Open Roads: New Italian Cinema At Lincoln Center 2008

[Chris Knipp]

I've condensed and updated the Festival Coverage introduction for this thread and added a couple of links to commentaries by Greenscene and Martin Tsai in The New York Sun. As Tsai notes, Matteo Garrone's Gomorrah and Paolo Sorrentino's Il Divo, which won prizes for Italian films at Cannes this year, were not shown because they're being held for the New York Film Festival, also run by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and scheduled for Sept.26 –Oct. 12.

I tend to agree with Tsai's assessment. He's right that obviously Italian movies still aren't what they used to be in their glory days, nor are many of these from this year's OPEN ROADS series distinctly "Italian" (though at the same time, most of them actually are!--they just don't give off the feel of a distinctly Italian cinematic style as the great directors of the Sixties did). However, I thought the general watchability level was notably higher this year than last in the series, and that seemed a very positive sign. On the other hand, frankly Greenscene's piece is mainly just pre-festival puffery, with the writer loathe to utter a single critical word.

Tsai is right about Italian cinema today, but the truth is somewhere between these two pieces, because we barely know how much good stuff is being produced in Italy, and the Italians barely know either, which is one of the problems, obviously. Only one of the OPEN ROADS films as far as I know has US distribution. But some of these films also were very little seen in their home country as well, not because of narrow appeal so much as because of poor distribution of local films in Italy, where American moves, 95% dubbed, prevail.

[Chris Knipp]

Today July 9, 2008 there is a followup on the Cannes Italian film story in an Arts section NYTimes piece by Elizabetta Povoledo about what the two prizes for Italian movies at the festival this year mean and how they're a shot in the arm for the local film industry.

Matteo Garrone's GOMORRAH (about the Mafia) won the Grand Prize and Paolo Sorrentino's IL DIVO (a scathing biopic about long-time Italian PM Giulio Andreotti) won the Jury Prize. Povoledo describes the Italian reaction:

The news media went wild.

“The Italian redemption,” the critic Natalia Aspesi wrote in a front-page article in the Rome daily La Repubblica, lavishly praising the two films for their clean break from the spiritless cinema that had taken root in Italy in recent years.

--Povoledo, NYTimes.

The benefit of this double win, which was greeted in Italy, Povoledo says, like winning a national soccer championship, is that the image of a return to world class filmmaking in the eyes of the public may force the government to improve its support. Government officials protest that the support is there, and both GOMORRAH and IL DIVO were made with RAI (state) funding; but a crucial element is the distribution system. Good movies are made in Italy and then allowed to die on home ground unseen. Obviously GOMORRAH and IL DIVO have not been allowed to die but have now been very widely shown and watched.

Their success--GOMORRAH's box office take in Italy is second only to the new Indiana Jones--could in turn help make Italian financiers see home grown movies as a potential money maker.

Further off perhaps is the day when sophisticated film fans in other countries such as the US will come to revere Italian directors as they did in the glory days of Rossellini, De Sica, Fellini, and Antonioni.

But to a considerable extent the negative state of affairs for Italian cinema has been homegrown--and different from France where the government ever since WWII has supported national cinema against Yank inroads. Surely this is an important aspect of government support too--not just funding the occasional independent film, but stemming the tide of American blockbusters from pushing Italian movies out of Italian movie theaters.

The NYTimes article touches on the Lincoln Center "Open Roads" series of this thread, citing Irene Bignardi of Filmitalia:

“The fact that two fine and important films won gives resonance to both films,” said Irene Bignardi, the president of Filmitalia, which promotes Italian cinema abroad. The films were not made in a vacuum, she noted, but “emerged from an overall situation that is quite bright.”

Ms. Bignardi had just returned from New York and the eighth edition of the Open Roads film festival, which showcases emerging Italian talents.

This highlights the fact that Open Roads is an important showcase for Italian cinema abroad.

It seems a little ironic that Martin Tsai condemns the Open Roads films for being indistinguishably international, not uniquely Italian, when Poveledo points out that

While Gomorrah and Il Divo deal with distinctly Italian themes, they use a narrative and visual language that is decidedly international, and that, critics concur, accounts for their success at Cannes.

Obviously a great filmmaker has to be both sui generis and universal. It may be time to stop pooh-poohing contemporary Italian cinema and start taking a closer look at it. The Cannes wins will speed this process.