The ’60s and ’70s were a highly politically-charged time for Italian cinema. The country’s neorealism movement chronicled working class lives in a post-WWII Italy — a newly post-fascist society still reeling from the fallout of the deadliest, most devastating conflict in human history. But unlike these grounded proletarian dramas, films like Ettore Scola’s A Special Day, Lina Wertmüller’s Seven Beauties, and most infamously Pier Paolo Pasolini’s hellish Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom confronted the nation’s fascist past directly and in subversive, often highly controversial ways. Bernardo Bertolucci’s luscious political thriller The Conformist, meanwhile, rendered the grim realities of fascism in ways none of his contemporaries did: alluring, hazy, anxious, and rife with repressed sexuality.
Part of Kicking the Canon – The Film Canon.
Published as part of InRO Weekly — Volume 1, Issue 1.
