“The Ideal Film”. On the transformation of the Italian Catholic film and media policy on the 1950’ and the 1960’

In this essay on the post-WWII period, Fanchi illustrates how the Catholic Church was marked by the tension between the willingness to promote cinema and the need to exercise control over it. This tension emerges in Church documents, catholic exhibition strategies, and catholic audiences. It was also evident in the oscillations of the Centro Cattolico Cinematografico judgements on films. Between the fifties and sixties, in particular, the growth in the percentage of films that audiences were denied highlights the progressive dominance of the pedagogic model that saw cinema as just teaching tool.