Quanto la critica si divise. A proposito degli anni Bergman

In the second half of the 1980s, Pietro Pintus published an important essay entitled “Quando la critica si divise” [when criticism divided], in order to evoke the critical battle between Italy and France fighted on the ground of Rossellini’s films of the 1950s. Twenty years later, this study investigates how much criticism was divided. Or, better: how many times and why. Thanks to the progress of research, in fact, it is now possible to better detail the many critical battles, daughters of a unique, ideological war, which were fought on the field of those Rossellini's films. In fact, if part of the Catholic criticism immediately understood that Rossellini was too important to leave him to the communists, finally also part of the Marxist criticism understood that he was too important to leave him to the Catholics. Therefore, the numerous battles fought on the ground of Rossellini's films were mostly battles dictated by the desire to acquire – or delegitimize – a director considered strategic to win the war for the appropriation of neorealism. That is, for the appropriation of the only Italian cinematic phenomenon of international importance, of which Rossellini was – and still is – considered the initiator.