Children in Fascist Regime Cinema: The Case of Luigi Ballerini’s La Fuggitiva (1941)

Abstract

After a sustained presence in silent movies, children almost vanish in Fascist cinema, which was dominated by the light comedies of the white telephones—a fact that clashes with the regime’s promotion of large families, population increase and the valorization of motherhood. Children begin to reappear in the melodramas of the early Forties mainly as a complement to the figure of the mother, who is depicted in sentimental stories about single parenthood, illegitimate children, hard negotiations between traditional motherhood and self-realization. Piero Ballerini’s film La Fuggitiva (1941) offers an interesting and problematic story of the mother-child relation, where, in the absence of the biological mother, too busy pursuing her theatrical career, we see the glorification of the maternal surrogate, a woman who is a paragon of sacrifice and selfabnegation. La Fuggitiva is also a film in which a child actress takes a prominent role. In this sentimental drama, the little girl suffers for and rebels against the loneliness and neglect stemming from the lack of a mother and a loving family setting. The film stages the crisis of the patriarchal family and the suffering of the child in ways that anticipate De Sica’s I bambini ci guardano.