Women in revenge and new symbolisms of female bodies between filmic anthropomorphism, fashion and gender idealism in the early period of Visconti’s cinema

Abstract

Visconti’s filmic realism concerns the story of the identity transformations of Italians from the post-war period to the economic boom, and is based on the representation of the psycho-socio-anthropological context in which “models of contemporary women” appear for eroticized traits, and always emblematic of attempts at a female revenge still in germ. In Visconti’s early films this particular aspect therefore takes shape in tones that are only ideally progressive and not concrete, represented in characters played by divas of the time such as Giovanna-Calamai in Ossessione (1943), Maddalena-Magnani in Bellissima (1951) and Pupe-Schneider in Il lavoro (1962). Underlying the expressive potential of these works is the anthropomorphic value of cinema, described in one of his famous essays that seems more like a ‘declaration of intent’, a preamble to his films designed to highlight their capacity, yet to be constructed, to reproduce the value of human authenticity in the acting and in the scene, or from the material aspects of which it is composed. It is precisely the film theory at the basis of his films and the correlated scenic representation, both in the symbolic forms constructed by the director and in the materialistic ones of the set, costumes and scene requirements, that initially assume the traits of neo-realism, or as he specified “human realism”, whose character he will always maintain, even in the films of the second period defined by critics as baroque and decadentist. This change will be determined by the understanding that the economic boom and the correlated advent of a new capitalist society have radically changed the life and culture of Italians, and not always for the better. In order to narrate this change, Visconti will define new forms of “realistically pre-structured” storytelling that show, in the richness of the materiality of environments and costumes, the symbolic aspects of a new human verism degenerated by money and often hidden behind the mask of apparent social growth. Starting from this discourse, the three female characters mentioned above are analysed, with particular attention to Pupe-Schneider, a case study chosen for the particular dramaturgical connotations constructed through the baroque elements of the scene and costumes/dresses of the Chanel brand.