Introduction
The Torinese production company Film Artistica Gloria released Il tamburino sardo (UK: The Sardinian Drummer Boy) and La piccola vedetta lombarda (The Little Lookout from Lombardy) in 1915.Footnote 1 Like their literary predecessors, the ‘monthly tales’ from Edmondo De Amicis’ Cuore (The Heart of a Boy, 1886), the films take place during the Italian Wars of Unification (the 1859 Austro-Sardinian War and the 1866 Battle of Custoza respectively). However, their cinematic retelling of the heroic deeds of young boys during Italy’s battles for Unification, evoke the most pressing political and military issue facing the nation at that time: Italy’s participation in the First World War.
While the motivations for intervention varied among different groups, the historical and emotional connections between the Risorgimento and the First World War provided a powerful rationale for those who supported Italy’s participation in the war. While the majority of the general population was not supportive, a vocal minority of politicians, intellectuals, activists and industrialists embraced the optimistic view that a swift victory for Italy was virtually guaranteed and would result in Italian annexation of the ‘unredeemed’ territories, thus bringing the Risorgimento to successful conclusion. Historians such as Mario Isnenghi and Emilio Gentile have meticulously documented the many positions surrounding nationalism and interventionism that existed in the first two decades of the twentieth century.Footnote 2 The various contingents embraced some combination of enthusiasm for modernity, a belief in Italian superiority, industrialist and imperialist interests, a desire to reclaim the ‘unredeemed’ territories, and frustration with the Giolitti government, although each was different from the other. Many, but not all, also expressed anti-democratic political philosophies.
The relationship between the cinema industry and interventionism was complicated. Wealthy aristocrats who shared interests with leaders in heavy industries, a class of people who tended to support intervention, played an important role in financing the cinema industry at this time (Bernardini et al. Reference Bernardini, Cherchi Usai, Sopocy, Noble and Koszarski1989, 361–363). Furthermore, as Ruth Ben-Ghiat asserts, the Italo-Turkish War had already ‘launched the engagement of commercial cinema with Italian imperialism’ (Ben-Ghiat Reference Ben-Ghiat2015, 24) D’Annunzio’s collaboration in the production of Cabiria (Itala Film 1914), for instance, represents a milestone in the intersection of fiction cinema and nationalism. On the other hand, the war, which would create obstacles to funding and international distribution, and ultimately cause some production companies to limit production or close, threatened the very existence of the Italian cinema industry. Giorgio Bertellini explains the difficult position of industry leaders as follows: ‘the period leading up to Italy’s participation in the Great War prompted the film industry first to voice, through the several trade periodicals it controlled, an open opposition to a conflict that would have disrupted the fragile distribution network it had long worked to establish. Once the war was declared, however, film companies lent their complete patriotic support’ (Bertellini Reference Bertellini2016, 70). Likewise, according to Jacqueline Reich, during Italy’s neutral period between 1914 and 1915, Italian films, despite Cabiria’s nationalistic tendencies, ‘did not immediately engage with any of the passionate political cries for intervention’ (Reich Reference Reich2015, 88).Footnote 3
In 1915, though, in the months immediately preceding and following Italy’s declaration of war, De Amicis’ Cuore, whose purpose was to construct a sense of Italian national identity based on inter-class and inter-regional harmony, and metaphorical and emotional appeals to exemplary sacrifice for the good of the many, would be recontextualised through its film adaptations and in light of the interventionist discourses surrounding them. Indeed, by all reports, De Amicis was an antimilitarist himself (Boero and Genovesi Reference Boero and Genovesi2009, 65). Furthermore, the content of the films themselves does not speak directly to the issue of intervention, nor does it address the sense of an incomplete Risorgimento that fuelled interventionist sentiment. While the enemy in the films is clearly Austria, unlike some other Risorgimento-themed films produced later in the war, such as Emilio Ghione’s Guglielmo Oberdan, martire di Trieste (Guglielmo Oberdan, Martyr of Trieste, Tiber Film 1915), the episodes focus more on the boys’ sacrifice at the urging of and out of respect for their Italian superiors than on the cruelty of their Austrian adversaries. In this essay, then, I will look at the marketing and promotional practices associated with Il tamburino sardo and La piccola vedetta lombarda in order to identify how De Amicis’ patriotically- and civically-themed monthly tales were recontextualised to support the interventionist project.
By 1915, while the ‘golden years’ of Italian silent cinema were coming to a close, the industry had already established an international reputation for high-quality historical epics. The setting of these epics spans the history of the Italian peninsula, but ancient Rome and the Risorgimento emerge as the most commonly depicted periods, with films set in ancient Rome dominating the market (Brunetta Reference Brunetta2008, 199–215; Muscio Reference Muscio2013). While not part of the ‘Kolossal’ trend, the Risorgimento-themed films such as Il tamburino sardo and La piccola vedetta lombarda intersect with and exemplify a sub-genre of the historical film that was especially popular in the years preceding and encompassing the First World War: stories of children exhibiting self-sacrificing behaviour for patriotic reasons. Many of these cinematic works were Cuore-inspired, even when not adapted directly from De Amicis’ novel.Footnote 4 With very few exceptions, films in this category, which seem to have flourished especially in the years surrounding the fiftieth anniversary of Unification (and somewhat coinciding with the centenary of Garibaldi’s birth in 1907) and again during the first years of the First World War, do not appear to have been widely internationally distributed like the historical epics set in ancient Rome, nor have they received as much scholarly attention.Footnote 5 Their historic and geographical specificity served a pedagogical purpose aimed at creating a sense of national identity for Italians, similar to De Amicis’ goals for Cuore. For instance, Pierre Sorlin cites Il tamburino sardo as a film in which continuity editing was perhaps neglected precisely because the film was not intended for international distribution and the story was so well-known to audiences in Italy (Sorlin Reference Sorlin1996, 28).Footnote 6
Cuore’s monthly tales
Cuore is among the best-known literary works of the post-Unification era, and, along with Pinocchio, constitutes the foundation of Italian children’s literature of the newly-formed nation. The diary of Enrico Bottini, a middle-class Torinese schoolboy, during his year in terza elementare, the novel was intended to be an educational tool for male children, instructing them in obedient behaviour towards patriarchy and patria. Alberto Mario Banti observes that Cuore stands as the most effective work within the ‘pedagogy of martyrdom’ trend that dominated literature for schoolchildren in the post-Risorgimento period (Banti Reference Banti2011, 62). The book’s presence in Italian schools endured into the decade preceding the First World War, even if in the field of children’s literature at this time Cuore had to take its place among a wealth of other publications that encouraged more aggressively nationalistic attitudes in their readers (Orestano Reference Orestano2016, 49–51).
Cuore’s narrative structure revolves around the months of the school year (October to July), with regular diary entries by Enrico interspersed with letters from his parents as well as the monthly tales. According to Enrico, these monthly tales, given to the students by their teachers to read and copy, provide some diversion and variation in what he describes as a fairly monotonous curriculum, and, he reports, the theme of the tales was always ‘un atto bello e vero, compiuto da un ragazzo’ (‘a fine and honest deed accomplished by a boy’, De Amicis Reference De Amicis1994, 21). In total, there are nine stories (one for each month beginning in October and concluding in June): ‘Il piccolo patriota padovano’, ‘La piccola vedetta lombarda’, ‘Il piccolo scrivano fiorentino’, ‘Il tamburino sardo’, ‘L’infermiere di Tata’, ‘Sangue Romagnolo’, ‘Valor civile’, ‘Dagli Appennini alle Ande’, and ‘Naufragio’. The stories feature boys from different regions of Italy between the ages of roughly nine and 13. Each one finds himself in a precarious situation that causes great emotional turmoil and requires an extreme sacrifice such as physical suffering and even death. Under duress, these young protagonists choose to commit heroic acts that most adults would find daunting, and in fact the beneficiaries of their sacrifice are for the most part adults in vulnerable situations themselves. Regardless of setting or circumstances, whether on the battlefield or at a local hospital, according to the author, all of the boys’ actions bring honour to the Italian nation because they all demonstrate cuore.
The tale ‘Valor civile’ contains a detailed explanation of why sacrifice on the part of children should be considered the height of heroism. Speaking at a public ceremony honoring a child who saved his friend from drowning, the town’s mayor declares:
Heroism in men is virtuous, venerable. But when it comes to children, in whom no ambitious or selfish goal is possible; children who must have more courage the less strength they have; children, of whom we ask nothing, who are not bound by anything, who seem so noble and kind when they simply understand and recognize the sacrifices of others, even if they do not take part; heroism in children is divine. (De Amicis Reference De Amicis1994, 224)Footnote 7
This passage succinctly restates the message that all of the monthly tales strive to illustrate. It also provides a clear guide explaining how readers should react to the tales’ excessive pathos created by the contrast between the vulnerable children and their heroic gestures. The monthly tales contain both an aspirational tone and the book’s most heart-wrenchingly memorable moments. While Enrico’s parents comment on current events or lecture him on empathy and charity, their words seem bland and tiresome compared to the drama and tragedy of the monthly tales. De Amicis understands that pathos is an important pedagogical tool.
In De Amicis’ text, the story of ‘Il tamburino sardo’ takes place during the Battle of Custoza (1848). A regiment of the Italian army takes shelter in an abandoned farmhouse as the Austrians close in on them. In charge of the Italian soldiers is a stern captain, concerned about the fate of his troops. Another member of the regiment is a drummer boy who, while young and scared, remains ‘steady on his feet’ (a bit of foreshadowing given that the boy will lose his leg by the end of the story) (96). The captain has noted the boy’s courage in the past and thus entrusts him with a dangerous mission – he must sneak out of the house and travel on foot to a nearby Italian encampment to call for backup. The boy successfully completes the mission and the troops are saved: however, the ordeal costs the boy his leg, which must be amputated. When the captain sees that the child has lost his leg in order to save the regiment, the previously stoic older man becomes uncharacteristically emotional:
And then that gruff soldier, who had never before said a gentle word to one of his inferiors, responded with an extremely affectionate and sweet voice: ‘I am only a captain; you are a hero.’ Then he threw himself with open arms on the little drummer boy, and he kissed him three times on his heart. (De Amicis Reference De Amicis1994, 103)
In this scene, the captain’s behaviour is an exemplar for the readers and his notable change of character frames the boy’s sacrifice as almost divine.
‘La piccola vedetta lombarda’ takes place in 1859, during the Austro-Sardinian war. A group of cavalrymen from the Sardinian army on a scouting mission suddenly comes across a 12-year-old boy alone in front of an abandoned rural house. When asked about his family, he answers: ‘I don’t have a family … I am a foundling. I work here and there for everybody. I stayed here to see the war’ (De Amicis Reference De Amicis1994, 49) The official in charge, eager to see if enemy troops are in the area, asks the boy if he can climb the nearby tree to take a look. The boy, a true patriot, is happy to oblige. Once he reaches the top of the tree the boy reports back with important information, but stays a little too long and is spotted by the Austrians who wound him with a bullet through the chest. He falls to the ground and dies as the official looks on. The regiment then wraps his body in the tricolore and dutifully moves on. A few days later, as the larger battalion passes the house with the boy’s body in front of it, the soldiers cover him with flowers, kisses and medals as ‘he was sleeping there in the grass, wrapped in his flag, with his white face almost smiling, the poor little boy, as if he could hear those farewells and was content to have given his life for his Lombardy’ (De Amicis Reference De Amicis1994, 53)
Biological parents are absent from these two stories. In that sense, the boys are true sons of Italy – sons of nobody and everybody. Like the protagonists of the other seven monthly tales, these boys come from different regions of the country and they are poor. They represent De Amicis’ vision of a country united by individual sacrifice for the collective good and the dignity of the lower social classes and provide a contrast with and example for Enrico, the comfortably middle-class schoolboy who dutifully copies their stories in his notebook. These two tales in particular also reinforce the comparison between soldiers and students, or the institutions of military and school, which is evident throughout De Amicis’ novel. For De Amicis, however, this association was not literal. School was like the military in that both institutions were pillars of the nation, but little scholars were not literal soldiers. This attitude is in keeping with Antonio Gibellli’s assertion that in general, late nineteenth-century representations of young boys as soldiers were more allegorical than naturalistic (Gibelli Reference Gibelli2005, 11–12)
Both tales as they appear in Cuore exploit the contrast between small vulnerable child and adult soldiers, and rely on melodrama and pathos to provoke emotional excesses and admiration. That these qualities appealed to filmmakers and film audiences becomes clear upon examining cinema journals from the era. While some might have frowned upon De Amicis’ sentimentalism, the fact that they were tearjerkers is precisely, according to reports from screenings and other publicity materials, what appealed to audience members. Additionally, the adaptation of the literary tales for the screen reflects a new perception of Italian childhood.
These cinematic adaptations of De Amicis’ monthly tales, however, parallel a transition from allegory to the reality of the militarisation of Italian youth. Gibelli argues that, despite the participation of some adolescents in high profile initiatives such as, in particular, Garibaldi’s Spedizione dei Mille, the trend in the nineteenth century was to raise the age of military service and acknowledge childhood as a time of innocence and dependence. But by 1915, young boys had already been mobilised in ways that brought them closer to actual combat, such as corresponding with soldiers during the war in Libya. Gibelli asserts that the First World War brings back to life the concept of the fanciullo soldato, or ‘child soldier’ (Gibelli Reference Gibelli2005, 18). Likewise, the cinematic representations of ‘Il tamburino sardo’ and ‘La piccola vedetta lombarda’ bring the protagonists out of the literary realm of abstract sacrifice and position them visually as combatants. While they were not the first films about children in combat – Il piccolo garibaldino (UK: The Garibaldian Boy, Cines, 1909), for example, preceded them – the representation of children engaged in battle was not typical in cinema up to that time. De Amicis’ little heroes, then, move from being Italy’s children into the role of warriors.
Gloria’s Cuore series and its reception
Filmmakers and promoters also latched on to these tales as the best passages from Cuore to translate into moving images, both for profit and as part of the industry’s attempt to become a critical force in the construction of Italian national identity. Many influential minds of the cinema industry, including Mario Caserini, founder of Gloria and director of a number of Risorgimento-themed films himself, believed that films were also an ‘extremely effective teaching tool’, and that filmmaking could be defined as an ‘act of patriotism’ that could model behaviour and unify the nation (Lasi Reference Lasi2006, 69).Footnote 8 As is the case with De Amicis’ monthly tales, not all of these cinematic children sacrificed themselves defending the nation, but many of them did, and it is clear that these themes dovetailed with national political concerns and resonated with audiences in the years between the Italian invasion of Libya and the beginning of the First World War. The first cinematic adaptation of Cuore was a 1911 Cines production of Il tamburino sardo, although it was not the first film inspired by Cuore. Cines’s Il tamburino sardo focuses exclusively on the monthly tale of the same name, and exemplifies the trend of military-themed (especially Unification-themed) patriotic films about self-sacrificing children used as opportunities to educate the masses.Footnote 9 The film won first place in the Categoria Didattica at the 1911 Concorso Internazionale di Cinematografia.
As noted above, Gloria produced film versions of all of Cuore’s nine monthly tales. While the films were officially advertised as uniform in length, at two reels and approximately 500m each, there are slight variations.Footnote 10 While it is possible that the films were made in the order in which they appear in the book but released in a different order, Il tamburino sardo appeared in cinemas first and La piccola vedetta lombarda followed several months later.Footnote 11 Three directors – Leopoldo Carlucci, Vittorio Rossi-Pianelli and Umberto Paradisi – shared directing credits, while two actors, Ermanno Roveri and Luigi Petrungaro, alternately played the protagonists in all nine films (Tortora Reference Tortora2006, 11). Rossi-Pianelli directed and Luigi Petrungaro appeared in both Il tamburino sardo and La piccola vedetta lombarda. Footnote 12
In terms of the intertitles, the filmmakers stayed very close to the original literary work, and used unusually long citations from the novel. Nonetheless, given the requirements of the art form, the filmmakers made choices that in turn affected the way in which the visual images tell the story. In particular, the nature of the medium allowed the filmmakers to linger on the children’s suffering while also creating specific visual contrasts. While De Amicis does not spare his readers from the horrors of either of the boys’ fates, the filmic images of the boys in the landscape and in relation to their adult counterparts intensify the portrayal of their sacrifice, innocence and victimisation.
As previously mentioned, in both stories and films, parents are absent. In Il tamburino sardo, there is no mention of the boy’s family, even when he is in hospital with life-threatening injuries. In La piccola vedetta lombarda the boy states that he is an orphan. Neither has a name (given or family). Thus, the military officers, representing the state, become surrogate parents who provide discipline and show concern for, and in the one case mourn the loss of, the boys. In turn, this means that the boys owe their parents the ultimate sacrifice. In both films, the height of pathos is reached when the boys’ brave actions result in physical harm. The pain and tragedy of the boys’ ordeals is communicated to viewers mainly through the reactions of their commanding officers. For example, when the captain visits the drummer boy in the hospital and learns of his amputation he reels back, clutching his heart, a look of intensifying horror on his face as the doctor piles on the commentary about how the leg could have been saved if only he hadn’t run so long and so fast to complete his mission. The filmmaker does not use close-ups to show the captain’s shock and dismay, but rather maintains a mid-range shot in order to contrast the angelic face of the boy framed against the white sheets with the various pained expressions of the captain. In La piccola vedetta lombarda, as the boy lies dying, the official once again caresses the boy’s face lovingly and tears at his own hair. As in Il tamburino sardo, there are no close-ups that feature the official’s intense emotion but rather a medium-range shot that allows for a physical contrast between the two actors and the echoes of the parent-child relationship visible in their pietà-like pose. Furthermore, the directors include only the two characters, military officer and child-hero, in the frames and deliberately exclude the other characters present in the literary versions of both stories as well as earlier in the scenes of both films (a doctor in the former and a sergeant in the latter). This choice heightens the contrast and promotes the notion of the Italian child as a son of the state, represented by his commanding officer, who is willing to suffer for it. Interestingly, the visual pairing of the commanding officers and the young boys, as opposed to a pairing of specific evil Austrians and the young boys, poses an unspoken and perhaps unintentional question about who bears responsibility (and who should feel guilty) for the tragic loss of life, an unwelcome ambiguity in otherwise uncomplicatedly patriotic films.
Il tamburino sardo and La piccola vedetta lombarda were generally well reviewed.Footnote 13 In particular, reviewers noted the effective way in which the young actors portrayed the suffering of the children. In a review of Il tamburino sardo in La vita cinematografica, Pier da Castello praises the performance of Luigi Petrungaro, specifically his effectiveness at representing all the various phases of his harrowing ordeal: ‘the exhaustion, the anxiety, the anguish, the physical pain’ (da Castello Reference da Castello1915, 62) On a similar note, a reviewer in La cinematografia italiana ed estera also applauds Petrungaro’s masterful portrayal of the wounded and limping child as he is ‘writhing in pain’ (Kardec Reference Kardec1915, 40). The special attention given to the visual rendering of the child’s pain is striking. While other actors are also praised for their talent, the reviewers repeatedly single out the sublime nature of the boy’s pain.
Less successful in reviewers’ eyes was the transfer of written text from page to screen. In attempting to maintain the perceived literary value of the work, the filmmakers decided that the intertitles should contain direct citations from De Amicis’ novel. This choice created the issue of text-heavy intertitles that slowed the flow of the films.Footnote 14 Additionally, one critic was left unimpressed by the inaccurate way in which the battles and military formations were handled in Il tamburino sardo (da Castello Reference da Castello1915, 62). However, these few flaws did not seem to hinder the success of Il tamburino sardo and La piccola vedetta lombarda with audiences (Tortora Reference Tortora2006, 11). Blurbs in La Stampa and Il Corriere della Sera from the time of the films’ release refer, for instance, to Il tamburino sardo’s ‘colossal and ever-increasing success’,Footnote 15 and recount that the ‘success of the first tale, whose showings began yesterday, was enormous and enthusiastic’.Footnote 16
It is sometimes difficult to differentiate reviews from advertisements, especially in cases where reviewers rely on the reputation of and/or nostalgia for the novel and thus conflate the two. Advertisements and reviews might have also converged at times due to the fact that journals were often linked to particular production companies and on the whole were aimed primarily at members of the industry (Rhodes Reference Rhodes2013, 264).Footnote 17 For instance, one reviewer compares the ‘splendid book’ to the ‘very noble undertaking’ of its cinematic adaptation. Another, appealing to the nostalgia factor, speaks of the episode of ‘La piccola vedetta lombarda’ in terms of a ‘heroic act’ that can never be forgotten by readers or viewers, and invites the journal’s readers to ‘remember’ with him as he summarises the plot (Martinelli Reference Martinelli1992, 16). Yet another declares that La piccola vedetta lombarda will revive ‘honest emotions’ and ‘fond childhood memories’ in viewers (Menini Reference Menini1916, 9).
Both films enjoyed multiple runs at major cinemas in Italy between 1915 and 1916, and they were also brought back at certain times to accompany other episodes of the series or to be screened at special war-themed events such as benefits for the Italian Red Cross.Footnote 18 Additionally, stories circulated about viewers sobbing at screenings, overwhelmed by patriotic fervour One correspondent recounts the story of a woman who, viewing the film as part of a special preview event, ‘seeing the heroic sacrifice of the Sardinian Drummer Boy narrated with such meticulous emphasis, at a certain point tears gushed copiously from her eyes, and she was so violently shaken by a patriotic sob that the committee became alarmed’ (Fabri Reference Fabri1915, 5). Here, the journalist draws attention to the new medium’s ability to emphasise the most heroic and horrific details in order to provoke an excess of patriotic emotion.
Also notable is the way in which this focus on the suffering of the self-sacrificing child helps to reframe the stories within the First World War context.Footnote 19 Writing in La cinematografia italiana ed estera, another journalist asserts:
Especially in this moment when our fatherland is preparing for the great ordeal, it is very useful to return to the example of the heroic Sardinian drummer boy, who demonstrates the duty to sacrifice for our compatriots and the fatherland. What a despicable explosion of vulgar egoism we could have perhaps avoided if those who will now have to fight had learned from the Sardinian drummer boy how noble and good it is to put the good of the nation and society above one’s own personal interests. (Kardec Reference Kardec1915, 40)
Here, the films are being read as and transformed into a comment on the war, as a continued model of behaviour for Italian citizens, and, as implied in the passage above, as a critique of the voices opposing Italian intervention.
Promotional materials
An advertisement for Gloria’s Cuore series offers another perspective on the recontextualisation of these two stories.Footnote 20 The advertisement, aimed at industry professionals responsible for deciding cinema programmes, appeared in a number of journals during the second half of 1915.Footnote 21 It is widely recognised that during the first two decades of the twentieth century, Italian production companies found that literary adaptations lent the new medium a certain status and seriousness (Brunetta Reference Brunetta2008, 113–134). Consequently, this advertisement attempts to capitalise on Cuore’s literary significance in order to promote the films as legitimate high art. However, the advertisement also introduces a new concept. Gloria markets the series as the ‘first cinematic book’, declaring:
This cinematic book, an artistic and faithful reproduction of the immortal work, which is known all over the world and translated into all languages, is destined for the greatest success. Nothing was overlooked by Gloria in the translation of these golden pages for the cinema, the most popular of representative arts, and in making the film worthy of the glorious name of Edmondo de Amicis.
Gloria claims that this melding of written and cinematic text was achieved by maintaining the book’s ‘integrity’ and ‘continuity’ through loyalty to De Amicis’ written text and by presenting all of the nine monthly tales as a package.Footnote 22
The advertisement also asserts that the ‘translation’ of the book into film will enhance everything about it:
And if nobody – even the least sensitive person – can avoid being intensely moved by simply reading the immortal book, to what heights will the spectator’s emotion rise when faced with its cinematic representation, in which the work’s lofty educational, moral and patriotic purpose is highlighted and becomes more clearly effective.
The implication here is that the new medium of cinema has the power to enhance the already lofty patriotic goals of the original work, and, according to the reviews mentioned earlier, this powerful medium did indeed increase the emotional impact of the story thanks to the performance of Petrungaro.
The layout of the advertisement emphasises the importance of Il tamburino sardo and La piccola vedetta lombarda within the series. Their titles and photographs span the centre of the two-page spread (indeed, the only two-pager in the volume) and are afforded more space, more descriptive text, and more stills than the others. The viewer’s eye is drawn to the photos depicting the intense suffering experienced by the child-soldier protagonists, and their subsequent elevation to near-sainthood. Strategically positioned in the middle of the page is a still of the Sardinian drummer boy lying dead after falling from his post in the tree, while another photo depicts the military officer leaning over the dying boy in a pietà pose. Yet another still, shot from an extreme low angle, shows the heroic boy perched in the tree, performing his courageous patriotic duty. The stills of Il tamburino sardo also, predictably, depict the most memorable moments of the film involving self-sacrifice: the boy being given his solemn task, the pain he endures on his treacherous journey, and the scene in the hospital during which the officer glimpses his bandaged leg. The stills of the other films advertised, Il piccolo scrivano fiorentino and Il piccolo patriota padovano, do not convey the same sense of heroic action and sacrifice, although they do provide close-ups of the young characters weeping in anguish. Additionally, the advertisement’s text singles out both of the war-themed films as ‘moving patriotic episodes’, while the other two films included in the advertisement are not labelled in that same way. The text also indicates that Il tamburino sardo had already enjoyed box office success. The promotional emphasis, then, seems to be on La piccola vedetta lombarda as a follow-up to the very successful Il tamburino sardo in that patriotism and war were the two most relevant issues addressed by the series at that time.
Once the films were released in cinemas, other types of promotional materials became available, not just to industry insiders but to audiences as well. Cinemas distributed commemorative postcards, called serie cinematografiche, for each of the films in the series.Footnote 23 The concept of serie cinematografiche was not unique to these films, however. It had been put into practice by film companies in 1910, and had been used in the theatre world even earlier. Essentially, the idea was that viewers could take home souvenirs from their cinema-going experience. The serie cinematografiche for the Cuore series contained between four and eight postcards each and came packaged together in a brochure. Typically, the brochure’s front page featured the title of the film, the number of postcards in the package, the name of the production company (in this case Gloria), and the name of the typographic company that produced the postcards (in this case Alterocca). The Cuore series brochure also included an image of De Amicis (Tortora Reference Tortora2006, 12). The postcards themselves depicted many of the same stills used for the print advertisements along with text from the novel, although not all of the text on the postcards appears in the films’ intertitles. While the print advertisements contain references to the literary and didactic nature of the Cuore series in which De Amicis and the novel were constructed as immortal treasures of Italian heritage, the postcards focus more on highlighting the films’ most dramatic moments without editorial comment. The last postcard in the series for La piccola vedetta lombarda, for example, captures the scene in which the battalion of soldiers comes across the boy’s corpse, wrapped in a flag. The text on the postcard reads: ‘he was sleeping there in the grass, wrapped in his flag, with his white face almost smiling, the poor little boy, as if he could hear those farewells and was content to have given his life for his Lombardy’. This is the concluding sentence of the tale in De Amicis’ novel (which, incidentally, does not appear in the film) and offers an idealised view of what the death of a soldier in the First World War looked like despite a reality that was quite the contrary. This multi-pronged publicity approach targeting industry professionals and audiences, then, sits at the intersection of sentimentalism, nostalgia, melodrama, and pedagogy, but also of patriotic mourning and commemoration at a time when the death announcements of fallen First World War soldiers began to appear in daily newspapers.
Corriere della Sera
One final aspect of the reframing process is the way in which lists of showtimes and cinema programmes appeared in daily newspapers. For the purposes of this essay, I looked at several examples from Corriere della Sera. Luigi Albertini, who has been credited with elevating the publication’s status to the most important national and international Italian newspaper of its time, served as Corriere della Sera’s editor between 1900 and 1925. Politically, Albertini vehemently opposed the governing style and policies of Giovanni Giolitti, particularly his opportunism and participation in a system of political patronage, as well as his neutrality with regard to the First World War. Albertini, who later in life became an important historian of the First World War with his three-volume work entitled Le origini della guerra del 1914 (1942-1943), strongly supported Italy’s intervention. Albertini advocated for intervention through Corriere della Sera which, consequently, heavily influenced attitudes about intervention among the publication’s readership, the largest of any Italian newspaper. Albertini and his circle of like-minded politicians, intellectuals and journalists such as Luigi Barzini, produced opinion pieces supporting intervention. Gabriele D’Annunzio’s spectacular and divisive pro-intervention speech at the inauguration of the Monumento ai Mille on 5 May 2015, a definitive step toward garnering public support for intervention through appeals to an incomplete Unification, was also published in its entirety that same day in Corriere della Sera. After Italy’s entry into the war, and as the war progressed, Albertini continued to direct authors not only of opinion articles, but also war correspondents, to report encouraging news from the front while avoiding any mention of difficulties (Moroni Reference Moroni2015). In this context, an examination of the way in which film showings, news about the war, and death announcements of soldiers comingled on the local pages of Corriere della Sera will be useful in analysing how these films were positioned within a network of multi- and cross-media pro-intervention propaganda.
Film showtimes for Il tamburino sardo and La piccola vedetta lombarda (as well as other Risorgimento-themed films) were often listed on the local news pages alongside a number of different types of reminders of the current war. These reminders included soldiers’ death announcements and columns dedicated to various war-related issues, from appeals to send items to prisoners interned in Austria and care packages to the troops at Christmas, to prices for military uniforms, and from selling matches to raise money for the war wounded, to summaries of lectures given on such topics as ‘The Battle for the “Italianità” of Trento and Trieste’.
On the ‘Corriere Milanese’ page of Corriere della Sera dated 17 November 1915,Footnote 24 for instance, an announcement that screenings of Il tamburino sardo would begin the following day is situated next to a column entitled ‘Fallen for the Fatherland’ in which the names of four soldiers who had been killed in combat are listed. This layout is not unique to that day but rather repeats itself over several weeks. Other columns on that page refer to the purchase of war bonds and donations of other kinds, and again, they are not unique to that one day but are repeatedly juxtaposed with the announcement of Il tamburino sardo’s showtimes. Another example of the network of meaning created on a single ‘Corriere Milanese’ page can be seen in the 10 December 1915 issue. An announcement for showings of La piccola vedetta lombarda (described here as a film that will awaken ‘a profound and patriotic emotion’) is listed in the same column as an announcement for showings of Il mio diario di guerra (described as ‘one of the most glorious pages from our war … that faithfully demonstrates the faith and valour with which our army fights’).Footnote 25 Thus, announcements for two films that speak to patriotic sacrifice, one set during the Risorgimento and one during the current war, appear in dialogue with each other in close proximity on the same newspaper page. Add to this the surrounding columns entitled ‘Christmas Care Package for the Troops’, ‘For the 30,000 Wool Clothes’, ‘A Donation from d’Annunzio’, and ‘Among the Milanese Troops’, and one sees how the film, an adaptation of the widely-known Risorgimento-era tale using modern technology to enhance and amplify its most excruciating moments of patriotic sacrifice, must be read in the context of these new deeds of selfless heroism asked of Italian citizens by the state.
Films, then, played an important role in creating these networks of meaning and the dialogue between historical events. At this time in particular, when the Italian film industry had been relying on its expert ability to produce high quality historical epics for international as well as domestic audiences, cinema was seen as a means of mass patriotic education. And while movie-going was a popular pastime, it was also an instructional resource in a more technical sense as well. An article dated 18 May 1916 entitled ‘Soldiers at the Movies’ illustrates this point. The article describes an evening spent by soldiers at the cinema, but not exclusively for entertainment this time. Instead they watched non-fiction films aimed at arousing in them excitement about arriving at the battle front:
They see on screen … films of manoeuvres, formations, processions, experiences, visions of life in the trenches, battle scenes, flights, meetings between people, all taken from real life, with a skilful inclusion of artistic content, that gives the soldiers an idea of what they will see in the near future and which awakens admiration, desire, and shudders of excitement in their souls.Footnote 26
On that same newspaper page, however, there appears an announcement for a double feature of Il tamburino sardo and La piccola vedetta lombarda at the Cinema Teatro dei Giardini. The announcement uses very similar language to the article ‘Soldiers at the Movies’ in promoting the films – it claims that they ‘awaken admiration and emotion’. The repetition of the verb destare (to arouse or awaken), an important term in Risorgimento rhetoric, provides an indicative example of the way in which print media covering the two films – in this case the layout of a newspaper page but in other cases, as we have seen, film reviews and advertisements – worked to project a pro-intervention message onto them despite a lack of obvious pro-intervention elements in the films themselves.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the editors of the journal and the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments. I am also grateful to my colleague Anna Wainwright for her suggestions and encouragement as I finished writing this article.
Amy Boylan received her PhD in Italian at the University of California, Los Angeles. She has published articles on Italian literature of the First World War, commemorative practices in twentieth-century Italy, and Italian cinema. Her recent work focuses on the First World War and Italian cinema.
