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The origins, fascism, the first world war
The idea of creating a National School of Cinematography dates back to 1930 and is due to the director Alessandro Blasetti. The following year, Anton Giulio Bragaglia submitted a report on the foundations of this organization to the Entertainment Corporation: a polytechnic institute dedicated to the training of all the professions of cinema was assumed. At first, as part of the Santa Cecilia conservatory, only the part of the project dedicated to acting was created, under the direction of Blasetti and under the cross-checking of the ministries of National Education and Corporations. In 1934, Count Ciano created the Directorate General for Cinematography which groups the competences on cinema previously divided among the various ministries, thus placing them under a closer and more direct control of the regime. Luigi Freddi is placed at the helm of this new organization, which considers the formation of new levers to be the main requirement and, considering the action of the School insufficient, creates in its place the Experimental Center of Cinematography, headed by the literary critic Luigi Chiarini. Freddi deals with the administrative part and the relationship with the state, while Chiarini outlines the structure of the courses on the basis of a study of the very few foreign institutions that had already faced similar experiences. The goal is to combine film practice with a broad cultural background.
The National School of Cinematography was thus dissolved and on April 13, 1935 the new Experimental Center of Cinematography temporarily established itself in the basement of a middle school, while the design of the complex in via Tuscolana began, entrusted to the architects Antonio Valente (attachment available for download ) and Pietro Aschieri. Construction began in 1937 with funds which, on Freddi’s initiative, were diverted from the cashiers of the Venice Casino to the financing of the company. The project has an international resonance, also because the building is a wonderfully equipped jewel of architecture. Umberto Barbaro, Eisenstein and Balazs translator, critic, narrator and playwright collaborates with Chiarini. Blasetti continues to teach direction, while Francesco Pasinetti is called to teach the history of cinema. He had just turned the film Il Canale degli Angeli on the basis of the aesthetic canons promoted by Chiarini and Barbaro.
The courses begin on October 1, 1935 and are divided into five branches: acting, optics, sound, scenography and production. Some teachings (aesthetics and history of cinema, social function of cinematography and history of art) are shared by all addresses. The course lasts two years, plus a third for those who request it. The Experimental Center of Cinematography is equipped with a library and a film library, the latter rich in many masterpieces of world cinema. Another pillar of the Centre’s activity is the publication of “Bianco e Nero”, a magazine of history and film criticism for the time that was absolutely innovative. In those years the Center also oversaw the publication of a series of books on technique and aesthetics in cinema and the production of educational films always on film technique, the first of which was Renato May’s shot. From 1938 the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia began to collaborate in the creation of professional feature films such as Barbaro’s The Last Enemy and Amleto Palermi’s Sinner, shot in the same establishments as the Center. In 1942 he self-produced Via delle Cinque Lune by Chiarini, created with the collaboration of teachers, students and alumni.
In the last phase of the war, the Center was forced to close: it was sacked by the Wermacht and in particular the film library was sacked, the traces of which are permanently lost, with the exception of a dozen films fortunately hidden by some employees. In this decade, the Experimental Center is the center of the formation of authors who will be the protagonists of the new era of Italian cinema: Michelangelo Antonioni, Giuseppe De Santis, Gianni Puccini, Steno, Luigi Zampa; of actors such as Gianni Agus, Paolo Carlini, Andrea Checchi, Arnoldo Foà, Massimo Serato; the “divas” Clara Calamai, Carla Del Poggio, Irasema Dilian, Mariella Lotti and Alida Valli; of scenographers and costume designers such as Mario Chiari, Vittorio Nino Novarese (two Oscars in the post-war period), Gianni Polidori and Maria De Matteis (who in the coming years will land in Hollywood); and directors of photography such as Pasqualino De Santis (first Italian Oscar for photography) and Gianni Di Venanzo.
We recall the somewhat anomalous cases of students like Pietro Germi, who graduated as an actor but became famous above all as a director; Leopoldo Trieste, who graduated as director but became the interpreter of many films by Fellini and Germi; and Dino De Laurentiis, who attends acting classes and then became one of the largest producers in the world. And also future journalists like Ermanno Contini and Mario Pannunzio, or politicians like Pietro Ingrao. In the years of fascism, the Center was a place of development of critical consciousness in antagonism with the regime. Among the teachers of that first, fundamental period we also remember Rudolf Arnheim (who then moved to America), the art historian Giuliano Briganti, the director and writer Corrado Pavolini, the director Ferdinando Maria Poggioli, the director of photography Piero Portalupi, the director Piero Scharoff, the costume designer Gino Sensani, the organizer Libero Solaroli, the architect Antonio Valente.
