Nostalgic Gangsters and the Mafia Filone

This chapter examines a filone of mafia films that proliferated in Italy between 1972 and 1974, and analyses how they inherit, recycle and perpetuate a number of pre-existing popular myths that frame the mafia as a repository for elegiac nostalgia. Transatlantic myths that crystallised in The Godfather are themselves shown to emerge from traditions of representation and stereotyping, in which the mafia film has always acted as a chronicle of cultural displacement. The Italian mafia film, meanwhile, is shown to be a component part of a broader tendency to stereotype the 'backward' southern regions of Italy as a window into the nation's history and a forum for taking stock of the contemporary moment in relation to a benighted past. The mafia filone of 1972-1974 is thereby seen to be an illuminating document of production decisions, marketing ploys and ruminations on the state of contemporary Italy.

Introduction

La polizia chiede aiuto / What Have They Done to Your Daughters? (Massimo Dallamano, 1974) opens with what appears to be a clear statement of intent, in a caption reading: Ogni giorno accadono fatti crudeli e apparentemente inspiegabili. Solo la ricostruzione fedele di questi fatti può farne comprendere il drammatico e inquietante significato....

Corruption and Conspiracy in the Poliziotteschi and the Vigilante Filone

The first half of the chapter examines poliziottesco or 'police procedural' format films whose plots invest in notions of high-level coup d'état conspiracy, arguing that such films seek, not to explain or to 'make sense' of the violent events of the 1970s, but instead to enact a ritual recognition of only partially understood, but pervasive and therefore assumed corruption. The second half examines vigilante films, which simultaneously hanker after an imagined past time of moral certainty, and amount to nihilistic assertions of the futility of fighting against a corrupt, faceless system. The assumed, taken-as-read ubiquity of corruption in these two groups of films is shown to manifest itself through seemingly minor scene-setting details and off-guard moments of background exposition, which expose preoccupations with the nation's traumatic past and the historical continuity of systematic institutional brutality.

Italian Crime Films and the Years of Lead

This chapter places Italy's 1970s within a broad continuum in post-war Western Europe, in which wartime schisms were silenced and shelved, only to reappear decades later into a transformed cultural landscape. An attendant sense of national 'taking stock' manifested itself in an acute awareness of the weight of the past, and of the present moment's significance as a turning point in Italian history. The chapter analyses this point in detail by looking at the influence of the USA in the post-war years, with a particular focus on Italy's film industry. As a barometer for the intimate economic and cultural relationship between the two nations, Italian cinema embodied wider tensions between the local and the global, and the 'crime film' is taken as a case in point.

Conclusion

This chapter considers issues of categorisation, and discusses the meaning, significance and usefulness of the word 'filone' for the study of this kind of cinematic output. The previous chapters' consistent recourse to notions of 'seriality' is here discussed as a unifying thread for the book as a whole, by considering filoni in relation to prevailing definitions of the 'film cycle'. The cinematic strands discussed throughout the book are found to vary widely in their relationship to such definitions, illuminating the industrial nature of this sector of the Italian film industry. The perpetual attempt to capitalise on topicality that resulted from this business model is ultimately seen to be the key to understanding these films' oscillation between repetition and difference. Their resultant traces of preoccupations with the recent past are key components of a contemporaneity that was assumed to be instantly recognisable to Italian audiences of the 1970s.

Enter … If You Dare! The Cross-cultural Reception of Crime Filoni

This chapter considers how discourses around Italian crime films' releases developed in two specific markets: those of Italy and the USA, examining how their differing distribution patterns across these markets resulted in contrasting promotional strategies and critical discourses. Through a wide-ranging survey of newspaper film reviews and publicity campaigns, the chapter charts a marked contrast between the two reception contexts, illustrating the centrality of 'serial' repetition to an understanding of these films' significance in their place of origin. When the films were removed from the concentrated production and release patterns of the Italian filone system, their status as innately serial artefacts failed to register, rendering them laughable peculiarities rather than culturally familiar rituals.

Serial Killing and the Giallo

This chapter analyses films connected through their depiction of serial killing in contemporary Italy, which are usually categorised within the giallo filone. These are shown to demonstrate a variety of ways in which filone cinema was characterised by tensions between cosmopolitanism and parochialism, in turn providing further insights into how particular filoni sought to capitalise on a preoccupation with the recent past. The giallo's broader obsessions with past traumas, fragmented memories and the unravelling of supposed facts are thus placed in the contexts of Italy's contested recent past, illuminating the extent to which wartime memory weighed heavily on the 1970s present.