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Alessandro Blasetti’s career reaches a turning point in 1942: at the end of the year Quattro passi fra le nuvole is released. The film is retrospectively considered a forerunner of Neorealism. Since then, Blasetti focuses on realistic dramas in humble settings e.g., Nessuno torna indietro (1944), up to the partisan resistance themed Un giorno nella vita (1946). However, from the late 30s to the first half of 1942, Blasetti works mainly on historical films, such as Ettore Fieramosca (1938), Un’avventura di Salvator Rosa (1939), La corona di ferro (1941) and La cena delle beffe (1942). As a result of this productive repositioning, how does Blasetti change his critical posture to reconfigure himself within the field? The paper aims to retrace Blasetti’s works in parallel with his public statements on the press to find fluctuations and shifts. To do so, the author uses the concepts of producer’s game and critic’s game derived from Altman’s genre theory, together with some of Bourdieu’s tools. Blasetti’s repositioning takes place within a context of drastic political and cultural changes, from the first signs of the Second World War to the Postwar period, from the fascist Regime to Neorealism.

This article analyzes the antiquities trade between Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany in the construction of the two regimes’ diplomatic relationship before and during World War II. Both regimes made antiquities a medium of their political and ideological propaganda. During the delicate stages of their alliance in and after 1936, the Fascist regime, which considered itself the legitimate heir of the ancient Roman Empire, intensified the promotion of its role as a leading arbiter of cultural matters. A sense of Italian cultural superiority underlay the antiquities gifted or authorized for export to fulfill the Nazi leaders’ requests. Alongside this ‘legitimate’ trade, many other antiquities were illegally exported, sold, or stolen by art dealers, troops, and common citizens. Drawing on intense archival research conducted in Italian archives, the article presents different cases that shed light on the ways in which antiquities were manipulated for ideological and political purposes by the Fascist and Nazi regimes.

The emergence and rise of the fascist movement in Italy, against the background of a major economic, social and political crisis, marked, through the trend generated in the history of the 20th century, structural mutations and ample reverberations in the ideological debates. The fascist phenomenon thus acquired generic connotations and a claimed, if not ascribed, identity designated as „totalitarian”. Historiography, social sciences and, above all, political science faced a laborious and difficult mission, in elucidating the totalitarian „experiment” that exceeded the limits of national and conjunctural conditions. Totalitarianism is not just a concept or a historically recorded political regime, but rather a „syndrome”, a „disease” from which humanity has unfortunately not recovered.

The essay starts from the analysis of Dallo Stato liberale al regime fascista - published in 1973 - which contains the guidelines of Nicola Tranfaglia's reflection on fascism and follows its developments up to the end of the nineties and the early 2000s. In this path it thematizes the debate on continuity/rupture in the history of Italy and mentions the debate on the biography of Mussolini by Renzo De Felice and the matter of historiographical revisionism on fascism.

When Rome became the capital of a unified Italian state in 1871, the city lagged behind other European capitals in contemporary architectural expression. Ancient ruins evoked a distant glory, although the area of Rome containing the Imperial Fora was covered over by a dense urban residential quarter called the Alessandrino District. The quarter was labelled a slum district by fascist propaganda, and it was demolished in the early 1930s to make way for a parade avenue, the Via dell'Impero. This article presents a discussion of the cultural and socio-economic nature of the Alessandrino District in the decades before its destruction, combining results from the Danish-Italian excavations at Caesar's Forum with a selection of archival data and historical accounts. The findings presented here indicate that a newly investigated area of the Alessandrino District was in fact not a slum district but rather a thriving middle-class residential and commercial area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay aims to investigate the connection between a local archive and global history, with a glocal perspective in a school environment. The work will deal with the archive of a high school in Milan, Italy, and examine how this community, with its principal, teachers and students, looked at (and was involved with) international events between 1935 and 1945. This was the period when fascist Italy declared war on Ethiopia and took part in the Second World War in its quest for an Empire and, later, for a new role in a Nazi-ruled Europe. Fascist foreign policy, which meant “war policy” in that period, and the way the Italian schools dealt with it became part of the totalitarian design of the regime. Changes in the local perspective regarding international events reflect changes in the regime’s political agenda.

Between the end of the XIX Century and the beginning of the XX Century dictation was one of the main tools to teach Italian to an almost illiterate people. With the advent of the fascist regime, dictation took on other purposes and was used daily by teachers as propaganda of the fascist regime. Although dictation is rarely mentioned in the Elementary School Programs of 1923 and 1934 its diffusion continued without any significant debate on its usefulness, as well as on the different ways of proposing it or how to correct mistakes. The reconstruction of this practice through the analysis of national curricula, school journals and, in some cases, school exercise books, opens a track to grasp the contradiction between what is declared and what is done inside the classrooms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Toruńskie Studia Polsko-Włoskie / Studi Polacco-Italiani di Toruń is the property of Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun, Faculty of Law & Administration and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This review of interwar design from various regions in Italy traces the development of a modern national style at this critical period of Italian history, dominated by the fascist regime. Through the examination of the Monza Biennials in the 1920s and the Milan Triennials in the 1930s, this article illustrates how Italian furniture partially abandoned regional folk traditions in favor of two main design movements: Novecento and Rationalism. The negotiation between craftsmanship and industrial production slowly shifted towards the application of technology paving the way for creativity and innovation in Italian post-war design. After 1936, the enforcement of the autarchic policy, which advocated for an economic self-sufficiency and relied on local resources, further encouraged experimentation with new synthetic materials, which were mostly used by rationalist architects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Constitutional History / Giornale di Storia Costituzionale is the property of Giornale di Storia Costituzionale (Journal of Constitutional History) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)