Fascist Cinema

In order to understand Italian neorealism and Vittorii De Sica's Bicycle Thieves, it's important to look at Italian neorealism's cinematic predecessor in order to appreciate the motivations that inspired the film genre. The Italian cinema under the Italy's fascist regime was something orchestrated to work alongside and benefit fascism's strength in Italy. Sam Rohdie argues in his "A Note on the Italian Cinema During Fascism" that the fascist state, much as any capitalist state, depends upon capitalistic enterprises, and therefore the state's interests tend to primarily benefit the development of capital. The film industry was one area of Italian society that offered vast opportunities for capital investment. It can be seen then how Mussolini used Italian cinema both as a political and economic instrument for the maturation of Italian fascism. The fascist state became heavily influential in all stages of film production, from the screenplay to the cinematography, from the acceptable actors and directors to post-production editing. Film for the fascist regime was a means of projecting its "conservative social values," as Mark Shiel suggests in his Italian neorealism: rebuilding the cinematic city, a form of propoganda reaching the Italian public through a culturally accessible way. Shiel lists some of the ways the Italian film industry was patrolled by Mussolini's regime. The film industry was systematized; several structures were established, each aiming at different elements of the industry in order to shape it according to its fascist role. For example, the Direzione Generale per la Cinematografia was established to limit the presence of foreign cinema in Italy by instituting a high taxation on its importation and dubbing over with Italian the foreign films that did make it into Italy. The institution banned some films and funded others, encouraging the production of films friendly to the fascist cause and disallowing those preaching liberalist values or including material that could appear a threat to the fascist doctrine. Although the  censorship on Italian filmmaking could be seen as a hindrance to artistic expression, the fascist approach did result in increased domestic film production--from 10 to 20 films produced per year in the early 1930s to almost 100 films per year in the early 1940s--which in turn spurred public spending on entertainment, fueling the fascist regime and proving Mussolini's involvement in film production a success.