BOOK – Antisemitism in Italian cinema before the Shoah

Usurers, seducers, and conspirators. This is how Italian cinema portrayed Jews before the Holocaust. In his new book, documentarist filmmaker Luca Martera, an expert in historical, investigative, journalistic and audiovisual research, reconstructs this little-known aspect. Titled Usurai, seduttori e cospiratori (Usurers, seducers and conspirators) and published by Salomone Belforte, the work was presented on March 20 at the Tullia Zevi National Library of Italian Judaism in Rome. 

“Stereotypes don’t come out of nowhere”, the author explained. “All the antisemitic iconography in this type of cinema comes from centuries of literature and theatre, from sculptures and frescoes that still exist in Italian churches.” The echo of these representations then spreads to films, documentaries, short animations. Not to mention the “Luce Institute and its sly propaganda.” 

In his research, Matera has found two films in which these stereotypes were at the heart, and at least a dozen in which the characters were stereotyped by their own actions. The meeting was attended by the UCEI President Noemi di Segni, historian of Italian Judaism Riccardo Calimani, Shoah historian Amedeo Osti Guerrazzi, director and producer Ruggero Gabbai and journalist Mario Tedeschini Lalli. It was no coincidence that the book was presented between after Holocaust Remembrance Day and Italy’s Liberation Day on April 25, Di Segni said. “We are seeing an increasing distortion in the way Italy’s liberation from fascism is perceived,” she added. “The challenge is to bring new stimulations.”

Translated by Rebecca Luna Escobar and revised by Chiara Tona, students at the Advanced School for Interpreters and Translators of the University of Trieste, trainees in the newsroom of the Union of the Italian Jewish Communities — Pagine Ebraiche.