The Role of Women in Postwar Italian Films

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Discussion
Conclusion
Works Cited

Introduction

In keeping with shifting cultural and historical contexts, cinematic portrayals of women have evolved throughout time. Italian neorealism was an artistic and cinematic style that sought to recapture Italy’s truth for a disenchanted Italian public after the indoctrination of fascism. The suffrage movement and the growing consciousness of gender equality shaped the portrayal of females in this period (Charitonidou 13). They had greater independence and responsibility in post-war films than before and a higher likelihood of working outside the house and pursuing an education. To illustrate this transformation, the paper discusses three Italian films, namely Roberto Rossellini’s Rome, Open City (1945), Pietro Germi’s Divorce, Italian Style (1961), and Giuseppe Tornatore’s La sconosciuta or The Unknown Woman (2006). The cultural norms put on women of the time generated a range of female depictions in cinema, with female roles scripted to accede, or more often oppose, the societal norms placed on them.

Discussion

The role of women in the first film, Rome, Open City (1945), is linked to the compromise of womanhood and morality as a way of gaining power in the early postwar years. Rome, Open City, is influenced by the struggle between Fascism and Nazism and the Italian Partisan Resistance (Forgacs 2). Manfredi and Don Pietro, who command the Communist Resistance and Partisan politics, respectively, exemplify the valiant and collaborative battle against an oppressive state. In juxtaposition, the two female protagonists in the movie, Pina and Marina, are presented as victims of Nazi oppression and brutality. Women continue to be characterized only in comparison to men, and their experiences are not scrutinized politically but instead subjected to patriarchal activity.

Although men in the film acquire status via political independence, which is demonstrated through collective revolution—women attain relevance through victimhood. The picture of the helpless lady encourages the viewers to relate with them rather than evoking empathy. Pina is the only female to acquire a hero reputation in the film. The viewer can learn about the conflicting character of an Italian female character in the postwar period by attentively examining her exploits in the movie. Pina is hailed as a legend solely because she serves as the trigger for the movie’s political agenda of unity.

The director inserts Pina in the thick of the bread melee to establish her as the movie’s star. Pina, enraged by a baker who caters to Fascists, attacks the bakery in a display of vengeful punishment, accompanied by several enraged women. She exits the disturbance with a small bit of bread and offers a loaf to her starving partner, an Italian policeman, with no reservation. Rossellini presents Pina in two stereotypically male positions in this quick sequence: the provider and the savior who takes from the wealthy and distributes to the poor (Bayman et al. 3). Pina is portrayed as a humble, gentle, and assertive protagonist; nonetheless, Rossellini diminishes her valor through contradicting personas. That is, he depicts her pregnant form in a medium-long sequence. Simultaneously emphasizing Pina’s pregnancy, Rossellini invalidates her legendary image by reminding the viewer of her motherly obligations. Thus, the filmmaker imprisons his heroine amid her successful deed with the feminine anticipation of childbirth.

Rossellini contradicts Pina’s reputation as an emancipated heroine in her death scene. The Nazis fatally shoot Pina for her defiance, and she drops to the ground. Rossellini emphasizes the futility of Pina’s killing by letting Francesco flee seconds thereafter in the next sequence. In contradiction to the other dead male heroes, Don Pietro and Manfredi die only for their political and intellectual ideals based on common resistance. In this way, conventional stereotypes of the fearful mother, the socially valued pregnant woman, as well as the defenseless lovestruck female obscure Pina’s perspective as the movie’s heroic figure (Leavitt and Charles 8). Pina embodies the conflict between rising female freedom and conventional female duties, reflecting postwar worries concerning women and their position in Italian culture. She is martyred to save Manfredi, the movie’s remaining protagonist.

The remaining female figures in Rome, Open City, Laurette, Marina, and Ingrid, essentially fall into the restricted classifications of seductress or antagonist, breaking family norms and posing a danger to patriarchy through their autonomy. While they seek financial independence and status, Rossellini cruelly criticizes every individual. In contrast to Pina, Marina declines to adhere to oppressive female responsibilities such as mother and wife since she views matrimony and parenting as a sacrifice of economic independence. She fears being doomed to the severe deprivation in which she was reared and declines to make any interpersonal or political commitments. Rather, Marina concentrates her whole sense of self-worth in the material possessions connected with economic success.

Similarly, Laurette is jealous of Marina’s wealthy situation and desires the same economic security, yet Ingrid is frigid, manipulative, and ruthlessly cruel. When taken together, these women’s worldly ambitions act as a warning message for an emerging culture of consumerism. Parigi (10) suggests that their death serves as a warning that women are penalized and treated like objects for carelessness. Consequently, Pina’s persona stands out compared to these female characters in the film, demonstrating the uniqueness of her heroine identity.

Women’s representation in Italian cinema changed significantly in the early 1960s. These developments may be attributed to the feminist movements during that era. Women started advocating for numerous things, including housekeeping allowance, divorce, safe birth control, abortion, and the elimination of domestic abuse. Italian women of this period made it quite apparent that they would not submit to injustice without fighting back, even if it meant physically confronting men. Divorce Italian Style (1961) consistently illustrates the troublesome paradoxes of heterosexual relationships in postwar Italy through humorous characters such as Fefè and Don Ferdinando.

Potentially influenced by the unbearable heat and somnolence of his days, obsessed with his sixteen-year-old cousin, Angela, Fefè envisions an opportunity to overcome the Catholic church’s ban on divorce. He uses a “loophole” that allows for divorce under certain circumstances. The idea emanates from a trial in Catania concerning an honor murder, in which a lady who killed her unfaithful spouse has become a legend for southern women who are often lured and deserted by irresponsible men. Fefè invents a similar act of murder which will free him from his wife, Rosalia. The evil act is to lead her into an adulterous affair with her former lover and then murder her to reclaim his honor.

Accordingly, gender depiction in Divorce Italian Style is heavily influenced by sexuality, the strict and set roles assigned to men and women in a misogynistic culture, and the honor code of an outdated and deceptive society based on hypocrisy. In this conventional and androcentric setting, males have ultimate dominance over females. The latter have their gender identity and sexual behavior closely monitored by the male figures in their lives, including fathers, spouses, and brothers. Paradoxically, men display their manhood and violate the traditional code of honor by engaging in adulterous sexual encounters. At the same time, they use every chance to mock Don Ferdinando, who is considered the disgraced cuckold of divorce.

One sequence has an elderly baron bullying the maid and ordering her to be silent because she is being too loud. This comment transforms the gender bias of the provocateur female into one that not merely tolerates but again welcomes sexual assault. In another instance, Agnese chides Don Ferdinando for being cuckold satisfied with his status because he has not responded to the dishonor in the conventional and anticipated way (by murdering his wife). The filmmaker appears to be mocking the Italian honor code in this situation by suggesting that Don Ferdinando’s inaction caused Agnese to be abandoned by Rosario, as the latter did not want to be associated with a dishonored family.

In many ways, the movie mocks Fefé with his hilarious notions on how to murder Rossellini. The director employs various amusing situations, like Fefé creating a hole in the room’s frescos and installing a mic to eavesdrop on his spouse. The filmmaker also includes hilarious moments of Fefé picturing various ways for his wife to perish, like sinking in quicksand, being shot into orbit, and being slashed. Thus, here Germi criticizes the Italian society at the time for valuing the code of honor more than a woman’s life (De Cristofaro 1). More importantly, humor is used to highlight how the legal system that prohibits divorce is disintegrating.

It suffices to say that the men’s failures or inability to kill their spouses show that the postwar Italian woman could not be controlled using retrogressive social codes. Each ridiculous effort Fefé makes to trap his wife in adultery to justify murdering her encounters several odd difficulties. In this sense, the movie comments on how difficult it was for men in Italy’s postwar era to exploit and abandon their spouses. Ultimately, the difficulties experienced to eliminate a wife outweigh the joy that should supposedly follow the act. By highlighting the case of the woman who killed her husband because of infidelity, Germi implies that Italian women at the time were capable of handling their business.

From the 1990s through to the early 2000s, Italian films increasingly focused on the challenges women faced in their role as mothers/housekeepers and the need to be economically independent. In Giuseppe Tornatore’s La sconosciuta or The Unknown Woman (2006), the tropes of gender concerns of nationality and social insecurity are associated with immigration. Furthermore, it explores concerns of personal identity concerning maternal and grieving concepts. The film seems to revolve around two women, Irena and Valeria, who claim maternal rights to a girl called Tea. Nevertheless, Irena’s enforced rejection of her identity as a mother involves a cycle of personal mourning and self-restructuring and raises questions about the concept of motherhood.

In essence, it can be argued that Irena’s unexplained reappearance in town was motivated by a wish to reunite with her daughter. Indeed, she attends an interview and is hired to fill Gina’s vacancy as Tea’s new caregiver. When Irena suggests that single life is insufficient to compensate for her errors, the joy of rearing Tea and her commitment to her well-being are seen as a maternal gesture. In this view, the disclosure at the movie’s conclusion that Irena was compelled to surrender nine children spanning twelve years enables the story to illustrate how the heroine is irreversibly cut off from motherhood.

This focus on the liberating impact of motherhood is consistent with and reinforced by mothering concepts. In Children, Love, and the Inner Life in Maternal Desire (2019), De Marneffe examines the idea of mother-infant fusion syndrome, which states that an infant’s first contact with their caregiver – habitually a mother – is marked by a sensation of unification or wholeness (67). Throughout the movie, Irena’s feeling of oneness is additionally confounded and defined by the fact that she has been pushed into separating herself from her children on several occasions. Eventually, this has affected her feelings of connectedness regarding her non-existent connection with all of her children and her capacity to perceive herself as a whole without them.

The movie’s multifaceted view of motherhood is mainly represented and emphasized by the striking difference between Irena and Valeria. Undoubtedly, this stems from their opposing attitudes of Tea’s parental care and their perceptions as mothers. Valeria is a rich, self-employed businesswoman with the financial and mental resources to support herself. Valeria’s personality seems to embrace her authority as a self-sufficient woman and her corporate reputation as a jewelry artist. Although she seems to nurture both identities successfully, it does not seem to apply to parenting her adoptive child or most motherhood tasks.

Valeria’s authority as a mum extends to the formalities that were performed for her and her spouse to be allowed to adopt a child due to her infertility. According to Pascuzzi (6), the conception of motherhood is, in fact, a display that she has chosen as a portion of a broader goal of self-actualization. Possibly this is because it looks to be a natural extension of her position. Unfortunately, Valeria does not qualify to be called a mother since that is not how she views herself. Moreover, unlike Irena, she has no desire to restructure her identity to fit the feminine role of motherhood. This explains why Valeria transfers her daughter’s parental care to Gina and later Irena while focusing on growing her firm and its economic and social influence.

Finally, when she is confronted with the possibility that Irena is Tea’s birth mother, Valeria has little to give the heroine. Instead, she threatens Irena, claiming that she is the real mom since all adoption documentation is in place. Here, Valeria shows off her child as if she is a possession she bought legally, and as a result, it is hers. Nonetheless, she does not offer or advocate for the empathic motherhood attachment expected of her. Irena’s personality is formed by her motherhood, and the movie emphasizes that this self-awareness is not limited or described by wealth or legal paperwork.

Conclusion

The analysis of the three films demonstrates that women had a significant part in Italian neorealism and that their contribution effectively supported the movement’s ideals. After World War II, they played a vital role in filmmaking. The use of women in postwar Italian films helped to push for social change and the emancipation of Italy as a nation from the fascist ideals that had a strong grip on the country’s social values.

Works Cited

Bayman, Louis, Stephen Gundle, and Karl Schoonover. “Rome, Open City: Rupture and Return.” Journal of Italian Cinema & Media Studies, vol. 6, no. 3, 2018, pp. 295-300.

Charitonidou, Marianna. “Gender and Migrant Roles in Italian Neorealist and New Migrant Films: Cinema as an Apparatus of Reconfiguration of National Identity and ‘Otherness,’” Humanities, vol. 10, no. 2, 2021, pp. 71.

De Cristofaro, Ernesto. “The Crime of Honor: An Italian Story.” Historia Et Ius, vol, 14, 2018, p. 1.

De Marneffe, Daphne. Maternal Desire: On Children, Love, and the Inner Life. Simon and Schuster, 2019.

Forgacs, David. “Rome, Open City: Before and After Neorealism.” Journal of Italian Cinema & Media Studies, vol. 6, no. 3, 2018, pp. 301-313.

Leavitt, I. V., and L. Charles. “Notes On the End of Rome, Open City.” Journal of Italian Cinema & Media Studies, vol. 6, no. 3, 2018, pp. 359-372.

Parigi, Stefania. “Death And The Gaze in Rome, Open City.” Journal of Italian Cinema & Media Studies, vol. 6, no.3, 2018, pp. 331-342.

Pascuzzi, Francesco. “Mothers at a Loss: Identity and Mourning in La Sconosciuta and Milyang.” Italian Motherhood on Screen. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 2017. 117-135.

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The Role of Women in Postwar Italian Films

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