Abstract

In this paper will be commented some examples taken from Italian combat films produced in the 1950s and dedicated to World War Two. These films have been usually overlooked as escapist and reactionary as well as opposed to the frank and “progressive” films of neorealism. Nevertheless, they should be reconsidered in order to understand the cinematic forms through which the memory and experience of World War Two was represented in the Italian popular culture of the 1950s. These films will be investigated by raising three different types of question: 1. the critical and historical reception (particularly in the light of neorealism, of course), 2. the differences and similarities with the Hollywood models, 3. the representations of gender roles that these films provide and especially the way in which they display masculinity.