Illusions of grandeur
From the outset, these studios established themselves as a technological prowess to rival Hollywood. The majority of films distributed in Italy were American, before the regime introduced protectionist measures to limit this "invasion". The gigantism and pomposity typical of Fascist aesthetics were expressed without a hitch in an epic film, Scipio the African (Carmine Gallone, 1937). This propaganda piece, from which cinema came out the loser in the eyes of viewers and critics alike, brought to a close the second Italo-Ethiopian war, which had begun a year earlier and of which the Italian people were still unaware of the extent of the disaster. Alessandro Blasetti, the great name of Italian cinema at the time, shot The Iron Crown (1941), which displeased Goebbels when presented to him at the Venice Film Festival. Inspired by Cecil B. DeMille's historical re-enactments, it's an epic fantasy that Scorsese marveled at as a child. Underneath its propaganda aspects, and its promotion of a providential man reminiscent of Mussolini, the film also reflects the desire for peace that prevailed among Italians at the time. The propaganda cinema of the Mussolini era was not without its paradoxes: many of the war films produced at the time displayed a certain defeatism, or presented desperate situations with tragic outcomes. A year later, Blasetti made a kind of great leap forward by shooting Four Steps in the Clouds (1942) at Cinecittà, which, not without a certain paradox, heralded the Italian neorealist movement, characterized by location shooting and methods at odds with the Cinecittà machine of illusions. The spirit thus precedes the letter in a film that uses a bus journey as a pretext to deal with the lot of ordinary people. It's true that the era was dominated by "white telephones", sentimental comedies or melodramas featuring high society characters in luxurious settings. This sub-genre, which had fallen into oblivion, got its nickname from the white telephones, ostensible signs of wealth, which played a central role. Almost 300 films were produced until the signing of the armistice. The studios were then plundered by the remnants of the Fascists and the Nazis, who still occupied the city. When Rome was liberated in June 1944, the studios, under the control of the American army, were used as refugee camps, forcing directors to shoot on natural sets, thus laying the foundations of Italian neo-realism.
The entry into the legend
But Cinecittà soon reopened its doors, strengthened by the workforce that had been built up under Mussolini's rule, and specialized in large-scale productions. Hollywood saw the opportunity for less expensive filming, benefiting from the know-how of Italian set designers, costume designers and other technicians and craftsmen, and above all from advantageous tax conditions. Quo Vadis (Mervyn LeRoy, 1951) launched the great wave of peplums, a trend that kept the studios running at full speed for over ten years. The filming of Roman Holiday (William Wyler, 1953) in Rome, and at Cinecittà, completed the appeal of a city where cinema was enjoying a sort of golden age, making it a mythical place today. Italian cinema, meanwhile, was not to be outdone, and found a privileged playground here. Fellini's La Dolce vita (1960) , for which the Via Veneto was reproduced in the gigantic Studio No. 5, made the Eternal City a little more legendary, with anthology scenes that left their mark on the collective imagination, while at the same time revealing the effervescence associated with the cinema that reigned in the city. In fact, the paparazzi owe their name to one of the film's fictional journalists. The famous Italian maestro never ceased to build gigantic sets to match his ambitions in these studios, where a room was reserved for him. Italian directors, destined for future glory, got their first taste of filmmaking with American directors and the considerable budgets allocated to them. Sergio Leone, for example, before becoming the father of the spaghetti western, was the second-team director on Ben Hur (William Wyler, 1959). This film, and in particular its famous chariot race, which took several months to shoot and required the construction of a set covering more than eight hectares, has become emblematic of Cinecittà's pharaonic productions. The studios were once again the center of attention when the filming of Cleopatra (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1963) took place: the budding affair between Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor made the tabloids... The film, which almost ruined Twentieth Century Fox, heralded the end of the peplum craze, despite being the biggest hit of 1963. The studios recovered momentarily, thanks in particular to the wave of spaghetti westerns, whose shooting was often divided between Cinecittà and Spain, with its spectacular natural settings, as in And for a Few Dollars More (Sergio Leone, 1965).
New births
By the early 1970s, most Italian studios were saddled with debt, yet Italian films were setting a new record, accounting for 65% of the domestic market. With a few rare exceptions, Cinecittà was now used only for television productions. The Last Emperor (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1986) and The Name of the Rose (Jean-Jacques Annaud, 1987) were the last two international blockbusters to be partly shot there for a long time to come. Fellini, who was about to die, paid a final tribute to his beloved film city, whose legend he had helped to create with Intervista (1987). In the early 1990s, the studios' financial situation was particularly worrying, forcing the government to negotiate its sale, which took place in 1998. Martin Scorsese, nostalgic for the golden days of Cinecittà and its pharaonic film shoots, soon afterwards decided to shoot Gangs of New York (2002), collaborating with legendary Italian set designer Dante Ferretti to recreate 19th-century New York. Wes Anderson followed for several scenes in La Vie aquatique (2004) and Mel Gibson for La Passion du Christ (2004). The Rome series, filmed there for two years, confirmed this temporary improvement before part of the studios were ravaged by fire in 2007. Today, the gigantic reconstruction of ancient Rome's forum is one of the highlights of any visit to the studios. The French TV series Kaamelott made a stop there to shoot part of its sixth season (2008), yet another proof that the studios have not finished rising from their ashes. A set imitating the Sistine Chapel was built for Nanni Moretti's Habemus Papam (2011), showing that Rome never ceases to reinvent itself. Today, a permanent exhibition recalls the history of Cinecittà and leads visitors through some of its now mythical locations: here, remnants of the set for Gangs of New York, there, those of an obscure peplum recycled for second-rate productions, or medieval Florence reconstituted for an Italian TV movie. Today, the studios are maintaining their activity, which has even increased recently with the filming of several series for the major platforms.
