Alessandro Blasetti - film director (2024)

Alessandro Blasetti, the film director sometimes referred toas ‘the father of Italian cinema’ for the part he played in reviving the filmindustry in Italy in the late 1920s and 30s, was born on this day in 1900 inRome.

In his directing style, Blasetti was seen as ahead of histime, even in his early days. His filmswere often shot on location, used many non-professional actors and had thecharacteristics of the neorealism that would make Italian cinema famous in thepost-War years.

Yet he will forever be seen by some critics as an apologistfor Fascism, a charge which stems mainly from his support for at least part ofthe ideology of Benito Mussolini, which led to a number of his films beinginterpreted as Fascist propaganda, although the evidence in some cases wasrather thin.

The son of an oboe professor at Rome’s Accademia Nazionaledi Santa Cecilia, Blasetti graduated in law from the Sapienza University ofRome. Married in 1923, his first jobwas as a bank clerk but after a year he began to work as a journalist and wrotethe first film column to appear in an Italian national newspaper.

He used his position to campaign for a revival of filmproduction in Italy, which at that time had largely ground to a halt, despiteRome having been a major hub of the silent movie industry before the FirstWorld War.

Blasetti helped begin the resurgence with his first movie,Sole – Sun – in 1929, with a storyline set against the real-life draining ofthe Pontine Marshes, south of Rome, a project organised by Mussolini.

Mussolini applauded the end result, declaring it to be ‘thedawn of the Fascist film’. Financed through a co-operative, it was not acommercial success yet it was significant in that Mussolini saw film as a wayof spreading his message and would later invest much state funding in theItalian film industry.

Blasetti’s early neorealism was clear in 1860, a film madein 1934 about Garibaldi’s campaign to unite Italy as seen through the eyes oftwo peasants, again with much location filming and imbued with the same kind ofvisual starkness that would be associated with Luchino Visconti, RobertoRossellini, Vittorio De Sica and others in the post-War years.

It can be argued that several of Blasetti’s 1930s films arecritical of the Fascist regimes. Vecchio guardia - The Old Guard - recountsMussolini’s 1922 March on Rome, which led to his ascension to power.Ironically, it was criticised by some in the Fascist government for having toofew scenes of public enthusiasm for Il Duce.

Blasetti, however, did not discourage Mussolini’s interestin his work and took every opportunity to lobby for state funding and support.One outcome was the construction of the large, state-of-the-art Cinecittàstudios in Rome, which would give Italian filmmakers the resources to make areal impact.

A marked shift to neorealism came with Quattro pasi fra lenuvole – Four Steps in the Clouds – his 1942 story of a married salesman whoagrees to save the honour of a pregnant girl he meets on a train by presentinghimself to her family as her husband.

As well as his films, Blasetti’s notable contribution toItalian cinema was as founder of the school that was to become the CentroSperimentale, Rome’s noted film study centre archive. He died in Rome in 1987.

Travel tip:

The Pontine Marshes is a reclaimed area of land south ofRome, bordered roughly by the Alban Hills, the Lepini Mountains, and theTyrrhenian Sea. It was a marshy and malarialarea that several emperors and popes tried unsuccessfully to drain and untilthe early part of the 20^th century it was inhabited by just ahandful of shepherds. However, in 1928 the Fascist government drained the marshes, cleared the vegetation and built new towns, notably Littoria (nowLatina) in 1932, Sabaudia in 1934, Pontinis in 1935, Aprilia in 1937, andPomezia in 1939. By the Second World War the only untouched area was the MonteCirceo National Park. The area is now the most productive agricultural regionin in Italy.

Travel tip:

The Centro sperimentale di cinematografia – the Italiannational film school - was established in 1935. The oldest film school inWestern Europe, it is still financed by the Italian government. It is located nearCinecittà, about 10km (6 miles) south-east of the centre of Rome along ViaTuscolana.

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