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The first
Lancia models that appear on the screen seem to
perfectly interpret the spirit of the Futurists who
maintained that the precepts of a car’s beauty could
challenge those of the winged Victory of Samothrace.
Many models from the Turin-based company punctuate the
history of Italian cinema and, in some ways, that of
world cinema, strongly assuming from the start not just
the role of a mere means of locomotion, but rather of a
subject of the scene that assumes and shares the role of
obvious star or lead with the other actors.
If the models (and Lancias in particular) already used
in the silent films made in Turin can be considered
magical assistants to the great Italian male and female
star system (we know that Emilio Ghione used Lancias in
his films, for example), it was the cinema of the
Thirties, and the so-called “white telephone” films that
chose this type of car to accompany the dream of
Italians that went beyond “the threshold of one thousand
lire a month” on one hand, and on the other, almost to
represent an access key to modernity.
But it was in the Fifties and Sixties in particular that
the Ardea, Appia and Aurelia launched and led the
process that led from post-war reconstruction to the
economic boom, introducing into the Italian landscape
and into Italian cinema, elements linked to the
discovery of a thousand and one Italys, the race towards
well-being that was no longer limited to a chosen few,
and the conquest of a new sense of freedom. From the
first post-war years, Italian cinema teemed with cars
that blended beauty, technological innovation, power and
luxury.
The video-installation – the fruit of research conducted
in a vast group of over one hundred and fifty works of
world cinema, is an integral part of the educational
project “Cinema interprets Italian society” and aims to
show how, over the years, certain Lancia models have
acquired what we could call a role of “widespread
stardom”, or at least an appeal that was no less strong
than that of the actual stars and actors in the film.
This journey into cinema history is an opportunity to
delve into our memory for shapes and car models that
have for decades played an important role in the
public’s imagination and dreams.
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And so this journey into cinema also a way of seeing how
the cinema has often filled, and can still fill, a
privileged position in our memory of the best examples
of Italian creativeness.
Gian Piero Brunetta
Gian Piero
Brunetta is a cinema historian, lecturer in Cinema
history and criticism at Padova University, and the
author of numerous publications about the Italian
cinema, including History of Italian cinema and One
hundred years of Italian cinema, he edited the History
of World cinema for Einaudi. He has curated numerous
exhibitions including the exhibition organised at
Cinecittà to mark the centenary of the cinema, and he
has collaborated on exhibitions in Palazzo Grassi, the
Centre Georges Pompidou and the Guggenheim Museum of New
York.
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