''Calligrafismo'' (; ) is an Italian style of

filmmaking Filmmaking or film production is the process by which a Film, motion picture is produced. Filmmaking involves a number of complex and discrete stages, beginning with an initial story, idea, or commission. Production then continues through screen ...

relating to some films made in Italy in the first half of the 1940s and endowed with an expressive complexity that isolates them from the general context. ''Calligrafismo'' is in a sharp contrast to ''

Telefoni Bianchi ''Telefoni Bianchi'' (; white telephones) films, also called deco films, were made by the Italian film industry in the 1930s and the 1940s in imitation of American comedies of the time in a sharp contrast to the other important style of the era ...

''-American style comedies and is rather

artistic Art is a diverse range of culture, cultural activity centered around works of art, ''works'' utilizing Creativity, creative or imagination, imaginative talents, which are expected to evoke a worthwhile experience, generally through an express ...

, highly formalistic, expressive in complexity, and deals mainly with contemporary literary material, above all the pieces of Italian

realism Realism, Realistic, or Realists may refer to: In the arts *Realism (arts), the general attempt to depict subjects truthfully in different forms of the arts Arts movements related to realism include: *American Realism *Classical Realism *Liter ...

from authors such as

Corrado Alvaro Corrado Alvaro (15 April 1895 – 11 June 1956) was an Italian journalist and writer of novels, short stories, screenplays and plays. He often used the '' verismo'' style to describe the hopeless poverty in his native Calabria. His first suc ...

Ennio Flaiano Ennio Flaiano (5 March 1910 – 20 November 1972) was an Italian screenwriter, playwright, novelist, journalist, and drama critic. Best known for his work with Federico Fellini, Flaiano co-wrote ten screenplays with the Italian director, includi ...

Emilio Cecchi Emilio Cecchi (14 July 1884 – 5 September 1966) was an Italian Literary criticism, literary critic, Art criticism, art critic and screenwriter. One English language source describes him as "an 'official' - although radically anti-academic - in ...

Francesco Pasinetti Francesco Pasinetti (1911–1949) was an Italian film director and screenwriter known largely for his documentaries. He also directed the 1934 realist feature film ''The Canal of the Angels'' set in Venice. His brother was the writer P. M. Pasine ...

Vitaliano Brancati Vitaliano Brancati (; 24 July 1907 – 25 September 1954) was an Italian novelist, dramatist, poet and screenwriter. Biography Born in Pachino, Syracuse, Brancati studied in Catania, where he graduated in letters and where he spent most of h ...

Mario Bonfantini Mario (; ) is a character created by the Japanese game designer Shigeru Miyamoto. He is the star of the ''Mario'' franchise, a recurring character in the ''Donkey Kong'' franchise, and the mascot of the Japanese video game company Nintendo. ...

, and

Umberto Barbaro Umberto Barbaro (3 January 1902, Acireale – 19 March 1959, Rome) was an Italian film critic and essayist. Biography Umberto Barbaro was active in many fields: fiction, drama, cinema, criticism and history of figurative art. In 1923 he was the ...

Main characteristics

The dominant feature in this heterogeneous corpus of films is the desire to compete with cinema on a European level by affirming the expressive autonomy of cinema with respect to the other arts and, at the same time, the possibility of comparing it on an equal footing with them through a style that can merge and contaminate the different artistic and expressive languages. The result is a formally complex cinema, capable of recalling numerous cultural tendencies and, at the same time, of harmonizing them in a complete expressive form through formal attention, the re-evaluation of the "artisanal" character of cinema, debased in the period of the cinema of ''

''. Many highly experienced technicians will collaborate on these films, including operators Massimo Terzano, Ubaldo Arata, and Carlo Montuori, and set designers

Virgilio Marchi Virgilio Marchi (21 January 1895 – 30 April 1960) was an Italian architect and art director. He designed the sets for more than fifty films during his career. Marchi was stylistically identified with the Futurist movement.Sabatino, Michelangelo. ...

, Gino Carlo Sensani, and Antonio Valente. The main literary references are those of 19th-century fiction, mainly Italian (from Antonio Fogazzaro to Emilio De Marchi), Russian, and French. Writers such as

, and

collaborate on the films. On the visual side, the calligraphy refers to the Tuscan

Macchiaioli The Macchiaioli () were a group of Italian painters active in Tuscany in the second half of the nineteenth century. They strayed from antiquated conventions taught by the Italian art academies, and did much of their painting outdoors in order ...

, the

Pre-Raphaelites The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB), later known as the Pre-Raphaelites, was a group of English painters, poets, and art critics, founded in 1848 by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Michael Rossetti ...

, and the

symbolists Symbolism or symbolist may refer to: *Symbol, any object or sign that represents an idea Arts *Artistic symbol, an element of a literary, visual, or other work of art that represents an idea ** Color symbolism, the use of colors within various c ...

. In this sense, the influence of contemporary French cinema is dominant, in particular of

poetic realism Poetic realism was a film movement in France of the 1930s. More a tendency than a movement, poetic realism is not strongly unified like Soviet montage or French Impressionism but were individuals who created this lyrical style. Its leading fi ...

and the works of

Jean Renoir Jean Renoir (; 15 September 1894 – 12 February 1979) was a French film director, screenwriter, actor, producer and author. His '' La Grande Illusion'' (1937) and '' The Rules of the Game'' (1939) are often cited by critics as among the greate ...

Marcel Carné Marcel Albert Carné (; 18 August 1906 – 31 October 1996) was a French film director. A key figure in the poetic realism movement, Carné's best known films include ''Port of Shadows'' (1938), ''Le Jour Se Lève'' (1939), ''Les Visiteurs du Soi ...

, and

Julien Duvivier Julien Duvivier (; 8 October 1896 – 29 October 1967) was a French film director and screenwriter. He was prominent in French cinema in the years 1930–1960. Amongst his most original films, chiefly notable are ''La Bandera (film), La Bandera'', ...

, but also of the American and German. Unlike French poetic realism and

Italian neorealism Italian neorealism (), also known as the Golden Age of Italian Cinema, was a national film movement characterized by stories set amongst the poor and the working class. They are filmed on location, frequently with non-professional actors. They p ...

, the films of this brief trend have no realist vocation or social commitment. The main interest remains the formal care and the richness of cultural references enclosed in a cinema capable of enhancing the professionalism of each production component. ''Calligrafismo'' does not lead to innovations in the production system, but raises its quality and reveals the ambitions of a new generation of authors interested in overcoming the narrow limits of fascist culture. The critics of the time branded this trend as unrealistic and superficial (specially coining the expression ''calligrafismo''); later, starting from the 1960s, this reductive judgment was corrected.

Directors and films

The best-known exponent of the movement is

Mario Soldati Mario Soldati (17 November 1906 – 19 June 1999) was an Italian writer and film director. In 1954, he won the Strega Prize for ''Lettere da Capri.'' He directed several works adapted from novels, and worked with leading Italian actresses, s ...

, a long-time writer and director destined to establish himself with films of literary ancestry and solid formal structure: '' Dora Nelson'' (1939), '' Piccolo mondo antico'' (1941), '' Malombra'' (1942), '' Tragic Night'' (1942), '' In High Places'' (1943). His films, figuratively complex, put at the center of the story characters endowed with a dramatic and psychological force foreign to the characters of the cinema of ''

''.

Luigi Chiarini Luigi Chiarini (20 June 1900 – 12 November 1975) was an Italian film theorist, essayist, screenwriter and film director. Life and career Born in Rome, Chiarini wrote extensively about film theory and in 1935 he founded the drama school Cent ...

, already active as a critic, explored the trend in his ''

Sleeping Beauty "Sleeping Beauty" (, or ''The Beauty Sleeping in the Wood''; , or ''Little Briar Rose''), also titled in English as ''The Sleeping Beauty in the Woods'', is a fairy tale about a princess curse, cursed by an evil fairy to suspended animation in fi ...

'' (1942), '' Street of the Five Moons'' (1942), and ''

The Innkeeper ''The Innkeeper'' (Italian: ''La locandiera'' also known as ''Mirandolina'') is a 1944 Italian historical comedy film directed by Luigi Chiarini and starring Luisa Ferida, Armando Falconi and Osvaldo Valenti.Reich & Garafalo p.28 The film is an a ...

'' (1944). The eclectic

Ferdinando Maria Poggioli Ferdinando Maria Poggioli (15 December 1897 – 2 February 1945) was an Italian screenwriter, film editor and director. He directed fifteen films including the 1940 melodrama '' Goodbye Youth''.Gundle p.56 He had previously worked as assistant di ...

approaches the manner, who, after ''

Jealousy Jealousy generally refers to the thoughts or feelings of Emotional insecurity, insecurity, fear, and concern over a relative lack of possessions or safety. Jealousy can consist of one or more emotions such as anger, resentment, inadequacy, he ...

'' (1942), in 1943 shoots '' The Priest's Hat''. The inner conflicts of the characters and the scenographic richness are also recurrent in the first films by

Alberto Lattuada Mario Alberto Lattuada (; 13 November 1914 – 3 July 2005) was an Italian film director. Career Lattuada was born in Vaprio d'Adda, the son of composer Felice Lattuada. He was initially interested in literature, becoming, while still a studen ...

('' Giacomo the Idealist'', 1942) and

Renato Castellani Renato Castellani (4 September 1913 – 28 December 1985) was an Italian film director and screenwriter. Early life Son of a representative of Kodak, he was born in Varigotti, at the time a hamlet of Final Pia, which became Finale Ligure ( ...

('' A Pistol Shot'', 1942), dominated by a sense of moral and cultural decay that seemed to anticipate the end of the war. The first film by

Luchino Visconti Luchino Visconti di Modrone, Count of Lonate Pozzolo (; 2 November 1906 – 17 March 1976) was an Italian filmmaker, theatre and opera director, and screenwriter. He was one of the fathers of Italian neorealism, cinematic neorealism, but later ...

, ''

Ossessione (, "Obsession") is a 1943 Italian crime drama film directed and co-written by Luchino Visconti, in his directorial debut. It is an unauthorized and uncredited adaptation of the 1934 novel '' The Postman Always Rings Twice'' by American author ...

'' (1943), is completely anomalous, which, while presenting some typical elements of calligraphy (the literary origin, the references to 19th-century culture, and the accurate formal composition) radicalises the self-destructive tension of the characters and, above all, the importance of the setting, effectively paving the way for the revolution of

. Another important example of a calligraphic film is the film version of '' The Betrothed'' (1941), by

Mario Camerini Mario Camerini (6 February 1895 – 4 February 1981) was an Italian film director and screenwriter. Camerini began his career in the film industry in 1920, working for his cousin the director Augusto Genina. Camerini went on to direct his own fi ...

(very faithful in the staging of Manzoni's masterpiece), which due to the perceived income, became the most popular feature film between 1941 and 1942.

References

External links

''Lontani dalla gloria (Narrativa) (Italian Edition)''

''After Neorealism: Italian Filmmakers and Their Films; Essays and Interviews''
{{Italian film genres Movements in Italian cinema 1940s in film

Main characteristics

Directors and films

See also

References

External links