Cinema

   Journal. Founded in 1936 and published bimonthly, Cinema soon became one of the most important reference points for film culture in Fascist Italy. In spite of being directed from 1938 to 1943 by Benito Mussolini's son, Vittorio, the journal was host to a relatively wide range of opinions and included in its ranks not only left-wing critics but also clandestine members of the banned Italian Communist Party. Although its general tendency was to voice strong support for a national cinema, there was no attempt to hide an obvious admiration for Hollywood films, with Vittorio Mussolini himself expressing opposition to the 1938 monopoly law, introduced by his father, on the grounds that hundreds of American films would no longer find their way to Italian screens. Nevertheless, from 1941 onward, a group of militant young critics, congregating around the figure of Giuseppe De Santis, began to use the pages of the journal to call for a greater sense of realism in Italian films, taking as their model the 19th-century Sicilian novelist Giovanni Verga. It was this group that eventually collaborated with Luchino Visconti in producing what they regarded as something of a manifesto of this new sort of cinema, Ossessione (Obsession, 1943).

   After being interrupted by World War II, the journal resumed publication in 1948, again providing a range of perspectives on a variety of topics, including cinema and censorship, film audiences, and a number of special issues dedicated to a reappraisal of the work of veteran directors such as Mario Camerini and Alessandro Blasetti. However, as time went on, it hosted fewer theoretical essays and became more of a film magazine. After initiating a third series in mid-1955, it ceased publication in 1956.