The Rome-Vienna Axis. A Page in the History of Italian Film in the 1930s

In the mid-1930s an intense cooperation develops in the area of film between Italy and Austria. The cooperation involves some of the most important Italian directors of the 1930s, such as Carmine Gallone, Augusto Genina and Goffredo Alessandrini, and its beginnings coincide with the establishment in fall 1934 of the Direzione Generale per la Cinematografia (DGC) under Luigi Freddi's direction. In fact, the cooperation explicitly represents the fruit of the efforts by the Dgc to regain an international standing for Italian film, after the severe crisis undergone in the 1920s, and the cooperative axis taking shape between Rome and Vienna in the mid-1930s sheds a light on a lesser known, but central chapter in the history of Italian film in the 1930s.