Cinecittà

Cinecittà was constructed in 1936–37 on the site of Cines, an important early studio that had burned down, and it was an important part of the Fascist government’s attempt to develop a domestic film industry equal to that of Hollywood. Cinecittà was the focus of the Italian movie industry during World War II, when bombings almost completely destroyed its facilities. After the war the Allies used Cinecittà as a prisoner-of-war camp and then as a displaced-person camp. That Cinecittà was closed after the war was a factor in the emergence of Italian Neorealism, which favoured films shot on location.

The studios were eventually rebuilt, and by 1950 Cinecittà was once again in full production. For the next 20 years Cinecittà set cinema trends through the work of such leading directors as Michelangelo Antonioni, Vittorio De Sica, Luchino Visconti, Roberto Rossellini, and particularly Federico Fellini, who shot most of his films there. Attracted by production subsidies and low labour costs, American studios shot such films like Roman Holiday (1953), Ben-Hur (1959), and Cleopatra (1963) there, earning Cinecittà the nickname of “Hollywood on the Tiber.” The growth of television and the decline in the quality of Cinecittà’s films diminished its prestige, however, starting in the 1970s.

The studio was privatized in 1997 and expanded to control two other studios in Italy, Dino Studios near Rome and Umbria Studios near Terni, and to have partial control of CLA Studios in Ouarzazate, Morocco. Although in the early 21st century the number of projects of production was only one-third of that in Cinecittà’s 1960s heyday, the studio still played a major role in Italy’s film industry and continued to attract foreign productions.