Women’s image in Alberto Lattuada’s cinema : 1948-1960

Considering Lattuada’s films, between 1948 and 1960, I will analyze not only the passage of this author through different narrative styles and genres, but also his investigation of contemporary women’s world. As Gian Piero Brunetta wrote: “Lattuada perceived, with a freedom unknown to other directors, the needs of women in a changing world and the very high price women, of different generations, have to pay for both freedom and the possibility of full possession of their own bodies – and their use – in order to improve their social status”. I will analyze five films, from the season of Neorealism represented in Senza Pietà (1948), where you can find documentary, drama and melodrama, through the “Neorealism for women” informing Anna (1952), a film in which protagonist’s sexuality is repressed and punished and in which some codes of fotoromanzo (photo love story novel) are used. I will then turn to La spiaggia (1954), the story of a prostitute who is not accepted by conformist society that shows the director’s complaint about the moralism Italian prevailing morality. I will analyze the unknown– and by then quickly changing – universe of teenagers in the Fifties with Guendalina (1957) and Dolci inganni (1960): if Guendalina is a film about a young girl’s transformation and growth motivated by her first love, Dolci inganni is an in-depth study of higher degree of maturity and intensity, showing a character fully aware of her actions, even while facing sexual experiences.