The rebirth of Italian cinema. The cinema of white telephones

1. Stefano Pittaluga and Cines

2. Emilio Cecchi

3. Luigi Freddi and the General Management of motion pictures

4. The imperial project

5. Cinecittà

On 27 April 1937, Mussolini inaugurated the new film studios of Cinecittà in Via Tuscolana (see film on inauguration). The imposing complex has structures that are not only as good as those in America but are unequalled in Europe. Cinecittà provides 75,000 metres of streets, squares and gardens, a big pool for sea filming, three restaurants, various houses for managers and clerks, sixteen studios and dressing-rooms equipped with all comforts. In fact, it is possible to enter the studios with just the idea of the film and exit with the finished product. The creation of Cinecittà, together with the Alfieri Law of 18 January 1939 (which granted national films a generous financial contribution), in addition to a policy of self-sufficiency in distribution which saw the big American companies leaving our market, are the main reasons contributing to the sharp increase in productions and the boom in Italian cinema in the pre-war period. With an average of eighty productions a year (an enormous figure considering the present-day asphyctic production) Italian cinema saw the creation of dozens of specialized magazines destined to increase the popularity of Italian film stars. The star par excellence was Isa Miranda, who also had a short but unhappy experience in Hollywood, followed by Elsa Merlini, the exotic Doris Duranti (the lover of Pavolini, the Minister of Popular Culture), the whimsical Assia Noris who had the good fortune of playing in all the films of her husband Camerini, the unruly Luisa Ferida (destined, together with her companion Osvaldo Valenti, to die an atrocious death towards the end of the war); and then the beautiful Clara Calamai (who shocked the public with her bare bosom, the first in the history of Italian cinema, in Blasetti's "La cena delle beffe" (1941) and Alida Valli (she made her debut with Mario Mattoli's "Ore 9 lezione di chimica" (1941) destined, in just a few years, to become the best loved star of Italian cinema.
The actors include Vittorio De Sica, Gino Cervi, Fosco Giachetti and Amedeo Nazzari.

6. Telefoni Bianchi