The Boom (1958-1960s)
To an Italian society that looked to move on from the war, Comedy would come to fill a very important gap as the wave of neorealism started to wane. This was not an immediate effect, being embraced as soon as the war was declared over, but would become more popular as the distance between the war and the population grew. As this distance grew, the humour of life that some Neorealism films lacked started to reemerge as Italians were more willing to laugh than ever before, and perhaps more wanting as well. Most critics look to 1958’s Big Deal on Madonna Street as the definitive film to start the trend of commedia all’italiana, but in truth even that film was built off of the stylings of it’s neorealism predecessors, specifically the more socially-pointed films by Rossellini and Fellini. In fact, according to Andrea Bini, these predecessor films are much more pivotal to Comedy Italian Style than Big Deal itself. Throughout the 1950s and 60s, the era in which Comedy Italian Style flourished, films could be taken as conversations between filmmakers as the state of Italy and it’s possible futures would be discussed. It would be a variety of filmmakers who would all bring individual pieces to the table, such as the introduction of the genre’s typical satire by Alberto Sordi, who used non traditional masks for his characters that reflected society realistically in a way that hadn’t really been done before.
Comedy found a unique spot in the forefront of Italian Cinema, such that almost all genres and forms of media would in some way tread a path into the genre. Meanwhile, it wasn’t as if the directors and producers were going to run of ideas any time soon. The commentary that was so pivotal to Comedy Italian Style could heavily draw upon the values, or rather lack thereof in the society around them. As modernization, and consumerism took it’s hold as Italy’s comeback had thrust right into the middle of the rest of the world’s influences. As a result, Italians experienced a detachment from their old values and the desire to move on, but the overarching society had no real new morals to accept, leading filmmakers to believe that much of Italy was caught in some dark middle ground of lawlessness and no morality.