ROME LETTER
625
million lire (less than thirty-three thousand dollars). To help Italian
movie-makers out, the State gives back ten percent of the entertainment
tax to ordinary Italian films, and sixteen percent to those considered to
have "cultural merit." But, in order to profit from this help, Italian
movies have to have a longer run than is usual. Movie theater owners
have no preference for the national product. Any B grade American film
will draw more people than De Sica's or Rossellini's best work. Only
musicals based on Neapolitan songs, Neapolitan bosoms, Vesuvius and
the Madonna, can hope to compete with the Hollywood product. Hence,
the State pitches in again, with a law that orders all movie theaters to
have Italian movies on the program for at least eighty days a year,
under penalty of a three hundred thousand lire fine (about five hundred
dollars). Theater owners (especially in the provinces, pay the fine oc–
casionally), and keep on making money on Hollywood.
All this means that, in Italy, the better the movie, the more im–
portant financially the foreign market.
Ope,n City
and
Shoe-Shine
got
some financial reward from American and French, rather than Italian,
movie-goers. Such being the case, many people in Italy go around asking
that the State do for the Italian movie industry at least as much as the
French government does to protect French films against American com–
petition. These people are now dangerously near the realization of their
wishes. Any such event, however, would be a disaster, both artistically
and economically, for everybody except the producers of Neapolitan mu–
sicals. After the war, Italy gambled the little she had on a free market
policy.
If
Italian studios are busy now, it is because French, British, and
American producers find it convenient to work in Italy, where they can
count on low costs and no interference by the Government. Investing
frozen box-office profits in making movies in Italy is a sound business
proposition. The moment the Italians attempted to go back to the kind
of protectionism they practiced in the days of fascism, they would expose
themselves to deadly retaliations and unemployment. In fact, if they
have been able to rebuild and re-equip their studios ruined by bombings
and German looting, it is largely due to foreign investments.
This is not all. Talented directors like Rossellini, De Sica, De
Sanctis, Camerini, and the others also have a vested interest in the free
competition system. Money coming from State-protected profits would
be very bad money for them, since it would automatically mean going
back to State controlled movies, a regime of preventive censorship which
would make the production of decent pictures almost as difficult as it
was under fascism, together with the placing of a premium on mediocri–
ty. This the good directors dread more than anything, and so does the
