Difficult Years

Luigi Zampa's 1948 Italian film follows Aldo Piscitello, a minor clerk in a small town. In 1934 Aldo has to join the Fascist party, not because he believes in it but because he cannot afford to lose his job. When the war comes, all he manages is to grumble in private while his son Giovanni is sent to the front. By the time Aldo finally finds the courage to say something out loud, it is too late. The film does not lay fascism at the feet of a few men at the top; it shows how the daily compliance of ordinary people held the thing up. That it was made only three years after the war, as Italy was barely beginning to discuss this, is a matter of its own.