R O ME LETTER
627
you couldn't show murder; suicide; people in rags; slums; lovemaking
between an unmarried, or unbetrothed, man and woman; an Italian
singing a love song ("Italians sing only when they work, or when they
march," said one official), and so on. Everybody also knew
t.~at
any
series of picture postcards on Italy's beauty, power, or civilizing mis–
sion, as well as any big spectacle about ancient Rome, with elephants,
naval battles and the Consul's triumph, would find the capital ncces–
sary to its production. But the trouble was that you couldn't possibly
make out what Mussolini's son meant when, placed as he was at thc
head of Italy's Hollywood, Cinecitta, he proclaimed that "The Italian
cinema must be healthy and luminous .. . because Italy
is Light."
O:1e
could produce what he thought the coziest, rosiest, and most koshrr
picture, and still be struck by the censor's lightning. In a movie directed
by Mario Camerini, there was a home-coming Italian American who,
seeing from the train the field where he had met his first love, wanted to
get off instantly and pulled the emergency cord. The conductor came
around, and fined
him.
The man took out a big bill, gave it to the State
railroad official, and made for the open country. The distribution of the
film was stopped. "You didn't show the conductor giving back the
change," explained the censor, "People abroad might think that Italian
civil servants take bribes." The whole first scene of the picture had to
be done over, with considerable expenditure and trouble. After which
the Duce passed the movie-makers in review, and told them: "I give
you one simple order: be the first." And the Minister of Popular Culture
';ldded: "Your movies must be about a society, ours, that, as distinguished
from Fance, has increased the birth-rate, where delinquency is on the
wane and ethical values are kept high not only by the State, but also in
the life of the family and of the individual." How one could make movies
on (faked) statistics, the Minister didn't explain.
Such things are still very much present to the memory of Italian
motion-picture people. For the time being, the "neo-realists" feel pro–
tected by public opinion, and the renown they have gained abroad.
"Neo-realism" has in fact become a catchword and a slogan, as well as
a stock formula in all highbrow dissertations about the recent develop–
ments of Italian picture-making. There have even been two Belgian
Dominican friars (one of them being Father Morlion, a prominent
teacher at the
Pro Deo
Institute, in Rome, and a member of the
Motion Picture Censorship Commission) who have written an article
on "The Philosophical Basis of Neo-realism in the Italian Cinema,"
which tries to prove that Italian postwar pictures are in perfect agree–
ment with Aristotelian and Thomistic metaphysics, insofar as their
