An Overview of French and Italian National Cinema

At issue herein is the question of how successful French and Italian filmmakers have been in creating a "national" cinema that addresses or depicts relevant social and political themes or issues that define a film as being from a particular country. Such a film, as referenced by Aaron Sultanik (167-168), is readily identifiable as positioned ideologically as well as physically within the context of events or ideas shaping the socio-political landscape of a country. By examining a select assortment of French and Italian films released between the early 1970s and 2000, and exploring relevant critical literature, it will be argued in this report that both France and Italy are home to established "national cinemas" that do represent each country's guiding ethos.

In a discussion of Italian cinema since 1945 to the present, Mirco Melanco (387) stated that Italy has experienced several periods of political and social crisis that are often examined in film. Indeed, Said Melanco (387): "The cinema is often a perfect witness of changes affecting a societyà.The cinema is a source of evidence, a safe filled with past documents." This is readily apparent in 1974's The Night Porter, directed by Liliana Cavani and focusing on Fascism and its sadomasochistic aspects.

Nora Sayre (1) says of this film that this film explores the effects of rape, of the Nazi era and of the lingering effects of Fascism. Exploring the post-war impact

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h the early 1980s. In the film, a mythical element related to the director's experiences in the milieu of a culture dating back to the grandeur of ancient Greece is present. By cataloging the events of adolescence and extreme youth in relation to the theater, the film captures the sociocultural aspects of growing up in post-war Italy (Mastri, 68). In this manner, the film appears to reflect the deterioration of Italian society despite the economic progress of the community and of the country. Like the other films discussed above, this film represents uniquely Italian issues and concerns and suggests that there is a national Italian cinema. The French films to be considered in this essay include Bertrand Blier's Les Valseuses, which describes the activities of two rather dim-witted young men who travel throughout France, engaging in petty crime and auto theft and interacting with a variety of women. Ultimately, the violence escalates to suicide and murder, depicting what John Wakeman (128) considers the post-war angst and dissonance that was common in France. The young ruffians who are central to the film are described as "deliberately uncharacterized figures serving as tokens of the pursuit of void pleasures" (Wakeman,
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