Contro il Neorealismo? Michelangelo Antonioni e La signora senza camelie

Among the Italian films that in the first half of the 1950s address the theme of (neorealist) cinema within cinema, La signora senza camelie is the one most programmatically distant from neorealism. Even more than Bellissima, We, the Women (Alfredo Guarini, Gianni Franciolini, Roberto Rossellini, Luigi Zampa, Luchino Visconti, 1953) and Lo sceicco bianco (Federico Fellini, 1952), the latter based on an idea by Antonioni himself. Through the analysis of some sequences, this study focuses on the essence of such distancing and captures to such extent it is precisely the illusion of authenticity produced by the filmic image that makes it impossible for cinema to represent reality. Because it is an illusion, capable of generating devastating effects like those produced on the young Clara, the protagonist of La signora senza camelie. Her story is also a female Bildungsroman. It is the story of a maturation, a defeat and a discomfort, from which also emerges an important reflection – aesthetic, sociological, ideological – on film acting and on the effects exerted by the cinema on a particular type of female cinematic audience, which neorealism failed to modify.