Calligrafismo (Italian:[kalligraˈfizmo];lit. 'caligraphism') is an Italian style offilmmaking relating to some films made in Italy in the first half of the 1940s and endowed with an expressive complexity that isolates them from the general context.Calligrafismo is in a sharp contrast toTelefoni Bianchi-American style comedies and is ratherartistic, highlyformalistic,expressive in complexity, and deals mainly with contemporary literary material,[1] above all the pieces of Italianrealism from authors such asCorrado Alvaro,Ennio Flaiano,Emilio Cecchi,Francesco Pasinetti,Vitaliano Brancati,Mario Bonfantini, andUmberto Barbaro.[2]
The dominant feature in this heterogeneous corpus of films is the desire to compete with cinema on a European level by affirming the expressive autonomy of cinema with respect to the other arts and, at the same time, the possibility of comparing it on an equal footing with them through a style that can merge and contaminate the different artistic and expressive languages.[3]
The result is a formally complex cinema, capable of recalling numerous cultural tendencies and, at the same time, of harmonizing them in a complete expressive form through formal attention, the re-evaluation of the "artisanal" character of cinema, debased in the period of the cinema ofTelefoni Bianchi. Many highly experienced technicians will collaborate on these films, including operatorsMassimo Terzano,Ubaldo Arata, andCarlo Montuori, and set designersVirgilio Marchi,Gino Carlo Sensani, andAntonio Valente.[1]
The main literary references are those of 19th-century fiction, mainly Italian (fromAntonio Fogazzaro toEmilio De Marchi), Russian, and French. Writers such asCorrado Alvaro,Ennio Flaiano,Emilio Cecchi,Francesco Pasinetti,Vitaliano Brancati,Mario Bonfantini, andUmberto Barbaro collaborate on the films. On the visual side, the calligraphy refers to the TuscanMacchiaioli, thePre-Raphaelites, and thesymbolists. In this sense, the influence of contemporary French cinema is dominant, in particular ofpoetic realism and the works ofJean Renoir,Marcel Carné, andJulien Duvivier, but also of the American and German.[1]
Unlike French poetic realism andItalian neorealism, the films of this brief trend have no realist vocation or social commitment. The main interest remains the formal care and the richness of cultural references enclosed in a cinema capable of enhancing the professionalism of each production component.Calligrafismo does not lead to innovations in the production system, but raises its quality and reveals the ambitions of a new generation of authors interested in overcoming the narrow limits of fascist culture.[4] The critics of the time branded this trend as unrealistic and superficial (specially coining the expressioncalligrafismo); later, starting from the 1960s, this reductive judgment was corrected.[5]
The best-known exponent of the movement isMario Soldati, a long-time writer and director destined to establish himself with films of literary ancestry and solid formal structure:Dora Nelson (1939),Piccolo mondo antico (1941),Malombra (1942),Tragic Night (1942),In High Places (1943). His films, figuratively complex, put at the center of the story characters endowed with a dramatic and psychological force foreign to the characters of the cinema ofTelefoni Bianchi.Luigi Chiarini, already active as a critic, explored the trend in hisSleeping Beauty (1942),Street of the Five Moons (1942), andThe Innkeeper (1944). The eclecticFerdinando Maria Poggioli approaches the manner, who, afterJealousy (1942), in 1943 shootsThe Priest's Hat.
The inner conflicts of the characters and the scenographic richness are also recurrent in the first films byAlberto Lattuada (Giacomo the Idealist, 1942) andRenato Castellani (A Pistol Shot, 1942), dominated by a sense of moral and cultural decay that seemed to anticipate the end of the war. The first film byLuchino Visconti,Ossessione (1943), is completely anomalous, which, while presenting some typical elements of calligraphy (the literary origin, the references to 19th-century culture, and the accurate formal composition) radicalises the self-destructive tension of the characters and, above all, the importance of the setting, effectively paving the way for the revolution ofItalian neorealism. Another important example of a calligraphic film is the film version ofThe Betrothed (1941), byMario Camerini (very faithful in the staging ofManzoni's masterpiece), which due to the perceived income, became the most popular feature film between 1941 and 1942.[6]
