Interview with Guido Aristarco (original) (raw)

Giunta: At what point in your career did you become interested in cinema, and what was the condition of Italian cinema and film criticism at the time? Aristarco: My first article was published in 1937. I was very young then and I was not interested only in cinema. Even then I was seeking links between film and other cultural forms. I saw film as something completely new, that generated responses altogether different from the ones generated by literature or other traditional art forms. My generation as well as the previous one saw cinema as a revolutionary event, though such perception was not always clearly articulated. We believed that cinema opposed the idealism of Benedetto Croce and the concept of the unity of art, and that it proposed a new notion of art. This new art form represented a complete departure from the traditional aesthetic for two reasons: first, because of its technological nature, and second because it was a collaborative art form. Its product, the film itself, involved several "authors." During that period, the "official" culture was very suspicious of technology, and did not believe in its capacity to create anything of lasting or high value. In the 1930's several intellectuals, even followers of Croce, converted to cinema, as did, for example, the literary critic Giacomo Di Benedetti and the art critics Giulio Carlo Argan and Carlo L. Ragghianti. The best Italian film theory is still unknown abroad. The French are typically reluctant to translate and thus are not familiar with the Italian contributions to film theory and do not know such critics as Barbaro, Chiarini, and Pasinetti, who all wrote in the 1930's and 1940's. I also believe that Italy was the first country in the world to establish the teaching of history and theory of cinema in the universities. Chiarini and I obtained the first professorships in 1969. G: You have also worked with De Santis and Lizzani as a screenwriter. A: Only once. I have always argued that the critic should not try to be a director or a screenwriter. The year 1946, however, was a special time in Italian history: I had been part of the partisan movement and Il sole sarge ancora (The Sun Also Rises