Making Caccia Tragica: Giorgio Agliani, Giuseppe De Santis and the Italian Resistance

Abstract

Giorgio Agliani is almost unknown as an Italian film producer. A former commander in the Resistance, he was placed, soon after the war, in charge of cinema affairs within ANPI, the Italian national association of partisans. Agliani strongly believed that cinema was the perfect medium to build the collective memory of the Resistance. As the executive producer of Caccia Tragica (Tragic Hunt, 1947), directed by Giuseppe De Santis, he oversaw the making of a film which explored the tensions between men and women who had taken different sides in the recent conflict. The film won the prize for the best Italian movie at the Eighth Venice Film Festival in 1947. The article explores the tensions and difficulties that accompanied this attempt to make a film outside of conventional industry channels. The production was complicated because of the need to balance political concerns, organizational issues and artistic aspirations. Given the sensitive topic of Caccia Tragica, the Italian Communist Party put great pressure on ANPI leaders to ensure the story was told in a certain way. This impacted on Agliani, who was in charge of coordination, as well as financial and organizational matters, and also on De Santis, who demanded respect for his artistic decisions. Agliani’s personal archive is drawn on to reconstruct the entire story of the making of Caccia Tragica and to disentangle the various issues involved in the production. The article highlights the way political, cultural and economic issues were intertwined as well and sheds light on a ‘mode of production’ that was far from being a capitalistic one.