallen. In this particular work, however, De Sica moves a step further and makes society itself a victim:

Shoeshine does not simply portray brutality against children, for which society will have to pay no particular price and for which it is simply 'evil'. The film portrays society's brutality aginst itself, in the person of its future: the children...Shoeshine is the pathetic story of Giuseppe and Pasquale, but...that is not all. The tragedy of post-World War II Italy is reflected in their pathetic story9

With this, the well-known fixation of neorealist cinema with despair and hardship becomes apparent...a fixation well justified, for Italian society at the time was dealing with recovering from the fascist era, new political coalitions and oscillating between economic boom and crisis. De Sica was certainly not the only neorealist to deal with such matters, and one cannot question their relevance. That which is open to critique, however, is the treatment of the subject. De Sica, as can be seen above, gives little analysis of Italian society. The films almost only depict, never explain. There is “no class analysis at all,” with the place of analysis being taken by a “moralist/idealist (even Christian) critique of social injustice.”10. We are forced to accept this depiction of Italy in only the simplest of moral terms. Any politics that can be interjected must originate from our prior understanding of society, and would be greatly unchanged by the watching of this film. De Sica's lack of explanation does not make him unique in the world of neorealism. Take, for example, the films of Luchino Visconti. Visconti's political affiliations placed him firmly 9 Cardullo, Bert. The Art of Sciuscia in Vittorio De Sica: Contemporary Perspectives, ed. Howard Curle and Stephen Snyder, 91 (Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2000). 10 Tomasulo, Frank. Bicycle Thieves: A Re-Reading in Vittorio De Sica: Contemporary Perspectives, ed. Howard Curle and Stephen Snyder, 163 (Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2000).

within the camp of Marxism, and his work occasionally reflected that. In La Terra Trema, Visconti recounts a tale of Sicilian fishermen who attempt to “break the circle of poverty and exploitation”11 they're trapped in. Visconti originally envisioned the film as a documentary for the PCI, hence remnants of Marxist ideology remain visible. Yet, the majority of that film is an exploration of Sicilian society...and, if anything, the overwhelming message consists of a simple emotional judgement of the socio-economic state of that society. The Marxist tendencies of the director are being lost somewhere. In Marxism and Formalism in the Films of Luchino Visconti, Walter Korte demonstrates how Visconti's Marxism is continuously compromised, concluding that “the problematic center of all Visconti's work [is] the dialectical tension between Gramscian Marxism and formalism”12. Though Korte attributes this compromise primarily to Visconti's aristocratic heritage, in La Terra Trema it certainly arises from the film's preoccupation with objective renderings of Sicily as well. The point to be made here is that neorealism could not break into the camp proper of political cinema. Political messages could not, for the most part, find their way through the directors' overwhelming concern with exactly that subject that our historical analysis led us to predict: the definition and depiction of Italy. Aesthetic At the very beginning, we stated that the answer to the question under consideration was one part analytic, one part historic and one part aesthetic. The initial two factors have been dealt with: historically examing the roots of neorealism led to the understanding that neorealism concerned itself with the definition of Italy. Analysis of the subject matter of films reveals that neorealist film concerned itself with little more, politically speaking, than that depiction of Italy. 11 Poggi, Gianfranco. Luchino Visconti and the Italian Cinema in Film Quarterly Vol 13, No. 2, pp 14. 12 Korte Jr., Walter. Marxism and Formalism in the Films of Luchino Visconti in Cinema Journal Vol 11, No. 1, pp 11

Neither method has truly revealed a satisfactory answer to the question: do the neorealist directors serve as organic intellectuals? Let us step back and consider the style employed in neorealist films: objective representation of people and places. The word 'objective' means, of course, uncoloured and with as little artificiality as possible. Since political conclusions must often be constructed on top of a social situation, not being inherent to it, this would imply that a neorealist film simply cannot effectively carry a definitive political statement. Indeed, Rossellini considered a political ideology to be a prism13, twisting the reality of situations and hence not in the neorealist creed. Note that the films whose political – that is, Marxist - ideology speaks the loudest are those that lie at the edges of the neorealist spectrum: such as Riso Amaro. De Sica shot a scene in Ladri di Biciclette in which a group of communists gather and, in the process of shouting slogans, disrupt a practicing theater group. The critic Frank Tomasulo said of the moment that it “displaces the political content onto aesthetic form”14. The neorealist director seeks to define Italy anew, and to depict the hardships faced within its society. But his choice of style restricts his ability to create a unique political message from the cinematography itself. Instead of attempting to overcome this, however, the director embraces it as his founding ideology, the instruction manual from which he operates. Essentially, nothing politically new can emerge from his films. For if neorealism is the depiction of the already existing, then any political message conveyed must be a simple culling from society itself...that is, anything that emerges from this film must have already been clearly visible in society. If political ideology is a prism through which we observe, then our eyes are currently covered by glasses manufactured by the traditional intellectuals of our stage in history. To see a new paradigm, to understand society from within the revolutionary movement, we must be given 13 Rossellini, Roberto. My Method (New York; Marsilo Publishers, 1992), 202. 14 Tomasulo, Frank. Bicycle Thieves: A Re-Reading in Vittorio De Sica: Contemporary Perspectives, ed. Howard Curle and Stephen Snyder, 161 (Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2000).

another pair. The neorealist films of the immediate postwar era do no such thing, but instead are content to keep their criticism (which rarely attains harsh levels) within the very intellectual paradigm of the society they criticise. Hence, the neorealist director does not attain the function of an organic intellectual of the subaltern classes through his art. Before we bring the argument together concisely, let us consider the case of one of neorealism's stepchildren – Pier Paolo Pasolini. Pasolini, unlike the neorealist movement, thrived in the practice of pushing bourgeois society to the limit. As Luis Bunuel challenged society through absurdity, Pasolini used disgust to force the viewer to go past society's norms and examine it from an exterior position. Even the most neorealist of his films, Accatone and Mamma Roma, attempt to suspend reality and push the audience into a state wherein they gain a new perspective on society. Yet even Pasolini cannot be counted as an organic intellectual through film, for his brand of Marxism-on-screen abandoned the revolutionary cause, so to speak. In La Ricotta, we see the despairing case of the subaltern classes being decimated by a frivolous petty-bourgeois, the class that Pasolini hated above all others. This bleak prediction is not a warning. Pasolini once said,

Practically and ideologically, I no longer have any hope. I am without justifications and alibis...Thesis? Antithesis? Synthesis? It seems too convenient. My dialectic is no longer ternary; instead, it is binary. There are only irreconcilable oppositions. Therefore, no 'sole dell'avvenire', no better future15

The lack of hope, of a foreseeable future, means that while Pasolini had the skill to force audiences to consider society from outside the paradigm of the traditional intellectuals, he could not give the revolutionary class any part of a revolutionary ideology. Still, this by no means 15 Viano, Maurizio. The Left According to the Ashes of Gramsci in Social Text, No 18. 55

lessens the fact that Pasolini was much closer to the organic intellectual than the neorealists. It would be educational to spend a few minutes hypothesising why. Pasolini's career in film dates after the end of the Second World War. He was thus spared the historical process that led the neorealists to sacrifice contemporary politics for the cause of rejecting fascist rhetoric. Indeed, the film technique that Pasolini rejected to begin his own career was that of neorealism itself16. Hence, he had an advantage over the neorealists – instead of being forced to redefine the Italy of the present and deconstruct existing fascist representations, he could start from that objective basis (that neorealism provided) and deconstruct that in the sense of revolutionary class-struggle. Historically, then, Pasolini was in a far better place from which to undermine existing intellectual paradigms. Clausula A fundamental hypothesis in certain historical circles is that behind any phenomenon lies a solid, historical explanation. Even though philosophers such as Karl Popper have debated endlessly the benefits of such a historical approach17, the results it yields are clearly of value. Moreover, the technique is widely used. Recently, Eric Hobsbawm proclaimed that the 20th Century Avant Garde art movement had failed to satisfy its stated goal of creating an art suitable for the era18. Can a similar statement be made about the neorealist? Frankly, I'm afraid that I – and this analysis – cannot answer. What we can say is exactly that which we have already said. The neorealists, obsessed with the denunciation of D'Annunzian rhetoric, revolutionized aesthetics in cinema with their portrayal of the subaltern classes. Marcia Landy, in her Culture and Politics in the Works of Antonio Gramsci, claims that, for Gramsci, “the study of intellectuals and their production is

16 Viano, Maurizio. A Certain Realism (Berkeley; University of California Press, 1993) 87 17 See Karl Popper's The Poverty of Historicism 18 Hobsbawm, Eric. Behind the Times (New York; Thames and Hudson, 1999).

synonymous with the study of political power.”19 Perhaps some academic, at some point, will be able to historically analyse the neorealists to such a level so as to truly judge their intellectual contribution, and hence learn something of the political process of the era. Perhaps, however, we are far too stuck within our paradigms to do accomplish this. The understanding of politics through the study of this particular group of intellectuals would be a leap in thinking that might very well require an intellectual of organic nature to pull off. Or, perhaps it's better not to rely on superheroes. Bibliography ●

Gramsci, Antonio. Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, http://www.marxists.org/archive/gramsci/prison_notebooks/problems/intellectuals.htm

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Vittorio De Sica: Contemporary Perspectives, ed. Howard Curle and Stephen Snyder, (Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2000).

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Hopping, Douglas. Representative Characterization and the Social Imperative in Roma, Citta Aperta. Unpublished.

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Mancini, Elaine. Film Weapons For and Against the Regime in Oxford Art Journal Vol. 2, No. 2.

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Vitti, Antonio. Giuseppe De Santis and Postwar Italian Cinema, (Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1996)

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Poggi, Gianfranco. Luchino Visconti and the Italian Cinema in Film Quarterly Vol 13, No. 2

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Rossellini, Roberto. My Method (New York; Marsilo Publishers, 1992)

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Korte Jr., Walter. Marxism and Formalism in the Films of Luchino Visconti in Cinema Journal Vol 11, No. 1

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Viano, Maurizio. The Left According to the Ashes of Gramsci in Social Text, No 18.

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Viano, Maurizio. A Certain Realism (Berkeley; University of California Press, 1993)

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Hobsbawm, Eric. Behind the Times (New York; Thames and Hudson, 1999)

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Landy, Marcia. Culture and Politics in the Works of Antonio Gramsci in boundary 2, Vol. 14 No. 3

19 Landy, Marcia. Culture and Politics in the Works of Antonio Gramsci in boundary 2, Vol. 14 No. 3 53