A Cinematic Renaissance

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1960 was a watershed in Italian cinema history, thanks to the domestic and international reception accorded Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita, Michelangelo Antonioni's L'Avventura and Luchino Visconti's Rocco e i Suoi Fratelli (Rocco and His Brothers). If the latter harked back to neo-realism, the other two were as modernist as anything emanating from the French New Wave and they similarly unleashed a torrent of new talent.

Like many Italian films in the 60s, L'Avventura was a co-production. However, as with La Notte (1961), L'Eclisse (1963) and Il Deserto Rosso (1964), it was very much the abstract, cerebral work of an auteur. Antonioni was prepared to foreground the filmic nature of his imagery through his use of long shots to integrate character and landscape and lengthy passages of minimalism to emphasise the action's dramatic and psychological significance.

Fellini was equally innovative, but markedly more flamboyant, with Otto e Mezzo (1963), Fellini Satyricon (1969) and Amarcord (1973) resembling carnivals of memory and fantasy. Pier Paolo Pasolini eventually adopted an equally flagrant approach. His early features, Accatone (1961) and Il Vangelo Secondo Matteo (The Gospel According to Matthew) (1964), as with Francesco Rosi's Salvatore Giuliano (1962) and Mani Sulla Città (Hands over the City) (1963), highlighted that poverty remained throughout Italy, despite the so-called "economic miracle".

David Parkinson