Aesthetic politics of fascism criticism in the post-1945 İtalian cinema

Through the content and form of a film, cinema provides the opportunity to 'recall' fascism, the struggle against fascism, the passion of the suppressed or unrealised revolution. In an era, when there is a possibility for a revival of fascism, when its potential of preventing the possibility of the liberation of the oppressed and the toilers is still kept alive, the need for films on this subject is bigger than ever. This thesis entitled 'Aesthetic Politics of Fascism Criticism in the Post-1945 Italian Cinema' includes a study and analysis on the aesthetic politics of films after Neorealism that confront fascism in Italy, where fascism was institutionalized as a doctrine and was defeated through anti-fascist struggle. Confronting fascism and anti-fascist struggle have remained among the most preferred subjects amidst the directors in every period of Italian cinema after Rosselini. It has been observed that the films, criticism of fascism of which constitute their aesthetic politics in our view, are produced not by the generation that lived through fascism but in 1970s by a new generation that can take a more distant look at the past. For this reason, films that are produced after World War II were selected. The films entitled 1900 (Novecento, Bernardo Bertolucci, 1976), The Conformist (Il Conformista, Bernardo Bertolucci, 1970), A Special Day (Una Giornata Particolare, Ettore Scola, 1977), Christ Stopped at Eboli (Cristo si è fermato a Eboli, Francesco Rosi, 1979) were analysed within the context of aesthetic politics, cinema and fascism. Our analyses of these four films, which criticize the arguments of fascism and its emptied and bloated 'system of values' that emerged based on these arguments, have revealed that cinema can play a positive role for the confrontation of societies with their past and can thus lead the way in changing the forms of seeing and thinking that are passed down from generation to generation.