Il Divo in the context of Italian political cinema Anonymous College

“We are very different. You are not my son, you are not my nephew. But you are a very good director.” [1] Upon seeing Sorrentino’s 2008 masterpiece, Il Divo, Francesco Rosi, one of the pioneering forefathers of the Italian school of cinema d’impegno civile – a brand of political cinema which promoted civic engagement and aimed to agitate the political sentiment of viewers, was at pains to convey to Sorrentino that, while he greatly esteemed his work, Rosi perceived him as separate from the canon of Italian political cinema of the 60s, 70s and 80s. Yet Rosi’s thinking is increasing being re-evaluated by many critics, who are quick to draw parallels between Il Divo, and its antecedents of the Italian cinema of the 60s to the 80s, citing the encouragement offered for civic engagement, the treatment of historical memory, and the profound analysis of an erstwhile era of politics – in the 1970s most commonly that of fascism, but in Il Divo, the Christian Democratic party. It appears that neither party – Rosi nor a vast array of film critics – should be totally mistaken in their conclusions. Whilst there are ostensibly a great deal of commonplaces with the political cinema of the 1970s, such as the revisiting of recent political...