Motion Pictures and the first amendment
The Rossellini work that would have an even greater international impact was the second section of L’Amore, “The Miracle” (“II Miracolo”), following Cocteau’s “La Voix humaine” segment. With Tullio Pinelli and a young actor named Federico Fellini, soon to become one of the most important directors of the postwar Italian cinema, Rossellini co-wrote the story of a tramp (Fellini) who has an affair with a mentally unbalanced woman; when she gives birth to a son, she says he is the Messiah. The Catholic Church responded by mounting an aggressive campaign against the film. After it was finally released in the United States in December 1950, the New York State Board of Regents succeeded in banning it on the grounds that it was sacrilegious. But the film’s American distributor took the case all the way to the Supreme Court, which in 1952 decided that the Regents’ ruling had violated the separation of church and state.
This decision was enormously important for the
Meanwhile, similar trouble was brewing in Italy, even as Neorealism was becoming influential internationally. In 1949, the Andreotti Law attempted to halt the production of films, specifically those of the Neorealist school, that did not serve “the best interests of Italy,” and to remove state subsidies from films that failed to depict a thriving postwar Italian state. In some cases, the law even denied export licenses for international distribution. Many filmmakers found a way around the restrictions, but as the national economy regained its footing Italian producers and audiences began to turn to more traditional fare. As the 1950s dawned, new court rulings, technological advances, and changing audience tastes forced the studios to adapt in order to survive.
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