Lantern Primary Sources in Context

Considering Lantern consists of 20 different collections and 2 million pages of digitized materials, my research will focus solely on columns and articles from the Motion Picture Herald spanning from pre- to post-WWII. This trade paper provides an editorial play-by-play of Hollywood’s and Italy’s production, distribution, and exhibition in Rome, particularly supported by the Fascist-established Cinecittà.

The Herald offers a distinctly American, popular point of view of the tense political and economic dynamic between Hollywood and Italy while the secondary sources clarifies context and incorporates Italian voices on the events that transpired. The articles and book below will help evaluate the narrative presented in the periodical's columns and articles. Please see the notes below to see exactly how they connect to my research.

1. David Welky, “‘A World Film Fight’: Behind the Scenes with Hollywood and Fascist Italy,” Film and History 47, no. 1 (Summer 2017): 4-17, EBSCOhost.

In this article, Dr. David Welky (Professor of History at the University of Central Arkansas) provides a backstage look at the clashing interests of Hollywood and Italy’s film market tempered by Fascist government officials that forced American filmmakers out just before the Second World War. Dr. Welky bases his research mainly on government memos from the U.S. State Department and private memos like those between Hollywood mogul, Will Hays, and soon-to-be Vatican Cardinal, Enrico Pietro Galeazzi. His article argues the New Deal free-trader’s appeasement of Fascist protectionists was all in vain. Italian officials persisted to raise dubbing taxes, lower export limits, and censor American films more than the Vatican, ensuring American business was driven out of Italy by the end of the 1930s. Film-fanatic Mussolini was set on creating an “autarky,” and the Italian film industry would be a cornerstone of the country’s economic strategy (p. 7). As the article’s title suggests, this secondary source will provide a behind-the-scenes look at the politics of the competing film markets to contextualize Motion Picture Herald headlines like “Italy Acts Officially to Freeze-Out Hollywood.”

3. Peter Bondanella and Federico Pacchioni, “Industry and Ideology: The Talkies during the Fascist Era," A History of Italian Cinema, 2nd ed. (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017) 23-61, Google Scholar.

In this chapter, Dr. Peter Bondanella (Professor Emeritus of Italian, Comparative Literature, and Film Studies at Indiana University) calls for a “critical reassessment of cinema during the Fascist period” (p. 26) which has been long overlooked by historians and critics who discounted these films as nothing more than state-subsidized propaganda when Mussolini intervened to save the dying film industry in the '30s. Unfortunately, Google Scholar has restricted the Bibliography and Notes page for this chapter. From the Notes of the first chapter, Dr. Bondanella primarily uses sources from other cinema scholars. He argues Mussolini’s belief that “cinema is the most powerful weapon” (p. 23) was not about the country’s fictional, feature-length films but rather newsreels created by Istituto Luce—the first melding of state and private interests by the Fascist regime. These aired at every theatre screening during intermissions and before the movie began. However, Bondanella asserts that state intervention also benefited the Italian film industry as a whole, establishing acclaimed actors, directors, and other professionals who laid the groundwork for the country’s distinct cinema culture realized after the regime’s fall in 1943. This chapter—which notes Hollywood’s monopoly on the European market as the industry’s cause of decay that led to Fascist state intervention—will provide the historical background needed to understand Italy’s relationship with Hollywood during this period. It will also put meaning to important state department names like the Ministry of Popular Culture and National Agency for Motion Picture Industries as well as the Alfieri Law mentioned in volume 131 of the Motion Picture Herald in 1938.

3. Steven Ricci, “Italy and America: Fascination and (Re)Negotiation," Cinema and Fascism: Italian Film and Society, 1922-1943 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008) 125-155, ProQuest.

In this chapter, Dr. Steven Ricci (Professor of Film, Television and Digital Media/Information Studies at the University of California) explores the Fascist-controlled film industry’s reluctance to solidify Hollywood as a “threat or ally” (p. 126). Similar to Bondanella, Dr. Ricci uses scholarly articles and books to compile his research. Due to Italy’s history of reliance on imported Hollywood films, he argues newsreels and documentaries were made to smooth over relations between the two countries during the early ‘30s. At the same time, Ricci notices feature-length films’ rejection of American culture by negatively coding settings and characters from the United States as immoral. Italy and Hollywood’s relationship were complicated by dynamic negotiations and mutual captivation. This chapter clarifies the foundation of transnational relations between the two film industries that lingered well after the Second World War as seen in a twelve-page spread on the “Salute to Italian Films Week” in a 1952 Motion Picture Herald issue.