The Italian Economic Miracle In Coeval Cinema

This essay explores the subject of the aversion of intellectuals to the market economy through a study of the Italian cinema of the early 1960s. The impact of Italy's ‘economic miracle’ on coeval cinema can hardly be overemphasized. Not only it inspired well-known art films, such as Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita and Michelangelo Antonioni's L'Eclisse, but it also played an inspirational role on the popular genre of the Commedia all'italiana, featuring as a context in Dino Risi’s Il Sorpasso and as the main theme in Vittorio De Sica’s Il Boom. The films suggest that the economic boom is bringing forth a scenario dominated by ruthless predators—e.g., Alain Delon in L’Eclisse—and in which virtuous characters have no chance to survive—e.g., Lean-Louis Trintignant in Il Sorpasso. In other words, the films offer a critical view of the changing economy by showing that it favors the ascent of controversial human types who trample on traditional moral values, and dooms those who do not adapt to the new rules of the game. Comparing the realities of the economic scenario with the films under discussion reveals a clash between the existential anxieties and moral corruption that the films emphasize and the story that economic and statistical data tell us. Contrary to what is commonly thought, these films do not capture the essence of the time, but give us a partial, if not distorted, understanding of it