Vincent F. Rocchio - Cinema of Anxiety - A Psychoanalysis of Italian Neorealism-University of Texas Press (2014)

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CINEMA OF ANXIETY
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CINEMA OF
ANXIETY
A Psychoanalysis
of Italian Neorealism
Vincent F. Rocchio
University of Texas Press, Austin

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Copyright © 1999 by the University of Texas Press

All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
First edition, 1999
Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent
to Permissions, University of Texas Press, Box 7819, Austin, TX 78713-7819.
䊊
⬁ The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of
ansi/niso z39.48-1992 (r1997) (Permanence of Paper).
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Rocchio, Vincent F. (Vincent Floyd), 1960 – Cinema of anxiety : a psycho-

analysis of Italian neorealism / Vincent F. Rocchio. — 1st ed. p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 0-292-77100-2 (alk. paper) isbn 0-292-77101-0 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Motion pictures—Italy—History. 2. Lacan, Jacques, 1901–
I. Title.
pn1993.5.i88 r59 1999
791.43⬘0945 — dc21 99-6046
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in memoria di
Vincenzo ed Antonia Rocchio
e figli
Domenico, Maria, ed
Anthony, mio padre nobile

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Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
1. Revisiting Psychoanalysis and the Cinema 9
2. Rome: Open City 29
A N X I E T Y, I D E O L O G Y, A N D C U L T U R A L C O N T A I N M E N T
3. Bicycle Thieves 53
IDENTIFICATION, FOCALIZATION, AND RESTORATION
4. La terra trema 79
SUBVERTING AND STRUCTURING MEANING
5. Bitter Rice 105

THE RETURN OF THE REPRESSED (DIVA)
6. Senso 127
DEGENERATE MELODRAMA?
7. Psychoanalysis, Cinematic Representation, 147

and Cultural Studies
Notes 159 Bibliography 175 Index 181

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Acknowledgments
This project started off, humbly enough, as a research paper while I was a
graduate student at New York University. Even though I immediately recog-
nized that the scope of the project could easily be expanded into a disserta-
tion, I was not as quick to pursue it. There were several reasons for that, but
the chief one was my last name. It is often difficult for others to understand
the onerous problem Italian-Americans face when they write on Italian cul-
ture. In the current overly competitive and far too trendy American aca-
demic climate, Italian-Americans are by and large looked down upon as be-
ing too parochial and somewhat inferior for writing about something they
already “know”—rather than expanding their horizons—when they write
on Italian culture or history. These days, it is only with some fear and trepi-
dation (or blind ignorance) that any of us pursue anything even remotely
Italian.
In my own case, however, several scholars whom I respect greatly en-
couraged me to go forward with this project right from its earliest stages.
Laura Mulvey was the first to read my approach to Neorealism and offered
strong encouragement while pointing out several theoretical limitations and
problems that I had encountered. Bill Simon was next to read an expanded
version of the project and also gave encouragement to go forward, even as he
challenged my conclusions and demanded more work on Italian culture. In
the end, with my dissertation nearing completion, he cleared off his desk to
get chapters read. Bob Stam amiably came on at the last minute to see the
project through and made several insightful suggestions regarding the inte-
grating function that the main theoretical model served. Steve Barnes, much
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x Cinema of Anxiety
further ahead of me in the program and a role model for being a genial and
supportive colleague, kindly pointed up my glaring omission of the role of
the Catholic church in the films under investigation—proving once and for
all that I was not going to “get away with” ignoring that complex issue (much
as I had hoped). Mirto Golo-Stone, another great one that NYU let get away,
was the first to stamp “publishable” on this project, allowing me to have
confidence in my work. Later, as I pursued the theoretical model into other
areas and tried to do comparative studies, Roger Simon became a patient
and tested sounding board, with encyclopedic knowledge of American film.
As I progressed from dissertation to manuscript in process, several people
gave me invaluable insight and support. Frank Tomasulo, who served as an
outside reader, always offered support and insight on how to turn a disser-
tation into a manuscript. He is the model of the generous scholar. Fortu-
nately for the field of cinema studies, he is not alone. Peter Brunette served
as an early reader and gave his support for what was at the time only a crude
manuscript with potential. Further, he generously revealed his identity as a
reader so that I could discuss his critiques more in depth. Most of the im-
portant theoretical revisions I made are due to his critiques. Joshua Bellin
was my sounding board on literary theory and gave me important culturally
based counterexamples of Ferdinand de Saussure’s model of the arbitrary
sign. Andrea Casson was my go-to Italianist, assisting me with both language
and culture. My colleague Michael Anton Budd gave detailed critique and
thoughtful advice on responding to readers, and his support was echoed by
Peggy Walsh and Renae Grant.
Joanna Hitchcock was the first editor to show interest in the project and
took the time to help out an unknown scholar pursue his work. In an age
when an individual’s importance is measured by hiding behind message ma-
chines and administrative assistants, she was always accessible, kind, and
enormously helpful. She obviously runs the University of Texas Press under
those same principles, because my editor Jim Burr helped this project along
in the same manner: forthrightly and supportively.
In terms of intellectual support, this project is thoroughly indebted to
Janet Staiger. The first few drafts were so lamentably crude that no one had
much interest in working with me—no one except Janet. From the begin-
ning, she showed faith in me and the project, preventing a major derailment
of both, I am sure. I do not need to laud Janet’s scholarly and intellectual
achievements, which are well known throughout the field. Perhaps what is
not so well known is her ability to maintain standards and still treat people
as individuals with dignity and respect. She is so fundamentally committed
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Acknowledgments xi
to both scholarship and people that she has been a great role model for sev-
eral scholars, none more than me.
In conclusion I would note that it is not really in vogue to acknowledge
family in the production of an academic work. This is a book on Italian cul-
ture, however, and that norm is very un-Italian—hence my willingness
to violate it, especially since people like my sister and my uncle kept me in
clothing as I worked on this, and my brother temporarily housed me from
time to time. My other brother quietly paid my graduate school fees because
I was too broke but wanted to graduate. My parents looked for any excuse
they could to find ways to support me, and my sister, separated by a conti-
nent, always found ways to encourage me.
In the end, however, my ability to finish a manuscript depended on my
wife, Margaret, who sacrificed much for me but still got up every day to pro-
vide health care to the poor and disenfranchised. Our work was made more
meaningful, if not a little more difficult, by the arrival of our daughter,
Antonia Therese. To all these people I am deeply indebted, and the quality
of this manuscript is largely due to their contributions. Its shortcomings, of
course, are attributable only to me. My hope is that it lives up to the gen-
erosity bestowed upon me and to the legacy of those who have gone before
me with such great courage and sacrifice.
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CINEMA OF ANXIETY
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Introduction
At the end of the summer of 1984, one week before I was to begin graduate
school, my sister Lisa and I vacationed in Maine with my oldest brother,
A. J., and his family. During that time, my nephew Jason went walking with
my sister and accidentally fell off a dock and onto the rocks below. Although
the tide was out, the surf—in one of those miraculous coincidences that
separate tragedy from normal childhood accidents—surged in just as he
landed, cushioning his fall against the rocks and preventing what would have
been a skull fracture (as the gash on his forehead testified).
Jason was rushed to a hospital by ambulance, where he was joined by my
brother and me. Jason’s mother, Cathy, was out at the time with his two-year-
old sister, Lindsey. When they returned, my sister informed them of what
happened, and they all waited together in the cabin. Cathy kept Lindsey en-
tertained by playing at getting her to speak. The game essentially consisted
of Lindsey, who had noticed her brother’s absence, asking, “Where Jason?”
From that question, the following ensued.
“Jason’s at the hospital.”
“Hospital?”
“He got a boo-boo on his head.”
“Boo-boo?”
“He fell down.”
When, as children are prone to do, Lindsey repeated the pattern for the
thirty-seventh time, her mother turned the tables on her, answering her
question with the same question. Lindsey was able to respond successfully:
“Jason fall down,” “Got boo-boo on head,” “Go to hospital.”
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2 Cinema of Anxiety
Over a month later I went to visit my brother and his family in their
apartment in Brooklyn. Kathy, Jason, and Lindsey were playing in the living
room when I arrived. I was saying hello to each of them when Lindsey started
speaking what I thought were just random combinations of vowels. Her
mother, however, understood her discourse and told me that she was saying,
“Jason fall down, got boo-boo on head, go to hospital.” Though at the time
I thought it remarkable that she clearly remembered me from the cabin, I
did not think it a particularly profound occurrence. I was wrong.
What I did not understand then was that Lindsey was in fact demonstrat-
ing three of the most significant aspects of language for cultural studies: its
arbitrariness, its malleability, and its grounding in recognition. Clearly, her
intended communication was more along the lines of “Hello, I remember
you” than it was an assessment of Jason, but she lacked the mastery of lan-
guage and its codes to say it “properly.” Despite the lack of such mastery, her
statement conveyed meaning more or less along the lines she intended, al-
most independently of the individual signifiers themselves—note that there
is no signifier designating myself in her discourse.
The reason for this lies in a fundamental principle of language that Saus-
sure pointed out: there is no inherent relationship between an individual
signifier or sign and that which it represents: the signified. Rather, as Saus-
sure demonstrated, the relationship is arbitrary. Thus, Christopher Norris
summarizes this principle by arguing:
There is no self-evident or one-to-one link between “signifier” and “signified,”
the word as (spoken or written) vehicle and the concept it serves to evoke. Both
are caught up in a play of distinctive features where differences of sound and
sense are the only markers of meaning . . . Language is in this sense diacritical, or
dependent on a structured economy of differences which allow a relatively small
range of linguistic elements to signify a vast repertoire of negotiable meanings.1
The radical implication of the arbitrary nature of language, and its depen-
dence on structure rather than grounding in external reality for meaning, is
the eradication of truth anchored to a claim of inherent meaning. The arbi-
trary relationship between signifier and signified means that there is no in-
herent meaning, which then inaugurates a search for what ensures the mean-
ing of the sign and the communications act.
Karl Marx, M. M. Bakhtin, and Antonio Gramsci saw in the process of
fixing and ensuring the meaning of the sign an inherently political process:
a means by which the world (or, more accurately, social reality) is ordered,
organized, and fixed (in the sense of stabilizing social relations). In this sense,
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Introduction 3
language becomes malleable, subject to the needs of the dominant mode of

social relations. As Terry Eagleton argues, it is
not simply a matter of asking “what the sign . . . [means] but of investigating its
varied history, as conflicting social groups, classes, individuals and discourses . . .
[seek] to appropriate it and imbue it with their own meanings.” Language, in
short . . . [is] a field of ideological contention, not a monolithic system; indeed,
signs . . . [are] the very material medium of ideology, since without them, no val-
ues or ideas could exist.2
Furthermore, what Eagleton makes clear with respect to Bakhtin is that ide-
ology shapes and determines language, not vice versa, even in the specific
speech act. Thus he argues that for Bakhtin, “words were ‘multi-accentual’
rather than frozen in meaning: they were always the words of one particular
human subject for another, and this practical context would shape and shift
their meaning.” 3 This malleability of language, determined as it is by the
word’s arbitrary relationship to its referent, is a significant site for cultural
studies, especially as it relates to analyzing cultures of inequity such as those
structured upon capitalism.
Systems of inequity continue to maintain and perpetuate themselves
through hegemonic processes and ideological discourses that function to
justify, legitimize, and naturalize such inequity, despite the illegitimacy of
their claims. Indeed, the truth claims that are made through ideology must
be continually reinforced and rearticulated, as well as adapted and restruc-
tured. This instability is the direct result of having their foundation in the
arbitrary nature of the sign. The cinema, born and developed under indus-
trial capitalism, actively participates in this process, and the timing is not a
coincidence.
At a fundamental level, the cinema’s production and representation of
images at a rate of thirty frames per second (or fourteen to twenty-four, de-
pending on the time period) belies an industrial process long before the
sheer volume of cinematic texts and their consumption are examined. In this
respect, however, it is important to note that the cinema depends on ad-
vanced and complex distribution systems that are also grounded in highly
advanced modes of exchange engendered in the later stages of capitalism
(industrial and consumer more so than, for example, mercantile capitalism).
The cinema’s relationship to industrial capitalism has been examined
in several different aspects, as in the work of Jean-Louis Baudry, Jean-Louis
Comolli, Janet Staiger, David Bordwell, and others.4 As Thomas Elsaesser
has pointed out, these were very important studies with respect to the insti-
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4 Cinema of Anxiety
tution cinema, and more such studies are certainly warranted. Elsaesser fur-
ther argues, however, that the other side of the paradigm is also in need of
close examination: the audience which consumes, as it were, the cinematic
texts produced in such volume.5 Here, too, several approaches have been
taken, including reception studies, cognitive psychology, and psychoanaly-
sis, particularly Lacanian psychoanalysis starting in the mid 1970’s.
Herein lies the significance of the third aspect of Lindsey’s discourse—its
grounding in recognition. Early appropriations of Lacanian psychoanalysis
in the mid 1970’s, as discussed more fully in the following chapters, were ex-
tremely important for bringing into cinema studies the concept of a desiring
spectator, whose specific desire for the cinematic experience (or texts) forms
the basis of the means of exchange which makes the institution of cinema
possible. At least one limitation of these early appropriations, however, was
a tendency to oversimplify the text-subject relationship as it relates to the
subject, especially as it relates to the concept of the unified subject.
Jacques Lacan’s rather difficult writings, if nothing else, sound a warning
that the dialectic of recognition that grounds human discourse is a complex
affair. What Lacan’s work demonstrates is that the fictive structure of iden-
tity, engendering as it does several layers of alienation, requires a continuous
process of reaffirmation and recognition of the specific fictions that com-
prise individual identity. Thus it is that Lacan argues:
The signifier, producing itself in the field of the Other, makes manifest the sub-
ject of its signification. But it functions as a signifier only to reduce the subject in
question to being no more than a signifier, to petrify the subject in the same
movement in which it calls the subject to function, to speak, as subject.6
Lacan’s description of the relationship between the signifier and identity

demonstrates the complex interrelationships at stake in the individual sub-
ject: the subject of being introjects the signifier, which in turn shapes and
determines individual identity, but only in relationship to prelinguistic iden-
tifications (themselves a response to Real conditions and effects). The com-
plex interplay between signification and being creates a demand (in the
economic sense) for discourse. The cinema and television are significant
sites for ideological study precisely because they provide not only the dis-
courses necessary for Symbolic recognition, but also images— establishing
the means for Imaginary (mis)recognition. This study attempts to show that
the necessity of Lacanian psychoanalysis for the study of film lies in its abil-
ity to examine both these operations as they are conducted in and through
the cinematic text.
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Introduction 5
My niece Lindsey is now a long way from her first forays into the world
of language. As I finish this manuscript, however, my nephews James and
Pete wait for me to rejoin them in the surf of the Atlantic Ocean off the
beaches of Avalon. Across the continent, my other niece, Jessica, and my
nephew Forrest wait with anticipation for me, my wife, and our baby,
Antonia, to arrive (and go play with them in the surf off Point Reyes), while
another nephew, Andrew, and his sister Elise take pleasure in caring for our
dog Pasquale (much of which is rooted in giving him commands). The
significance of these situations for cultural studies is admittedly more per-
sonal than theoretical, but only marginally so.
For years now, despite being a fairly competent interpreter of Lacan,
I have never been able to give a clear answer to the question, “Why Lacan-
ian psychoanalysis?” Now, however, the answer is to be found in the joyous
sense of wonder and awe that I see in the faces of my nieces and nephews as
they negotiate their existence in a complex world that is ofttimes foreboding,
frequently enticing, and almost always mysterious. Socialization into con-
sumer-capitalist societies is a process of effectively draining out that mystery
and sacredness of the world, replacing it with an empty materialism, and
persuading us of the “inevitability” of this process.
The necessity of Lacanian psychoanalysis lies in its ability to effectively
confront that process in a manner that Marxist critical theory cannot do on
its own. In its essence, the Lacanian framework is a fundamental commit-
ment to a dialectical model of the individual that can take full account of the
social /cultural realm and its relationship to the individual. The key term
here is dialectical. Lacan’s theories transcend overly simplistic binary oppo-
sitions like nature/nurture and individual /social, insisting that, in terms of
the psyche, not only is it both, but in such a complex manner that the bal-
ance cannot be isolated. The result is that audiences and individuals can
never (or should never) be reduced to either biology or culture, but likewise
should not be limited to their own “individuality” either, since the concept
is fictive. Lacan’s work demonstrates that theories which line up at either pole
in binary oppositions not only are grossly inaccurate, but also have grave
consequences in terms of their social implications.
Lacan’s return to Sigmund Freud focused on The Interpretations of
Dreams, The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, Jokes and Their Relationship to
the Unconscious, and The Ego and the Id, finding continuity there where oth-
ers did not. This was especially the case in terms of the field of psychoanaly-
sis overemphasizing the synthesizing function of the ego. Lacan saw in ego
psychology the dissolution of the dialectic of identity, and with it the en-
01A-T0618-INT 8/26/99 3:13 PM Page 6
6 Cinema of Anxiety
thronement of the ego. As Theresa Brennan points out, this can have disas-
trous results for a social system and the very environment it exists within.7
The fundamental Freudian text that these conclusions point to is, of
course, Civilization and Its Discontents. Here Freud sounds a grave warning
that few heard clearly enough: repression is a necessary part and function of
human identity, but can become too much a part of social systems. Lacan
was one of the few who took up these pronouncements of Freud and ad-
vanced them further, making clear that failure to introject the “No” of the
father leads to the prison house of psychosis. As Ellie Ragland-Sullivan dem-
onstrates, the ego itself has no limits; rather, it is structured around a “pro-
pensity for grandiosity, narcissism, and aggressiveness. In this sense, the
phallic super-ego saves the individual from psychosis, and society from
genocide, while also imposing tyranny and alienation on being.” 8 The fun-
damentally dialectal structure of the individual that Ragland-Sullivan dis-
cusses is extremely important for social transformation.
This is particularly the case for a social system as complex, cunning, and
(seemingly) complete as capitalism, which depends on the exploitation of
individuals for its very existence. The implications of the Lacanian model
are such that overly simplistic demands to eliminate repression and revolu-
tionary programs that cannot meaningfully address issues of authority and
limits are ultimately bound for failure. In the mainstream discourses of the
1990’s, cultural commentators are quick to denigrate the 1960’s in just such
a manner: focusing in on its excesses and characterizing its revolutionary
movements as naïve (ignoring, as they do, the incredibly reactionary effects
of 1970’s stagnation). At least one lasting, positive effect of the 1960’s for con-
temporary American culture, however, is a quick suspicion of illegitimate
authority, if not a ready cynicism toward all authority.
The problem for contemporary American society, though, is that no
other kind of social model has found wide acceptance as a viable replace-
ment for reverence and obedience to authority. In this respect, there are very
strong parallels between contemporary American culture and postwar Ital-
ian culture. The critical difference between the two is that for postwar Italian
culture there were visible other models competing with patriarchal capital-
ism: the cooperation and unity of the Resistance became the most hallowed
example.
Despite the dissolution of its government and the resulting social up-
heaval, postwar Italy did not become a revolutionary society. Patriarchal
capitalism, while battered, nonetheless maintained itself, with not a little
help from American intervention in the economic and political life of
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Introduction 7
postwar Italy. Bald economic and political acts do not occur in a vacuum,
however; Gramsci’s concept of hegemony demonstrates that they operate
through and with ideological discourse. In postwar Italy patriarchal capital-
ism was made to seem “inevitable,” even by those discourses which hoped
for a more enlightened transformation of Italian society. In the end, not even
the legacy of the Resistance or its revolutionary potential could stand against
this “inevitability.”
This study of Lacanian psychoanalysis and film looks at Neorealism pre-
cisely because a period with such potential for social transformation was ef-
fectively contained. What this study attempts to demonstrate is the manner
in which ideological containment is— or can be— conducted through nar-
rative. Indeed, as the following chapters demonstrate, narrative itself engen-
ders containment, but does not inherently exercise ideological containment.
Lacanian psychoanalysis provides the study of film with the means by which
to analyze the ideological functioning of narrative as it intersects the specta-
tor through the dynamics of desire and pleasure (though, admittedly, it has
not always done this successfully). In this respect, it offers a valuable tool—
especially as a beginning—for confronting the hegemonic processes that
conduct themselves through ideology in order to maintain and perpetuate
systems of inequity that, in addition to their human toll, are devouring the
means of our very existence.
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1
Revisiting Psychoanalysis
and the Cinema
The American Frenchspeak ghetto has complicated things by maintaining

an elitist, separationist policy: initiation rites no longer are limited to a read-
ing of Freud, Marx, and Saussure; now one must know Lacan, Althusser, and
Derrida as well. Faced with such demands, traditional critics have naturally
run to more familiar ground: rhetorical criticism, genre study, film history.
The holier-than-thou attitude often adopted by both sides has served only
to deepen the schism.
Charles F. Altman 1
For the emerging field of cinema studies, the discovery of Lacanian psycho-
analysis in the early and mid 1970’s marked a watershed period, filled with
contentiousness, power politicking, and not a little guruism. Indeed, Alt-
man’s use of the term “schism” is not purely figurative; Lacanian psychoan-
alytic film theory, or, more properly, the politics of Lacanian psychoanalytic
film theory, is cited as the primary reason for the resignations from the Screen
editorial board by Edward Buscombe, Christine Gledhill, Allan Lovell, and
Christopher Williams.2
For all the intensity of these debates and schisms, however, Lacanian psy-
choanalytic film theory seems by and large eclipsed; the attitude of the field
in general is one of “been there, done that.” This movement away from La-
canian psychoanalytic film theory can be seen, at least in part, hegemoni-
cally: as the result of shifts and balances in an evolving process, both within
the field (among those who would lead it) and outside it (as an academic dis-
01B-T0618-CH1 8/26/99 3:13 PM Page 10
10 Cinema of Anxiety
cipline seeking to establish itself through new discourses and paradigms).

Such a reading, while important to understanding the field as part of a larger
social-hegemonic process, is not prepared to focus on the viability of Lacan-
ian psychoanalysis for the study of film.
The movement away from the Lacanian framework, while part of a hege-
monic process which moved into other venues, is also rooted in several lim-
itations and inconsistencies with the specific appropriations of the 1970’s and
their subsequent theoretical outcomes: the concept of subject positioning,
suture theory, and a tendency toward a certain ahistoricism. Indeed, for all
the excitement and activity that psychoanalysis generated, very few book-
length studies were produced from its application. Feminism would be the
notable exception to that productive lack.
This study, without being a historiography of psychoanalytic film theory,
attempts to demonstrate how the problems and limitations of Lacanian psy-
choanalytic film theory can be transcended through a process of revision
that results in the creation of significant theoretical tools. Indeed, this study
answers Christian Metz’s classic question—“What contribution can [Lacan-
ian] psychoanalysis make to the study of the cinematic signifier?”—by dem-
onstrating its ability to be a central (if not undergirding) integrating the-
ory that can overcome traditional conceptual limitations within studies
of representation: most specifically with respect to delineating the relation-
ships or boundaries between the individual and the social. Detached from its
political-hegemonic encumbrances of the 1970’s (which continued on well
into the 1980’s with a politically charged cognitive psychology vs. psycho-
analysis antagonism), psychoanalytic film theory can provide a framework
that facilitates the integration of multiple theories into analytic models for
the purpose of ideological critique, an appropriation that has begun not only
in and through the study of film and popular culture (as with Slavoj Zizek),
but also in other important areas of cultural studies: gender and sexuality (as
with Judith Butler), race (as with Homi Bhaba), and ecology (as with Theresa
Brennan).
In this respect, what is sometimes referred to as the New Psychoanalysis
plays a fundamental coordinating role in examining film, culture, and the
communications process in general as complex and dialectical phenomena
anchored in the domain of representation. Furthermore, representation it-
self is perhaps the most vital area for cultural studies today, at the very least
because of a persistent inability to get the achievements of studies in repre-
sentation to find acceptance and understanding in mainstream culture. The
most radical implication of semiotics (which became a foundation for Marx-
01B-T0618-CH1 8/26/99 3:13 PM Page 11
Revisiting Psychoanalysis & the Cinema 11
ist cultural studies and Lacanian psychoanalysis) is that social realities are
constructed onto reality, they do not spring forth from reality, a point that
Lacan hammered away at in his early seminars when he argued that
language cannot be conceived of as the result of a series of shoots, of buds, com-

ing out of each thing. The name is not like the little asparagus tip emerging from
the thing. One can only think of language as a network, a net over the entirety of
things, over the totality of the real. It inscribes on the plane of the real this other
plane, which we here call the plane of the symbolic.3
Expanding on the semiotic framework, Lacan points to the manner in which

the Symbolic framework, whose principal function is to order, organize, and
fix reality, is—in the final analysis—arbitrary. As such, social reality, how-
ever concrete it becomes in the form of buildings and skyscrapers, highways
and gardens, is imposed upon and transcended by reality—subjected to and
a part of reality—but not reality in and of itself.
Studies of representation are of utmost significance since social texts are
the means by which social realities are not only articulated but constructed:
the vehicle by which they come into being, are maintained and enforced.
Hence, before there can be a brick, there must be the categorical distinction
between elements which allows for the process of the brick. Before the coer-
cive force of the state can act, there must be a text through which it can per-
form. Thus it is that prior to cops smashing the heads of Columbia Univer-
sity students there must first be, at the very least, the categories of cop and
student. Then individuals can situate themselves within categories, negoti-
ate, accept, and/or defy and resist a series of codes, before a series of actions
can be prescribed (again through the Symbolic)—that result in Real effects.
The pervasiveness of the Symbolic (Lacan carefully chose his metaphor
of a net over the Real) combined with our anxiety over the Real (that which
resists symbolization entirely) exercises a significant role in social reality’s
tendency to present itself as reality. This is what leads Todd Gitlin, for ex-
ample, to argue that the function of the mass media is to certify reality as
reality.4 Studies of representation, and the analytical frameworks they pro-
vide, are thus paramount for deconstructing social realities, for pointing
to their dependencies and— especially in the case of systems of inequity—
denouncing their arbitrariness and dismissing their necessity.
The significance of a psychoanalytic framework is its ability to transcend
the boundaries between broader social processes (which create and maintain
Symbolic systems) and individual processes (which are the ultimate site of
the consumption of social texts). Fredric Jameson refers to this key relation-
01B-T0618-CH1 8/26/99 3:13 PM Page 12
ship as “the insertion of the subject” and discusses the inability of most
theory to engage it meaningfully.5 While Marxist critical theory provides ex-
panded conceptions of both culture and subject, it does not so readily pro-
vide what Jameson conceives of as “mediations” between the “social phe-
nomena” of texts—their appropriation, inscription, and/or transformation
of cultural signifying practices—and the “private facts” of an individual
subject—how they are interpreted through the structure of identity and ne-
gotiated for the purpose of consent.6 The value of Lacanian psychoanalysis,
therefore, lies in its ability to delineate the manner in which discourses, and
the texts within which they are situated, engage the specific desires of the
spectator in a dialectic of identity for the purpose of ideological containment
and hegemonic consent.7
Lacan’s revision of Freud through a semiotic theory focuses directly on
the subject’s relationship to signifying practices and the effects of signifi-
cation on the human subject. It thus provides a more detailed and specific
understanding of the subject in relationship to signifying practices. As Lacan
argues: “I have shown . . . that one should see in the unconscious the effects
of speech on the subject—insofar as these effects are so radically primary
that they are properly what determine the subject as subject.” 8 The primacy
of signification within the formation of the subject radically undermines the
concept of an essential subject (spectator). In what is perhaps its most radi-
cal contribution to critical studies, a Lacanian framework forecloses the tidi-
ness of conceptualizing the human subject through either biological essen-
tialism (subjects and identity are determined by being, genetics, or some
other biological determination) or cultural essentialism (in which the sub-
jects and their identity are determined by the society and culture they come
out of ). Lacan, instead, integrates the two poles of this binary opposition
through a dialectical, dynamic, and contingent relationship between iden-
tity and being, biology and culture. Thus, in delineating the relationship be-
tween signification and meaning, and the role of the subject within that pro-
cess, a Lacanian analysis can determine how signification engages the desires
of its spectators and mobilizes the pleasure in meaning (the ideological and
hegemonic consequences of which are alluded to above).
Before it can achieve such results in the study of film, however, Lacanian
psychoanalysis needs to be extricated from the limitations incurred in its
earlier appropriations. The groundbreaking contributions of 1970’s psycho-
analytic film theory center around the attempt to make the process of iden-
tification explicit and a focus of study, to posit a desiring spectator as a cru-
cial component in that process, and to incorporate the structural processes
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that encompass and regulate the parameters of the text-subject relationship.

The liabilities of this work, however, center around an overprivileging of
Lacan’s concept of the Imaginary: the cognitive register of images, associa-
tions, identifications, and wholeness in being—a cognitive site where in-
tense pleasure in being is realized. The strong corollaries that can be found
between film spectatorship and the Imaginary register seduced this period of
film theory, occluding several key aspects of Lacanian theory and imposing
several important theoretical consequences.
The first casualty of this overvaluation, especially with respect to theories
of identification, is Lacan’s premirror stage. Frequently overlooked for the
more celebrated mirror stage and its relationship to the Imaginary, the pre-
mirror stage is nonetheless formative in the structuring of the unconscious
(and identity). With this primary stage, Lacan emphasizes the important ef-
fects resulting from a disparity between the infant’s advanced perceptual
abilities and its physical and psychical helplessness (lack of motor abilities
and “self-knowledge”). This disparity creates a gap between the inability
to process sensory input meaningfully and the enormous amount of infor-
mation presented to the infant by its perceptual functioning. Lacan describes
this gap as “the original distress resulting from the child’s intra-organic
and relational discordance.” 9 The effect of this gap, he argues, is the experi-
ence of the body as fragmented—an experience the infant defends against
through primary identification with the part-objects and effects that come
into its sensorial-perceptual field. In delineating this mode of identification,
Lacan stresses the lack of “a specular image, or . . . alterity” that character-
izes it.10 Lacking a sense of individuation to separate itself from these effects,
the infant does not so much identify with an object, but rather with the ef-
fects of what it perceives.11
The structuring process of the premirror stage is that the primordial base
of identity is a representational layer of perceptions whose basis rests inside
and outside of fragmented parts and effects. As Lacan argues:
For these objects, part- or not, but certainly signifying . . . are no doubt won or
lost by the subject. He is destroyed by them or he preserves them, but above all
he is these objects, according to the place where they function in his fundamen-
tal phantasy.12
At the base of identity for Lacan lies not an essential subject, but an essen-
tial response: a tendency for and a network of identifications taken on in
response to a fundamental lack. A fundamental limitation with traditional
psychoanalytic film theory is a tendency to collapse the distinctions between
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different modes of identification into a response to lack. This results in a fail-

ure to delineate the manner in which the different modes of identification
are set in dynamic relationship to each other. Metz’s primary identification
in cinema, for example, where the spectator identifies with the “pure act
of perception,” 13 is far more characteristic of the premirror identificatory
mode—an identification with effect—than of the Imaginary mode that
Metz ascribed it to. With Metz, and in most of traditional psychoanalytic
film theory, identification becomes limited to the Imaginary, obscuring the
complex processes concurrently operating in the maintenance of identity.
Another significant limitation of traditional psychoanalytic film theory is
the manner in which it appropriated Lacan’s cognitive model—the frame-
work of the Imaginary, the Symbolic, and the Real—as a model of person-
ality. This misappropriation leads to grave oversights, including the manner
in which Lacan differentiated his concept of the ego from Freud’s. The most
glaring omission for cinema studies, however, is a general neglect of Lacan’s
concept of Symbolic identification. Lacking this concept, the dialectical and
historically contingent functioning of the subject that Lacan sought to de-
lineate was lost in the rush to elaborate the operations of the Imaginary in
text-subject relations.
THE L ACANIAN SUBJECT
The constitution of the subject must therefore be revisited and its dialectical
and contingent qualities restored before any meaningful revision or model
can go forward. In order to achieve such revision, a short review of Lacan’s
developmental model and the formation of the subject is necessary. Indeed,
as Jameson notes, the significance of Lacanian theory is its emphasis on the
formation of the subject and its “constitutive illusions,” 14 which Jameson
sees as a historically specific process. He thus argues that “the forms of hu-
man consciousness and the mechanisms of human psychology are not time-
less and everywhere essentially the same, but rather situation-specific and
historically produced.” 15 The historical specificity of subject formation and
the resultant constitutive illusions are inscribed in Lacan’s work through his
concept of the Other(A).16
Lacan has defined the Other(A) as “the locus in which is constituted the
I who speaks.” 17 In designating a hypothetical “locus” Lacan formulates what
can be described as the secondary unconscious, formed by the subject’s sub-
jugation to a historically specific social-Symbolic system. Maintaining a di-
alectical model, however, he demonstrates that the Other(A) is not limited
01B-T0618-CH1 8/26/99 3:13 PM Page 15
to the secondary unconscious, but rather is that point of continuity between

primary and secondary formations (hence the need to consider its locus as a
figurative designation).
The historical specificity of the formation of the subject and his/her sig-
nifying relations is at the base of identity for Lacan. In his theory of person-
ality, identity is not an essential subject but an essential response: a tendency
for and a network of identifications taken on in response to a fundamental
lack in being. Drawing on Freud’s discussion in The Ego and the Id that the
ego is the sum of identifications, Lacan proposes that identity, and, indeed,
subjecthood, is a representation:
Freud states in a thousand, two thousand places . . . that the ego is the sum of the
identifications of the subject, with all that implies as to its radical contingency. If
you allow me to give an image of it, the ego is like the superimposition of various
coats borrowed from what I would call the bric-a-brac of its props department.18
For Lacan, then, consciousness and identity are not the sign of an essential
subject, but, rather, a dynamic process: the putting on of identifications in
response to needs, desires, and the demands of an external world.
Lacan’s emphasis on identity formation’s dependency on identifications
with the object world stresses a contingency that has important implications.
The unity that the child assumes—puts on—is an “image” of unity learned
from the outside world. What is taken as an identity, then, is an outside or
alien image. The significance of what Lacan terms the mirror stage is the
structuring of identity as alien and fictive (an important aspect of the Lacan-
ian framework that traditional psychoanalytic film theory has stressed).
Lacan describes the identity that is structured through the premirror and
mirror stages as the moi to express its function as a primary ego. Further-
more, he defines the characteristics of the moi as alienated, “unified,” and
nonindividuated—the result of its specular logic. Lacan argues that it is only
through acquiring language, the corollary of the Oedipal stage, that the child
learns to differentiate and thus form a separate identity. For Lacan, the ex-
perience of the Oedipal crisis is both a learning experience and a traumatic
one. The child learns to separate the identity of the mother from itself, but
only referentially: by the mother’s relationship to an other— expressed as
Other(A) by Lacan—the father. The father thus serves, to use the term of
Ragland-Sullivan, as the “representational agent of separation” or “the phal-
lic signifier” in Lacan’s terms.19 By dividing the Imaginary fusion between the
child and mother, the phallic signifier (the role of the father) functions to
impose boundaries on the child’s identity by imposing “No” on the Imagi-
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nary Desire for unity with the mother. This “No” of the father (termed “the-
Name-of-the-father” by Lacan in a play on words between non and nom) be-
comes the first symbol for the child: representing difference and law and
thereby introducing the order of symbols.20
In learning difference and acquiring language, the child learns how to
represent itself and thereby repress the trauma of castration through alien-
ation. By identifying with the father as difference, as a representational agent
(i.e., the difference between paternal role and biological being), the child
learns to substitute itself (to replace its primary identity constituted by ob-
jects of desire) for a representation of itself (an ego, the sense of itself as dis-
tinct unity symbolized by its name) and thus distance itself from the pain of
castration. Lacan refers to this process as primary repression, which causes
the “splitting” of the subject into the moi (the unconscious subject of iden-
tifications and narcissism) and the je (the subject who speaks).
Lacan sees the division of the subject between moi and je as a complex
and dynamic structuration rather than a simple binary operation between
conscious and unconscious. Indeed, close readings of Lacan demonstrate
that the moi and the je operate in both conscious and unconscious systems.21
He characterizes the moi as the unconscious subject of identifications but
also as a primary libido: driving for fusion and recognition. Thus he argues
that “the human individual fixes upon himself an image that alienates him
from himself . . . [where] the energy and the form on which this organiza-
tion of the passions that he will call his ego is based.” 22 In addition, Lacan
characterizes the moi as paranoid, because it is limited to its specular logic
and a dependence on the object world.23
In characterizing the je, Lacan asserts:
The je is born through the reference to the you . . . [it] is constituted at first in a
linguistic experience, in reference to the you, and . . . this takes place within a re-
lation in which the other shows him, what?— orders, desires, which he must rec-
ognize, his father’s mother’s educators’ or his peers’ and mates’.24
Thus, for Lacan, the je is more than a grammatical term, it is a functional

representation operating in response to the internal demands of the moi and
the external demands of the social world. What Lacan stresses in the func-
tion of the je, the “subject determined by language and speech,” is its func-
tion of stabilizing moi forces through representation.25 As a result of its para-
noiac structure and its spatial logic, the moi drives for fusion with the object
world. The je thus operates to displace and temper the drives of the moi
through the abstracting and temporalizing properties of language. As Lacan
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argues: “The word doesn’t answer to the spatial distinctiveness of the object,
which is always ready to be dissolved in an identification with the subject,
but to its temporal dimension.” 26
Thus, subjected to the drive of the moi, but displacing and repressing
those desires through language, the je functions as a dynamic representation:
the “subject” of consciousness that takes its specific shape from unconscious
introjections of the father, the law he represents (cultural norms and values),
and the language which conveys it, a discretely specific process engendering
the individual’s own personal history as well as the historical specificity of
his/her culture. Lacan’s understanding of the effect of a primary void in be-
ing and the role language plays to compensate that void and structure an un-
conscious dynamizes the subject’s relationship to discourse as a continuing
chain of substitutions and displacements in the service of recognition and
repression. His concept of the human subject, split between conscious and
unconscious, and divided between the moi and the je, makes language a dy-
namic field where repression and the drive for recognition are constituted.
At the base of any Lacanian critical method, therefore, must be the con-
cept of a desiring subject, driven toward discourse (of which the film text
is but one site) as a means of reconstituting identity through identifica-
tion. The subjugation to a historically specific social order and the language
that conveys it determines that the secondary unconscious constitutes a fur-
ther alienation of the subject, an alienation that is masked, however, through
the functioning of identity. Subjugation to the Symbolic order thus deter-
mines that culture itself becomes part of the composite which forms iden-
tity and engenders historical specificity (both individual and cultural) at
that site.27
Symbolic identification, therefore, becomes the mode through which the
subject identifies through culture as a means of repressing alienation and
maintaining the continuity between identifications and language. For Lacan,
then, identification is not a singular process, but, rather, a dialectical rela-
tionship, dominated by two modes, each with their own object—image and
language—whose site of continuity is the Other(A).
T H E T E X T - S U B J E C T R E L AT I O N S H I P
Lacan’s dialectical framework provides for a more expanded model beyond

the desiring subject and toward a more complex construct where cultural
texts and ideology play a vital role in maintaining identity— expressed in
Lacanian terms as maintaining the continuity of the Other(A). The film text
01B-T0618-CH1 8/26/99 3:13 PM Page 18
inscribes the structure of this continuity through the join between im-
age and the discursive operations which structure the text. Stephen Heath
argues that:
the match of film and world is a matter of representation, and representation is in
turn a matter of discourse, of the organization of the images, the definition of the
“views,” their construction. It is the discursive operations that decide the work of
a film and ultimately determine the scope of the analogical incidence of the im-
ages; in this sense at least, film is a series of languages, a history of codes.28
What Heath’s argument demonstrates is the necessity for the text’s discursive
operations to join image identification with language. The text’s ability to
obtain Symbolic identification therefore becomes the primary site for main-
taining the continuity between identifications and language.
Traditional psychoanalytic film theory, influenced by the work of Chris-
tian Metz and Jean-Louis Baudry, has neglected this important component
of Lacan’s theory of identification.29 In the work of both Metz and Baudry
there is an overprivileging of the Imaginary and, subsequently, Imaginary
identification. In the process, the concept of Symbolic identification has been
excluded from the analysis of the film text. Jane Feur, for example, locates
Symbolic identification within the narrative process of television, but not
film.30 Even studies which focus directly on theories of identification, such
as Ann Friedberg’s “Theories of Cinematic Identification,” ignore Symbolic
identification and fail to get past the mirror stage.31
In his critique of Metz’s work, however, Geoffrey Nowell-Smith makes
clear that at least one of the implications of overprivileging Imaginary identi-
fication in film theory is that the content of the film becomes irrelevant,32 a
point that is implied in both Barbara Klinger and Noel Carroll’s criticism of
the concept of spectator positioning.33 Furthermore, Nowell-Smith’s argu-
ment that secondary (or Symbolic) identifications break down specularity,
but displace it “onto relations which are more properly intra-textual,” 34 in-
dicates that the process of Symbolic identification is a significant textual op-
eration within narrative film. This is what leads Thomas Elsaesser to con-
clude that the process of, and relationship between, Imaginary and Symbolic
identification is both simultaneous and dynamic,35 a position more in keep-
ing with Lacan’s own theorizing when he argues:
Narcissistic [Symbolic] identification—the word identification, without differ-
entiation, is unusable— . . . is identification with the other which, under normal
circumstances, enables man to locate precisely his imaginary and libidinal rela-
tion to the world in general.36
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A Lacanian model of text-subject relations, therefore, has to take into ac-

count not only the functioning of the Imaginary and libidinal relations, but
also the manner in which Symbolic identification regulates that process and
the historical specificity under which that regulation occurs. The historical
specificity of these operations functions to maintain the continuity between
identifications and language, providing pleasure (jouissance) through the
Imaginary unity that such a continuity creates.37
Traditional psychoanalytic film theory emphasizes the construction of
apparently unified subjects through discourse, but fails to establish the his-
torically specific basis of continuity between identifications and language
necessary for maintaining subject unity at the site of the Other(A): the in-
trojection of specific cultural norms and values as a basis of identity which
determines the subject’s ability to identify symbolically.38 The primary role
that Symbolic identification exercises in securing Imaginary pleasure estab-
lishes culture as the fundamental mode of reception in the intersection be-
tween text and subject.39 The analysis of textual operations must therefore
conduct itself through the prism of the historical spectator: the identity the
text addresses—through culture—to construct a unified subject.
The text-based Lacanian model developed here therefore conducts itself
through the conception of an implied spectator: the Symbolic identity the
text constructs as a means of obtaining Imaginary pleasure. This is not an
ideal spectator—a kind of “sum total” of all the textual operations—but,
rather, as Seymour Chatman illustrates, “the audience presupposed by the
narrative itself.” 40 The complex functioning of identity that is at stake in this
concept is further articulated by Chatman when he argues that “the real
reader may refuse his projected role at some ultimate level—nonbelievers
do not become Christians to read The Inferno or Paradise Lost. But such re-
fusal does not contradict the ‘as if ’ acceptance of implied readership.” 41 It is
this identity that individual subjects must come to identify with at the ex-
pense of what Elsaesser describes as “more differentiated modes of ideologi-
cal and psychological self-recognition.” 42 Indeed, Lacan’s work emphasizes
culture over other modes of “(mis)recognition” since it is the social Sym-
bolic system which assigns meaning to categorical distinctions.
Furthermore, it is the subject’s position toward culture vis-à-vis subjuga-
tion that determines the degree to which s/he will identify with any categori-
cal distinction. What is significant for a text-based mode of analysis, there-
fore, is not so much the various categorical distinctions (within culture) that
can be brought to bear on the process of reception, but, rather, the ways in
which classical texts induce spectators to repress difference, promoting in-
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stead a homogenous cultural identity through Imaginary identification.

Within the operations of the classical film text, individual subjects them-
selves determine whether to identify symbolically; however, rejecting Sym-
bolic identification risks precluding Imaginary pleasure. Textual operations
function to deny the collective differences which intersect them and demand
the same kind of denial from the individual spectator as a means of obtain-
ing jouissance.
Locating the text’s denial of difference and its construction of a Symbolic
identity through inducements of Imaginary pleasure engenders difficulties:
it appears to replicate the ahistorical mode of investigation of traditional
psychoanalytic theory, which has been accurately criticized for eliminating
audience particularities and therefore history itself from the field of investi-
gation.43 What is not evident, however, is whether this repression of history
is inherent to the method itself or results from the specific object of study.
Jameson’s discussion on the insistence of interpretive modes clarifies this
point. In discussing theories of expressive causality, for example, he argues
that “if interpretation in terms of expressive causality or of allegorical mas-
ter narratives remains a constant temptation, this is because such master
narratives have inscribed themselves in the texts . . .” 44 In a similar manner,
theories of subject positioning occlude difference (and keep insisting them-
selves) precisely because the repression of collective particularities has been
consistently inscribed in film texts.
Furthermore, criticisms of Lacanian theory based on the denial of differ-
ence and repression of history are directed at specific appropriations of the
theory and are less accurate for critiquing the theory itself. The dialectical
model that Lacan constructs forecloses the possibility of a completely ahis-
torical theory. Indeed, the historicity of Lacan’s theorizing, alluded to ear-
lier by Jameson and developed more fully by Theresa Brennan,45 is itself
evidenced in Lacan’s discussion of sublimation, where he historically distin-
guishes cognitive processing based on the cultural Symbolic system.46
Rather than characterize all Lacanian theory as ahistorical, a theoretically
productive critique would delineate what Jameson describes as the structural
limitations of the specific aspects of the theory that are ahistorical. This
would be a process of determining the “seam which strategically seals . . . off
[interpretive systems] from the social totality of which they are a part . . . [to]
constitute their object of study as an apparently closed phenomenon.” 47
Applied to Lacan’s work, Jameson’s argument is nowhere more evident than
in the structural account of alienation. In Lacan’s framework, alienation is a
01B-T0618-CH1 8/26/99 3:13 PM Page 21
closed phenomenon, immune to history, an inevitable process precisely be-

cause it is inherent in the nature of the subject and the signifier.
By conceptualizing alienation structurally, and therefore outside of his-
tory, Lacan’s framework elides the historical process which has determined
the role that alienation exercises in the social totality: its function and value.
In other words, his account keeps invisible the processes whereby a specific
mode of production, imposing the logic of the individual, forecloses collec-
tive possibilities to transcend alienation. Lacan’s subject is always and utmost
alienated from him/herself. The resolution or suspension of alienation is
then structured or conceived as a “libidinal Utopia of the individual body,”
to use Jameson’s term.48 As a structural limitation, however, this does not re-
veal an error in Lacan’s thinking as much as it demonstrates conditions un-
der which the theory was formulated. The systematic quantification and ra-
tionalization of capitalism attempts to impose the structural limitation of
the category of the individual on most, if not all cultural discourse. The re-
sult of such a structural limitation is a privileging of a libidinal utopia of the
individual body over collective utopias.
The structural limitations imposed on Lacan’s theoretical framework
are a result of their formulation under late capitalism. This does not, how-
ever, prevent its appropriation for conducting historical analysis. Rather,
the manner in which Lacanian theory represses its formulation under capi-
talism can indicate the ways in which textual operations perform the same
function.49 Lacanian theory articulates this process in the relationship be-
tween identifications and language—Imaginary and Symbolic identifica-
tion. In describing the relationship between the two modes of identification,
Ragland-Sullivan argues that
subjects constantly reconstitute their identities within a synchronic, cultural sig-

nifying context—a Symbolic order—to secure themselves a fixed value in terms
of their Imaginary “self ” . . . When a subject’s Imaginary ideal is confirmed by
Symbolic labels and approved by Real events, the accompanying feeling is one of
wholeness or jouissance. 50
Thus, subjects must identify symbolically—that is, take their place in cul-
ture 51 —to fix Imaginary identification and thereby maintain continuity at
the site of the Other(A). Furthermore, what this process leads to, jouissance,
is precisely a libidinal utopia of the individual body—the Imaginary whole-
ness of the subject as monad, as complete entity unto itself, and not, for ex-
ample, some kind of totalizing integration into the collective.
01B-T0618-CH1 8/26/99 3:13 PM Page 22
A Lacanian framework can thus articulate the manner in which textual

operations recapitulate this process. Classical Hollywood narrative, for ex-
ample, inscribes the structure of this process diegetically, where the figure
of a protagonist, by obtaining his goals, achieves a kind of wholeness de-
fined through the structure of the individual.52 Furthermore, textual opera-
tions function to promote spectator identification with these structures that
realize a libidinal utopia of the individual. The structures and operations of
classical narrative function to promote specific Symbolic (cultural) identi-
fications as a means of establishing (fixing) Imaginary objects of desire. This
process maintains the continuity between identifications and language at the
site of the Other(A) and provides the subject with jouissance—an individual
jouissance of the body. In this manner it functions to reify the category of the
individual and thus foreclose, repress, or recontain collective logic.53
Furthermore, what becomes significant for a Lacanian framework seek-
ing to elucidate the ideological function of signification is the manner in
which cinematic narration maintains—and indeed reifies—the continuity
of the Other(A) of its historical spectator by articulating a dialectic that libid-
inizes the Symbolic itself— conferring Imaginary wholeness in the place of
its lack, what Lacan terms the “lack in the Other.” 54 Slavoj Zizek thus argues
that the place of a Lacanian criticism of ideology is precisely where fantasy
fills the lack in the Symbolic.55
This lack within the Symbolic is the designation of the necessary gap be-
tween the signifier and the signified. Despite the fact that language, in Lacan’s
words, is “a network, a net over the entirety of things, over the totality of the
real,” 56 there is always that which escapes or resists symbolization. This leads
Lacan to conclude that “there is no language in existence for which there is
any question of its inability to cover the whole field of the signified.” 57 In-
deed, his definition of the Real is that which resists symbolization entirely.58
The Real as remainder, as “impossible,” 59 marks the limits of both the Sym-
bolic and Symbolic identification as being incomplete, as inevitable lack. It
is for this reason that Zizek argues that “every process of identification con-
ferring on us a fixed socio-symbolic identity is ultimately doomed to fail.
The function of ideological fantasy is to mask this inconsistency . . . and thus
to compensate us for the failed identification.” 60
A Lacanian criticism of ideology, therefore, must begin with the analysis
of the dialectic between identificatory processes: Imaginary and Symbolic.
At stake here is the manner in which the spectator’s identification with the
assumption of a Symbolic identity—a Symbolic mandate—provides the
wholeness of Imaginary pleasure. It is in this dialectic that the structure of
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the classical text seeks to eradicate difference through the libidinizing of a

Symbolic mandate. In addition, however, a Lacanian criticism of ideology
must be able to determine the manner in which the lack in the Other is re-
pressed by the text through the structure of fantasy. As Zizek argues, “fan-
tasy is a construction whose function is to hide this void, this ‘nothing,’ that
is the lack in the Other.” 61 The structure of fantasy in the text, therefore, is
not on the side of the Imaginary, but, rather, is that point where the impos-
sible is made present—indeed becomes the means by which symbolization
is possible.
Lacanian analysis of texts is thus not so much a searching for master nar-
ratives, but, rather, determining the basis by which signification constructs
itself and the ideological and hegemonic functions engendered in that pro-
cess. Semiotics insists that signification and meaning do not spring forth
from external reality, but, instead, are imposed on reality as a result of pacts
and agreements. What a Lacanian ideological critique provides is the ability
to integrate the social consequences (ideological and hegemonic) of the sig-
nifying pact and its resultant meaning with the role of the individual in-
scribed within that process.
A P P LY I N G L A C A N
Restoring some of the lesser-known aspects of Lacan’s theory does not itself
create a model. The three chapters that follow all contribute to the construc-
tion of such a model by examining an individual text for its signifying struc-
tures, the spectator they address, and the particular aspect of Lacanian
theory that can elucidate their operation. The texts chosen for such exami-
nation, Rome: Open City, Bicycle Thieves, and La terra trema, all come from
a period of Italian film known as Neorealism. The choice of Neorealism and
these specific texts is motivated by several factors. To begin with, studies of
psychoanalysis and film have been dominated by either classical Hollywood
or German cinema as the domain of investigation, including recent revi-
sionist work.62 There comes a point, and the field has probably reached it,
where the strength of revisionist approaches is compromised by their appli-
cation to an already saturated domain of investigation. For this reason, it is
far more necessary to expand psychoanalytic film theory to new areas than
to reexamine past ones.
Second, this Lacanian approach emphasizes the role of Symbolic identi-
fication and classical narrative’s tendency toward the denial of difference and
homogenized Symbolic identification. This places a significance on film’s
01B-T0618-CH1 8/26/99 3:13 PM Page 24
role of exercising cultural containment and unanimity. Placing such an in-

vestigation within more divided or fragmented societies can provide vivid
insight into the operations of culture as it seeks to exercise containment and
the role that narrative film can play in that process.
Such fragmentation and division profoundly characterizes postwar
Italian society. Even before the collapse of the state through the war, Italian
culture was marked by its segmentation and regionalism. Indeed, regional-
ism traditionally defined identity in the Italian subject much more than na-
tionality did, a symptom or a result of a culture that did not become a uni-
fied political entity until the 1860’s.63
In addition to this tradition, however, James Hay points out that Italian
culture in the 1920’s and 1930’s, under the influence of increased modern-
ization, became much more unstable and atomized.64 Hay situates Fascism
within this context, conceiving of Fascism beyond its political definitions
and more as a cultural response to the divisions and disunifying forces
within the social system. In this respect, Fascism in its attempts to unify
disparate forces within culture—however political in effect and intent—
nonetheless constituted and conducted itself through the process and do-
main of signification (a fundamental aspect of the structure of Fascism that
sociological and political perspectives largely ignore).
An analysis of Italian narrative film, therefore, cannot overlook the highly
fragmented cultural arena in which the films were produced and consumed
as a fundamental aspect in the historical specificity of their signification.
P O S T WA R I TA L I A N C U LT U R E A N D N E O R E A L I S M
The collapse of the Fascist state (as a result of the Allied invasion and parti-
san activities) resulted in further divisions within Italian culture. The effect
of Fascism’s failure was to further define (and divide) identity within culture
into three general groups via their relationship to Fascism: anti-Fascists, ex-
Fascists, and the complicit. Indeed, Paul Ginsborg argues that with the dis-
solution of the state two occupying armies, as well as three Italian govern-
ments (Benito Mussolini’s Republic, the CLNAI , and the Kingdom of the
South), claimed the obedience and allegiance of Italian citizens, forcing po-
litical and moral choices upon which lives could depend.65 The postwar cul-
ture that Neorealism found itself situated within can thus be characterized
by its deep-rooted, traditional divisions, based on region (with its own sep-
01B-T0618-CH1 8/26/99 3:13 PM Page 25
arate language[s]) and class, and more immediate segmentation from the ef-
fects of Fascism and its failure.
The psychoanalytic framework constructed here seeks to determine the
degree to which these films attempted to eradicate, deny, or mediate cultural
difference and segmentation. In this respect, this study attempts to deter-
mine the degree to which the construction of specific Symbolic identities
provided or failed to provide meaning which Italian subjects could “mis-
recognize” as their own Other(A) —their own unconscious meaning sys-
tem. Furthermore, to the extent that Neorealist films did provide pleasure
through this kind of “misrecognition,” analyzing their relationship to the
historical spectator should determine the ideological function of Imaginary
pleasure or its absence. What needs to be determined, therefore, is whether
the construction of pleasure is defined in terms of individual wholeness or
whether unpleasure is defined as individual alienation.
To the degree that the texts’ construction of Imaginary pleasure (or lack
thereof ) serves an ideological function, it simultaneously articulates what
Jameson describes as the “Utopian impulse,” the expression of the unity of
a collectivity.66 As Jameson argues:
The achieved collectivity or organic group of whatever kind— oppressors fully

as much as oppressed—is Utopian not in itself, but only insofar as all such col-
lectivities are themselves figures for the ultimate concrete collective life of an
achieved Utopian or classless society.67
This argument leads him to conclude that any class discourse takes on his-
torical specificity by the manner in which it projects its form of collective
unity. Given the amount of upheaval and competing impulses within the so-
cial system under which Neorealist films were produced, it is not difficult to
conceive of stylistic differences—and difference in general—among Neo-
realist films as symptomatic of different ideological impulses: the projection
of different forms of collective unity as an attempt to mediate an unstable so-
cial domain. Indeed, to the degree that the social domain can be perceived
as unstable, it is possible to determine a failure in the uniformity of cultural
signifying practices: an inability to contain through symbolization the fun-
damental contradictions and antagonisms that structure the social domain
as a response to the impossible Real.
Cultural instability is precisely those moments when a historical balance
toward uniformity in signifying practices breaks down, replaced with com-
peting attempts to symbolize the social domain. In this respect, the histori-
01B-T0618-CH1 8/26/99 3:13 PM Page 26
cal point at which the demise of Fascism within Italian culture can be iden-
tified signifies precisely a point at which Italian culture fails in a certain level
of uniformity in signifying practice. This failure leads to a far more visible
struggle between competing attempts to structure signifying practices.
It is within a domain of such instability and competing attempts for
dominance in cultural signifying practice that Neorealist films were consti-
tuted. What is significant for a study of Neorealism, however, is not just the
manner in which stylistic differences between individual films can be con-
sidered symptomatic of cultural instability, but also the manner in which
this same instability might constitute a basis of similarity and difference be-
tween signifying practices. What Lacan’s work makes clear is that the impos-
sibility of the Real, its residue and irruption into the Symbolic, is the site of
anxiety for the individual subject: the affective state of an inability to sym-
bolize the Real. Instability of culture—the demise of a cultural signifying
practice in dominance—thus brings the threat of anxiety insofar as the Real
protrudes and invades, lacks containment through symbolization.
Constituted within an unstable culture, Italian Neorealist films may lack
stylistic uniformity; however, each may constitute an attempt at contain-
ment. In this respect, individual texts become significant sites of projec-
tion, negotiation, and identification of figures of collective unity. The struc-
tural limitations imposed on that process, and the ability to provide pleasure
through and beyond the dialectic of identification, indicate the manner in
which ideological containment symbolized and conducted itself.
In attempting such analysis of select films of Neorealism, this study
(drawing as it does on Marxist critical theory) seeks to demonstrate the cen-
tral place psychoanalysis can play in ideological criticism. The level of analy-
sis required to make an investigation of each Neorealist film being beyond
the scope of a single project, this study analyzes five films within the Neo-
realist period, three of which constitute a kind of locus classicus of Neo-
realism: Roma, città aperta (Rome: Open City), Ladri di biciclette (Bicycle
Thieves), and La terra trema (The Earth Trembles). Each of these three films
is considered by traditional scholarship the (Neorealist) “masterwork” of
the most prominent Neorealist directors (Roberto Rossellini, Vittorio De
Sica, and Luchino Visconti). In this sense, these films form (at least part
of ) the canon of Neorealism, even though scholars disagree as to what con-
stitutes Neorealism: when it began and ended and what the limits of its
scope are.
Despite the many differences on a variety of issues on the subject, how-
ever, there is little disagreement that all three of the above films are Neo-
01B-T0618-CH1 8/26/99 3:13 PM Page 27
realist. The effect of auteurist perspectives can be seen in the constitution of

this Neorealist core. Without stylistic similarity, the basis for comparison be-
comes the relationship between the authors and their historical-cultural con-
text. A detailed analysis of each film through the Lacanian critical method
developed within this study might determine whether there is a nonauteurist
basis for such a grouping and what the basis for such a grouping might be.68
If, for example, box-office success can be an indicator for pleasure, then
these films can also be seen in some respects as a cross-section of the rela-
tionship between Neorealism and pleasure. Rome: Open City achieved both
box-office popularity and critical acclaim. As P. Adams Sitney notes, it re-
ceived support from “nearly all sides of the political spectrum . . .” 69 Bicycle
Thieves was less popular at the box office, received much less critical sup-
port, and instead generated much consternation.70 La terra trema failed at
the box office, won a minor award at the Venice film festival, and was assailed
by most critics.71 The apparent difference with respect to pleasure thus needs
to be analyzed through a Lacanian framework to determine the relationship
between text, meaning, and subject. Furthermore, if such differences do ex-
ist between pleasure and historical spectators, another basis for categorizing
films as Neorealist needs to be found.
The last two chapters of this study analyze two of the classic “transi-
tional” texts, Riso Amaro (Bitter Rice) and Senso, in order to examine the is-
sues surrounding that search. Here it is important to determine the degree
to which, if there is any element that defines Neorealism, it is absent or oth-
erwise degraded in films which traditional scholarship considers either lesser
Neorealist texts (in the case of Bitter Rice) or points of departure (in the case
of Senso). The first three chapters develop a model through their application
of theory to film. The last two chapters then apply the model, freed—as they
are— of having to explicate as they go along.
The Lacanian critical methods developed in this investigation take as
their object the functioning of desire in signification. Rather than being
viewed as a unified and expressive field of stable meaning, human discourse
is understood instead as an unstable and dialectical domain: the site of the
moi’s demand for recognition and drive for fusion, repressed and displaced
by the je. The Lacanian critical methods developed here are thus organized
around analyzing the structure of this dialectical relationship as it functions
within discourse. As Lacan argues: “It is therefore always in the relation be-
tween the subject’s ego (moi) and the ‘I’ (je) of his discourse that you must
understand the meaning of the discourse . . .” 72
In the Lacanian framework, the functioning of desire within discourse
01B-T0618-CH1 8/26/99 3:13 PM Page 28
operates through the structure of the moi: its drive for fusion and demands
for recognition. Thus, determining the site of moi operations as they are
inscribed within discourse is fundamental. In this respect Lacan argues:
“There is an inertia in the imaginary which we find making itself felt in the
discourse of the subject, sowing discord in the discourse . . .” 73 Ragland-
Sullivan expands on this when she asserts: “The moi can be fathomed as a
structure of disruption in the je’s unified discourse, as it positions itself in
relation to authority (the phallic signifier) and recognition requisites.” 74
Ragland-Sullivan’s argument thus provides a conceptual paradigm that or-
ganizes a Lacanian critical method around the analysis of three interrelated
structures: unity of discourse, relations to authority, and recognition re-
quests. Analyzing discourse for these three structures can determine the
functioning of desire as it operates through the fundamental relationship be-
tween the moi and the je.
The goal here is to delineate the manner in which the signifying sub-
ject intersects the specific and material signifying practice of the film text.
Within this framework, then, the text is not so much determined as it is
an encounter—an appropriation, articulation, translation, and (at times)
transformation of cultural signifying practices within the text’s symbolic
praxis. This framework thus mediates between the historical-cultural con-
text within which Neorealist films were produced, the transformation of
those “social phenomena” into the operations of the text, and the place of
the historical spectator within those operations.
Indeed, as detailed analysis of these films shows, the anxiety within post-
war Italian culture—the destabilizing effects of the collapse of the Italian
state under Fascism—becomes inscribed within the textual operations of
each film. In this respect, it is possible to determine Neorealism’s encounter
with the Real and the anxiety of postwar Italian culture as they are translated
into the very structure of plot, problematizing the traditional relationships
of pleasure and creating, as it were, a “cinema of anxiety” whose complex
identificatory relationships must be located beyond the Imaginary.
02-T0618 8/26/99 3:13 PM Page 29
2
Rome: Open City
Anxiety, Ideology,
and Cultural Containment
Rome: Open City is a film about fear, everyone’s fear, but above all my own.
R oberto R ossellini 1
In his discussion of Neorealism, Geoffrey Nowell-Smith argues that “the real

heart of the Neorealist movement was the Resistance film,” 2 a statement that
(implicitly or otherwise) concurs with much of traditional scholarship.3
Although the intersection of “Resistance” and “film” has been written about
extensively, a Lacanian framework can make a unique ideological contribu-
tion in its investigation of culture and film by its unwillingness to accept so-
cial phenomena (institutions, associations, groups) as part of the Real or, in
Kantian terms, as things-in-themselves. Rather, a Lacanian framework in-
sists on such social phenomena as part of the Symbolic, as a representation,
a signifier in need of further analysis. In this respect, the Resistance, both in
Italian culture itself and as signifier within the material signifying practice of
film, is a Symbolic construction—the site of a pact (or agreement) that will
govern behaviors and actions within a specific social domain.4
Lacan’s concept of the totalizing function of the signifier, its ability to
present itself as a thing-in-itself (as something real), is demonstrated in the
signifier of the Resistance. As a social pact that governs actions, the Resis-
tance not only directs the actions and behaviors of those who participate as
members of the group (or association), but comes to envelop the entire so-
cial domain. Even those who oppose the Resistance, who in some sense dis-
02-T0618 8/26/99 3:13 PM Page 30
agree with the pact, nonetheless recognize its existence and in their attempt
to destroy it come to have their actions defined by it.
The appropriation of the signifier of the Resistance within the material
signifying practice of film, however, marks a site where (as with any cultural
signifier that is appropriated) the pact that defines the meaning of the signi-
fier can be renegotiated—the signifier redefined. The meanings constructed
around and through the Resistance as signifier are thus an important site for
analysis. The status of the Resistance as a signifier-in-dominance within Ital-
ian culture and the early practice of Neorealism is thus not the result of its
status as political reality (being a thing-in-itself ), but, rather, rests within the
degree to which its function as signifier serves as a site of organizing and de-
termining struggles and conflicts between social forces. The Resistance func-
tioned as a signifier-in-dominance within a culture that experienced itself as
fragmented through and by several arenas of identification, as discussed ear-
lier. The pact which structures the meaning and function of (the Italian) Re-
sistance is itself a site where a fragmented culture attempted to image social
unity.
The structure of a pact which seeks to establish social unity also deter-
mines the signifying function of the Resistance-as-signifier in Rome: Open
City. The film’s appropriation of the Resistance stresses the cooperation be-
tween diverse and even antagonistic segments within Italian culture. Indeed,
the Resistance as a site of unity—a popular movement—becomes the site of
utopian ideals figured at the end of the film. What is critical for a Lacanian
ideological analysis is the manner in which the struggle for and image of so-
cial unity at the site of the Resistance is situated within a text whose unity of
discourse is undermined by disruptions of plot.
The classical film text’s ability to inscribe a multiplicity of signifying prac-
tices and organize them into the semblance of a solitary discourse is a signifi-
cant site for early appropriations of Lacanian theory. The film text is a par-
ticularly rich field for such an analysis since (in its narrative form) the goal
of unity is the principle that determines the relationship among what are
otherwise several distinct formal elements. Indeed, Heath argues that film “is
potentially a veritable flux of affects, a plurality of intensities, and narrative
functions to contain that affectivity . . .” 5 Furthermore, he asserts that nar-
rative achieves this function because “narrative in cinema is first and fore-
most the organization of a point of view through an image-flow . . .” 6
Heath’s argument stresses the unifying role that narrative exercises on
what is otherwise a fundamental potential for disruption within the film text:
editing. Narrative construction combines a multiplicity of separate shots,
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Rome: Open City 31
each of which inscribes a different point of viewing or perspective. The struc-

ture of narrative works to organize these separate points of view into a coher-
ent and unified point of intelligibility for the spectator.
While Neorealist films in some respects challenged certain narrative con-
ventions (among them tight, linear, goal-oriented causality), an adherence
to intelligibility is nonetheless uniform. Analysis of Rome: Open City demon-
strates that, despite threats to character and other manipulations of plot that
function (however temporarily) disruptively, the film conforms to Heath’s
argument that “it is narrative significance that at any moment sets the space
of the frame to be followed and read . . . Narrative contains the mobility that
could threaten the clarity of vision in a constant renewal of perspective.” 7
Rome: Open City prepares its audience for a disruptive style and the re-
newing of perspective in its very opening. The first two shots of the film
function to establish the time and space of the narrative. The German patrol
marching through the Piazza di Spagna sets a specific space (Rome) and a
fairly specific time (the German occupation of World War II ). Actions are
more habitual than specific: synchronized marching and harmonious sing-
ing contribute to a sense of a routine. In this manner, the first two shots be-
gin to establish the story world. The third shot, however, abruptly shifts into
action, thrusting the spectator in medias res. The Germans on patrol are re-
placed by a shot of a military truck. After the truck comes to a quick stop,
German soldiers jump out, run over to a building, and pound on the door.
The action here shifts from the habitual or recurring to specific and di-
rected. Haste and lack of ceremony in the third shot distinguish it from the
previous shots. The shift from establishing the story to specific action occurs
without any clear causal, spatial, or temporal relationship between the shots,
pronounced by the absence of any motivation for the change between the
two shots. This functions to create a gap in the plot that foregrounds the dis-
ruption of narrative flow.8
The function of such an early disruption is to establish narrative disrup-
tion as a stylistic norm. Moreover, the significance of disruption for a Lacan-
ian analysis is the way it actively draws attention to breaks in the unity of dis-
course, working against what Stephen Heath described earlier as narrative
containment: the leveling off of the plurality of affects within the film text.
In this respect, Luigi Chiarini’s argument that “the film lacks the usual struc-
ture” does not describe the absence of specific plot structures,9 which many
scholars find abundantly,10 but, rather, the frequent lack of traditional nar-
rative effect: the unifying and organizing function of containment.
Conceptualizing narrative as a process of containment—a transforming
02-T0618 8/26/99 3:13 PM Page 32
of the primary disruptions of the text into a continuous maintenance of

an intelligible point of viewing—is a fundamental contribution of early ap-
propriations of Lacanian psychoanalysis within film theory. The strength
of these approaches rests in their explication of textual encoding: delineat-
ing the historical specificity of the text’s appropriation, transformation, and
repression of cultural signifiers and signifying practices. The limitation to
these approaches, however, is an inability to provide the same level of his-
torical specificity to textual decoding. Narrative’s ability to provide unified
discourse became the means in itself toward providing pleasure to the spec-
tator. This reduces both the specificity of the text (the precise elements of the
text that narrative imposes unity upon) and the specificity of spectatorship
(the historical contingencies regulating the text-subject interaction) to an-
cillary components of narrative analysis.
This chapter demonstrates how Lacan’s theory of personality can restore
to narrative analysis the historical specificity at stake in decoding the dispa-
rate signifiers that narrative structure functions to unify. Within the narra-
tive function—the unifying structure that organizes the multiple points of
view and affects of the film text—is a relationship between signifiers whose
specific structure determines the avenues through which different modes
of identification can be engaged. The function of this revisionism is not so
much to ignore earlier contributions to narrative analysis as to integrate
them with the historical dimension of spectatorship. This is a particularly
important realignment for Rome: Open City, since traditional scholarship
has discussed the film’s stylistic departure from classical Hollywood and Fas-
cist cinema but overlooked the historical dimension of spectatorship in that
process.
The prevalence of heightened shifts between recurring and specific ac-
tion and information gaps within the narrative makes Rome: Open City
well suited for Meir Sternberg’s narratological work on temporal structures
and expositional modes. Furthermore, integrating Sternberg’s work with
Lacanian ideological criticism can provide the historical dimension of spec-
tatorship lacking both in traditional scholarship on the film and in Stern-
berg’s own narratology (since ultimately he offers a model of the text, not of
spectatorship).
The site of such an integration can be situated at the concept of unity of
discourse. Sternberg’s work on temporal structures and expositional modes
demonstrates that narrative itself is not so much a single unified structure as
it is a system of relations characterized by gaps and substitutions. By distin-
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Rome: Open City 33
guishing between expositional modes (characterized by their general, decon-

cretized, and static discourse) and actional dynamics (distinguished by its
specificity and concreteness) within narrative, Sternberg’s analysis perme-
ates the apparent unity of the structure of narrative, delineating instead a dy-
namic system of relations between discourses.
In Sternberg’s narrative theory, the function of exposition is to regulate,
delay, and stabilize the forward movement of narrative, itself articulated as
actional dynamics. The regulating and stabilizing function of exposition
makes it a primary site in the process of narrative containment.11 As further
analysis demonstrates, however, the plot structure of Rome: Open City fre-
quently subverts the role of the exposition, working against narrative con-
tainment and creating narrative confusion rather than stability. Within the
first half of the film, three disruptions in particular are grounded in this
expositional subversion: the previously discussed opening, Marina’s “en-
trance” during the search of Manfredi’s apartment (via her phone call), and
Laura’s intrusion into Francesco’s apartment during Pina and Manfredi’s
conversation. Neither of these scenes plays a significant role in the ongoing
action of the plot. Indeed, each could be characterized as a minor scene in
that respect. These scenes do contribute to important definitions of charac-
ter, however, and, even more significantly, function to create the subversion
of exposition and the subsequent lack of narrative containment as a norma-
tive system of the text.
The search of Manfredi’s apartment illustrates this point. Here the ac-
tional dynamics takes on the form of the Germans’ pursuit of Manfredi, the
narrative drive defined as their goal to catch him. While searching the apart-
ment, the German officer’s interrogation of Manfredi’s landlady is inter-
rupted by a phone call, which the officer answers in hopes of obtaining more
information. Upon his answering, the film shifts to Marina in her bedroom
(it is she who initiates the call). Asking for Giorgio Manfredi, Marina repeats
the name used previously by the German officer. She is thereby linked to
the subject of the Germans’ pursuit, and her call creates the possibility of
contributing to Manfredi’s capture. The conflict that is created stems from
Marina’s lack of knowledge and subsequent confusion, when her habitual
action (calling Manfredi) interrupts the specific action of the search.
As exposition, the sequence functions to introduce a new character and
links that character to Manfredi, subject of the action. Rather than sta-
bilize and regulate, however, Marina’s exposition amplifies the action by
creating more possibilities for its direction.12 This expositional misappro-
02-T0618 8/26/99 3:13 PM Page 34
priation destabilizes the narrative, contributing to confusion rather than

containment. This sense of confusion is then displaced diegetically as Ma-
rina’s confusion.
In a negative fashion, therefore, the scene demonstrates the structural
relationship between the exposition and actional dynamics, articulating
through its absence the kind of containment that is at stake in the function
of the exposition. Further, the scene also evidences that the exposition’s func-
tion of regulating, stabilizing, and delaying is bound to the actional dynam-
ics as source of narrative drive.13 It is at the site of narrative drive that the re-
lationship of exposition to actional dynamics can be seen to correspond to
the structure and logic of Lacan’s theory of personality: the relationship be-
tween what he terms the moi and the je. 14
It is frequently overlooked in English translations that Lacan’s terms are
an attempt to replace the concept of the ego with a more dialectical model.
In attempting to return to Freud’s contention that the ego is not so much an
entity in itself as it is the organized portion of the id, Lacan develops a the-
ory of personality that is split between conscious and unconscious and then
further divided between the moi and the je. For Lacan, then, the moi is a kind
of primary ego, a site where “the energy and form on which this organiza-
tion of the passions . . . is based.” 15 This leads him to further argue that “li-
bido and the moi are on the same side.” 16 These three crucial components
to the structure of the moi— energy, form, and organization— correspond
to what have become essential components of narrative for several different
schools of literary theory (though not explicitly).
Arguing that there is a correspondence between the structure of narra-
tive and aspects of the human psyche is not to argue for an implied deter-
minism: that the structure of the psyche determines the structure of narra-
tive or vice versa. Moreover, to argue that the structures correspond is not to
imply that narrative is a kind of simulacrum of the psyche: a concept that in-
trigues Roland Barthes with respect to the Oedipus complex,17 but which
Jameson warns against in terms of the trajectory from the Imaginary to the
Symbolic as a master narrative determining the structure of all narrative.18
Thus, to examine the manner in which both the structure of the moi and the
structure of narrative have form is not to posit that they have the same form,
but, rather, to identify the manner in which they share the logic of form and
the structure of form and that, furthermore, the correspondence on the level
of structure and logic may be the elementary basis upon which a structural
identification begins.
Thus, from liberal humanism through postmodernism, narrative has
02-T0618 8/26/99 3:13 PM Page 35
Rome: Open City 35
been seen as a mode of organization, a position clearly articulated with re-

spect to film by Edward Branigan.19 While some narratologists, like Barthes,
and even to a degree Peter Brooks, would argue that this mode of organiza-
tion is based on the organization of desire (or the passions), such similarity
is not a necessary and fundamental position for a Lacanian model. What is
primary for Lacan in discourse is recognition, not desire, and spectatorial
engagement with non-narrative modes of organization would confirm such
a position. Thus, prior to the organization of the trajectory of a desire, what
narrative first offers to a spectator is a mode of organization.
Further, and in some respects as a result of its organization, narrative is
said to have form, which, for example, became the basis for American New
Criticism and Formalism to distinguish it from poetry. Here, too, the corre-
spondence between structures is not identical, but structural. For Lacan, the
form of the ego is complexly associated with the body. Thus he argues:
“Freud underlines that it [the moi] must have an intimate connection with
the surface of the body . . . this surface in so far as it is reflected in a form.” 20
It is through this structural logic that the moi and narrative correspond. Nar-
rative offers itself as form, even though different narratologies argue what
that form is. The recognition of form thus provides a basis for spectator iden-
tification with the narrative and narrative operations (including the dis-
course of narrative).
The correspondence between the energy that defines the moi and nar-
rative structure can be determined in the concept of narrative movement,
which is frequently characterized as narrative drive. This can clearly be seen
in the work of a structuralist like Barthes, who argues that “Sarrasine . . . is
the story of a force (the narrative) and the action of this force . . .” 21 In ad-
dition, however, the characterization of narrative as drive, force, or energy
can also be seen in work of several Formalists like Vladimir Propp,22 with his
emphasis on the horizontal structuring of plot and the reduction of char-
acter to the movement of action and plot functioning, and R. S. Crane,
who discusses the power engendered in plot.23 Indeed, even Neo-formalists
Kristen Thompson and David Bordwell recognize the centrality of desire—
the correlative of drive—to the structure of narrative.24 Furthermore, nar-
rative drive or movement is frequently defined as the drive for resolution
and the restabilization of events. This drive for restabilization as the object
of the drive also corresponds to the structure of the moi, which, as Lacan ar-
gues, attempts to “neutralize” as much as possible.25
This neutralizing function of the moi results from its drive to impose ho-
mogeneity through narcissistic identification. As Lacan argues, “the ego ex-
02-T0618 8/26/99 3:13 PM Page 36
periences reality not only in so far as it lives it, but in so far as it neutralizes
it as much as possible.” 26 Lacan’s discussion of the characteristics of the moi
establishes another site of correspondence between the moi and narrative
drive: their reliance on—but irreducibility to—representation. This prin-
ciple is also clearly evidenced in Rome: Open City, where narrative drive first
takes on the form of the Germans’ desire for control and then gets trans-
ferred to the characters of the Resistance and their desire for freedom and
control. At each point in the narrative, however, this drive is necessarily
linked to the signifier of character.
This irreducibility of narrative drive corresponds to the moi insofar as
Lacan conceives of this psychical structure as a site of form and organization
of drive and Imaginary tension, but (like narrative) it is also, he maintains,
“an object.” 27 Furthermore, Lacan’s frequent stress that the moi is the sum of
identifications determines that it is representation which gives form to the
moi. 28 Despite its status as object, however, Lacan argues that the moi is not
limited to its representations, which give specificity to its form. Rather, he
insists upon the irreducible character of the narcissistic structure that char-
acterizes the moi and its formation.29
Thus, a status as object, irreducibility, form, and organization of drive is
characteristic of both narrative and Lacan’s concept of the moi. What textual
analysis objectifies and localizes as narrative drive is ultimately inseparable
from the signifiers that give it form. In this respect, it is possible to isolate the
key operational functions of the signifier: giving form to a drive or desire.
This key function is what Jameson argues for in his discussion of Freud’s
term Vorstellungsrepräsentanz (ideational representative) in order “to under-
score the indissociable link” between drive (Trieb) and its representation.30
Insofar as narrative movement or drive can be localized or objectified within
the text, it is the result of isolating a signifier giving it form, a structure which
finds its organizing function at the site of the moi.
This irreducibility of narrative movement to the signifier determines the
operation which Sternberg defines as actional dynamics, where the function
of the signifier is to give form and specificity to drive or desire. In delineat-
ing a second function of signification, the delay and regulation of narra-
tive movement, Sternberg’s model corresponds to the structure and logic of
what Lacan termed the je and its exercise of the Symbolic function. As Lacan
argues:
The symbolic function presents itself as a double movement within the subject:
man makes an object of his action, but only in order to restore to this action in
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Rome: Open City 37
due time its place as grounding. In this equivocation, operating at every instant,
lies the whole process of a function in which action and knowledge alternate.31
The equivocation Lacan describes—the alternation of an action (already

at the level of the signifier) and its objectification through signification—
delineates the process by which the je (the site of Symbolic organization
through the structure of identity) functions to regulate and displace the
drives and desires organized at the site of the moi.
The process of substitution between actional dynamics and exposition
thus can be said to correspond to the continual displacement of moi desire
through the functioning of the je. The term limit of narrative is not the mas-
ter narrative of an acceptance or accession into the Symbolic order (hence
the much noted Jameson warning),32 but rather a process of recoupment of
the moi’s Imaginary jouissance. The drive of classical narrative is thus consti-
tuted as the circular movement of moi desire and recognition requests.
Linearity comes into the structure where it corresponds to the je, which an-
chors meaning and displaces desire into the linearity of representation.
Rome: Open City’s subversion of that classical structure can not only be
read in terms of its destabilizing of narrative, but can also become the site for
analyzing the historical specificity of the signifying practice of the film and
the spectator it addresses. The film’s subversion of the expositional function,
as mentioned, creates narrative confusion that becomes displaced onto char-
acter. This expositional confusion within the structure of plot can be read as
the text’s appropriation and transformation of the confusion within Italian
culture over their role in the war, culpability for Fascism, and the future di-
rection of the Italian state. Further analysis can further establish this corre-
spondence, in addition to demonstrating the historical dimension of nego-
tiating the meaning of that appropriation and transformation.
The confusion over the substitution of exposition for action frequently
becomes displaced by diegetic confusion (or conflict) between habitual (or
recurring) and specific (or concrete) actions. The first site of this diegetic
confusion or conflict between habitual and specific action occurs with Ma-
rina’s call to Manfredi’s apartment, as discussed previously. The repetition of
this structure can be determined at the introduction of the character most
similar to Marina: Laura.
The scene which introduces Laura begins with Pina opening Francesco’s
apartment for Manfredi. Through her conversation with Manfredi, Pina in-
troduces expositional information by discussing the bakery riot of the pre-
vious scene, thereby clarifying prior narrative action. During this relatively
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calm discussion, however, a loud, angry voice is suddenly heard off-screen.

Individual close-ups of the characters reveal their reaction to the voice. To
Pina, who is talking, the voice is familiar and only a minor distraction: the
stuff of everyday life. To Manfredi, who does not know the source, the voice
is a potential threat to his safety and is therefore a specific and immediate
kind of danger.
Just as Pina excuses herself to take care of the distraction, Laura, her sis-
ter, bursts into the room, almost immediately recognizing Manfredi. Her en-
trance into the room serves an expositional function: it introduces a new
character to the narrative. In addition, it confirms Pina’s understanding of
the interruption as a generalized and recurring action. The disruptive nature
of Laura’s intrusion, however, is evidenced by the confusion she generates
among the characters. Previous to her entrance the narrative is stable and
character relationships are clearly defined.
Upon entering the room and recognizing Manfredi, Laura creates doubt
and confusion about character relationships. Unclear about the situation,
Laura mistakenly believes that Manfredi is there to see her. He confirms this
assumption (to protect himself ), which makes Pina doubt the previous ex-
position of the narrative. Laura then turns on Pina for not telling her sooner
that Manfredi was there to see her. For his part, Manfredi is anxious to keep
Laura from knowing why he is really there. Laura’s exposition is therefore
similar in function to Marina’s earlier exposition. She introduces a new
character (herself ) and even establishes character relationships (herself and
Manfredi, Pina, and Marina, respectively). Like Marina’s exposition, how-
ever, Laura’s is also confusing and disruptive to the narrative rather than be-
ing a clarification of it. That the narrative stabilizes through exposition as
soon as Laura leaves the scene underscores the difference between the two
sets of characters and begins to indicate the function of narrative disruption
and stability.
In Laura and Marina’s exposition and in the opening, disruption brings
both confusion and a threat of danger. These characteristics are symptom-
atic of the specific manner in which the structure of plot and its narrative dis-
ruptions inscribe the structure of anxiety. An elaboration of this concept
clarifies the point. Freud defines anxiety as an “intentional reproduction” of
an affective state whose function is to safeguard the ego from psychical help-
lessness in the face of unmet need.33 As a complex ego function, it prevents
psychical danger by reproducing an affective state (anxiety) in order to re-
direct desire away from situations or objects that can lead to unmet need.
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Fig ur e 1 . The introduction of Laura to the story creates confusion among all the
characters, temporarily destabilizing the narrative as they try to determine their rela-
tionships. courtesy of the museum of modern art , film s tills archive.
Anxiety thus acts as a signal which engages the mechanism of repression to

redirect desire.
Lacan’s conception of anxiety aligns itself with Freud’s definition. To be-
gin with, Lacan also sees object-loss as central to its structure, arguing that
(psychical) castration inaugurates anxiety.34 In addition, his characterization
of anxiety as a temporal dimension corresponds with Freud’s delineation of
an ego function.35 Finally, both Lacan and Freud conceive of anxiety as a
symptom of danger in relationship to the libido. What is of particular signifi-
cance for a narrative analysis, however, is Lacan’s conception of the aspect of
danger within the structure of anxiety. For Lacan, danger results from the
subject’s inability to symbolize an encounter with the Real.36 Within a psy-
choanalytic framework, the structure of anxiety could thus be characterized
by four important elements: its temporal dimension, its relationship to ob-
ject loss, its displacement of danger, and its redirection of desire.
Narrative disruptions are by no means unique to Rome: Open City; how-
ever, what is significant for this analysis is the manner in which all four of
these characteristics are inscribed within the film’s narrative disruptions. To
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begin with, narrative disruptions are constructed as temporal dimensions—

suspending or disrupting the forward movement of narrative. Thus, in the
opening, narrative disruption occurs as a function of a temporal advance,
situating the spectator in medias res before an opening can be fully estab-
lished.37 Marina and Laura’s respective disruptions also perform this tempo-
ral function. Each of their disruptions functions as exposition: introducing
new characters in the story world. As exposition, their disruptions perform
what Sternberg describes as the expositional function of delaying or retard-
ing the forward movement of narrative.38 Finally, another significant disrup-
tion in the film—Pina’s assassination—also evidences this temporal dimen-
sion. Here the film’s editing style shifts dramatically in a manner that violates
continuity in order to extract the moment from the real time of the narra-
tive and, in the process, place dramatic emphasis on it.
In addition to the temporal dimension, however, narrative disruptions
within the film construct themselves around the second characteristic: (ob-
ject) loss. The opening’s gap, which results from a jump in medias res, cre-
ates a lack of information from the loss of exposition. This undermines the
spectator’s ability to make conclusions about the narrative action, and thus
the effect of narrative containment is lost. Narrative ambiguity can be com-
mon in the early part of films, especially through the creation of what Stern-
berg would describe as temporary gaps. What makes this loss so distinctive
in Rome: Open City, however (as the discussion below indicates), is the man-
ner in which it functions to direct spectatorial identification—which is most
evidenced with the loss of Pina. In the disruption structured around her as-
sassination, the character herself (the object through which narrative has
come to be organized) is lost to the narrative.
The respective disruptions of Marina and Laura are also constructed
around loss. By creating narrative confusion with their exposition rather
than clarifying narrative action, Marina and Laura introduce a plurality of
affects to ongoing action. Their disruptions therefore cause a loss of narra-
tive containment, interrupting its organized flow. Furthermore, their asso-
ciation with the loss of narrative effect plays an important role in the overall
function of inscribing the structure of anxiety and begins to indicate the his-
torical dimension of this structure. Indeed, each of these disruptions must
be read through the signifiers of occupation (the opening and Pina’s assassi-
nation) and collaboration (Marina and Laura). The negotiation of meaning
at stake in this process is conducted through the position, with respect to
identity, that the spectators have already defined for themselves with respect
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Rome: Open City 41
to the social reality of occupation and collaboration (and their own individ-
ual history within that social reality).
What an analysis of the structure of anxiety in Rome: Open City demon-
strates is the historical dimension of this structure with respect to the spec-
tator. The structure of anxiety inscribed in the text, and its association with
the signifiers of occupation and collaboration, is negotiated by a spectator
with a distinctive relationship to the social reality of occupation and collab-
oration (as cultural signifying practices). That is, the spectator’s own lived
experience of the social dimensions of occupation and collaboration deter-
mines that their meaning within the text—far from being overdetermined
by the text—is a site where the spectator seeks to recognize, and negotiates
with the text to confirm, the meaning s/he has invested (through the struc-
ture of identity) in those signifiers.
This negotiation of meaning is evidenced at the site of another charac-
teristic of anxiety, the displacement of danger, which operates both in the
appropriation of cultural signifying practices and in the transformation of
social phenomena into the structure of the individual. The first operation
occurs at the site of the signifier of occupation. Itself constructed around the
structures of repression, danger, and threat, the signifier of occupation func-
tions as a displacement for Fascism itself. The social reality of Fascist excesses
is transformed within the text into the repressive excesses of German occu-
pation. The film thus displaces the effects of Fascist excesses and cultural re-
pression onto the external image of an Other: the German forces of occupa-
tion. This displacement constructs occupation as the Other which “controls”
culture and thus “causes” repression—a significant textual operation for
structuring identification. Indeed, as a result of this displacement, the his-
torical spectator does not have to negotiate Fascism as the site of cultural re-
pression and excess (thus becoming a crucial site for allowing the audience’s
particularities—their own relationship to Fascism—to be suspended).
This operation is facilitated in the text’s transformation of social phe-
nomena into the structure of the individual, also determined at the site of
the text’s displacement of danger. In each of the narrative disruptions—the
opening, Marina’s and Laura’s interruption, and Pina’s assassination—there
is either a direct or indirect threat of danger to physical survival. By struc-
turing this danger as an individual phenomenon, however, the text trans-
forms social phenomena through a process of displacement: displacing the
underlying structure of psychical helplessness that occupation as signifier
comes to engender.39
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This process is articulated by the text in the scene where Francesco

comforts Pina on the eve of their wedding. Francesco justifies the risks and
the hardships they undertake with promises of freedom and a better world.
By defining their situation within these terms, the text indicates that the
necessity of the Resistance struggle, and its physical danger, lies in avoiding
a more serious danger—the lack of freedom that occupation represents.
What is therefore a historically specific social phenomenon— German
occupation—is transformed through the text into the structure of the indi-
vidual.40 The text defines the danger of occupation and the lack of freedom
it imposes through the structure of ego mastery and control, what Lacan de-
scribes as the structure of the narcissistic moi. As the source of intentional-
ity, the narcissistic moi is threatened when subjected to lack of control and
repression of desire. Precisely what occupation comes to represent within
the text is a threat to this psychical structure. The lack of freedom it imposes
is a lack of individual control.
The specifically historical dimension of this displacement is the manner
in which it functions to contain the anxiety of a specific lack of symboliza-
tion in the Real. The dissolution of Fascism, and with it the Italian state, cre-
ated a void in signification through which the Real could irrupt and impose
itself on the lived experience of the Italian subject. The effect of Fascism’s
prolonged death throes and the accompanying instability was to render
visible an aspect of the Real that is frequently disguised and hidden: that
social reality—Fascism, the Italian state—is only an effect of signification.
The disintegration of the signifier and its effects— ordering, structuring,
and regulating through signification—allowed the Real (that which resists
symbolization entirely) to surface. Conditions in social reality—the vio-
lence of the war and occupation, the desperate conditions of acquiring basic
necessities—thus threatened not only as physical danger, but as a psycho-
logical danger as well: the inability to symbolize these encounters and as a
result being subjected to them as meaninglessness.
In this respect, Lacan’s argument that anxiety is “framed” clarifies the
function that Rome: Open City performs for its historical spectators: literally
providing a frame where the anxiety of symbolizing the Real effects of the
war, the legacy and fall of Fascism, occupation, and collaboration, is dis-
placed through the structure—and the trajectory— of identification.
The trajectory of identification is significant in the final characteristic of
anxiety, the redirection of desire. This redirection can be readily seen within
the opening. The narrative’s association of narrative disruption with the sig-
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Rome: Open City 43
nifiers of occupation and collaboration functions to direct spectatorial iden-

tification away from those sites and toward the characters associated with
narrative stability. In the first half of the film, the characters whose exposi-
tion clarifies and stabilizes narrative action are Manfredi, Pina, Don Pietro,
and Francesco.41 Their association with containment functions to help se-
cure identification with their characters.
As the narrative progresses, however, the film directs this identification
toward the death and suffering of these characters. The unpleasure of iden-
tifying with the death of first Pina, then Manfredi, and finally Don Pietro
helps redirect identification from one character to another, but not before
encouraging identification with suffering and death. Thus, after Pina dies,
spectatorial identification is directed toward Manfredi and his goals of es-
cape. After Manfredi is tortured and dies, identification is transferred to Don
Pietro. Finally, after Don Pietro’s death, identification is transferred to Mar-
cello and the boys’ Resistance group.42
The specificity of this redirection is important for determining both how
the text manages a subversive utopian impulse and the place of the histori-
cal spectator within that operation. To begin with, the first site of redirection
occurs at the death of Pina. The narrative logic that assigns the necessity of
her death determines that Pina (a historical distortion through condensation
of female participation in the Resistance) is a subversive utopian threat to
patriarchal-capitalist culture.43 This threat is distinctly articulated in the film
at several points: the first is the image of the bakery riot, which the text makes
clear was organized by Pina and the neighborhood women.
Another significant site in the film, while far more subtle in its point, is
nonetheless indicative of the potential threat that Pina constitutes. This oc-
curs in the scene in Francesco’s apartment where Manfredi asks Pina about
her upcoming wedding. When she responds that it is only a wartime wed-
ding, a moment with Don Pietro, Manfredi expresses surprise and politely
(but critically) questions her about getting married in the church. Pina’s
reply, noted frequently by traditional scholarship, is that it is better to be
married by a partisan priest than by a Fascist at city hall, to which Manfredi
must reluctantly agree.
What traditional scholarship has overlooked, however, is how Pina’s re-
sponse both affects and defines relationships among characters. Her reason-
ing produces similar effects on both Francesco (he agrees to the ceremony)
and Manfredi (it silences any objection that he has). The significance of
Pina’s response, and what it accomplishes, is underscored by the differences
02-T0618 8/26/99 3:14 PM Page 44
between the characters. Pina, a working-class woman who admits to believ-

ing in God, outmaneuvers both Francesco, a working-class Socialist, and,
most importantly, Manfredi, an educated, bourgeois Communist. The ease
with which she appropriates the moral authority of the Resistance and uses
it to overcome male prohibitions further constitutes a threat to the opera-
tions of patriarchy. Pina thus functions to represent an ideological peril that
the film contains: future subversive collective action against patriarchal capi-
talism’s attempt to represent a new Italian state.44 In this respect, Pina, and
the threat she embodies, must be killed off.45
Pina’s death causes narrative desire to be redirected toward Manfredi and
his attempt at escape. Here, too, however, the film directs desire to an ideo-
logical threat that ends with the death of a character. Manfredi is a Com-
munist who, as the film all too clearly points out, will begin working against
Monarchists and his sworn enemy, the church, as soon as the Germans are
gone. Carrying out the same narrative logic, the threat that Manfredi con-
stitutes is contained by his death. The death of Manfredi, and the subver-
sive utopian impulse he represents, functions to redirect narrative desire
again. This time, however, desire is directed to a different utopian impulse—
one that has been severely detached from its originally subversive role—
Christianity.46
With the death of Manfredi, spectator identification is directed to Don
Pietro—the partisan priest. The function of this redirection, as further anal-
ysis demonstrates, is ideological recontainment. The utopian impulse em-
bodied in Don Pietro’s character is defined not through what Fredric Jame-
son describes as the logic of the collective, but rather through the logic of the
individual. As a Roman Catholic priest, Don Pietro’s character is defined
through the structure of individual renunciation. He himself states that he
puts his life in the service of others. Furthermore, as a priest he bears the
signifier of celibacy—the individual renunciation of sexual intercourse. The
redirection of narrative desire from Manfredi to Don Pietro therefore redi-
rects identification from a utopian impulse defined through the logic of the
collective and toward a utopia defined through the logic of the individual—
a utopia based on individual renunciation.
The ideological overdetermination of the logic of the individual even
defines the social or group dynamics within the film. The construction of
an “open city” that accommodates a plurality of perspectives occurs only
through the structure of renunciation. The Marxists must renounce their
opposition to the church, as Manfredi does in his discussion with Pina and
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Rome: Open City 45
his acceptance of Don Pietro. Likewise, the church must renounce its claim
for political authority (as it did in the Lateran Pacts), which is demonstrated
in Don Pietro’s refusal to look upon Manfredi in political terms during his
interrogation with Bergmann.
The specific historical dimension of the text’s redirection of desire can
be determined at the site of its inscription of the structure of Roman Cathol-
icism’s rite of penance. This structure is most clearly evidenced in Man-
fredi’s torture sequence, where, as Peter Bondanella notes, the film employs
traditional Christian iconography to associate Manfredi with the crucified
Christ.47 The articulation of this structure, however, occurs in relationship
to the redirection of narrative desire. As the narrative progresses, the specta-
tor comes to identify with Manfredi’s suffering as a result of the death of
Pina and the subsequent need to redirect identification to another character.
The identification with Manfredi’s suffering therefore occurs after the
narrative has shifted its attention from Pina and after a significant scene
where Pina talks to Don Pietro. In that scene the two characters walk to-
gether down Via Casilina. Reflecting on her past transgressions and on the
suffering and anxiety the war has caused, Pina asks: “How will we be able to
forget all the suffering, all the anxiety, the fear? Doesn’t Christ see us?” Don
Pietro responds:
Many ask me this question, Pina. Doesn’t Christ see us? But are we sure we have
not deserved this plague? Are we sure we have always lived according to the law
of God? And no one thinks of changing his life, of repenting his ways. Then, when
things get bad, everyone is desperate, everyone asks: doesn’t God see us, doesn’t
God pity us? Yes, God has pity for us. But we have much to be forgiven for, and
for this we have to pray and forgive much.
Don Pietro’s response to Pina, however, runs counter to the compassion and
understanding earlier established in his character. The effect of placing Don
Pietro’s response within the context of an inconsistency of character is to
draw attention to, and thus emphasize, the content of the discourse: anxiety,
sin, and forgiveness.
This emphasis on Don Pietro’s discourse assigns meaning to the text’s
redirection of desire, where sin will ultimately be forgiven through suffering.
Identification with the “innocent” Manfredi becomes the site where the sins
of the Italian subject— collaboration and passive complicity as a cause of
Fascism and the war—achieve their forgiveness through suffering.48 The re-
direction of desire allows the film to manage a multiplicity of spectator anx-
02-T0618 8/26/99 3:14 PM Page 46
iety. In negotiating the meaning of the text, Italian spectators could contain
their own superego anxiety through Symbolic identification with structures
that allowed the spectators to see themselves in morally acceptable terms.
Indeed, at the site of Marina and Laura’s characters the text defines col-
laboration as a form of psychological weakness and immaturity, thus trans-
forming a social phenomenon into morally acceptable individual struc-
tures.49 Millicent Marcus, for instance, argues that Marina’s collaboration is
a “personality weakness” rather than the result of broader social causes.50 By
defining collaboration as a personal and moral weakness, the film places it
within the framework of that which needs to be “forgiven.” It thus seeks to
absolve individual subjects of collaboration (and thus contain punishment
by the superego) and direct their identification toward the final site of Sym-
bolic identification: the structure of individual renunciation.
In addition to containing the anxiety and guilt of collaboration, the struc-
ture of penance in Rome: Open City functions to contain the anxiety and
guilt for Fascism and the war as a result of passive complicity.51 The site for
such an identification is in the characters of Pina and Francesco. In the scene
where Pina and Francesco reminisce about the early days of their romance,
Pina recalls:
How mean you were. You’d been living here for two months, and when you
passed on the stairs you never greeted me. That was two years ago. How long
that’s been . . . and how much has changed. Yet, the war was already begun.
Francesco responds:
Yes; everyone was deluded that it would end soon, and that we would see it only
in the cinema . . .
By describing themselves in this manner, Pina and Francesco characterize

themselves as part of the passive public who found themselves plunged into
the war.52 In comparison to Laura and Marina, they are neither collaborators
nor Fascist supporters. However, they are not constructed as prewar anti-
Fascists. The everyday nature of their prewar conditions aligns them more
with the general public, whose prewar positions with respect to Fascism
were largely passive.
Their identities—in relationship to culture— correspond to the identity
of the Italian general public, who neither actively supported nor opposed the
Fascist government. The active stance that Pina and Francesco take against
German occupation therefore functions as a displacement of desire: the de-
sire to have taken an earlier active stance against Fascism. This displacement
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Rome: Open City 47
functions to exonerate them for their complicity, while at the same time con-
structing them as innocent victims (like children, they were “deluded”) of
Fascism. By providing Symbolic identification within these terms, the film
“manages” the superego anxiety that its historical spectators bring to the
text.53 It “translates” the effects of the Fascist legacy in terms that allow the
film’s Italian spectators to “misrecognize” themselves in morally acceptable
terms.
In addition to collaboration and passive complicity, the film’s contain-
ment of anxiety in the negotiation of meaning extends to Fascism itself. The
film’s moral and ideological structure does not condemn the Italian Fascist
regime or the repressive role of national culture itself. Rather, as discussed
earlier, it displaces this onto the Germans, a process dramatically articulated
by Don Pietro at the death of Manfredi. The film’s refusal to condemn the
Fascists is most clearly constructed, however, in Don Pietro’s execution.
In this scene, the Fascist firing squad is disrupted in its task by the whis-
tling of the children’s Resistance group (who gather at a fence nearby). The
whistling draws the attention of both Don Pietro and the firing squad. As the
soldiers take aim, the film cuts to a medium-shot of three Italian soldiers
pointing their rifles low. This is followed by a long shot, showing the rest of
the soldiers aiming low. When the fire order is given, all the guns report, but
miss Don Pietro. The priest painfully recognizes that he has been spared,
while Hartmann, the German officer in charge of the firing squad, reorders
the soldiers to fire. When they fail to do so, he removes his own pistol from
its holster, walks up to Don Pietro, and discharges the weapon into the
priest’s head.54 The sequence makes clear that the soldiers not only inten-
tionally miss but also refuse to fire again. The Fascist firing squad is therefore
innocent of his death, with the guilt resting instead on the Germans. The film
thus allows its Fascist subjects to identify with an image of Fascism free from
guilt and condemnation, fulfilling their desire to see themselves in morally
acceptable terms.
By constructing a Fascist identity free from guilt and condemnation, and
an identity of collaboration as needing forgiveness, the film exonerates those
Italian subjects who, through either complacency or direct approval and par-
ticipation, made up the consensus of the Fascist state. The film thus “forgives
much” and in doing so offers a process of identification that frames the anx-
ieties of its spectators.
Textual operations are therefore organized around framing this superego
anxiety as a means of symbolizing the historical subject’s encounter with the
Real effects of Fascism—symbolizing it through the structure of Roman
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Figure 2 . The Resistance youth demonstrate their solidarity by gathering at the

fence and making their presence known through whistling collectively. The film ends
with the narrative being transferred to them. courtesy of the museum o f
modern art, film stills archive.
Catholicism’s penitential rite. The ideological function this operation per-

forms can be located within the final redirection of narrative desire. Signifi-
cantly, it is not the “crucified” Manfredi who achieves resurrection, but
rather Don Pietro, who lives on in the figure of the Resistance youth. Their
solidarity with the priest is demonstrated at his execution, where the boys
amass to bear witness and to indicate their alliance with the priest through
their whistling. Their actions indicate their will to take up Don Pietro’s ideals
after he is gone.
Even prior to this demonstration of solidarity, however, the text defines
the Resistance youth through the model of Don Pietro—that is, through the
structure of individual renunciation. For example, they renounce their own
childhood and the pleasures of childhood to take up armed struggle. The
film clearly separates Marcello and Romoletto—the leaders of the Resis-
tance youth—from the other boys in the film who play at soccer in the
church courtyard. Furthermore, as children, the Resistance youth also bear
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Rome: Open City 49
the signifier of celibacy—through culture’s prohibition on childhood sexual

activity.
By directing spectatorial identification toward the Resistance youth, the
film’s ending provides for a Symbolic identification with the kind of spiritual
rebirth that is the legacy of resurrection. Thus, in the final shot of the film,
the boys of the Resistance youth who have demonstrated their solidarity
with Don Pietro return toward the city in a long shot. The camera pans
with them, revealing Rome, with the dome of St. Peter’s in the background.
Trailing slightly behind the group are Marcello and an older boy, who com-
forts Marcello by putting his arm around him. Their solidarity with the
priest and movement toward the church of St. Peter suggest their “apos-
tolic” mission of taking up the ideals of the priest: the ideals of renunciation
and duty.
The vision of a new society the boys represent—structured around in-
dividual duty and renunciation— defines itself through the logic of the in-
dividual. The utopian impulse engendered in the character of Don Pietro—
a utopia based on individual renunciation—becomes the means by which
the Italian subjects can symbolize their encounter with the Fascist legacy.
Through Symbolic identification with Don Pietro, the text contains the sub-
versive threat of a utopian impulse by defining it through the logic of the
individual. The framework of the text reestablishes the necessity of culture
as a repressive mechanism for individual desire—the site of organization
for individual renunciation. The text thus reworks what is otherwise a sub-
versive utopian impulse into a structure consistent with the patriarchal-
capitalist culture of postwar Italy.
The threat of a subversive utopian impulse which aims to dissolve
patriarchal-capitalist culture constitutes more than a political threat: it also
constitutes a psychical threat at the level of the individual by threatening to
sever the relationship between identifications and language at the site of the
Other(A). This separation is inscribed in the text in Marcello’s separation
from the maternal bond. Marcello’s hysterical grief finds its source in the
structure of internal splitting—the forced decathexis from the object of de-
sire. Marcello’s character thus functions as the site for the historical Italian
subject, who faces the threat of decathexis should a subversive utopian im-
pulse dissolve the structure of patriarchal-capitalist Law and force a separa-
tion from the Law as it has been introjected into identity at the site of the
Other(A). The “necessity” of a Rome: Open City therefore lies in its ability to
contain— or frame—this anxiety by redirecting the subversive threat to the
02-T0618 8/26/99 3:14 PM Page 50
Other(A) into the structure of individual renunciation, the very structure of

the Other(A) itself under patriarchal-capitalist culture.
This attempt to recontain a subversive utopian threat makes clear the
ideological function of the film’s exoneration of both collaborators and Fas-
cists. The film manages the threat of superego anxiety resulting from collab-
oration and Fascist participation in order to direct identification toward
the spiritual rebirth of the film’s ending—a rebirth determined through the
structure of individual renunciation. The film thus seeks to organize the
identities of Fascism and collaboration away from history and toward an
identification with a society structured through individual renunciation and
subjugation. Indeed, Sitney recounts the numerous deviations from history
the film commits in order to refrain from indicting Fascism.55 The ideologi-
cal function of such operations is to contain the subversive utopian impulse
of the Resistance by reorganizing repressive patriarchal-capitalist culture
and retranslating it symbolically. The spiritual rebirth that will establish an
“Open City” occurs only through the death of individuals—Pina, Manfredi,
and Don Pietro. It thus reestablishes the primacy of the demands of culture
over individuals, and their necessary subjugation to ensure that order.
In this respect, the signifying practice of the film corresponds to the po-
litical praxis of the Christian Democratic Party, which sought to contain
the effects of the Fascist past in order to reorganize patriarchal culture and
gain ascendancy over the Communist Party, by co-opting the hegemony of
the former Fascist consensus. The principal means of accomplishing this, as
many historians have noted, was by obstructing a Fascist purge. Thus,
Giuseppe Mammarella argues:
The DC and Liberals were strongly opposed to . . . [extensive Fascist purges] . . .

since a purge to this extent would hit mainly the social classes from which they
expected to draw their electoral support. To give a free hand to the extreme left . . .
[would] for both the DC and Liberal Party . . . undermine their own political
power and future possibilities of taking over the government. Both the DC and
the Liberals needed the help of the former governing class. But the political fu-
ture of the Left in the government depended upon the substitution of the former
governing class.56
In their unwillingness to confront the Fascist past, both the film and the po-
litical praxis of the Christian Democrats reveal the ideological necessity of
“retranslating” patriarchal-capitalist culture to reestablish its consensus and,
thus, contain the subversive utopian threat which the Resistance had evolved
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Rome: Open City 51
into. Thus, far beyond embodying a style that announced a “new” realism in
the cinema, Rome: Open City dramatically demonstrated the power of nar-
rative trajectory to negotiate and contain the ideological threats destabiliz-
ing a culture in crisis and the enormous role the operation of identification
can exercise in that process.
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3
Bicycle Thieves
Identification, Focalization,
and Restoration
Disappearance of the actor, disappearance of mise en scène? Unquestionably,

but because the very principle of Ladri di Biciclette is the disappearance of a
story.
André Bazin 1
The previous analysis of Rome: Open City demonstrates that as a theoretical

framework Lacanian psychoanalysis can contribute several dimensions to
ideological analysis. In joining the radical contributions of psychoanalysis
and linguistics, Lacan’s work stresses that meaning is inextricably within the
signified (linguistics) and, furthermore, is overdetermined by the uncon-
scious (psychoanalysis). This chapter analyzes Bicycle Thieves to demonstrate
the necessity of a concept of Symbolic identification as precisely that site
where the mediation between the social and the individual occurs through
the structure of identity. Beginning with an analysis similar to that in the
previous chapter, this discussion links the results of analyzing disruptions in
discourse with an analysis of Symbolic identification and the textual pro-
cesses mobilized to secure it—again integrating established narratological
frameworks into a Lacanian method.
For André Bazin, and for many historians, Bicycle Thieves represents a
break with earlier Neorealism in that postwar society, rather than the war,
is the object of the film’s narrative. In the eyes of contemporary critics like
Bazin, then, the “New Realism” of the Italian cinema lived on because it was
able to “reaffirm anew the entire aesthetic of neorealism.” 2 At least part of
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this aesthetic for Bazin was the “lack of story,” a critical judgment that is
fraught with difficulties.3 What an analysis of the relationship between ex-
position and actional dynamics demonstrates, however, is that the lack of
story Bazin alludes to is not an absence of narrative structure, but, rather, an
undermining of narrative effect. Furthermore, this undermining results in
an inscription of the structure of anxiety within the signifying process of this
specific text, thus creating for the historical spectator a proximity between
the anxiety of postwar culture and the text.
The reduction of narrative effect in Bicycle Thieves is achieved by sev-
eral means. David Bordwell, for example, notes that “in the name of veri-
similitude, the tight causality of classical Hollywood construction is replaced
by a more tenuous linking of events.” 4 Certainly the deemphasis on causal-
ity is notably present in Bicycle Thieves, as many other scholars have also
noted. Investigating the relationship between the film’s exposition and its
actional dynamics, however, reveals another significant textual operation
which functions to reduce narrative effect: temporary subordination of nar-
rative progression to exposition of social conditions. Indeed, the temporary
although frequent subordination of narrative progression to social expo-
sition becomes the preeminent stylistic norm in Bicycle Thieves, function-
ing to articulate what Frank Tomasulo describes as an “individual /collective
antinomy.” 5
The effect of this narrative subordination, as this analysis demonstrates,
is to produce disruptions in the film as discourse— disruptions that narra-
tion must work to mask over. Furthermore, the disruption of social exposi-
tion into narrative progression inscribes the structure of anxiety, tempo-
rarily displacing Imaginary identification with the movement of desire onto
Symbolic identification with the film’s discourse on social conditions. This
structure is inscribed within the plot by suspending attention from charac-
ters advancing the narrative in order to focus instead on social conditions:
mass unemployment, the competition for jobs, the desperation of the un-
employed, and the sterile bureaucratic treatment of the situation by the gov-
ernment. These suspensions function as a retardatory device, disrupting the
continuousness of narrative drive.6 Other elements within the narration—
point of view, long-take, sound bridges, and music— operate through con-
tinuity to contain the severity of disrupting narrative drive and thus prevent
radical breaks.
This structure is evidenced when Antonio retrieves his bicycle from the
pawnshop. While one employee unenthusiastically searches for the bicycle
amidst the rows within the shop, another employee walks across the frame
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Bicycle Thieves 55
carrying the sheets Antonio and his wife pawned. As the character walks out
of frame, the film briefly returns to the medium shot of Antonio looking
through the opening at the counter. It then cuts back to the character walk-
ing with the sheets, suspending attention to the activity of obtaining the bi-
cycle. Framed exclusively within the shot, the employee with the bundle ap-
proaches a massive set of shelves where pawned sheets are stored. He slowly
but deftly climbs the shelves, as Antonio looks on.
The suspension of narrative drive, the gap in its continuity, is contained
through the structure of point of view. The editing defines the sequence
through Antonio’s point of view: as his passing interest. Subordination of
narrative drive to expositional function (describing social conditions—
widespread poverty due to a collapsed postwar economy) is concealed by
inscribing the exposition within the actions (the gaze) of the most obvious
agent of narrative drive (Antonio).
As the film progresses, however, it ceases to contain breaks in the con-
tinuity of narrative drive through the structure of point of view, shifting
instead to more self-conscious, external narration. This occurs during An-
tonio’s first day on the job. While at his first job-site, Antonio receives in-
structions from a co-worker on the procedures for pasting up movie posters.
In the foreground are two young boys, one of whom plays the accordion.
The co-worker, annoyed with the music, eventually reaches out and kicks
the accordion player in the rump. Without missing a beat, the boy lets out a
yelp and moves away. As he does so, a well-dressed man walks into frame
with his back to the camera. As he crosses the frame, he is followed by the
other youth, who begs him for money; the camera pans with their move-
ment. This camera movement leaves Antonio and his co-worker off-screen,
abandoning them for the exposition on social conditions articulated in the
interaction between the youths and the well-dressed gentleman. Although
the voice of the co-worker can be heard off-screen continuing with his in-
struction, the camera has clearly subordinated their activities to the investi-
gation of widespread economic needs.
The disruptive quality in this expositional shift is marked by a distinct
lack of containment of affects within the sequence. The kick that the young
accordion player receives has the effect of disruption since there is little cue-
ing to expect such action. It therefore surfaces as an outburst which inaugu-
rates the movement away from Antonio and his co-worker. This outburst is
marked diegetically first by the boy who receives the kick (he yelps) and then
by the accordion (which changes pitch at impact). Furthermore, the move-
ment away from Antonio and his activities fails to inscribe any point of view
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to regulate, and thereby contain, the effect of abandoning narrative progres-

sion for social exposition.
The relative lack of narrative motivation in this sequence indicates the
function of the film’s breaks in the continuity of narrative drive: the loss of
narrative. The film frequently structures the alternation between exposition
and actional dynamics as a break in the continuity of narrative drive that
subordinates narrative progression to social exposition—a break that the
narration works to recontain, making the film disruptive, but preventing it
from constituting a radical assault on the structure of classical style. Narra-
tive progression thus becomes a presence made of absence: relegated to and
suspended in off-screen space through overt narration (camera pans, track-
ing, or cutting) while the plot temporarily moves its attention to commen-
tary on postwar conditions in Italy.
This alternation between narrative progression and its subordination
to exposition on social conditions functions to inscribe the structure of anx-
iety. Each subordination of narrative drive to social exposition in Bicycle
Thieves can be characterized by a temporal dimension, object loss, the dis-
placement of danger, and, finally, the redirection of desire.7 Furthermore,
inscribing the structure of anxiety and its redirection of Imaginary desire al-
lows the spectator to empathize with the main character and judge the social
conditions which prevent his individual fulfillment, rather than identify
with the anxiety of his alienation and lack of control.
Thus, in the first such subordination, occurring in the pawnshop, the
movement toward obtaining the bike is temporarily suspended for the ex-
position of storing the pawned sheets. Temporally, the alternation functions
to retard the forward movement: delaying procurement of the bike by shift-
ing attention elsewhere. This temporal function is underscored by the off-
screen space the camera leaves behind. The plot has already established the
magnitude of social conditions by the number of bikes and the pawnshop
worker’s difficulty in singling out Antonio’s bike from all the others. Focus-
ing in on the worker’s search for Antonio’s bike would have yielded the same
kind of social exposition: nearly everyone is pawning possessions to survive.
Instead, the narration leaves the space of the bicycles in order to accomplish
a temporal delay, opening up an entirely new narrative space in the process.
In addition to its temporal function, this subordination inscribes the
structure of object loss. The plot itself, clearly, is constructed around object
loss: the desire which moves the narrative forward is the desire to repossess
the lost object. Indeed, a conventional psychoanalytic thematic analysis
would identify the bicycle as the phallus and the manner in which the nar-
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Bicycle Thieves 57
rative is constructed around lack. More than constructing itself around ob-
ject loss, however, the very structure of the plot inscribes object loss. The
subordination of narrative progression to exposition of social conditions—
marked by overt narrational cues—signals the plot’s suspension of the nar-
rative. The presence of narrative is marked through its absence, as that which
is suspended and returned to—taken up again after its temporary loss. In
this manner the narrative itself becomes constituted as object—as that
which functions as the trajectory of and for desire. Its subordination to so-
cial exposition threatens its forward movement, manifesting the potential of
the narrative being subsumed into the overwhelming social conditions that
are the object of the exposition (the threat is then realized in the film’s end-
ing). The consistent replacement of narrative with the exposition of social
conditions allows the film to more readily establish narrative as object and
inscribe the threat of object loss within the structure of the plot.
Furthermore, the plot’s structuring of object loss functions as a displace-
ment of danger. Freud’s argument that anxiety about object loss displaces
the psychical danger of an economic situation onto the loss of the desired
object itself clarifies this function.8 The object loss centered around narra-
tive displaces the psychical danger of an economic situation. Spectator iden-
tification with Antonio and his family constitutes identification with psy-
chical helplessness through unmet need (the poverty and helplessness that
Antonio and his family face). The loss of narrative displaces identification
with psychical helplessness onto the anxiety of object loss: the temporary
loss of narrative as a trajectory of desire and as desired object. It is precisely
this displacement which inhibits identification with Antonio, allowing Mira
Liehm to argue that “the filmmakers . . . engender . . . in the audience a feel-
ing of great empathy, which replaces the usual identification with the char-
acters.” 9 For the spectator, the movement away from individual actions to
social conditions is the movement away from Imaginary identification with
unpleasure and toward Symbolic identification with judgments on social
conditions. The anxiety that results from the loss of the object for Imaginary
identification displaces the anxiety that would occur through identifying
with Antonio and the unpleasure of his helplessness.
Such a displacement is clearly articulated in the scene at the police sta-
tion. As soon as Antonio indicates that there were no witnesses, making the
situation hopeless for the police to help, the narrative abandons him. The po-
lice officer to whom Antonio is speaking is called from out of frame. The
officer rises and walks to a door. The film cuts to a medium shot of the door
(in a match on action) and tracks with the officer as he approaches a win-
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dow. Antonio, meanwhile, has been abandoned as the officer converses with
a colleague about changes in job assignments to quell a riot. The plot thus
shifts its attention away from Antonio and onto the role of the police within
the story world. Marcus notes that this digression demonstrates that “the law
is less interested in protecting the property rights of the citizens than in sup-
pressing their civil liberties.” 10 By separating the actional dynamics so dis-
tinctly from the exposition, however, the plot encourages the spectator to
make judgments and construct conclusions about social conditions at the
expense of identifying with the main character. In this separation, Imagi-
nary identification is suspended, with the object (Antonio) relegated to off-
screen space as soon as it becomes apparent that his situation is helpless.
The exposition of social conditions therefore does not fulfill the tradi-
tional function of exposition. Rather than stabilize and “translate” Antonio’s
actions, exposition functions to displace them. The lack of analysis given to
social conditions, their construction as antinomy to character identification,
demonstrates the displacing function they exercise. Frank Tomasulo there-
fore argues: “Bicycle Thieves . . . seem[s] unable to deal with the real forces at
work within the society, so [it] displaces them and attempt[s] to close the
discourse around these displacements.” 11 David Overby concurs when he
notes:
Although social problems form the basis of content in many neo-realist films, few
are dealt with in any depth . . . for example, De Sica’s Ladri di biciclette has the
problem of unemployment in the city as its pivot . . . yet, instead of treating the
“total reality” of the problem the film degenerates into a sentimental, albeit often
effective, tale of grace lost and restored . . .12
Overby’s argument thus emphasizes the separation between social condi-

tions, which are not investigated in any depth, and the narrative or “tale” of
Antonio and his lost and restored grace.
The function that this displacement exercises inscribes the structure
of anxiety in its redirection of desire. The plot’s retardation of narrative
suspends and suppresses Imaginary identification, displacing it through
Symbolic identification with the film’s discourse on social conditions. This
redirects Imaginary desire toward Symbolic differentiation, allowing the
spectator to empathize with Antonio and condemn the social conditions
which antagonize him, rather than identify with his anxiety.
The disruptions caused by the separation between exposition and action
thus undermine the usual narrative containment achieved through identi-
fication and Imaginary desire. Disruptions continue throughout the film,
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Bicycle Thieves 59
functioning to threaten the narrative by undermining its containment of ef-

fects. This lack of narrative containment can be seen in the film’s use of fram-
ing and off-screen space. The frame does not function as a boundary within
the film: the diegetic world is never contained within its limits. Rather, the
narrative world consistently erupts from off-screen space into the frame, de-
stabilizing the space of action. Thus, while Antonio and his friends pressure
a vendor in the market to see the serial number of a bicycle, the wife of the
vendor suddenly emerges from off-screen space, forcefully chastising the in-
quiry in an attempt to prevent it. Her sudden appearance, much like Laura’s
in Rome: Open City, functions to complicate rather than clarify narrative
action.
Likewise, in his search for one of the thief ’s contacts, Bruno peers into the
confessional in a church the old man has taken refuge in. As Bruno peers in,
a priest appears abruptly from the confessional and slaps Bruno’s head, pun-
ishing him for the invasion. When Antonio continues the search for the old
man outside of the church, he is interrupted by a disruption off-screen:
people shouting for help because a boy is drowning in the river. Fearing that
the boy could be Bruno, Antonio suspends the search and rushes toward the
bridge where he left him. This interruption from off-screen functions to
complicate the plot. It suspends the search for the bicycle and introduces
Antonio’s tension and concern over Bruno. Off-screen space thus continu-
ally undermines narrative effect, threatening to subsume narrative progres-
sion by its intrusion into and suspension of Antonio’s actions.
The final instance of such intrusions occurs in Antonio’s unsuccessful at-
tempt to steal a bicycle. Almost immediately after Antonio takes a bike, the
owner appears from out of frame, chasing the stolen object and calling out
for help. In response to the owner’s cries, men come from out of frame to as-
sist in the chase, catching Antonio and thwarting his attempt to take control
of his situation.
The effect of the frequent loss of narrative containment, combined with
Antonio’s inability to control narrative events, is a consistent threat that
narrative will be subsumed by the overwhelming conditions within the
diegesis—indistinguishable from the masses. Indeed, both Marcus and
Bondanella observe that narrative movement is inscribed within Antonio’s
attempt to distinguish himself from the crowd.13 His attempt to distinguish
himself from the crowd, however, is precisely the attempt to order, control,
and thus contain the story world: achieving, as it were, a narrative. Tempo-
rarily achieving this control inaugurates narrative and allows Antonio to be
distinguished from the social exposition—the space of the crowd.
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Indeed, narrative itself, under the structural limitations imposed on it by

patriarchal capitalism, could not be achieved otherwise: including the indi-
vidual desires of each member of the crowd and the personal effects of social
conditions on all of them, in addition to Antonio, would produce precisely
the plurality of affects that narrative containment seeks to organize and con-
trol. Thus, when Antonio’s desires and actions do move the plot forward,
the narrative achieves containment. When intrusions from off-screen space
suspend and obstruct his actions, however, both his ability to control events
and narrative containment itself become destabilized. Off-screen space is
therefore constructed as a threat to narrative containment: it is the space of
overwhelming social conditions, of the undifferentiated crowd. Its intrusion
into and obstruction of Antonio’s actions thus function as a threat: as that
which will subsume Antonio into its affects, removing any distinction be-
tween itself and Antonio.
The film ends in just such a manner—with Antonio and Bruno sub-
sumed into the crowd: Antonio no longer possesses any ability to control
and order narrative events. The specific desire for the bicycle functions to
order narrative events and distinguishes Antonio as main character—sepa-
rating him from the crowd and from the exposition. With the renunciation
of the desire for the object comes lack of order: Antonio subsumed into the
crowd, the basis of differentiation eliminated. The end of the film is thus
constituted by the term limit of narrative containment.
Undermining of narrative effect through specific plot alternations is not
the only method the film uses to displace Imaginary identification, as an
analysis of the relations to authority demonstrates. Although the text estab-
lishes the basis for Imaginary identification by inscribing the actional dy-
namics of the plot within the identity of Antonio, the text’s focalization—its
ideological orientation— often judges him negatively. This prevents conti-
nuity between Imaginary identification with the main character and Sym-
bolic identification with the authoritative norms that the text constructs—
norms which reject aspects of the main character.
The manner in which the text constructs a normative system—the val-
ues and ideological premises it establishes to evaluate the narrative world—
is a critical site (if not the primary site) for delineating the operations of
Symbolic identification. This chapter illustrates the manner in which textual
signification works to procure the spectator’s Symbolic identification with a
specific set of abstract norms, values, and commands that authorize and vali-
date specific trajectories of desire. Lacan’s work, focusing as it does on the
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Bicycle Thieves 61
effects of signification on subject formation, is oriented toward such an

analysis, but offers no specific model for textual operations. Integrating La-
can’s theory with the work of narratologists Gérard Genette and Shlomith
Rimmon-Kennan provides a model for analyzing specific textual operations
as a means of obtaining the spectator’s Symbolic identification.
Rimmon-Kennan’s elaboration of Genette’s distinction between narra-
tion and focalization makes clear that the articulation of the text occurs un-
der the rubric of an ideological orientation when she argues: “The story is
presented in the text through the mediation of some ‘prism,’ ‘perspective,’
‘angle of vision’ verbalized by the narrator, though not necessarily his.” 14
Since the mediation verbalized by the narrator is not necessarily his/her
own, Rimmon-Kennan concludes that “speaking and seeing, narration and
focalization, may, but need not be, attributed to the same agent.” 15 The sig-
nificance of the distinction between narration as “speaking” and focalization
as “seeing” is that film analysis of the story’s mediation through its textual
construction does not need to engage the questionable status of a narrator in
the film text.16 It is this sense of mediation as a textual construct that Mieke
Bal illustrates when she argues:
Whenever events are presented, they are always presented from within a certain
vision . . . Perception depends on so many factors that striving for objectivity is
pointless. To mention only a few factors: one’s position with respect to the per-
ceived object, the fall of the light, the distance, previous knowledge, psychologi-
cal attitude towards the object; all this and more affects the picture one forms and
passes on to others. In a story, elements of the fabula are presented in a certain
way. We are confronted with a vision of the fabula. What is this vision and where
does it come from? 17
The understanding that narrative information is thus presented in “a certain

way” is shared by Branigan, who defines narrative as “a series of episodes col-
lected as a focused causal chain.” 18 The value of Rimmon-Kennan’s approach
to focalization for the study of cinematic narration is her independence from
the construct of character for discussing the story’s mediation.
This distinction is particularly important to a film like Bicycle Thieves
which alternates between validating the main character at certain points
within the text and evaluating him negatively at others. A concept of fo-
calization locates this mediation of the story internal or external to the die-
gesis (as with Bicycle Thieves), as a textual construct, allowing an analysis
that delineates the perceptual, psychological, and ideological facets operat-
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ing within this process. What is particularly relevant to a Lacanian analysis

is the ideological facet of focalization, what Rimmon-Kennan describes as
the “norms” of the text, the “general system of viewing the [narrative] world
conceptually.” 19 It is at this site that the organization of signification and its
articulation function to validate (or disallow) trajectories of desire through
the operation of Symbolic identification.
This process can be determined in Bicycle Thieves by the plot’s alternat-
ing validation of the desire to find the bicycle. P. Adams Sitney reviews sev-
eral of the criticisms that surround the narrative premise of searching for
a stolen bicycle in Rome, pointing out that all the efforts that are mobilized
become more than it would take to arrange for the loan of a bicycle to An-
tonio.20 Certainly, the film must work at the credibility of the search, which
its pointed criticism of the church, unions, and the PCI (Communist Party)
for not helping Antonio attempts to accomplish. What is not so evident,
however, is that the film’s work at validating an impossible search is some-
times withdrawn. Furthermore, as the ensuing analysis demonstrates, there
is much more at stake in this process of validation than the traditional con-
cept of “willing suspension of disbelief ” can address. Rather, as a discussion
of focalization through a Lacanian framework indicates, the validation of
trajectories of desire is intricately involved in the film’s ideological focaliza-
tion that it is simultaneously involved in constructing and articulating.
This construction and articulation of a mediating framework within the
text is a significant site for coordinating this particular narratological ap-
proach with Lacanian psychoanalysis. Indeed, as Rimmon-Kennan indi-
cates, the ideological facet of focalization engenders not only an evaluative
process within the text, but the site of authority, asserting that “the ideology
of the narrator-focalizer [or in film the external and implied focalizer] is
usually taken as authoritative, and all other ideologies in the text are evalu-
ated from this ‘higher’ position.” 21
Rimmon-Kennan’s discussion of classical narration indicates that textual
focalization is that process of signification which constructs, establishes, and
articulates the relations of authority within the text. Further, she demon-
strates that the process of narration stems from a specific source that autho-
rizes the textual information imparted to the reader (or in film the specta-
tor). These “relations” of authority can be clearly seen within Bicycle Thieves,
at that point in the film when Antonio prepares for his first day of work. Up
to this point in the text, the narrative has been constructed around Antonio,
authorizing his quest to provide for his family. As he playfully tussles with his
wife, Maria, however, Antonio becomes too rough, to the point where she
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Fig ur e 3. Antonio’s search for help interrupts a party meeting in the union hall. The
film makes pointed criticisms of the unwillingness of collective organizations to help
individuals in need. courtesy of the museum o f modern art , film s tills
archive.
has to call out that he is hurting her. The moment can no longer be con-
tained through the signifier of “playful affection,” and the text has ambigu-
ously withdrawn its validation of Antonio, however briefly.
This temporary withdrawal of validation from Antonio marks off the ex-
ternal position of a mediating factor that attempts to persuade the audience
to see or—more accurately— evaluate the narrative world from the same
perspective. What a Lacanian framework contributes to the analysis of such
a process is an understanding of the logic that organizes the discourses and
codes which comprise the authoritative norms of the text. The complex
array of textual processes, which together construct the story’s mediation,
is organized through the logic of identity—however external to the diege-
tic world the mediation may be. As a result, Rimmon-Kennan argues that
“even . . . an unpersonified stance tends to be endowed by readers with the
qualities of character.” 22 Her discussion indicates that, through a process of
projection or otherwise, readers (subjects) interpret these textual operations
through the logic of identity.
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To begin with, Rimmon-Kennan argues that “focalization has both a

subject and an object. The subject (the focalizer) is the agent whose percep-
tion orients the presentation, whereas the object (the focalized) is what
the focalizer perceives.” 23 Her argument that the story’s mediation—its
focalization—has a subject, an agent whose perception orients the presen-
tation, demonstrates the degree to which the process is organized around the
logic and structure of identity. Furthermore, as an analysis of Bicycle Thieves
demonstrates, it establishes the basis to distinguish between the norms and
values attributed to main character and the story’s mediation. A concept of
focalization allows narrative analysis to establish the degree to which main
character (the norms and values attributed there) is the object which is be-
ing judged by the evaluative system of the text rather than orienting that sys-
tem. Thus, although main character may orient narrative action and trajec-
tory, a concept of focalization demonstrates that main character does not
necessarily orient the evaluative system of the text.
This would accurately characterize the relationship between Antonio and
the evaluative system of Bicycle Thieves, where at several points in the nar-
rative the text’s focalization—its ideological orientation—judges Antonio
negatively. The first such site in the text occurs when Antonio tells Maria of
his inability to take a job. Maria’s struggle to get information out of an un-
communicative Antonio and to keep up with him as she carries the water for
the family contributes to articulating his insensitivity. As if to emphasize
that this insensitivity is not due to his employment anxieties alone, the film
rearticulates this trait after Antonio obtains the job, as discussed previously:
Antonio hurts Maria when he playfully wrestles with her.
Antonio’s self-absorption and insensitivity are even further articulated in
his relationship with Bruno. In her discussion of the film, Millicent Marcus
outlines several sites where Antonio displays an insensitivity to Bruno. Thus,
she notes:
He often walks well ahead of Bruno . . . that at times endangers his son’s very well
being . . . [He] fails to notice that Bruno has fallen in the rain, and . . . Bruno is
twice nearly run over in the traffic of Rome as Antonio heedlessly forges ahead.24
In addition to the incidents Marcus notes, Antonio also demonstrates his in-
sensitivity when, as a result of his own frustration, he leaves Bruno behind
with a hostile crowd, letting go of the boy’s hand as he walks away.
These negative traits assigned to Antonio’s character create two distinct
perspectives within the text: Antonio’s own perspective, which consistently
fails to register his insensitivity, and the normative system external to his
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Bicycle Thieves 65
character, which evaluates his insensitivity negatively. What becomes crucial

for analysis, then, is to delineate the process by which the spectator comes to
identify with any of these positions, and what is at stake when such a Sym-
bolic identification is separate from main character. This process can be
demonstrated by recontextualizing focalization through a Lacanian frame-
work: delineating a correspondence between the process of focalization and
the structure and logic of the je.
Indeed, the specific logic of the je identity can be determined within the
formal characteristics of focalization. As Rimmon-Kennan argues, the iden-
tity of the focalizer can be implied or incomplete. In this respect, it can be
without the representation of a corporal unity, leading Rimmon-Kennan to
conclude that “focalization is sometimes no more than a textual stance.” 25
The complexity and problematic nature of this identity, while contradicting
traditional conceptions of a corporal identity, nonetheless correspond to the
formation and structure of the je.
As the subject of language and meaning, the je mistakenly presents itself
as an autonomous unity, denying its collective origins (secondary introjec-
tions of cultural norms and values). This allows the je to take itself as an
identity, rather than the social construct it is. Lacan argues:
If the subject is what I say it is, namely the subject determined by language and
speech, it follows that the subject, in initio, begins in the locus of the Other, in so
far as it is there that the first signifier emerges.26
Lacan thus tries to establish that the identity of the je occurs through an
introjection of cultural signifiers. The formation and structure of the je is
characterized by its collective nature and its signifying function in relation
to desire. Lacking autonomy and control, however, the je is also charac-
terized by mendacity. Mistaking itself for an identity rather than a con-
structed cultural signifier, the je thinks itself a unity rather than a collection
of discourses.
Thus, functioning to organize cultural discourse in relation to the moi’s
fusionary drive, the identity formed by the je regulates and displaces desire.
As Lacan argues, the je shapes “all those inflections which, in the life of the
adult, the imaginary commitment, the original captation, can take on.” 27 It
is therefore possible to see the inscription of the logic and structure of the
je in the formal characteristics of focalization. As an organized collection of
discourses, focalization can be either within or without a corporal unity. In
addition, it forms an identity (the focalizer) through a dependence on cul-
tural signifiers. Furthermore, by mediating the story, focalization inscribes
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the functioning of the je in its process: translating, shaping, and giving form
to the actions and desires of the narrative.
This structural process of the text intersects the subject at the site of
the je: where the spectator either accepts or rejects the ideology of the text
through Symbolic identification. Establishing the functioning of the je
through Symbolic identification requires a reconceptualization of identi-
fication as a function of a split and dialectical process, rather than the unified
and deterministic structure conceptualized by early psychoanalytic film the-
ory (as discussed earlier with respect to Baudry and Metz, who eclipse the
role of Symbolic identification by locating textual identification solely within
“the unconscious” or the Imaginary).28
Although identificatory fusion is characteristic of the moi, the process
of identification is formative of both the moi and the je. In describing his
“Schema R,” Lacan distinguishes between identificatory processes as the
movement away from the narcissistic and specular logic “in which the ego
[moi] identifies itself . . . [and toward] the paternal identification of the
ego-ideal.” 29 This movement represents the difference between Imaginary
identification with the object world and identification with the abstract
world of the Law and the signifier that structures Symbolic identification and
the formation of the je. In Symbolic identification, therefore, the subject
identifies with what Lacan refers to as “a certain organization of affirmations
and negations, to which the subject is attached.” 30
In its overprivileging of the Imaginary traditional psychoanalytic film
theory has bypassed that “certain organization,” collapsing the abstract po-
sition of the subject into the physical, “the all seeing subject” of the Imagi-
nary. Lacan, however, maintains a distinction between the physical act of vi-
sion and the Symbolic positions that subjects come to take up through
identification, asking, “must we not distinguish between the function of the
eye and that of the gaze?” 31 In making this distinction, he argues: “In our re-
lation to things, in so far as this relation is constituted by the way of vision,
and ordered in the figures of representation, something slips, passes, is
transmitted from stage to stage, and is always to some degree eluded in it—
that is what we call the gaze.” 32 For Lacan, what is eluded in the relations to
things constituted by vision is the abstract position or place—the dialectic
of desire and lack—that orders perception. In this respect, Lacan argues:
If one does not stress the dialectic of desire one does not understand why the gaze
of others should disorganize the field of perception. It is because the subject in
question is not that of reflexive consciousness, but that of desire. One thinks it
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Bicycle Thieves 67
is a question of the geometral eye-point, whereas it is a question of a quite differ-

ent eye . . .33
In distinguishing the “different eye” of the gaze, Lacan reinvests the Sym-
bolic as a fundamental aspect of identification. The disorganizing power of
the gaze of the other stems from the constitutive role that the Other(A) ex-
ercises in the formation of the subject and the consciousness which registers
perception. Thus it is that Lacan argues, “Psychoanalysis regards conscious-
ness as irremediably limited, and institutes it as a principle, not only of ide-
alization, but of misrecognition.” 34
What becomes significant for a psychoanalytic reading of ideology is not
so much the look of the camera—its all-seeing position—but the gaze that
it inscribes—the Symbolic place from which the objects are evaluated. The
scene of morning preparation for the first day of work in Bicycle Thieves can
illustrate this distinction. In this scene, Antonio readies himself in the bed-
room while Bruno assists by working on his father’s bicycle. As Bruno pre-
pares to leave for work with his father, he pauses briefly before exiting the
room and glances at something out of frame. The film cuts to a medium
close-up of a baby lying on a bed, wedged between pillows. It then returns to
Bruno, who changes his direction: delaying his exit and going instead to the
window to close the shutters.
Prior to Bruno’s glance in the direction of the baby, the film makes an ef-
fort to ignore the presence of his younger sibling within the room. The es-
tablishing shot of the sequence relegates the baby to the lower left hand cor-
ner of the frame, its presence unacknowledged by either Bruno or his father.
When Bruno first opens the shutters of the window, he walks in the direc-
tion of the baby. The camera, panning with him, brings the baby closer to the
middle of the frame and thus closer to the center of interest within the frame.
Before this can be fully achieved, however, the film resorts to a cheat cut,
which reframes the baby off-screen while appearing to continue the pan
with Bruno as he opens the shutters of the window.
The plot therefore manipulates several elements to establish, but ignore,
the presence of Bruno’s infant sibling. In establishing this cognitive neglect
of the infant, the plot—through its focalization— creates a Symbolic posi-
tion for the spectator whereby the neglect is not evaluated negatively. Rather,
through Symbolic identification with the “gaze”—the Symbolic position
from which the spectator views the events—the infant’s place as over-
looked-then-attended is evaluated positively. Furthermore, analyzing the
position of this gaze demonstrates the manner in which the Symbolic posi-
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tion can be independent of the physical position of camera presentation. As

Marcus notes, the scene opens with Bruno polishing the bike from Antonio’s
point-of-view shot.35 A failure to distinguish between Symbolic and physi-
cal could readily be maintained here. Borrowing from the physical point of
view, the scene could be defined as Antonio’s perspective. The subsequent
omission of the infant from the plot would thus reflect Antonio’s psycho-
logical state: his preoccupation with the first day of work. In this respect,
Bruno plays so predominately in the scene because he is part of the prepara-
tions Antonio must attend to before he starts the job (i.e., Bruno must be
dropped off at the gas station before Antonio can go to work). Thus, Bruno’s
preparations are important to him. The infant does not figure in Antonio’s
preparations and is overlooked.
The end of the scene, however, abandons Antonio to concentrate on
Bruno. At the end of the scene it is Bruno who stops, changes direction, and
closes the shutters of the window out of consideration for the infant. With
Antonio gone, the presence of the infant, and its needs, is made known
through Bruno’s actions. The Symbolic position that has been constructed,
the gaze that the spectator identifies with, is therefore that of Bruno, who,
despite his chastising of his father for not complaining to the pawnshop, is
identifying with Antonio. The gaze which looks past the infant with such
ease thus reflects Bruno’s psychological position, his identification with his
father. Antonio’s departure from the room provides the means by which
Bruno’s gaze (which as Lacan argues is a desire on the part of the other) can
be redefined and thus allow for a reconsideration of the infant.36
Another indication that the scene is constructed around Bruno’s gaze
is the preceding scene (discussed earlier) of Antonio’s excessive shaking of
Maria. The excess of the playfulness is demonstrated not only through the
physical action, but also in Maria’s protest, when she tells Antonio that he is
hurting her. The spectacle of the violent excess is not contained through
Antonio’s gaze as just playfulness. Rather, the excess remains ambivalent,
unsymbolized as either pure violence or pure playfulness. This Symbolic po-
sition with respect to the action is that of Bruno, even though physically he
is not present. Though even Maria may not know what to make of Antonio’s
actions here, it is Bruno who lacks the ability to make Symbolic distinctions
and associations between violence, physical affection, and sexuality.
The separation of Bruno’s gaze from the physical act of viewing is the dis-
tinction between narration and focalization and necessitates further elabo-
ration on the manner in which textual focalization operates. In this respect,
Bicycle Thieves is an instructive text because the focalization of its perceptual,
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Fig ur e 4. Antonio and Bruno prepare for Antonio’s first day of work. The film goes
to great lengths to ignore the presence of the baby in the room as a means of articu-
lating the cognitive orientation of the characters. courtesy of the museum of
modern art, film stills archive.
psychological, and ideological facets is not readily apparent. The focaliza-

tion’s position relative to the story is, significantly, not easily distinguishable.
The narration seems to be restricted to Antonio’s point of view, suggesting
that the focalization is internal to the story: conveyed through the character
of Antonio. Spatially, the narration seems to conform to such a character-
ization. Rather than employing the bird’s-eye view afforded by external fo-
calization, plot information in Bicycle Thieves is restricted to only those
spaces that Antonio is in or is about to enter.
Likewise, the plot consistently fails to provide simultaneous views of
the narrative world: while Antonio and Bruno search one part of the city, the
spectator has no knowledge of the others who are searching, nor of the
thief ’s current activity, until Antonio comes upon them. Maria’s absence
from the narrative after Antonio begins the search is motivated through this
restriction. Finally, in its temporal dimension, the plot is restricted to the
present, further indicating a limitation characteristic of an internal focalizer.
The restrictions on space and time within the narration are extended to
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aspects of the psychological facet of focalization. The cognitive orientation

of the focalizer, normally signaled by a difference between unrestricted and
restricted knowledge, also demonstrates restrictions characteristic of an in-
ternal focalizer.37 With few exceptions, the narration in Bicycle Thieves re-
stricts knowledge of the story world to what Antonio knows, suggesting that
he is the internal focalizer.
Indeed, the restricted nature of both the spatial and psychological facets
of focalization seems to indicate that the position of focalization relative to
the story is internal. The emotive component of the psychological focaliza-
tion, however, does not support such a conclusion. Rimmon-Kennan de-
scribes the difference between external and internal focalization in its emo-
tive transformation as a distinction between neutral or uninvolved narration
(characteristic of external focalization) and subjective or involved narration
(characteristic of internal focalization). Throughout its plot, Bicycle Thieves
fails to provide the kind of subjective or involved narration that would indi-
cate an internally focalized emotive component.
Rather, the narration is more accurately characterized as neutral and un-
involved. Indeed, the style of narration in Bicycle Thieves largely strives for
invisibility, prompting Bazin’s argument that the storyline disappears into
the work.38 Although the accuracy of Bazin’s statement is questionable, the
narration is nonetheless marked by its largely passive role. Techniques which
signal more overt narrational styles or subjective narration, such as hand-
held camera work or the rapid editing sequences found in Rome: Open City,
are absent in Bicycle Thieves. Furthermore, those points in the film where the
narration takes on a more active role in imparting plot information mark
movements away from Antonio and his emotional perspective, providing
the spectator with information which does not register with Antonio (such
as the interactions between the two boys begging and the well-dressed man).
In addition, three brief scenes within the plot are inconsistent with the
position of an internal focalizer: the opening itself, which begins with the
bus coming down the hill into Valmeliana, the scene where the bicycle is
stolen and the plot allows the spectator to witness the actions of the thief
and his accomplices as they position themselves to carry out the theft, and
the scene where Antonio attempts to steal the bicycle without knowing that
Bruno is close by. Here the text departs from Antonio’s restricted knowledge
and, in the process, exercises simultaneous views of different places charac-
teristic of external focalization.
These deviations from the restrictions inherent to internal focalization
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Bicycle Thieves 71
suggest that the text constructs an external position which restricts itself
for rhetorical purposes, rather than an internal focalizer.39 Such a position
would then be consistent with the failure of the emotive component to con-
form at all to an internal position. Further consideration of the emotive
component also indicates an external position. In addition to the distinction
between neutral and uninvolved versus subjective and involved, external
and internal focalization function differently with respect to what Rimmon-
Kennan designates as the object of focalization: the focalized. With respect
to this aspect of focalization, the film’s emotive component is in an external
position, because, as Rimmon-Kennan argues, it “restricts all observation to
external manifestations, leaving the emotions to be inferred from them.” 40
Thus, at no point does the film attempt to penetrate the consciousness of
Antonio or any other character. Rather, emotions and attitudes are inferred
from external manifestations. Many scholars have noted, for instance, the
significance that De Sica placed on how Enzo Staiola walked: the disparity
between Antonio’s long strides and Bruno’s attempt to keep up with small,
quick steps functions to reveal the state of their emotional bond at different
points in the film.41 Likewise, after the bicycle is stolen and Antonio returns
to his worksite, his emotional state is conveyed through his external actions:
his aimless attempts to finish with the poster, throwing the brush into the
bucket, and slumping on the ladder. Antonio’s state of mind must be read
through these actions as external manifestations of an interior mood. The
scene closes with the camera moving in slightly on Antonio, emphasizing
the emotion that plays across his face. The lack of any point-of-view shot
within the sequence further marks the external position the film takes rela-
tive to representing Antonio’s consciousness. The conventions of cinematic
narration in general do not provide for the easy accessibility of character
consciousness found in literature. Even within these limitations, however,
the images of Bicycle Thieves emphasize the external over the internal, as the
withholding of Antonio’s point of view indicates.
The exception to this external orientation can be found in the film’s mu-
sic, which underscores nearly every dramatic moment. The music gives some
access to the character’s consciousness by enunciating particular moods.
This access to the interior mood comes from a position external to the die-
gesis, however, and thus reinforces the external position of the focalization.
Further—and a more detailed Lacanian analysis of film music would be
needed here—the kind of invisibility that the music score occupies is an im-
portant site for an investigation of modes of identification. The music in
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Bicycle Thieves rarely tries to dominate or order the image track, as contem-
porary music montage or appropriations of pop-tune scenes have a ten-
dency to do. Rather, the kind of invisible or suggestive role that the musical
score takes with respect to image and narrative begins to indicate that it
functions more along premirror modes of identification—as pure effect
that is attached to other modes of identification from a distinct external
position.
The external focalization of the text’s emotive component therefore as-
sumes a position distinct from the character of Antonio. Indeed, the dis-
tinction is maintained in the text’s refusal to allow the external focalization
to penetrate his consciousness. Nonetheless, much of the narrative seems
oriented to Antonio’s perceptions, aligning him closely to the focalizer,
if not making him the focalizing agent itself. In this respect, the focaliza-
tion closely resembles a position which Dorrit Cohn describes as narrated
monologue. This position “may be most succinctly defined as the technique
for rendering a character’s thought in his own idiom, while maintaining
the third-person reference.” 42 Cohn further describes this position as “the
moment when the thought-thread of a character is most tightly woven
into the texture of third-person narration.” 43 Although this definition is
language-bound in its framework, the concept of what Cohn describes as a
“fusion”— or close alignment—between two separate agents can nonethe-
less be adapted to cinematic narration.
The emotive focalization of Bicycle Thieves remains external, but seem-
ingly aligns itself closely with Antonio’s character as a means of rendering his
emotional consciousness. The function of such a rhetorical position is to
generate the necessary sympathy for Antonio’s position and validate or au-
thorize his desire for self-fulfillment. As Cohn argues: “narrated mono-
logues themselves tend to . . . attitudes of sympathy or irony. Precisely
because they cast the language of a subjective mind into the grammar of ob-
jective narration, they amplify emotional notes . . .” 44 Within Bicycle Thieves,
this amplification of emotional “notes” functions not only to construct the
kind of sympathy necessary to validate Antonio’s desire, but also to articu-
late the distinction of psychological positions.
This distinction is important for determining the rhetorical purpose of
the external focalization in Bicycle Thieves, which is to construct a complex
Symbolic position. Rather than being aligned with Antonio, the external fo-
calization is aligned with Bruno, whose position is one of identification with
Antonio. The sympathy generated for Antonio’s position is thus the sympa-
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Bicycle Thieves 73
thy of Bruno, who, identifying with his father, desires what Antonio desires.
This construction reveals itself at those points in the narrative when that
identification is suspended or compromised, as in the previously discussed
scene where Bruno temporarily suspends his identification and attends to
his infant sibling.
The most explicit point in the narrative, however, is when Bruno’s iden-
tification with Antonio is compromised: when he witnesses Antonio steal-
ing the bicycle. The articulation of what is for Bruno a tearing away from
Antonio’s position occurs with a reaction shot of Bruno as he turns around
in response to the commotion he hears. Bruno’s shock is emphasized by the
camera moving in closer to register the expression on his face. The move-
ment in is further accentuated by the additional camera movement laterally
across Bruno, framing him first right of center then left. The next shot of An-
tonio trying to escape from his pursuers is subsequently defined as Bruno’s
point-of-view shot. The events are registered both cognitively and emotion-
ally on Bruno. Antonio (and for that matter the group that chases him) is
unaware that Bruno has witnessed the pursuit through most of the sequence.
Bruno is the only internal perspective with access to this knowledge.
Likewise, the emotional effect of Antonio’s capture is registered on Bruno
more than it is on Antonio. Antonio seems stunned and uncertain, his face
almost expressionless, as he is surrounded and shoved by the group of men.
Moreover, the film refuses to focus on him for an adequate amount of time
to fully register outward manifestations of his emotional state. Rather, it cuts
to Bruno’s anxious cries and desperate attempts to push through the crowd
and reach his father. When the camera does focus on Antonio within the
crowd, it does so from an angle which suggests Bruno’s physical point of
view: almost at waist level to the men and looking up. The film thus brings
together the camera’s physical point of view with the Symbolic position of
the gaze as a means of emphasizing the latter. Indeed, the owner’s refusal to
press charges after seeing the devastating effects the incident has had on
Bruno demonstrates the degree to which Bruno’s perspective has come to
subordinate all the others within the text.
What is not so readily determined by a structural analysis of the text’s
focalization, however, is the manner in which Bruno’s gaze solicits the Sym-
bolic identification of the spectator. In other words, how is it the spectator
comes to identify (symbolically) with Bruno’s position? The Lacanian
framework established here posits an answer in the correspondence between
the je identity established in the text and that of the spectator.
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The text organizes signifiers into the norms and values that regulate nar-
rative drive through the construction of a je identity. The spectator identi-
fies with that identity through Symbolic, rather than Imaginary, identifi-
cation. Textual analysis which seeks to determine how the subject is engaged
through the operation of identification must account for the relationship
between the codes of the text—its ideology or evaluative system—and the
identity of the subject’s je, contingent upon the introjection of specific norms
and values in relationship to desire.
In some manner, the text’s inscription of the structure of the je must or-
ganize an identity that corresponds to the spectator’s je identity in order to
obtain Symbolic identification. Without Symbolic identification the pro-
cesses of Imaginary identification, dependent on the je for “translation” and
“shaping,” become disengaged. It is precisely this dialectical process between
the je and the moi that prevents the spectator from being positioned or be-
coming the reflex reaction of the text.45
What a Lacanian analysis of Bicycle Thieves demonstrates is the manner
in which this correspondence can occur at the level of structure. Further-
more, this structural correspondence is a primary instrument in transform-
ing the social to the level of the individual. In taking up Bruno’s position,
the spectator comes to identify with the disappointment in what Lacan de-
scribes as the failure of the paternal—its inability to “live up” to its Symbolic
mandate. As Lacan argues: “the paternal function concentrates in itself both
Imaginary and Real relations, always more or less inadequate to the Sym-
bolic relation that essentially constitutes it.” 46 As his discussion indicates,
the inadequacy of the paternal function results from the Symbolic—the
inevitable failure of every signifier. Furthermore, this inadequacy, and its
constitution in all three registers, determines that the resolution of the
Oedipal complex circumscribes not only castration, but frustration and pri-
vation as well.47
In effect, then, what structures the evaluative system of the text and cor-
responds to the spectator’s identity is frustration and disappointment in the
inadequacy of the father. As Lacan argues, “what is in question is the mo-
ment when the subject quite simply perceives that his father is an idiot or a
thief . . . or quite simply a weakling . . .” 48 The disillusion and disappoint-
ment that results from the “moment” Lacan describes—the inadequacy of
the paternal function—is precisely what structures the evaluative system of
Bicycle Thieves. The scene which introduces Bruno articulates this position.
While cleaning the bicycle for his father, Bruno discovers a small dent in-
flicted at the pawnshop. When Antonio seems unconcerned about the dent,
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Bicycle Thieves 75
Bruno fervently insists that “I would have complained.” Marcus notes that
“Bruno’s rejoinder . . . registers an implicit criticism of his father’s passiv-
ity . . .” 49 In addition, however, it demonstrates a childlike belief in the ab-
solute nature of the authority of the Law to ensure individual justice. It is this
position which Antonio will adopt and which authorizes his frustration and
disappointment with institutions to help him secure justice.
The text’s negative orientation toward the police when they fail to assist
Antonio demonstrates this position. The text evaluates the police negatively
not so much because they are the Law, but rather because they fail to live up
to their role within the Law. The Law is criticized from Antonio’s position
only because it does not act upon and exercise its authority, both in the sta-
tion and in the thief ’s house.
The same position is articulated in the scene at the mendicant’s church.
In its obstruction of Antonio’s pursuit of the old man, the bourgeois church
shows more concern for decorum and what Marcus describes as “the whole-
sale approach to processing bodies and souls” than for helping individuals
or responding to individual needs.50 The text constructs such a negative ori-
entation toward the church because it obstructs individual justice rather than
securing it. The irony results from the church failing to live up to its Sym-
bolic mandate: the institution of Christ Jesus as champion of the poor and
oppressed.
The same kind of disappointment and criticism is leveled at the la-
bor unions. The presence of an actual worker with problems and needs—
Antonio—is an annoying obstacle to union activists plotting and debating
political maneuvering in social crisis. In this respect, the text emphasizes the
degree to which the Symbolic mandate of the labor union is all a show,
articulated in Antonio’s relegation to a different space in the hall where a
rehearsal for a performance is taking place.51 Antonio’s presence is again
treated as getting in the way.
The articulation of these scenes functions to induce a Symbolic identi-
fication with the structure of the inadequacy of the paternal function. What
becomes significant for an ideological analysis, however, is the manner in
which this identification occurs through the structural similarity between
the social domains and individual identity. In appropriating the structure of
the failure of the paternal function to define the social domains within the
diegesis, the text provides the basis for a Symbolic identification with a spe-
cific ideological function. This is articulated in the film’s ending with Bruno’s
restoration of Antonio’s dignity (Overby’s contention that it is a story of
“grace lost and restored”).52
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With Bruno’s acceptance of his father’s failure to “fully live up to” his own
place within the Law, the narrative establishes the “natural” acceptance of
the legitimacy of patriarchy— despite its failures. Bruno’s place thus be-
comes the place of the historical spectator, who is asked to accept the le-
gitimacy of Italian patriarchal-capitalist culture, despite its recent “moral”
failures (e.g., Fascism) and its continued failures to “fully live up to” the
Symbolic value invested in its function—its present inability to address so-
cial and economic problems within Italy.
Antonio thus becomes the site for the restoration of patriarchy, and
Maria, as the maternal, must be dismissed (as she is in the narrative) lest pa-
triarchy “owe” anything to the maternal for its restoration or, even more
threatening, become an option for reorganizing Italian culture after the fall
of Fascism. Thus, as the narrative progresses, the vacillation that goes on with
respect to Antonio functions to “admit” the faults of patriarchy, while at the
same time seeking to restore its legitimacy. For this reason Antonio is nei-
ther idolized nor despised, but rather made necessary. In identifying with
Bruno’s desire to restore Antonio’s dignity, the spectator comes to identify
with the desire to restore the legitimacy of patriarchy.
The restoration of Antonio’s position, despite his demonstrated insensi-
tivity, is the site of the text’s translation into the structure of the individual
of what is otherwise the political domain’s insensitivity to social conditions.
Textual operations function to reestablish and reaffirm the legitimacy of
patriarchal-capitalist culture, and the political structure it maintains, by
“translating” failures and inadequacies as natural, inevitable, and ahistorical
conditions which must be accepted and left to fate.
The Symbolic position—the gaze—which structures the evaluative sys-
tem of the text, the desire for restoring patriarchy’s legitimacy, anticipates its
own failure by working into the narrative an ideological fantasy. The contra-
dictions of patriarchy, its excesses, insensitivity, and incompetencies, are
masked over through a comparison with an untenable alternative. The site
of this untenable alternative is the site of the collective, which is defined
through the structure of fantasy as an unstable and threatening domain—a
potential source of anarchy that must be contained. Indeed, as earlier analy-
sis has demonstrated, the narrative trajectory is defined through Antonio’s
attempt to distinguish himself from the alienating/annihilating domain of
the masses.
Within the text, the collective is that site which always threatens: charac-
ter, stability, and narrative itself. The collective is a fantasy of destruction
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Bicycle Thieves 77
and annihilation of subjecthood that patriarchy functions to contain. De-

spite De Sica’s assertion that the Italian cinema needed to show the truth
about Italy, the radical potential of Bicycle Thieves is swallowed up in a fan-
tasy where the collective is the problem, not the solution, and the answer is
the restoration of patriarchy.
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4
La terra trema
Subverting and
Structuring Meaning
The structure that is reflected in the concept of Griffith montage is the struc-
ture of bourgeois society.
Sergei Eisenstein 1
One by one they dry up, the branches of the tree, and fall away.
Voice-over narration in La terra trema
In establishing a Lacanian critical theory for film analysis, the first two chap-
ters of this book each focused on one of two interrelated principles: unity of
discourse and relations to authority. This chapter centers itself around the
third interrelated principle: recognition requests. Lacan’s work clearly posits
the function of communication—the purpose of discourse—as recognition
(probably the only thing that is clear in Lacan). In the seminar on the moi,
he argues: “Speech is first and foremost that object of exchange whereby we
are recognized, and because you have said the password, we don’t break each
other’s necks, etc. That is how the circulation of speech begins.” 2 Lacan’s em-
phasis on speech as an object of exchange whose purpose is recognition is
critical for understanding text-subject relationships and the historical speci-
ficity of those relationships.
The previous examination of Symbolic identification demonstrates that
before spectators can come to take up the position constructed for them by
the text, there must be some basis for identification. What the analysis of
both Rome: Open City and Bicycle Thieves begins to demonstrate is the man-
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ner in which the text, seeking to secure a mass audience, may establish the
basis for Symbolic identification on the level of the structure of identity—
over cultural categorical distinctions of race, class, and gender (to name only
a few). In examining La terra trema, this chapter more fully explores the role
of structure as it relates to the process of misrecognition and its relationship
to the unity of discourse and relations to authority.
In this respect, La terra trema distinguishes itself within Neorealist prac-
tice by rejecting the function of containment from its signifying practice.
Indeed, despite Bazin’s assertion that Bicycle Thieves is “the only valid Com-
munist film of the whole past decade,” 3 La terra trema evidences an expres-
sive potency distinct from other Neorealist texts precisely as a result of its re-
jection of containment for a Marxist articulation of the alienating effects of
culture under patriarchal capitalism.
Concise analyses of the text’s unity of discourse and relations to author-
ity demonstrate this point. The opening of the film itself establishes both the
structure of classical narrative and the stylistic norms through which it will
be subverted. As in many narratives, the opening of La terra trema serves
an expositional function. The use of a voice-over narrator, however, empha-
sizes the operation of the film’s exposition. During the credit sequence the
camera follows a small group of men as they walk through town in near
darkness. Soon after they arrive at the shoreline, a voice-over narrator com-
ments: “As always, the first to begin their day in Trezza are the fish merchants,
who go down to the sea even before the sun has appeared from Cape Mu-
lino.” 4 The narrator’s statement functions to ritualize the actions taking
place within the image: emphasizing their recurring nature.
The text’s emphasis on cyclical time and ritualized action will come to
foreground the manner in which a specific economic and political system
(namely the monopoly capitalism of southern Italy) appropriates ritual and
tradition to maintain the structure of repression and privilege. Furthermore,
analyzing the structural relationship between exposition and actional dy-
namics and the plot’s use of what Gérard Genette describes as iterative time
demonstrates that the terms of cultural repression become articulated in the
text through the consistent transformation of specific and concrete actions
into the recurring action of ritual.
This process can be determined in the introduction of Mara (and what
will become the space of the Valastro family), with Lucia’s break from pre-
paring for the men’s arrival, and in Antonio’s courting of Nedda. In the first
example, the voice-over narration functions to construct exposition by the
continued process of generalizing and placing of images as nonspecific. It
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La terra trema 81
describes the image of Mara walking through the courtyard as “a house like
all the others, built of old stones, with walls as old as the fisherman’s trade.”
What could function as a more specific element of the plot is instead gener-
alized by the voice-over narration: it is a house “like all the others.” Further-
more, the voice-over narration attempts to link the house to the cyclical na-
ture of the previous images by the claim that the walls are “as old as the
fisherman’s trade.”
A similar operation occurs with Lucia’s break from the house prepara-
tions. When she suspends her ritual cleaning actions to stare at something
off-screen, Lucia is asked, “What are you looking at?” She responds, “Our
brothers . . . I always think of them out there . . . like I thought of our father
the day he didn’t return.” Lucia’s response transforms what might otherwise
function as specific and concrete action into her own personal ritual per-
formed in preparation for the men returning from the sea. Indeed, her re-
sponse serves an expositional function that her actions do not fulfill: giving
both character information about Lucia (her attitudes and concerns for her
family) and plot information about the father (that he was lost at sea). In its
operation, however, the exposition functions to repress actional dynamics,
to contain the break with ritual caused by Lucia’s actions.
Similarly, Antonio’s break with habitual and recurring action in his
courtship of Nedda is ritualized and situated in cyclical time. The specificity
of his action is transformed into nonspecific and recurring action—as a rit-
ual in itself—through what Genette describes as an external iterative mode.5
The voice-over narration describes Antonio’s actions in clichéd expressions
which ritualize the event, claiming: “If there is a respite, if there is a mo-
ment’s happiness, it is in thinking of one’s girl, and for a girl one can also go
without sleep, because men are made to be caught by the girls as the fish in
the sea are made for those who can catch them.” The generalizing or exter-
nal iteration of the voice-over is clear. It functions to situate the specificity of
Antonio’s desire, and this particular action, within a more generalized ritual.
What might in other cases become the principal line of action—romantic
union—is instead reorganized by textual operations as recurring and gen-
eralized action. Antonio’s pursuit of Nedda is but another instance of a “man
caught by a girl.” The action therefore becomes iterative rather than singu-
lative, providing character information about Antonio and the story world.
Without the specificity of singulative narration, however, the action becomes
removed from the linear structure necessary to advance the plot.
The narrative’s reluctance to advance the plot begins to indicate the re-
pressive function that iterative narration signifies within the text. By trans-
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forming specific or concrete actions into the recurring actions of a ritualized

way of life, the iterative narration subverts the linear movement of action by
containing it within cyclical movement. Likewise, within the narrative world,
cyclical time, ritual, and tradition itself are appropriated by the economic-
political structure as a means of repressing the working-class fishermen and
maintaining a system of exploitation.
Specific or concrete plot actions which cannot be contained by the expo-
sition and iterative narration often function as disruptions that break cycli-
cal movement: threatening the stability of narrative structure as it threat-
ens the stability of the repressive culture of the story world. This occurs in
the scene where Antonio leads a riot against the wholesalers. The action of
the dealers—itself a long-established ritual— demonstrates the manner in
which ritual and tradition are appropriated by the economic/political struc-
ture as a process of containment: their collusion keeps prices down and
works against the efforts of the young men to break with their constant ex-
ploitation. The dealers’ practices outmaneuver Antonio’s plans and function
to contain the potential disruption. The dealers’ preestablished ritual thus
operates to contain the linear movement of a specific action by binding it
into the cyclical movement of their ritual.
This process of containment fails, however, with Antonio’s disruption:
he abandons the goal of procuring more for the catch in order to upset the
entire economic process which maintains the fishermen’s exploitation. The
crowd of fishermen, following Antonio, breaks into a riot and begins bat-
tling the dealers. Antonio’s inciting of the riot functions to break the con-
tainment imposed on the actions of the fishermen through ritual and tradi-
tion. The disruptive nature of the break is articulated by the speed with
which the organized ritual between buyers and fishermen breaks down into
mass violence.
Here, too, however, the disruption that occurs through singulative nar-
ration—the riot—is ultimately contained by iterative narration. The linear
movement inscribed within the fishermen’s break with tradition (and the
subsequent riot it caused) is absorbed into the cycle of an established po-
litical tradition: the state’s coercive power functioning to support the rul-
ing class (or, perhaps more accurately, agents of capital). Indeed, after the
exercise of the iterative action of the police, the recurring actions of the
fishermen’s ritualized way of life resume as if nothing had happened (with
the exception of Antonio). The structural effect of this transformation of
singulative narration into iterative modes is repression of the narrative de-
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La terra trema 83
sire organized around the collective goal of the fishermen to escape their
exploitation.
The transformation of specific into recurring action subverts the linear-
ity inscribed within the classical narrative’s construction of a trajectory of
desire. Within the classical narrative, as Genette and Sternberg demonstrate,
iterative narration is subordinated to the singulative—regulating and stabi-
lizing the specificity of linear action. La terra trema’s consistent transfor-
mation of singulative into iterative thus constitutes a subversion of classical
structure by reversing the subordination of the two narrational modes. Fur-
thermore, subordinating the singulative to iterative functions to repress nar-
rative desire, rather than displace it along the narrative trajectory as in the
classical text.
The repression of the movement of desire, and its consequences for
Imaginary identification, marks a significant site at which the text under-
mines classical narrative structure. Indeed, the film’s consistent repression of
the movement of desire indicates a role for anxiety within its textual opera-
tions. A close examination of the plot’s structure demonstrates the functional
characteristics of anxiety (temporal dimension, object loss, displacement of
danger, redirection of desire) within its identificatory operations.
To begin with, Imaginary identification with the movement of desire is
arrested through a temporal dimension. The repressive structure of the iter-
ative narration’s transformation of a linear trajectory into its own cyclical
movement functions through the transformation of temporal structures. As
argued previously, this transformation removes specificity from concrete ac-
tions. It is precisely specificity, however, which allows one action to be dis-
tinguished from another—a process of opposition which inscribes linearity
within its structure. This linearity is then constructed textually within tem-
poral terms: actions originate, progress, and end. By removing an action’s
specificity, the text assimilates actions into an indistinguishable cycle. It thus
denies the temporality to action by subverting linearity.6
The second functional characteristic of anxiety— object loss—also exer-
cises a significant role in textual operations. The exposition’s repression of
the movement of desire is constructed around object loss. Precisely because
specific objects within the text function as objects of desire, their loss marks
a site within the text that demands renunciation of specific desires. Thus, for
example, with the loss of the boat, Antonio’s individual desire for “a life free
of the bloodsuckers” must be abandoned—renounced—however unwill-
ingly.7 Similarly, object loss is inscribed in the text at other sites: the barrels
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of anchovies, the house, and even the family members themselves (the loss
of the grandfather, Cola, and Lucia). Each of these objects comes to repre-
sent a desire (mastery, certainty, constancy) that must be renounced. Object
loss therefore functions within the text to repress narrative desire.
It is at the site of object loss that the text inscribes the third characteristic
of anxiety: displacement of danger. Repression of narcissistic drives consti-
tutes a psychical danger to the structure of the moi (its intentionality). Freud
therefore argues that anxiety functions to displace psychical danger away
from narcissistic drives and onto the loss of the desired object itself.8 This
operation functions within the structure of the text nowhere more clearly
than with the loss of the boat.
Both Antonio and Cola fail to recognize that the loss of the boat consti-
tutes an enormous threat to the family’s security. Having mortgaged the
house to pay for the boat, the family has lost both their capital investment
(the boat is worth nothing now) and the means to pay off their debt (the
boat now provides no income). Instead, it is the grandfather who recognizes
this when he states: “It’s time we think of paying the debt.” The different
responses to the loss of the boat articulate the boat’s displacing function.
Antonio and Cola focus on the loss of their ability to obtain a better life.
The loss functions to repress their desire, and their grief is directed toward
the loss of that desire. This displaces the danger away from the security of the
family—their inability to provide for themselves— caused by the loss of the
boat. Rather than appropriating classical narrative’s transformation of social
phenomena into an individual character’s desire, the plot structure of La
terra trema subverts that structure by transforming social phenomena into
individual object loss and displacement of psychic danger. The diegetic at-
tention paid to the loss of the object itself—as in Cola and Antonio’s re-
sponse to the boat, Antonio’s response to the anchovies, and Mara’s response
to the house— displaces the spectator’s identification with psychical danger
onto the object itself.
The progression of the text also indicates the final characteristic of anxi-
ety—redirection of desire—within its operations. With the repression of
desire, the forward progression of the text is driven by the redirection of de-
sire. After the boat is destroyed, Antonio’s desire to be free from the exploi-
tation of the fish dealers no longer moves the narrative forward. This repre-
sents a significant subversion of the structure of classical narrative. Whereas
in a classical narrative Antonio’s desire would advance the narrative (and
find some kind of fulfillment in the end despite the setback) the plot struc-
ture in La terra trema refuses this structure. Rather, Antonio’s individual de-
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Fig ur e 5. “One by one they fall away . . .” Cola looks at his family one last time
before departing. The film inscribes object loss into the narrative through the disinte-
gration of the family. courtesy of the museum o f modern art , film stills
archive.
sire is textually subordinated to the repercussions that patriarchal capitalism

exacts from the family for their attempted rebellion. Narrative progression
is structured as a conflict between Antonio’s attempt to retain his desire (as
opposed to advance it) and the survival of the family.
Antonio’s attempt to retain his desire is articulated at several sites: his
foray into drunkenness, his refusal to work for Lorenzo, and, retroactively,
his possession of distinctive clothing. The scene with Lorenzo, for example,
makes clear Antonio’s desire for control. With his family disintegrating and
starving, Antonio puts his own desire for mastery over the dealers above his
desire to help the family. The redirection of this desire toward preserving the
family is marked within the text at the point where Antonio gives up his bet-
ter clothing for his older clothing and signs on to work for the dealers as a
laborer.
This action retroactively defines Antonio’s continued possession of dis-
tinctive clothes as yet another site of maintaining desire. His clothing is but
one of numerous references to his time in the service. These references work
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to suggest that Antonio has lived outside the village and is thus not defined
entirely by the social-Symbolic system of Trezza. Indeed, Antonio’s goal of
breaking free of the system of exploitation is consistently defined diegetically
as a result of his time abroad (as when Cola explains Antonio’s actions to his
grandfather in these terms). Forfeiting his better clothing marks the point at
which Antonio renounces his desire to become distinct from the cultural re-
pression of Trezza and redirects it toward preserving what is left of his fam-
ily. This act of renunciation ends Antonio’s self-destruction and secures his
ability (and the ability of the family) to survive.
The resolution of Antonio’s conflict between giving in to the dealers and
preserving the family is a significant site for the text’s subversion of the struc-
ture of classical narrative. Rather than ending with the final possession of a
desired object, the sequence ends with the final redirection of desire—a de-
sire which does not so much obtain an object as much as prevent loss (of
the family). Unity is achieved, but not the unity initially sought. Moreover,
it is a unity which articulates the terms of subjugation through which it is
achieved and thus denies Imaginary pleasure.
Textual operations do not construct the redirection of Antonio’s desire
toward preserving the family (constancy and wholeness) as a site of moi ful-
fillment. Rather, this redirection comes at the expense of the narcissistic
structure of the moi. Neither does the narration attempt to validate the ac-
tions of the dealers as a necessary restraint to Antonio’s previous grandiosity
and thus construct it as a positive Symbolic structure. Rather, the inscription
of the structure of anxiety operates textually to redirect spectator identifi-
cation away from the unpleasure of the threat to moi intentionality, but at
the expense of an Imaginary jouissance. Textual operations do not reinforce
the structure of the moi, but rather undermine its narcissistic intentional-
ity by repressing the movement of desire through object loss. Constructing
the redirection of Antonio’s desire as a subjugation denigrates the structure
of the moi. This allows the spectator to accept Antonio’s position as neces-
sary, without identifying with him. The result is a Symbolic acceptance of
Antonio’s position (the structure of the Symbolic being that of separation
and differentiation) without any Imaginary identification (nondifferentia-
tion) in such an acceptance.
An analysis of the identificatory operations of the text is thus a signifi-
cant site for determining the film’s subversion of classical narration. The
text’s construction of a detached, Symbolic acceptance of Antonio’s position
without Imaginary identification indicates a separation of Imaginary and
Symbolic identification as a means of encouraging a detached and analytical
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Fig ur e 6 . Antonio’s renunciation of his desire to live free of the

“blood-suckers” is articulated through costume, as he changes into
older clothes before signing on with his brothers as day-laborers.
courtesy of the museum of modern art , film s tills
archive.
spectatorship. The separation between Imaginary identification and the

complex structure of Symbolic identification within the text becomes the fo-
cus of the second mode of analysis—relations to authority.
Analyzing the text’s focalization demonstrates that the identificatory sep-
aration in La terra trema is achieved primarily through its external focaliza-
tion. Indeed, the authority to translate both Antonio’s actions and the forces
of repression that work against him rests within the external focalization.
The primary indicator of the text’s external focalization is the use of voice-
over narration. At no point within the narrative does the text attempt to lo-
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calize the voice-over commentary diegetically within one character. This

constructs the voice-over as a disembodied voice external to the diegesis,
“necessarily presented outside” of the diegetic space, as Mary Ann Doane ar-
gues.9 The voice-over’s commentary on narrative action thus functions as an
external perspective, mediating between image and spectator. Moreover, the
external position of this perspective gives it authority over internal perspec-
tives. As Doane argues: “It is its radical otherness with respect to the diegesis
which endows this voice with a certain authority.” 10 Pascal Bonitzer concurs
when he notes: “Because it rises from the field of the Other, the voice-over is
assumed to know: this is the essence of its power.” 11 An analysis of La terra
trema’s focalization demonstrates that the position the spectator comes to
occupy through Symbolic identification is precisely the field of the Other-
presumed-to-know. Through this identification, the spectator accepts the
voice-over’s “translation” of narrative action, allowing for the beginnings of
Imaginary identification with Antonio’s actions earlier in the text, but end-
ing with a detached Symbolic identification.
This is achieved through an external focalization that is articulated
through the voice-over and its ability to align, but subsequently withdraw
itself from Antonio’s perspective. This alignment is expressed through the
statements the voice-over makes (evaluating the fishermen positively while
criticizing the wholesalers) and the specific elements of plot and style that
convey its external perspective. Early in the film, for example, the image
track reinforces the voice-over’s privileging of the fishermen by excluding
the wholesalers during such descriptions. By focusing on the activities of the
fishermen to the exclusion of those of the wholesalers, the narration assigns
a primacy to the former over the latter, which articulates the external focal-
ization’s alignment with Antonio and the fishermen.
The structure of the plot determines that the function of this primacy is
to align the focalization’s external perspective with Antonio’s internal per-
spective in the first half of the film and thus “authorize” his desire. This
alignment of the voice-over narration’s position and Antonio’s position is ar-
ticulated several times within the film, but is clearly evident when Antonio
and his brothers return to sea. Here the voice-over first describes the scene
then, after a pause, continues:
Look, he should try it himself, he, Tony, with his younger brothers and friends,
face to face with the wholesalers and making the prices and seeing a little if this
injustice can end. This is the idea that turns over in Antonio’s head.
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La terra trema 89
The film conveys the close alignment between the voice-over narration and
Antonio by giving the external narration access to Antonio’s consciousness.
As Rimmon-Kennan contends, this process “reveals the inner-life of the fo-
calized,” in this case Antonio, “by granting an external focalizer . . . the priv-
ilege of penetrating the consciousness of the focalized.” 12 The act of pene-
trating his consciousness constructs a proximity between the voice-over
narration and Antonio.
That the two positions are distinct, but aligned, is demonstrated within
the narration itself. Although the voice-over commentary penetrates An-
tonio’s consciousness, the narration itself does not represent his conscious-
ness. Rather, the film’s narration maintains its external position, repre-
senting instead Antonio’s physical position within the story world. The
distinction between Antonio’s internal position and the external position of
the text’s focalization is significant for the text’s separation between Imagi-
nary and Symbolic identification. Maintaining an external focalization al-
lows for a Symbolic identification with the norms of the text separate from
Antonio. This permits Symbolic identification with Antonio’s moral point
of view without the kind of absolute authorization of his character that
would form the basis of Imaginary identification. An external focalization al-
lows the text to separate itself from Antonio’s perspective—and indeed even
criticize him—while still maintaining consistent ideological norms.
The separation of the two positions is clearly articulated at the site where
the external focalization can no longer penetrate Antonio’s consciousness.
This occurs in the scene after the purchase of the boat, when Antonio
obtains another object of his desire: Nedda. In this scene, Antonio’s pur-
suit of Nedda culminates in physical passion. As the scene closes with the
couple walking away, the voice-over asks: “What does your heart say to you,
Antonio, now that you have everything you ever wanted? Every dream of
yours is within reach.” By asking this question, however, the voice-over dem-
onstrates that it has taken up a different position with respect to Antonio’s
consciousness than it had earlier in the film. Whereas before the voice-over
commentary was able to penetrate Antonio’s consciousness and articulate
his thoughts, here it remains outside, unable to access or perceive. By refus-
ing to penetrate Antonio’s consciousness (when it has already demonstrated
its ability to do so), the focalization aligns itself with Nedda, whose ability to
perceive Antonio’s thoughts is now severely undermined by the distance be-
tween them.
The focalization’s shift away from Antonio at the moment when he ob-
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tains one of the objects of his desire is significant for understanding the
film’s attempt to prevent Imaginary jouissance. Ragland-Sullivan defines the
structure of jouissance as follows: “at an abstract level it [jouissance] could
be described as the temporary pleasure afforded by substitute objects.” 13
Antonio’s temporary pleasure is what the shift in focalization withholds from
representation. Precisely at the moment when the story comes to a char-
acter’s Imaginary jouissance with a substitute object of desire, the narration
restricts itself, assigning itself to the position of “not knowing.” It thus pre-
vents identification with a character’s Imaginary jouissance by withholding it
from plot.
By assuming this restricted position, the narration once again inscribes
the structure of anxiety, which, as Lacan argues, appears at the place of the
jouissance of the Other.14 The narration inscribes this structure by aligning
itself psychologically with Nedda. Although she might “know” Antonio’s de-
sires, she cannot know Antonio’s Imaginary jouissance, which the narration
conveys by repressing Antonio’s fulfillment from representation, focusing
instead on the psychological distance between the two that fulfillment of de-
sire causes. In this manner the text prevents identification with the structure
of jouissance by substituting the structure of anxiety in its place.
What is particularly significant for analyzing relations of authority, and
the manner in which La terra trema separates Imaginary from Symbolic
identification, is that the external focalization, having shifted away from
Antonio at this point of the text, maintains its distinction from his position.
Indeed, from this point on the external position refuses to privilege any char-
acter’s perspective. Furthermore, the voice-over narration’s separation from
Antonio in the second half of the film, combined with its implicit criticism
of some of his actions, works to prevent Imaginary identification with his
character.
The subversion of an Imaginary identification with Antonio can be de-
termined in one of the final scenes, where Antonio comes upon a group of
men fixing the damaged boat. In both the pattern of presentation and its spe-
cific articulation, the narration refuses to absolutize (to use Jameson’s term)
Antonio’s position into an Imaginary construction of wholeness.15 Here the
voice-over’s repetition of Antonio’s phrase about the necessity of solidarity
and being good to each other emphasizes the ideological significance of this
perspective. Although the voice-over validates this perspective, it does not
privilege it. The voice-over makes clear that, despite the significance of this
perspective, Antonio (and by implication the spectator who evaluates him as
a site for identification) must also consider his own role in the destruction
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La terra trema 91
of his family—that he must find courage inside himself, rather than mea-
suring the actions of others by his failure.
This “translation” of Antonio’s character by the authoritative norms of
the text thus refuses the kind of absolute construction characteristic of the
Imaginary. Indeed, rather than constructing an Imaginary character, the text
here emphasizes the role his character plays as a site of organization for sev-
eral textual processes. Antonio’s failure is more than the combined effect of
the actions of individual identities: it is also the result of a repressive capi-
talist culture and the lack of consciousness, goodwill, and solidarity among
the others. In addition, however, the narration concludes that Antonio must
bear responsibility for how he negotiated a world lacking solidarity and
goodwill.
What this construction avoids is a translation of Antonio as absolutely
“good,” thus disallowing the good/bad dichotomy characteristic of Imagi-
nary constructions.16 Instead, the text differentiates between Antonio’s role
and the others, and between Antonio’s earlier and later actions, establishing
a Symbolic construction which avoids the absolutism of a “vanquished vic-
tor.” 17 Without this kind of Symbolic authorization of an absolute construc-
tion, the text prevents an Imaginary identification with Antonio’s position.
The denial of an Imaginary pleasure indicates the place of the historical
spectator within the text’s ideological operations. Precisely what gets trans-
formed into the Symbolic structure of the text is the failure of the utopian
impulse to translate itself politically and transform Italian culture. Rather,
the reorganization of patriarchal capitalism from the fall of Fascism into the
Christian Democratic coalition government demonstrates the constancy of
the system as a mode of cultural organization. As a result of its ideological
opposition to this structure, the film constructs the obtainment of constancy
in a manner which refuses pleasure. The implied spectator that the text with-
holds pleasure from is its contemporary Italian audience, who experienced
the disorienting effects of postwar Italian culture—an unstable period that
was stabilized through the constancy of patriarchal capitalism. By withhold-
ing Imaginary pleasure from the constancy that Antonio achieves in the end,
the film articulates its Marxist conclusion: no pleasure can be found in a
Symbolic order which demands individual subjugation to exploitation. The
structure of the film thus reflects not only a Marxist rejection of classical
narration, but a Marxist rejection of the social formations that ground clas-
sical narration.
The Symbolic position that the spectator takes up, the gaze with which
s/he identifies, external to the diegesis, as the analysis of focalization has
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demonstrated, is the Other-presumed-to-know. Denied an Imaginary iden-

tification with Antonio, the spectator is afforded a place which validates
Antonio’s desire to be “free of the blood-suckers,” but holds him account-
able for failing to negotiate a world lacking collective consciousness. What
the external focalization already “knows” is a consciousness that Antonio
must achieve—the consciousness articulated in Gramsci’s “The South-
ern Question,” where he argues that “no mass action is possible unless the
mass itself is convinced of the ends it wants to reach and the methods to
be applied.” 18 It is this utopian consciousness that “knows” the collective
transformation of culture will ultimately occur (probably after many indi-
vidual failures) which is afforded to the spectator for Symbolic identifi-
cation. In taking up such a position, the spectator can avoid the anxiety of
a lack of Imaginary identification, through a Symbolic identification of a
future gratification—a collective utopia to come, rather than a libidinized
utopia of the individual that so grounds the pleasure of classical narration.
If, as Eisenstein argues, the structure of bourgeois society is reflected in
D. W. Griffith’s films, La terra trema represents a different structure: a posi-
tion of consciousness that rejects capitalism, but must wait for collective
transformation to reach its potential.
This structural position afforded to the spectator for identification begins
to indicate the key role that structure exercises in the organization and de-
termination of signification. As demonstrated in discussions of Symbolic
identification, the text must afford the spectator some basis for misrecog-
nition in order to procure identification. What an analysis of recognition
requests demonstrates is that the classical text, seeking to procure a mass
audience, begins organizing that basis on the level of structure. What the
spectator “recognizes” is a structure of identity that assigns meaning to the
significations and operations of the text.
Lacan’s concept of the point de capiton makes it possible to determine the
manner in which structure (and in particular the structures of identity) be-
comes the site of organization that assigns meaning to an otherwise equivo-
cal operation of signification. In formulating this concept, Lacan addresses
the arbitrary nature of meaning, the result of its determination by the Sym-
bolic and the signifier, and not the Real. Lacan thus argues that “significa-
tion . . . proves never to be resolved into a pure indication of the real, but al-
ways refers back to another signification.” 19 This is of particular importance
for analyzing the film text since film, drawing as it does on the indexical sign,
presents itself— or can be made to present itself—as an indication of, or
emanating from, reality.
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La terra trema 93
What semiotics indicates, however, is that meaning, whether a function

of the indexical sign or others, is still a function of signification and not de-
termined by reality. The absence of the Real in the determination of mean-
ing, and its referentiality to signification itself, results in what Lacan describes
as the “incessant sliding of the signified.” 20 Such a concept is particularly im-
portant to La terra trema, where the shifting focalization creates the poten-
tial for a plurality of meanings competing against each other. As discussed
previously, the film starts by subverting classical narration. Later it begins
appropriating the structure of classical narration through the character of
Antonio and his specific desires. At that point in the plot, the focalization
aligns itself with Antonio, signaling this position by penetrating his con-
sciousness. As a means of returning to a subversion of classical narration,
however, the focalization withdraws itself from Antonio, and the trajectories
of Antonio’s desires become denigrated.
Despite a complex approach to focalization and to subversion and ap-
propriation of classical norms, La terra trema maintains a clear narrative
comprehension. Precisely what a Lacanian framework can contribute to nar-
rative analysis is an understanding of the manner in which complex signify-
ing practices can maintain intelligibility and control the potential sliding
of the signifier(s). In the Lacanian view, what fixes meaning, determines
the signified, is the point de capiton, the anchoring point which provides
the totality around which signification organizes itself. As Lacan argues:
“Everything radiates out from and is organized around . . . [the] signifier,
similar to these little lines of force that an upholstery button forms on the
surface of material. It’s the point of convergence that enables everything that
happens in . . . discourse to be situated retroactively and prospectively.” 21
Zizek elaborates:
If we maintain that the point de capiton is a nodal point, a kind of knot of mean-
ings, this does not imply that it is simply the richest word, the word in which is
condensed all the richness of meaning of the field it quilts: the point de capiton is
rather the word which, as a word, on the level of the signifier itself unifies a given
field, constitutes its identity: it is, so to speak, the word to which things them-
selves refer to recognize themselves.22
Lacan’s assertion that signification is never an indication of the Real de-

termines that an anchoring point, that locus where the meaning of signifi-
cation is determined, results not from a relationship of sign with reality, but,
rather, from the properties of the signifier. Here, too, film makes a valuable
illustration of this point. A narrative film with an emphasis on realism ap-
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pears to capture the reality of a specific space and time, yet this is a function
of, among other things, codes of editing and their reception. Were the film
composed of four- to six-frame shots that defied spatio-temporal continu-
ity, the reality-effect could be severely compromised, if not eliminated. The
“naturalness” of the realism in La terra trema and other Neorealist films (as
well as narrative film in general) is due in part to the manner in which spe-
cific codes allow for a synchronic structuring of signification.23 As Lacan
notes: “the signifier is constituted only from a synchronic and innumerable
collection of elements in which each is sustained only by the principle of its
opposition to each of the others.” 24 Precisely what allows a signifier to serve
as an anchoring point—as that point which situates discourse—is its abil-
ity to present itself as “pure signifier,” as support of, and emanating from,
the Real. Lacan thus argues:
Try to imagine, then, what the appearance of a pure signifier might be like. Of
course we can’t imagine this, by definition. And yet . . . [our] experience makes
us constantly feel that these basic signifiers, without which the order of human
meanings would be unable to establish itself, exist.25
The ability to present itself as primary, as a whole that emanates from the
Real, allows a signifier to function as an anchoring point, organizing the re-
lations between signifiers and meaning. Zizek elaborates this function:
It is because the Real itself offers no support for a direct symbolization of it—
because every symbolization is in the last resort contingent—that the only way
the experience of a given historic reality can achieve its unity is through the
agency of a signifier, through reference to a “pure” signifier. It is not the real ob-
ject which guarantees as the point of reference the unity and identity of a certain
ideological experience— on the contrary it is the reference to a pure signifier
which gives unity and identity to our experience of historical reality itself.26
Zizek’s elaboration on the ideological function of the anchoring point in

constructing historical reality is correlative to the manner in which the film
text constructs itself as social discourse. What this analysis attempts to de-
lineate is the manner in which the structure of identity functions within the
film text as an anchoring point, as that which organizes signification and
meaning and which textual signifiers and signification refer to and recognize
“themselves” in.27
The structure of identity can be determined most readily in the text’s
construction and evaluation of character. Indeed, as the work of Propp and
A.-J. Greimas makes clear, the movement of desire within the text is in-
scribed at the site of character. Although La terra trema withholds this move-
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La terra trema 95
ment within the plot, eventually it does articulate such a structure through
the character-identity of Antonio. It is at the site of his character that the
working-class struggle to break free from exploitation is transformed into an
individual desire. Through the structure of identity the character of Antonio
organizes collective desires (his family, the fishermen, the spectators) into a
single trajectory. The structure of Antonio’s identity, and the trajectory of his
desire in its relation to other signifying structures in the text, becomes the
principal site both for anchoring meaning within the text and for the sub-
version of the structure of classical narration and denial of pleasure to its
spectators.
The work of Propp and Greimas clarifies this anchoring function. In their
narratology, action is assigned narrative primacy. Character is then the or-
ganization of discursive strategies which qualify and indeed translate and
give shape to action and narrative movement. The structure of the relation-
ship between desire and discursive strategies that Propp and Greimas for-
mulate thus shares the logic of the relationship between the moi and the je
(which might lend it the kind of “practical value” that Jameson describes).
In Greimas’s approach, action, or function itself, has no identity indepen-
dent of or divorced from the few key signifiers which give it “name.” His
approach begins to make clear the anchoring function that “name” pro-
vides in the relationship between action, function, character, and narrative
trajectory.
A Lacanian critical method takes this structural characteristic of the text
even further by demonstrating a commensurability between subject and
character at the site of subordination to the signifier with respect to the struc-
ture of identity. The “identity” that the subject maintains is no less a fiction,
and no less dependent on key signifiers, than the “character” which the text
constructs. The legibility of narrative as an organizational structure, and its
ability to mobilize pleasure, is grounded in the subject’s ability to identify
with the process of narrative—its covering over of a lack of self at the site of
character. Indeed, Lacan’s dynamic picture of a primary identity asserts the
fictional nature of the “self.” The “truth” of the subject for Lacan is that there
is no self, only a lack of self: a void which was filled through the introjection
of part objects. What structures identity, then, is the effect of papering over
a void, not an essence of self. The “self ” is thus the sum of those effects, which
organize around the primary objects or “pure signifiers.”
Narrative inscription of the structure of the moi constructs character in
just such a manner. Frank Kermode, summarizing both Propp’s and Grei-
mas’s approaches, argues that a preliminary situation gives rise to a function
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which “develops into a proper name; so it becomes a character, whose life

and death have a narrative; and then the function is lost in the character.” 28
The “preliminary situation,” as Sternberg argues, is the site of the exposition
and thus is formed through the relationship between signifiers (expositional
material). The structure of the moi and of primary identity can be seen
within the “loss” of function in character. What becomes “lost” is the “truth”
about the identity of character: that it is an effect, not an essence. The text
and the characters it constructs start from a void— existing as nothing—
and come into being by an introjection, a putting in, of signifiers. There is
thus no essence to character, only otherness: the relationship between a few
“pure” signifiers. The movement of “function” toward “name” and “desire,”
and away from the “truth” of nonexistence, is thus the paranoid structure of
the moi, which is threatened by its alienation. As Lacan argues: “each time we
get close, in a given subject, to this primitive alienation, the most radical ag-
gression arises.” 29 The movement of desire, therefore, is thus the movement
away from otherness and toward “name” and the Symbolic, where, Lacan as-
serts, it can be mediated as recognition.30
A Lacanian critical method thus delineates character as the site of the di-
alectical structure of the moi and the je: reducible not to its actions, but
rather to the primary meaning which shapes desire. At the locus of charac-
ter, therefore, are the Symbolic discourses and codes (the je) which regulate
desire, but which in turn are determined by the primary identity within de-
sire which moves the narrative forward. Character is not an “essence” as
much as a site of organization. The multiple structures of desire which op-
erate in and through the text find a primary site for signification in the locus
of character. Through the unifying structure of identity, character functions
to organize the discourses and codes which desire operates in and through.
A Lacanian critical method should therefore analyze the identity traits
and the drive attributed to a (main) character. As character (“function” with
a proper name) moves in a direction away from its otherness and toward de-
sire, actions and interactions take on the function of recognition requests:
affirming or revealing the presence of the particular traits which “motivate”
those actions. It is only through interactions with other characters and ob-
jects within the narrative that the character’s “identity” can be recognized
and thus confirmed. The narrative’s movement forward, defined as the char-
acter’s desire, is thus no less the paranoid and specular structure of the moi.
The identity of Antonio’s character can be defined through the struc-
ture of the narcissistic moi, which has important implications in the text’s
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La terra trema 97
denial of Symbolic identification. The movement of desire inscribed within

Antonio finds its source in the structure of the moi: mastery, constancy,
wholeness. In its articulation, however, the movement of desire is defined
through the structure of identification with the phallic injunction. The de-
sire to break free from exploitation, expressed within Antonio’s actions, is
directed toward differentiation and separation—the Symbolic and the je—
and not toward unity—the Imaginary and the moi. The relationship be-
tween Antonio and substitute objects of desire articulates this structure.
Although Antonio’s desire for freedom from exploitation is represented
through substitute objects of desire—the boat, Nedda, the thirty barrels of
anchovies—it is always directed past the objects themselves, thereby deny-
ing the kind of Imaginary jouissance that results from union with substitute
objects of desire.
Thus, when Antonio’s desire for mastery leads to possession of the boat,
the narration denies the final moment of possession— of obtaining the ob-
ject itself—by omitting the action from representation. Antonio’s posses-
sion must be inferred from the text; possession of the boat is not directly
depicted. Rather, what is depicted are the problems that result from the ac-
tion. Antonio is almost immediately ostracized by his neighbors at the point
where he tries to revel in the jouissance that the substitute object could afford
him. His indifference toward this separation from the momentary fulfill-
ment a substitute object affords him indicates that his desire is directed
elsewhere, beyond union with an object and toward separation from his
exploitation.
Possession of the boat leads to obtaining another substitute object of de-
sire, the barrels of anchovies, but here, too, the text denies Imaginary jouis-
sance with a substitute object. The anchovies are first introduced by the text
as so valuable an object as to be from providence. In the scene immediately
following, however, the text modifies this construction. Mara qualifies their
function as signifier when she says to Nicola: “Well, if luck helps us, Nicola,
and the salting goes well, we’ll soon remove that debt from the bank . . . We
have it here like a lump in our throat.” In Mara’s terms the anchovies do not
function as a desired object—an object that provides pleasure in itself.
Rather, the anchovies function as objects which can prevent pain and hard-
ship. Indeed, it is not even their possession which can provide pleasure and
joy for the family, but their dispossession—their ability to be sold and pay off
the debt—that allows them to provide pleasure by preventing the hardship
that debt could impose.
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In this manner the text already manifests a subversion of classical nar-

ration by problematizing the trajectory of desire toward substitute objects,
disallowing objects of desire the ability to provide the kind of Imaginary
jouissance characteristic of classical narrative. Within classical narrative, the
(mis)recognition at stake in the movement of desire is a denial that primary
identity is otherness: the structure of a few key signifiers, which are fixed, but
realign themselves in response to ever shifting relations. Thus, the structure
of the narcissistic moi (specifically mastery and constancy) finds its articula-
tion in the character-identity of Antonio, but also shifts to and from the
boat, the anchovies, Nedda, and retroactively—in a conflict between mas-
tery and constancy—Antonio’s clothing.
The analysis of character through the mode of recognition requests thus
takes as its object the anchoring points or primary signification of the text:
the “pure signifiers” which realign themselves through the movement of
narrative. In addition to locating these anchoring points, however, a Lacan-
ian method must delineate the misrecognition that is at stake there if it is
going to transcend the limitations of earlier Freudian models, the search
for the phallic symbol and the positing of “fixed” and objective meanings to
the text.
An analysis of misrecognition, however, necessarily inscribes the histor-
ical spectator as the site of misrecognition: a site that is constituted through
the role of desire. In this respect, a Lacanian analysis relativizes the relation-
ship between signification and meaning by introducing the role of desire.
Lacan argues that “desire is instituted within the Freudian world in which
our experience unfolds, it constitutes it, and at no point in time, not even in
the most insignificant of our maneuvers in this experience of ours, can it be
erased.” 31 Lacan’s position here is that desire overdetermines our structura-
tion of the world, how we come to symbolize and understand it. As a result,
meaning is grounded in, depends upon, the world as symbolized and the
subject’s individual position relative to that symbolization at the site of the
Other(A). Meaning, therefore, is both overdetermined by and a reflection of
desire.32
Analyzing the text for primary signification, therefore, is not so much a
reduction to some “final truth” as much as it is determining the site where
“meaning” provides the subject with unconscious recognition, the sense of
continuity that occurs when the Other(A) of the subject is confirmed. This
“sense of continuity,” however, is none other than the functioning of iden-
tity—the covering over of the subject’s alienation through identification.
The meaning of discourse—its truth value—is therefore bound up in its
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La terra trema 99
ability to confirm the identity of the subject: the fictions that cover over the
“truth” of their lack in being. Ragland-Sullivan thus concludes:
The fictions in an out-of-sight meaning system—the Other(A) — determine the

socioconventional meaning of contracts, pacts, and laws from culture to culture.
Meaning, then, cannot ultimately be identified with linguistic function only, for
it is inherently relative, relational, structural, and “self ”-referential. 33
Meaning and pleasure are subsequently fused together in subjects’ ability to

identify, to “misrecognize” their own “out-of-site meaning system”—their
own Other(A) —within discourse.
The significance of La terra trema thus lies in its subversion of the struc-
ture of classical narration by refusing to provide pleasure through identity
“misrecognition.” One of the first methods by which the film subverts the
classical narrative structure, as discussed earlier, is by withholding narrative.
It is not until the voice-over narration penetrates Antonio’s consciousness
and reveals his goal to be free from exploitation that a desire is specified that
initiates a forward trajectory that the exposition does not immediately trans-
form. As the plot advances, however, all of Antonio’s desires become denied
or displaced, in a refusal to constitute the kind of textual jouissance of clas-
sical narration.
This consistent denial of jouissance indicates that the desire organized
around Antonio’s character is not the desire for unity, but rather for separa-
tion (from the cultural system of exploitation). The structure of desire in-
scribed within his character is therefore defined through identification with
the phallic superego and the injunction to separation. The text marks this
structure by reversing the movement of desire at the moment where it
overtly withholds the construction of jouissance: in the love scene between
Nedda and Antonio discussed earlier. Here a reversal of expectations occurs.
The film starts out promising to be an epic saga— one man’s victory over
the forces that would oppose him—but denies this expectation halfway
into the story by reversing the structure of narrative itself. Rather than creat-
ing the movement of desire toward unity, the story is transformed into the
deterioration of desire and its disintegration— of the “branches falling away
from the tree.” In this manner the text subverts the structure of the classical
narrative as a means of articulating a Marxist rejection of the idea of personal
fulfillment through the acceptance of subjugation.
The primary role that the superego injunction for separation plays in the
structuring of identity therefore functions to articulate the fundamental
ideological position of the text: an opposition to the idea of individual fulfill-
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ment through subjugation to cultural repression. It serves as the anchoring

point for articulating the contradiction at stake in transforming the work-
ing-class struggle against exploitation into the structure of an individual de-
sire. Indeed, the narrative logic of La terra trema forecloses any possibility
for fulfillment in relationship to cultural formations organized around indi-
vidual exploitation—through either rejection or acceptance.
In addition, however, the primary role assigned to the separation injunc-
tion inscribes the primary role that separation formerly exercised in Italian
cultural formations—most notably evidenced in the inability of the state to
forge an Italian national identity. In the historical period of the film, region-
alism traditionally defined identity in the Italian subject much more than
nationality (as discussed in Chapter 1). Although economic structures and
to some extent political formations certainly contributed the most to the
separation into regionalism that defined cultural formations and individual
identities, language—the agent of separation—became the primary ground
for the expression of cultural division. Thus, ten years after the film Denis
Mack Smith still observed that “the natural speech of most Italians has been
dialect until quite recently, and most of the dozen or so dialects are largely
unintelligible outside their particular district.” 34
The central role that cultural separation through language occupies in the
Other(A) for the film’s contemporary audience is inscribed in the film’s use
of dialect. The unintelligibility of Sicilian dialect to Italian audiences con-
structs a separation between the identity of the film’s contemporary main-
stream audience—non-Sicilian—and the Sicilian identities constructed in
the film. Although the well-documented intent of such a stylistic strategy is
in the desire for greater realism, the effect for the film’s contemporary Italian
spectators was nonetheless a separation through language between character
and spectator that subtitles and the voice-over narration in Italian attempted
to bridge over. Furthermore, the effect of cultural separation through the
language of dialect is to place the trauma of the Fascist past between specta-
tor identification and character.
Separation between the film’s contemporary spectators and the charac-
ter’s use of Sicilian dialect is the result of Fascism’s failed attempt to impose
a national language. Indeed, language itself became one of the principal sites
of the Italian population’s rejection of Fascism’s attempt to forge a national
identity. Regional dialects prevailed despite the Fascist mandate for one com-
mon Italian language. In its use of language to reference the Fascist past, La
terra trema incorporates a pattern established by Rossellini’s Rome: Open
City, where, as Marcus notes, the use of dialect situates character with the
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La terra trema 101
people, while the use of nonregional Italian is used for social mobility under
Fascism.35
In this manner, Rome: Open City establishes dialect as a rejection of Fas-
cism. Pina, an anti-Fascist, speaks in dialectal cadences and colloquialisms.
Marina, however, speaks nonregional Italian, complying with the Fascist in-
junction in order to achieve social mobility. Unlike Rome: Open City, how-
ever, La terra trema uses dialect to create separation, not identification. The
use of dialect as a rejection of Fascism is reserved largely for the charac-
ters. The mainstream audience, dependent on the nonregional Italian of the
voice-over and subtitles, cannot share the same position.
The structural effect of the film’s use of dialect for its contemporary au-
dience was to create separation between the film’s Sicilian characters and the
mainstream Italian audiences (in addition to dividing spectatorship itself ).
The gap between the Sicilian (southern) characters and the mainstream au-
dience who depend on the “nonregional” Italian (northern) language trans-
forms the separation between North and South over the effect of the Fascist
past into the signifying practice of the film. As Geoffrey Nowell-Smith notes:
The southern question is a permanent running sore in the body politic of Italy . . .
No better served by Fascism than it had been by the previous regime, the South
did not even enjoy the benefits of the resistance in 1943 –5. In the place of a spon-
taneous political upsurge, the South experienced only invasion and the return of
banditry and the Mafia. The year 1945 found the South, and Sicily in particular,
in the same state of poverty, apathy, primitivism, and corruption which had
struck and horrified observers of the Southern Question at the time of unification
80 years before.36
A relationship to Fascism is thus profoundly different for Sicilian identity

than it is for northerners. To the South, Fascism was but one of many over-
lords who maintained the same system of disenfranchisement. To the North,
the Fascist past involved complex issues of complicity that needed to be
repressed.
A principal site for repression of the Fascist past became the Resistance.
The historicization of the Resistance allowed northern Italians to repress the
trauma of the Fascist past, and their complicity in it, by symbolically identi-
fying with the Resistance as a unified, popular movement which performed
the function of a cultural rite of purification. The translation of the Real
event and effects of the Resistance into the Symbolic thus becomes a critical
means for repressing Fascism.
The Resistance as unity, as popular movement, is constructed within the
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film—through its absence—as a strictly northern translation of events. The

site of this reference to the Resistance as structured absence is Antonio’s mili-
tary service. Although the film makes several references to this military ser-
vice, it denies any specific information about the nature of Antonio’s activi-
ties. There is no certainty as to whether he is a war veteran, whether he
fought for Fascism or against it. Rather, the film constructs an opposition to
northern translations of the Resistance with the signifier of southern partici-
pation in the military service. It then denies the spectator the ability to trans-
late, and thus contain, this opposition term symbolically. Antonio’s military
service is presented in the plot, but not translated within the operations of
the text. It is, rather, a diegetic encounter with the historical Real that is not
symbolized and, therefore, a site of anxiety over the historical past.
Indeed, what La terra trema emphasizes is the continuity between the
cultural repression and exploitation of the present and the Fascist past. The
mise-en-scène, with its location shooting and long-take style, emphasizes
the physical poverty, primitivism, and corruption which existed before Fas-
cism and continues to exist in its aftermath—unchanged. Antonio and his
brothers cleaning up on their return from fishing is one such example. The
men’s sharing of basins, beds, and bread is emphasized by a wider framing
that keeps them in groups. Further, the editing in the scene is incorporated
to show the mobilization of the household upon the return, emphasizing the
living condition of the characters over character itself. Further articulation
of the physical conditions is seen in the symmetry between the long takes
of the environment of Trezza, particularly the fariglioni that jut out from
the sea, and the physical setting, the houses and courtyards made of stone—
a symmetry which establishes the continuity between the rugged environ-
ment and the living conditions carved out of it.
The mise-en-scène’s most explicit articulation of the continuity with
the Fascist past, however, occurs in the co-op scene. During Antonio’s final
subjugation to the exploitation of the dealers, the plot situates Raimondo,
the senior and hence leader of the dealers, at a desk. On the wall behind
Raimondo is the not very faded imprint of Mussolini’s name. The use of a
close-up emphasizes an association between Raimondo and Mussolini, fo-
cusing on the contiguity between them to the exclusion of the rest of the
physical space within the scene.
In this manner the film emphasizes a continuity between the Fascist past
and contemporary exploitation through cultural repression. In the process
it exposes northern “translations” of the Resistance as means of repressing
the Fascist past, a repression that allows “Fascism” to continue under a new
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La terra trema 103
“face.” The alienating effect of this construction for its contemporary audi-
ence is the parallel the film makes between the Symbolic identification that
allows for the repression of complicity in the Fascist past and the Symbolic
identification that represses their complicity in the system of capitalist ex-
ploitation which organizes Italian culture. Indeed, as discussed previously,
the film’s ideological position rejects Symbolic acceptance of cultural re-
pression as a means toward fulfillment. Rather, the film constructs Symbolic
identification with the Law as subjugation to an Other’s desire at the loss of
one’s own. In its rejection of the system of exploitation that defeats Antonio,
the film rejects what is the very basis for its contemporary audience’s je iden-
tity. Thus, instead of confirming the identities of its contemporary audience,
thereby providing Imaginary pleasure, La terra trema articulates the very
alienation of its audience through their subjugation to the Law of culture.
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5
Bitter Rice
The Return of the
Repressed (Diva)
Viva le mondine!
graffito on the arched entrance to the rice farm
By 1948, the practice of Neorealism had reached certain aesthetic impasses,

as many critics have commented. The war and its aftermath had been sym-
bolized, a process which Neorealism itself contributed to, and with that sym-
bolization came a distancing characteristic of Symbolic operations.1 As the
two previous chapters demonstrate, Bicycle Thieves and La terra trema over-
came the “crisis of Neorealism,” and its “aesthetic impasse,” by shifting
Symbolic praxis from the war to the anxiety of postwar Italy. Traditional
scholarship, as well as contemporary criticism, situates Giuseppe De Santis’s
Bitter Rice as part of this aesthetic process, though more as an example
of Neorealist practice that appropriates other genres, especially from the
American cinema, like the detective and gangster.2
In her discussion of the film, however, Mira Liehm argues that Bitter Rice
“challenged the prudishness of the Neorealist period. Drawing heavily on
cinematic eroticism, it marked, above all, the return of the diva, the star, the
femme fatale.” 3 Using a Lacanian based model for ideological criticism, this
project is less concerned with categorization than it is with situating the Sym-
bolic praxis of the film as a response to, and participant in, the construction
of Italian postwar society. The problem with situating Bitter Rice as either
within or transgressing the boundaries of Neorealism is that it overshadows
what is more prominently occupying the strategies of representation in the
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film—the role of representation and containment of the feminine. In this

respect, Liehm’s argument that Bitter Rice is a kind of revisionist diva film
places ideological struggle back in the forefront of the film’s analysis.
In his characterization of the diva film and its central character, the
femme fatale, Pierre Leprohon argues: “She takes the form of a force against
which one is powerless, since she herself is dominated by something stronger
than herself . . . the man she touches and condemns becomes the victim of
a kind of holocaust.” 4 In addition to the diva’s destructiveness, however,
Liehm notes that the femme fatale almost always dies in the end.5
What traditional histories of the diva film do not explore, however, is the
relationship between these films and the conflicts within Italian culture over
the traditional role of women and the social changes afforded to them as a
result of increasing industrialization. The (relative) empowerment being af-
forded to women within Italian culture (the ability to earn wages, work in a
man’s world, use contraception) is translated into the diva films and figured
within the power that the femme fatale has over not only male characters but
the diegesis as well. The reactionary impulse of the films can be determined
in both the destructiveness of her being and actions and the necessity of her
own punishment, via death, that she must receive as a result of taking on
power and narrative control. In this manner, the diva films functioned to re-
contain the threat that women’s empowerment—and the modernization
that helped facilitate it—represented to traditional Italian culture.
In a similar manner, both the fall of Fascism and the extensive participa-
tion by women in the Resistance movement brought about new challenges
to the patriarchal roles assigned to women in the postwar era. This threat,
and its recontainment, is translated into the signifying practice of Bitter Rice.
Indeed, this strategy of containment is evidenced in the very opening of the
film. As the credits finish, the film dissolves to a close-up of a man in a suit
and tie, with a hat upon his head. The man looks directly into the camera
and begins speaking, describing the centuries-old tradition of rice produc-
tion in Italy. Both the specificity of the discourse and the camera’s mediation
exercise significant expositional functions.
The specific description of rice production in Italy that the man gives first
grounds the practice through an implied natural law: it is a centuries-old tra-
dition and it is done in India and China as well as in Italy. The function of
an appeal to natural law is demonstrated in the discourse that follows. The
man next describes the area where rice is produced, the provinces of Pavia,
Novara, and Vercelli, before introducing the object of the discourse and its
ideological operations: Italian rice production’s dependence on exploited fe-
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Bitter Rice 107
male labor. This is introduced with the speaker’s description that millions of
women have left an indelible mark on the region by planting and tending
rice for “four hundred, five hundred years.”
The repetition of the centuries-old tradition of female labor functions to
provide an ideological framework through which to evaluate the speaker’s
description. Indeed, his description of the work as hard and unchanging,
with legs in water, backs bent double, and the sun beating down on the wom-
en’s heads, demonstrates the necessity for a Symbolic operation to render
such conditions acceptable. Tradition, with its implication of natural law, is
established first in the discourse, assigning it a primacy which later repeti-
tion affirms and providing the Symbolic framework for interpreting the
conditions and exploitation that Italian rice production rests upon. The ne-
cessity of this ideological operation is confirmed by the conclusion of the
discourse, which states that only women can do this work because it needs
delicate and nimble hands, the same hands that patiently thread needles and
rock cradles.
That the ideological function of the discourse is to reinforce patriarchal
exploitation of women is most evident in this conclusion. By referencing
child rearing, the discourse of the speaker attempts to depict female labor in
the rice fields as a natural extension of gender differentiation based on the
separation of biological function. In this way, the pain and suffering of ex-
ploitation is as much the unquestioned fate of women as is the pain and suf-
fering of childbirth.
Absent any challenges to this discourse by other plot elements, the nar-
rator, who is diegetically placed as a radio commentator, functions as pri-
mary exposition: establishing the ideological framework through which the
story world is to be evaluated. Thus, although the focus of the discourse is
the conditions of the workers, the ideological function of the discourse is to
efface the exploitation within those conditions.
In addition to the ideological specificity of the exposition, the structural
relationship between exposition and actional dynamics in the opening also
establishes the subordination or avoidance of social conditions. This is evi-
denced in the opening when the commentator tells the audience that they
are going to hear from one of the many women traveling to work in the
fields. After introducing the woman, the commentator tells the audience that
“Severina Cerri will now give you her impressions of the needs and ideals of
these workers.” The narrative thus raises the expectation that it will focus on
the work conditions, here promising to get right to the heart of the matter:
the needs and ideals of the workers. Before Severina has a chance to express
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these needs and ideals, however, the camera comes to rest, in medium shot,
on two men waiting on the platform.
The shift between shot scales—from a long shot of groups to a medium
shot isolating two figures—signals the plot shift that is about to happen.
Rather than hearing Severina’s impressions, the plot focuses instead on the
conversation between the two men. Severina, standing in as a representative
for the workers, has been abandoned by the plot for the two men and their
impact on story events. Indeed, as the men converse it becomes apparent
that they are police officers waiting to capture a felon. Although the plot has
not shifted from exposition to actional dynamics, it has shifted within the
exposition toward specificity and action. Rather than establishing the setting
and environment of the story world, as it had been doing, the exposition
begins to establish a framework for the upcoming narrative action. Thus,
when the character Walter finally comes into frame wearing a long trench-
coat, pulling up his collar, and glancing nervously, his gestures can be read
within the specific context established by the exposition: he is the person
that the law enforcement officials are seeking to capture. Moreover, his ges-
tures signal that the specific plot action has commenced.
The shift between expositional modes indicates the manner in which the
social conditions of the workers are subordinate to the actional dynamics of
the text. When the exposition to establish the crime story begins, the social
conditions of the rice workers are abandoned, pushed into the background
where they function as setting: a context for dramatic action. Indeed, from
this point on, the crime drama, and then the moral drama which appropri-
ates it, takes control of the narrative, organizing the progression and the ele-
ments of plot to its conclusion/resolution.
The moment in which the crime drama becomes subordinate to the
moral drama occurs at the site/sight of the figure of Silvana. Early in the
crime drama, Silvana is introduced as the object of everyone’s gaze, dancing
enticingly to diegetic music. The camera does not remain on Silvana for an
extended period, however. Rather, it soon cuts to a medium shot of Walter
leading Francesca. The camera then cuts to the opposite angle in order to
show Silvana through Walter’s admiring gaze. The shot begins in medium
scale on Silvana’s dancing feet then slowly tilts up to reveal her legs (bare to
the knees, with her hand lifting her skirt), her torso, and then her chest.
When it finally reveals her smiling face, it quickly cuts back to the train,
showing in long shot the police officers continuing the pursuit of Walter and
Francesca.
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Bitter Rice 109
When Francesca informs Walter of their situation, however, he contin-

ues to direct his gaze at Silvana, refusing to avert it even momentarily to di-
rect Francesca as to their course of action. The relationship between the on-
going action, editing, and the direction of gazes functions to assign primacy
to the figure of Silvana and the subordination of narrative progression to
her. The introduction to her figure, though assigned to off-screen space, has
the effect of freezing Walter and Francesca in their actions, reducing them to
a gaze. As a result, narrative progression retards in order to reveal the object
of the gaze, freezing the actional dynamics for the sake of the camera’s in-
vestigation of the figure of Silvana. As Laura Mulvey describes:
the presence of woman is an indispensable element of spectacle in normal narra-

tive film yet her visual presence tends to work against the development of a story
line, to freeze the flow of action in moments of erotic contemplation.6
In this respect, the figure of Silvana functions as a threat to narrative pro-

gression, a threat which narrative must work to contain.
Even when the actional dynamics of the narrative displaces the figure of
Silvana, as when it takes up the pursuit of the police, it functions more to
articulate the primacy of her figure and its function as threat than it does
to subordinate it. Indeed, the reintroduction of the pursuit demonstrates,
through the figure of Walter, the subordination of action to the figure of
Silvana. Walter refuses to assign primacy to the pursuit by his unwillingness
to avert his attention from Silvana.
The tension between narrative spectacle and narrative progression is re-
solved when Walter joins the two arenas: stepping into the spectacle Silvana’s
figure creates in order to conceal his own specificity as figure within the die-
gesis. In joining the movement of narrative to the stasis of spectacle, Walter’s
character functions to contain the threat embodied in the figure of Silvana.
As spectacle, her figure moves against narrative, subordinating progression.
When Walter enters into the spectacle, the threat is contained by transform-
ing spectacle into narrative. This containment, however, does not subordi-
nate Silvana to the narrative, but rather establishes her as the narrative.
The dance with Walter, though a fluid harmony between characters, be-
comes an uneasy alternation of narrative control. Although Walter enters
into the dance as the figure of narrative control—the principal element of
narrative organization—he loses this position through the movement of the
dance. At the point where he loses his hat and is recognized, he loses control
of the narrative, which is now bound to Silvana. At this point plot elements
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are organized and presented in relation to her character. Indeed, Walter’s es-
cape is now a function of how it effects Silvana, playing into the intrigue and
excitement that she is looking for through American music and romance
magazines. Figured as she is in the narrative, the film becomes a narrative of
her figure.
What becomes significant for an analysis of the relationship between ex-
position of social conditions and actional dynamics is the manner in which
the narrative, structured around the containment of the figure of Silvana,
overdetermines this relationship. The first two abandonments of narrative
progression for exposition of social conditions demonstrate this point. The
first occurs while Francesca and Silvana are on a train headed for the rice
farm. While Silvana negotiates with labor contractors, Francesca goes to find
a place to sit down. As she does, the camera pans from her and toward the
other occupants of the car, revealing as it does the conditions of the car and
the women who ride in it. Unlike a regular passenger train, it has no cabins
or even seats. The first woman the camera comes upon is standing drinking
from a bottle; her working-class clothing is in stark contrast to Francesca’s
more refined white blouse. The camera next reveals one woman combing
another’s hair, followed by a woman sleeping on the floor of the car, and
then a woman tearing ravenously at a crust of bread with her teeth. Finally
the camera comes to rest upon another woman sitting on the floor, applying
makeup with the help of a small mirror. Unlike most of the other women,
however, she wears a dress that bears an economic affinity to Francesca. As
the camera comes to rest upon her, she looks up and suggests where Fran-
cesca should sit, commenting that the race horse who used the car before the
women had defecated in another area.
The significance of this sequence is the manner in which narrative pro-
gression has been subsumed into exposition on social conditions so soon af-
ter Silvana becomes the central organizing element of the narrative. It is as
if the figure of Silvana, so clearly defined by the text as erotic spectacle, can-
not hold the narrative. The degree to which narrative progression has been
subsumed is articulated in the soundtrack, which buries the last remnant of
Silvana’s presence, her off-screen voice, with the sound of women singing.
As the camera explores one aspect of the women’s conditions after another,
the narrative becomes further and further marginalized in its discourse: the
figure of Silvana—having herself disrupted narrative progression and so re-
cently come to assume narrative control—is unable to guarantee its re-
sumption around her.
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Fig ur e 7. A narrative about Silvana’s figure. The

film consistently subordinates its exposition of social
conditions to the figure of Silvana. co urt e s y o f
the m useum o f m odern art, film stills
archive.
This problematic position is articulated by the plot when narrative pro-

gression does resume around Silvana and her negotiations with the labor
contractors. Soon after the camera returns to them, Silvana—still speaking
to the men—strikes a pose reminiscent of the pinup genre: hand behind the
head, elbow up, knees bending. In itself, the gesture is antinarrative, both
in its intertextual complexity and in its tendency toward erotic spectacle.
Within the diegesis, however, the gesture functions to assist Silvana in get-
ting (seducing) the labor contractors to conform to her will, allowing her to
retake control of the narrative.
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It is precisely in this position of threatening narrative with erotic

spectacle—but nonetheless functioning as the point of narrative organiza-
tion and causality—that the figure of Silvana functions and thus overdeter-
mines the relationship between exposition and actional dynamics. Indeed,
the tentative ability of Silvana to hold the narrative earlier in this scene is not
present in later abandonments of narrative progression for social condi-
tions. Thus, when the film cuts from the journey on the train to the arrival
at the rice farm, the absence of Silvana and the film’s attention to the other
women function to describe the world within which Silvana is contained and
from which she desires to break free. The next abandonment of narrative
progression, introduced with the repetition of the film’s opening shot,
confirms this function.
In a manner similar to the film’s beginning, this sequence is introduced
with the opening of the dike. The camera cuts in order to follow the flow of
water into the field, revealing as it does the women stepping over the open-
ing in the dike. As the shot continues, it closely mimics the first shot of the
film, with its craning and panning. The function of this repetition is to re-
assert a claim that the film focuses on the social conditions of Italian rice pro-
duction. In this sense, the repetition could serve as a threat to the narrative;
however, plot events prior to the sequence function to contain this threat.
The maneuvering between Francesca and Silvana over possession of the
stolen necklace has established the rice fields as the arena where Francesca
must succeed if she is to recover the necklace from Silvana. The elaboration
of social conditions is subordinated to the ongoing action that will occur
within the space. The discourse on social conditions is thus background in-
formation rather than the focus of the plot. It functions to provide informa-
tion on character— describing Silvana’s conflict and desire to escape from
the confinement of those conditions. In this manner it marginalizes the
threat to narrative progression that detailed attention to social conditions
could entail.
Silvana’s desire to liberate herself from the social conditions the exposi-
tion establishes, however, bears only a cursory similarity to Bicycle Thieves,
where Antonio Ricci struggles to differentiate himself from the unemployed
masses. The major difference between the two is the manner in which the
figure of Silvana, its threat and function as spectacle, assures her differentia-
tion and control of narrative. Indeed, the manner in which this is assured
is articulated in the plot within this sequence. As the laborers take to the
field, Silvana hesitates, attempting to discover Francesca’s actions. Another
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Bitter Rice 113
worker, however, takes Silvana by the hand and leads her from the fore-
ground of the frame into the background, the space of the masses. At this
point, the plot abandons Silvana, emphasizing her merging into the masses,
by cutting to Francesca and the group of scab laborers she leads.
Silvana is able to differentiate herself and reassert narrative control, how-
ever, through her function as erotic spectacle. As the camera reveals the
women working, it comes to rest upon a skid used to ferry the rice plants to
them. Silvana enters the frame: first her legs, then up to her waist, pausing to
emphasize the cut of her shorts around the thighs. Next her chest enters the
frame, followed by her face. She offers to help the driver of the skid, who is
eager to accept, touching her body as he vocalizes his agreement. Silvana is
thus able to liberate herself from the line of rice planters—step out from the
undifferentiated masses and reassert narrative control—by using her body
as figure for desire.
The figure of Silvana as threat to narrative progression but site of nar-
rative organization and causality thus functions to overdetermine the re-
lationship between the plot’s exposition on social conditions and actional
dynamics. Abandonment of narrative progression for exposition of social
conditions does not function to create object loss precisely because the ex-
position is mediated through the figure of Silvana—the agent of narrative
causality and thus progression. As the plot advances toward its conflict and
final resolution, the alternation between exposition and actional dynamics
functions to organize the narrative as a morality tale around the contain-
ment of the figure of Silvana.
The historical specificity of the morality tale, and the place of the histori-
cal spectator within its operations, can be determined within the text’s focal-
ization. Indeed, what an analysis of the text’s focalization reveals is not an
ahistorical necessity for containment of erotic spectacle, but precisely the
historical necessity of the recontainment of the feminine within postwar
Italian culture. What becomes significant for an ideological analysis is the
manner in which the text attempts to procure identification with the neces-
sity of containing the figure of Silvana.
The bird’s-eye view that the plot establishes early on and maintains
throughout the film indicates an external focalization. What differentiates
Bitter Rice from Neorealist works examined here is the manner in which the
external focalization rarely, if ever, aligns itself with main character. In Rome:
Open City, for example, the external focalization aligns itself with main char-
acter(s) and against disruption (as discussed previously). In La terra trema,
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the external focalization aligns itself with the disruptive effects of the main
character on the diegetic world; and even in Bicycle Thieves, the external fo-
calization, while complex in its alignments, nevertheless aligns itself with the
main character’s desire. From the beginning, however, the external focaliza-
tion of Bitter Rice is organized around containing the threat that the femi-
nine constitutes, of which main character—the figure of Silvana—is the
most extreme example.
The opening of the film, as discussed previously, initiates this ideological
operation of containment through the figure of the radio announcer. The
historical specificity of his function, however, occurs precisely within his
historicizing. By emphasizing the history of female exploitation in Italian
rice production and grounding it within “natural” gender distinctions, the
discourse of the radio commentator effaces not only the exploitation itself,
but the disruptions in history that have threatened this process of exploita-
tion: industrialization, Fascism, and, more significantly, the fall of Fascism.
The historicizing of the radio commentator implies a continuity that effaces
not only the impact of the war and occupation on Italian rice production,
but also the opportunities for challenging traditional gender roles that the
crises brought on, especially in terms of the Italian Resistance.
Postwar culture became a significant battleground for patriarchy to re-
assert its claims over women. Having opened up venues previously closed to
them, it now had to find ways to coerce women back into traditional roles.
In the United States this was accomplished through the discourse of patrio-
tism and concern for veterans (and their joblessness). Postwar Italy, how-
ever, found itself in a far more vulnerable position with respect to reassert-
ing patriarchal claims. As discussed previously, patriarchy had been too
closely affiliated with Fascism and as a result suffered a loss of credibility.
This association too severely compromised the discourse of patriotism for it
to be an effective means of coercion.
The opening sequence of Bitter Rice, however, demonstrates an area of
Italian culture that could easily be coopted by patriarchy as an effective
means of containment: Roman Catholicism. Despite the official church hi-
erarchy’s collusion with Fascism, the church, for several reasons—not the
least of which was lower clergy involvement in the partisan movement—
managed to preserve its reputation and loyalty among Italians.7 The text’s
inscription of Roman Catholicism as a mode of containment of the feminine
can be determined at that point in the film just before Walter makes his en-
trance. As the film cuts from the two primary law enforcement officials to a
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Bitter Rice 115
group entering the platform, the most prominent figures are in the middle
ground, a young woman and a Catholic priest. They give their tickets to a
uniformed figure and then receive them back. As they walk on, they move
toward the camera and pause for the priest to instruct his charge to look af-
ter the others.
The significance of this small digression within the plot is the relationship
it constructs between the church and women. What the scene stresses (if not
also naturalizes) is the authority over feminine behavior invested in the
church. The priest is instructing the girl precisely about his expectations of
how she will conduct herself. Of particular significance here is the relative
age difference between the two figures, which is minimal. Both the priest and
the girl he instructs are young. His figure does not depend on the authority
of age (and its signification of wisdom, experience, or father-figure), but,
rather, solely on the authoritative position of the church within Italian cul-
ture. The “purity” of that authority, its ability to regulate the feminine, evi-
dences the avenue left to patriarchy to reassert itself and recontain the threat
of the feminine in Italian culture.
In addition, the priest’s lack of age further functions to repress history, an
important operation for the church to maintain its claim for moral author-
ity: he is of neither the age nor the hierarchy of Fascist collusion. His regu-
lation of the feminine, and implicit endorsement of female exploitation in
Italian rice production, lacks a signifier that can articulate the collusion be-
tween Fascism and the church, allowing for the figurement of the church’s
moral authority within Italian culture.
The priest thus functions as a diegetic insertion, a figuring, of the text’s
external focalization. Furthermore, the text’s ideological perspective is orga-
nized around the containment of the feminine in a manner consistent with,
if not reflective of, the position of the church and its prescription for women,
marriage, and the family. In their analysis of Casti Connubi, Pius XI’s papal
encyclical on marriage, Elizabeth Clark and Herbert Richardson assert that
“the church of the 1930’s portrayed itself as retaining the same ideals of sex-
ual morality upheld by the bishop of Hippo (St. Augustine) over 1500 years
before.” 8 Characterizing the church’s position toward women, Clark and
Richardson argue:
Although Pius was aware that women in contemporary society were permitted
more civil and legal rights than they had formerly enjoyed, he wished women to
use these in such a way that the traditional idea of the female role, especially the
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function of wife and mother, was not overturned. Women are reminded that, de-
spite the rights now granted to them, they are to be in “ready subjection” to the
chief of the family, the husband. Husbands and children are to be the center of
their existence.9
It is against this position that the characters of the film, but most visibly
Silvana, are evaluated. Indeed, it is against this ideology that Silvana is con-
structed and constitutes a disruptive threat, while Francesca achieves a mea-
sure of redemption through it.
The ideology of the church with respect to women, marriage, and the
family dominates the evaluative system of the film; however, it is largely a
presence made of absence. The most visible trace of this absence lies at the
site of the rice workers, whom the text clearly defines as outside the bounds
of the traditional extended or even nuclear family. Indeed, the implication of
the text is that the women who work the rice fields—who are in a position
to be exploited— do so because they have failed to secure for themselves, or
to submit to, the position defined for them as wife and mother. The scene of
the rice-workers’ disembarkation at the farm demonstrates this point.
After the trucks transporting the women to the farm arrive, a medium
shot shows Silvana and Francesca climbing down from the truck and exiting
the frame. When they leave the frame, the narrative shifts to the expositional
mode, providing character information about the rice-workers. The infor-
mation that is provided, however, centers around the sexuality of each char-
acter. The first woman is making a rendezvous that night with a soldier from
her village, because, as she tells another worker, forty days is a long time. The
next woman asserts that she has seen more soldiers than a retired general,
claiming to know their regiment by their smell.
Rather than breaking the bounds of Neorealist “prudishness,” however,
this frank revelation of unregulated feminine sexuality functions as an im-
plied causality, providing information on not only “who” works the fields
but also “why.” The next character introduction evidences this causality.
Commencing with a closer scale, this shot reveals two women climbing the
stairs to the dormitories. As the two women ascend, the first tells the second
that her boyfriend works on a nearby farm, where they met the previous
year. She ends by stating that soon they will be married and will be able to
spend all their time together. The relationship between the setting (the as-
cension of the stairs) and the hopeful discourse of the future bride articulates
the film’s position with respect to the exploitation of the rice-workers: it is
the fate of those who fail to secure a stable marriage situation (stable being
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Bitter Rice 117
defined as a husband who provides enough). The differentiation among the

rice-workers is then defined by their relationship to this position. The older
woman who brings her child is an example of what happens when a woman
marries a husband who does not provide enough. Another who suffers a
miscarriage functions as an example of the fate of a woman who fails to se-
cure marriage and conducts sexual relations outside marriage. Still others
function as examples of women who “play the field” rather than search for
the proper husband. The assertion at the end of the film that the wedding be-
fore the end-of-harvest party is a first-time event both confirms the upward
social mobility of the rice-workers through proper marriage and at the same
time concludes with the comparison that the others (with the exception of
Francesca) have simply failed to desire this course.
It is against this “ideal” of proper marriage that Silvana is constructed
and evaluated. Indeed, the cross-cutting between the medium shot of Silvana
and the bride and her wedding party toward the end of the film provides a
clear image to Silvana of the course that she has rejected. Prior to this scene,
however, Silvana’s rejection of proper marriage is articulated in her relation-
ship to Marco. The first site of this rejection occurs after Marco intercedes
in the riot she helps instigate against Francesca. After convincing Silvana to
return the stolen necklace to Francesca, Marco turns to leave. The film then
cuts to a close-up of Francesca, who, gazing upon the parting Marco, walks
slowly in the direction of his exit. As she does, she comes upon Silvana, who
is also directing her gaze at Marco. Slowly, however, Silvana turns her gaze
from Marco to Francesca and finally away from both the characters, turning
her back completely upon Marco.
The significance of this scene lies precisely within the character dynam-
ics, which function to establish the poles of the Symbolic framework through
which spectator identification will be directed. In his mediation between
Silvana and Francesca, Marco affirms the rejection of the artifice of wealth
(in the figure of the necklace), defining himself as being content with his po-
sition in the lower classes. In addition, he expresses a disaffection for and
disbelief in jails, especially as a recourse for Francesca, noting that prison
never saves anyone. Furthermore, Marco evidences a conviction of the in-
appropriateness of judging others.
The significance of these traits for the ideological operations of the text is
critical. Marco’s justification for rejecting prisons because they do not “save”
people begins to indicate the close alignment between his character and the
discourse of Christianity, which, in addition to emphasizing salvation, posits
both a rejection of judging others and an ambivalent attitude toward prison
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(especially because of its historic role as an instrument of the state for politi-
cal and economic repression).10 The construction of Marco’s character func-
tions as a critical site for the text’s attempt to secure Symbolic identification:
that place in the text where the historical spectator can (mis)recognize his/
her ideal ego.
This function can be determined by the manner in which the text “ideal-
izes” Marco. This idealization is evidenced in many ways, but certainly be-
gins with his physical distinction from the other men in the film; most of
them are haggard and worn, except for Walter, from whom Marco is distin-
guished by physical stature and prowess. This physical distinction is impor-
tant in Marco’s construction as a working-class character. The system has
not exhausted him: rather, his “abilities” allow him to transcend class limi-
tations and find contentment. Thus, for example, his duty in the army is in
a leadership role (though, significantly, not in the officer class), putting him
in a position to exercise some control. In addition, the text makes several at-
tempts to portray him as a man of intelligence and reason who can see the
poetic in life (evidenced by his inscription on the dormitory wall and his me-
diation in the conflict in the rice fields). Lastly, the text reasserts his con-
struction as a man of ability in several places, but clearly evidenced in the
ending, where he becomes the capable man of action.
Construction of class similarity between character and audience, coupled
with the idealization of character, functions within the text to secure the
Symbolic identification of the historical spectator. The affiliation of the char-
acter with the discourse of Christianity also contributes to the idealization of
the character, but performs another important ideological function. These
traits, aligned as they are with the discourse of Christianity, construct Marco
as the site for patriarchal recontainment of the feminine through the dis-
course of Roman Catholicism. The idealization of his character functions
to construct him as good object for feminine desire. Indeed, as the plot ad-
vances, it is the direction of desire toward Marco that provides salvation for
Francesca and destruction for Silvana, who rejected such a desire.
Silvana’s rejection of this desire, first introduced after the riot in the rice
fields (as discussed earlier), is confirmed in her later scenes with Marco. In
the first of these scenes, Marco explicitly asks her to join him and build a new
life together in South America. Although Silvana does not explicitly reject
the offer, the scene nonetheless evidences their opposite desires. Marco is
lured to South America because it is virgin land, Silvana to North America
because it is modernized, “electric,” as she describes it. In the later scene, this
opposition of desires leads to Silvana’s rejection of Marco when he attempts
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Bitter Rice 119
to link the resolution of Silvana’s problems with the stolen necklace to her
joining him. Here her rejection is explicitly stated. As she pushes Marco
away, she tells him to go away and never see her again. Later, as the two speak
to each other less emotionally, Silvana reiterates her lack of desire, claiming
that she is not the one for Marco and that they would have made a miserable
couple.
The relationship of each of the principal female characters to Marco,
and the Symbolic identification that is constructed around it, is thus a criti-
cal site for the text’s ideological operations. Although structured as the prin-
cipal character, Silvana is also structured as threat to the narrative, creating
disruption through her body as erotic object (it becomes the site of conflict
between Walter and Marco) and through her desires (her desire for the
necklace leads to the riot in the rice fields). The devaluation of Silvana’s de-
sires, their associations with fantasy, and their destructive trajectories add to
her function as narrative threat to prevent Symbolic identification with her
character.
The process of this devaluation of desire and its prevention of Symbolic
identification is crucial to the text’s translation of social conditions in its sig-
nifying practice. The anxiety created by patriarchy’s precarious position
within Italian culture as a result of its association with Fascism is translated
in the text at the site of Silvana, who, as erotic object, threatens and disrupts
narrative. Indeed, in those moments in the text where Silvana functions as
erotic object, she resists symbolization, withholding narrative progression
for a sustained gaze that denies temporality. It is only through defining her
desires, rather than her function as object of desire, that the text can sym-
bolize her character and thus provide traits that could facilitate Symbolic
identification.
The anxiety that Silvana represents, however, is withheld from the struc-
ture of the text through the prevention of Symbolic identification with her
character. The threat and the danger that her desires represent are not au-
thorized by the text. Devalued, they are not taken up by the spectator, who
then avoids the necessity of decathexis or withdrawal of desire resulting from
any loss of object or desire. Indeed, because the text attempts to prevent
identification with Silvana, it disallows identification with either her frustra-
tion or the anxiety that results from the impossibility of her desires. Thus, al-
though anxiety is present within the diegesis itself, it is absent from the sig-
nifying structure of the text itself.
Rather than identification with anxiety, the Symbolic system of the text
authorizes feminine desire and secures Symbolic identification at the site
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of Francesca. Although the text creates some obstacles to Symbolic identi-

fication with Francesca—most notably her criminal past—it nevertheless
constructs her character in a manner which secures this process. By con-
structing her character as a maid, it situates Francesca in the working class,
promoting a similarity between her and a large segment of the historical au-
dience. Furthermore, like Marco, she has seen through the false promise of
material wealth and desires something else (as elaborated in her scene with
Silvana where she tells of her past). Also like Marco, she demonstrates lead-
ership abilities and takes on the role of leader in several places in the text, as-
sociating her character with the structure of control.
The obstacle to Symbolic identification with these traits, her criminal
past, is overcome through her association with the Christian theme of the re-
demption of the fallen woman. This association is facilitated through cos-
tume at those points in the film where Francesca is the only character to
cover her head with a white scarf in a manner referencing classical Madonna
iconography. The association is further advanced through her abandonment
of Walter and union with Marco, with whom she can rebuild her life.
The redemption of Francesca thus exercises a significant function in the
ideological operation of the text. By securing Symbolic identification with
Francesca, the text seeks to direct desire toward the containment of the fem-
inine within the traditional gender roles assigned through marriage. In this
manner, the text directs identification away from the liberation of feminine
desire and the threat it represents to traditional patriarchal culture and to-
ward the recontainment of feminine desire. The function of the text’s exter-
nal focalization—its organization and articulation of certain doctrinal and
ideological norms of Roman Catholicism—thus lies within its authoriza-
tion of a Symbolic identification with feminine containment and its deval-
uation of feminine desire.
Feminine desire, if not feminine sexuality itself, is thus structured within
the text as a primary signifier: organizing and overdetermining the function
of the signifying elements which comprise the text. It is thus at the site of the
text’s representation (or crisis of representation) of feminine desire and sex-
uality that the historical specificity of social conditions is translated into the
signifying practice of the text. Indeed, as Lacan’s discussion of feminine sex-
uality demonstrates, the conflict within the text and the threat that Silvana
comes to constitute stem from a crisis of representation—the limits, pre-
cisely, of patriarchal modes of representation.
In his seminar of 1972 –1973, Lacan argues that
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Fig ur e 8. Francesca’s status as a fallen woman is transformed through her union

with Marco. courtesy of the museum of modern art , film s tills
archive.
when any speaking being . . . lines up under the banner of women it is by being
constituted as not all that they are placed within the phallic function. It is this that
defines the . . . the what? the woman precisely, except that THE woman can only
be written with THE crossed through . . . There is no such thing as THE woman
since of her essence . . . she is not all.11
Lacan’s insistence on the essence of woman as “not all,” with its implication
that there is no such thing as “THE ” woman, results from his theory of the
phallus (which he makes clear is not to be equated with the literal male or-
gan) and the phallic function.12 What Lacan describes in his theory is that
the phallus is a signifier or, rather, the signifier which introduces and an-
chors the Symbolic function. The phallus, as such, comes to occupy a posi-
tion of both privilege and wholeness.13 The desire to possess the phallus is
thus the desire for wholeness, which, he argues, is impossible, given the sub-
ject’s irreducible alienation. Lacan thus asserts that “man cannot aim at be-
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ing whole . . . once the play of displacement and condensation . . . marks his
relation as subject to the signifier.” 14
What Lacan emphasizes in delineating the alienation of the subject and
the fundamental “lack in being” is the lack of gender specificity in the pro-
cess. For Lacan, gender identity is a function of cultural myths that the sub-
ject will come to identify and negotiate upon his/her subjugation to the
Name of the Father and the Symbolic order.15 Included in these myths in
patriarchal culture is that the male possesses the phallus. Lacan insists, how-
ever, that this myth— constructed around a signifier— depends on the
woman for its support (since symbols function as a result of the opposition
between signifiers and not through a relationship between the signifier and
the signified).16 This is the position that Mulvey draws upon in her seminal
article “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” when she argues: “The para-
dox of phallocentrism in all its manifestations is that it depends on the im-
age of the castrated woman to give order and meaning to its world. An idea
of woman stands as lynch pin to the system . . .” 17
What Lacan, and later Mulvey, argues is that, under patriarchal Symbolic
orders, woman is defined as “not man” or in Lacan’s terms as “not all” (since
the man, believing he possesses the phallus, possesses “all”). Because she
does not possess the phallus, she possesses no thing (nothing), which is then
projected onto her anatomy. It is for this reason that Lacan argues: “Of all
the signifiers this is the signifier for which there is no signified . . .” 18 Thus,
when he asserts that there is no such thing as “THE ” woman, it is a rhetori-
cal position to illustrate the manner in which, under patriarchal modes of
representation, woman is only defined in relation (opposition) to man. With
no meaning outside that opposition, there is no such “thing” as woman, only
what Lacan describes as an “empty set” (where the place of meaning should
reside) that is assigned to the female gender.19 Since woman is assigned the
place of “not all,” the “empty set”—the place that she comes to occupy—is
the place of male fantasy: fantasies constructed around difference and loss.
It is for this reason that Lacan argues that man takes on the woman in a
fantasy meant to disavow loss: “it is the man . . . who takes on the woman, or
who can believe he takes her on . . . Except that what he takes on is the cause
of his desire, the cause that I have designated the object a.” 20 Furthermore, he
asserts that this Imaginary function that woman fulfills is anchored in the
Symbolic at the site of the Other(A). For Lacan, the Imaginary unity the
male desires, projected onto the image of woman, is validated in the Sym-
bolic by her designation as the place of the Other—the place of truth. Thus
he argues: “By her being in the sexual relation radically Other, in relation to
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Bitter Rice 123
what can be said of the unconscious, the woman is that which relates to this
Other . . .” 21
For Lacan, then, there is nothing inherent about sexuality, masculine or
feminine, no “reduction to biological factors,” 22 but rather an overlaying of
the Symbolic—a validation of Imaginary unity— onto the primary alien-
ation in being. The Symbolic as place of “truth” is thus complicit in anchor-
ing woman to a position of fantasy and male wholeness. As Lacan argues:
That the symbolic is the support of that which was made into God, is beyond
doubt. That the imaginary is supported by the reflection of like to like, is certain.
And yet the object a has come to be confused with the S(O) . . . and it has done so
under pressure of the function of being. It is here that a rupture or severance is
still needed.23
Lacan’s argument thus concludes that the oppression of women, their reduc-
tion to a position of object and support of the male, results from Symbolic
interpretation and projection onto the biological.
The primary signifiers which organize the narrative trajectory of Bitter
Rice function to validate this Symbolic collusion of the place of the woman.
Silvana, introduced as erotic object, remains a threat to narrative stability
precisely because she resists the position assigned to her through male fan-
tasies of wholeness, articulated through the character of Marco. To accept
Marco’s offer—his fantasy—is to accept a position that is limited to her
support of him and his desire. There is no indication of her ability to possess
any meaning beyond this function. The position thus constructed confirms
Mulvey’s conclusion that once the woman subjects herself to (and fulfills)
the position laid out for her by patriarchy, “her meaning in the process is at
an end, it does not last into the world of law and language.” 24
The impossibility of woman taking on meaning independent of the male
is translated into the film by the options that are afforded to Silvana within
her moral struggle. While Marco represents the moral center to which she
should aspire, the position she would occupy there is the position of non-
meaning and hence a position she resists. The alternative for Silvana, how-
ever, offers a rejection of a moral position, but still relegates her to a position
of nonmeaning. By aligning herself with Walter, Silvana attempts to pursue
her desire for escape from a life of working-class poverty and exploitation.
In the process, however, she must subject herself to his desires and eventu-
ally come to occupy the position of nonmeaning. Silvana is only an object
for Walter’s desires, sexual and otherwise.
This is articulated in the text during the confrontation in the butcher’s
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shop. When Marco appeals to Silvana to abandon Walter, Walter attempts

to reduce Silvana’s options as a subjection to one male or another, claiming:
“She loves me. She does only what I want.” The editing, which includes re-
action shots of Silvana, works to convey her anguish in her subjugation to an
untenable position. What the plot makes clear, however, is that in the end
she is reduced to a pawn that Walter has used in his plans to steal the rice.
Silvana’s suicide, coded over by the text as an extreme moral repulsion
against her actions, nonetheless articulates the logic within the position that
the Symbolic order has defined for the woman: the place of “not all,” “the
empty set,” the “zero.” Silvana’s suicide, signifying the loss of subjecthood,
conveys the emptiness of the position—the lack of meaning and individual
subjectivity—imposed on her by patriarchy. The ideological operations of
the text thus function to re-cover the very limitations imposed by patriarchy
that it articulates. This ideological function is accomplished through two
major trajectories, each of which is closely bound to the identificatory pro-
cesses discussed earlier.
The first of these ideological operations is the sanctioning of the posi-
tion of woman under the Symbolic of patriarchy. This sanctioning occurs
through the character of Francesca, who finds jouissance by acceding to
Marco’s desire. His final acceptance of Francesca in the butcher shop allows
her to become fulfilled (however temporarily), thus providing her with the
courage to face down Walter and Silvana. The scene thus articulates the jouis-
sance that Francesca has found in becoming the object of Marco’s desire—
the support for a wholeness in being that he originally sought from Silvana
as erotic object, but transferred to Francesca upon recognizing her virtue.
The film’s ending, showing Francesca and Marco walking off together,
draws upon the logic of narrative closure to suggest the permanence of their
union and the fulfillment that Francesca finds in taking up her position of
subjugation. In this manner it attempts to sanction the position assigned to
women under the Symbolic of patriarchy as the place of wholeness and
fulfillment, denying the subjugation and lack of meaning that such a posi-
tion imposes.
In addition to sanctioning the position defined for women under patri-
archy, the film re-covers the position that it has exposed by the manner in
which it manages the threat of Silvana’s desire. In justifying her involvement
with Walter to Francesca, Silvana states: “We’re marrying. I told you I was
sick of poverty.” By defining Silvana’s desire past Walter and toward some-
thing more, or in excess of Walter himself, the text maintains the structure
of her desire that it has constructed throughout. Silvana’s desire is consis-
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Bitter Rice 125
tently defined as a desire to transcend her class and the position assigned to
her. She is not content with her economic status, nor with being an object
for male desire. The text thus defines Silvana’s desire through the structure
of what Lacan argues is a jouissance “beyond the phallus.” 25
In his discussion of feminine subjectivity, Lacan argues that if woman is
excluded by the Symbolic order, assigned to the position of nonmeaning,
she nonetheless possesses “in relation to what the phallic function designates
as jouissance, a supplementary jouissance.” 26 Lacan’s designation of a jouis-
sance that is beyond the phallus attempts to reclaim what is beyond the con-
straint of the Symbolic, to reclaim the meaning outside of language that ex-
ists in the Real. His reference to this beyond as mystical (filled as it is with
cautions) rearticulates his position that the Symbolic imposes its own reality
on existence, in a sense, making its own world. As Lacan argues:
The symbolic order from the first takes on its universal character . . . As soon as
the symbol arrives, there is a universe of symbols . . . however small the number
of symbols which you might conceive of as constituting the emergence of the
symbolic function as such in human life, they imply the totality of everything
which is human. Everything is ordered in accordance with the symbols which
have emerged . . . Everything that is human has to be ordained within a universe
constituted by the symbolic function.27
Thus, when Lacan refers to the woman’s jouissance beyond the phallus, he is
describing the meaning of woman that exists in the Real, but beyond the
nonmeaning which the patriarchal Symbolic imposes upon her.
The mystical character of this jouissance lies in its irretrievability into lan-
guage and, subsequently, knowledge, since to do so would be to impose the
very limitations of the Symbolic that it transcends. It is for this reason that
Lacan argues that “there must be a jouissance which goes beyond. That is
what we call a mystic . . . It is clear that the essential testimony of the mystics
is that they are experiencing it but know nothing about it.” 28 For Lacan, the
“truth” of the woman, and the jouissance specific for her, lies only beyond
the dynamic of a fundamental alienation that language, the Symbolic, and
the existence it imposes attempt to re-cover. It is for this reason that Lacan
concludes: “might not this jouissance which one experiences and knows
nothing of, be that which puts us on the path of ex-istence?” 29
Clearly the most challenging aspect of this jouissance for the ideological
limitations that the Symbolic imposes on the woman is the idea of a truth—
or meaning—that exists beyond the Symbolic and language. Bitter Rice con-
structs such a challenge around Silvana’s desires, articulating an exposure
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of the ideological limitations imposed by the Symbolic order of patriarchy

that the text must work to re-cover. The manner in which the text accom-
plishes this is through the process of linking Silvana’s desires to fantasy.
The scene on the train with Francesca articulates this construction. When
Francesca first comes upon Silvana, the latter is hiding behind a copy of
Grand Hotel magazine. As the two converse Silvana asserts to Francesca:
“These magazines don’t invent stories. They’re true!” Later, she sits in fasci-
nation as Francesca tells her about the life she led as a maid in the world of
wealth, confirming to Silvana that “it happens to all sorts.”
What the text makes clear, however, is precisely that “these stories” are
not true. The lack of value of the stolen necklace—it is fake— does more
than function as a convenient plot device. Rather, it works against myths
surrounding the glamour associated with jewel theft (as evidenced, for ex-
ample, in Ernst Lubitsch’s 1935 film Desire). The necklace is false as a means
of asserting that the beliefs that people like Silvana construct around them
are false as well, belonging to the world of appearance and fantasy.
The glamour that Silvana associates with the world of Grand Hotels and
stolen jewelry is countered in the film by a more involved and far less elegant
image of theft: the stealing of the rice harvest. As opposed to Silvana’s fan-
tasy, the film constructs the image of thievery as destructive, toilsome, and
firmly rooted in the environs of the working class rather than the salons of
the upper class. The film thus affirms (and thereby rejects) Silvana’s belief as
fantasy by offering instead a harsher view of “reality.”
The insistence on Silvana’s association with fantasy is articulated in the
text in the dormitory scene between Francesca and Silvana after the disrup-
tion in the rice fields. As Francesca tells about her experiences in the world
of the upper class, Silvana listens with interest and attentiveness. The per-
spective of Francesca’s discourse, however, is the emptiness and illusory na-
ture of that world, a point which Silvana, too intent on confirming the “re-
ality” of her fantasies, fails to grasp.
Silvana’s desires for a jouissance beyond the phallus are thus bound by the
text to the realm of fantasy and nonreality. In this manner the text re-covers
the ideology it has exposed and articulated by assigning the Real beyond the
Symbolic (articulated through Silvana’s desires) to the arena of fantasy and
affirming the universe of the Symbolic as reality and wholeness (through the
character of Francesca). It thus binds identification with jouissance beyond
the phallus to fantasy and death and thus forecloses any possibility of escap-
ing the limitations imposed by the Symbolic.
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6
Senso
Degenerate
Melodrama?
. . . a moth or a fly at the window. Do you not notice?

Lt. Franz Mahler
In 1954 Luchino Visconti’s Senso splashed across the screens of Italian movie
theaters in vivid Technicolor. It was an Italian film made in color, a stylistic
choice that dramatically announced the death of Neorealism. A cinema that
had been born in the everyday poverty of the working and middle classes of
Italian society had now graduated to the world of international financing.
Not coincidentally, then, Senso reversed several Neorealist practices seen in
Visconti’s La terra trema as well as De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves. De Sica rejected
an offer of American financing for the latter film that was tied to the con-
dition of casting Cary Grant in the leading role. In making Senso, however,
Visconti obtained international financing and cast Farley Granger as the
leading male.1 Furthermore, where Bicycle Thieves takes place on the streets
of contemporary Rome, focusing on the plight of an ordinary working-class
family, Senso is set as a costume drama in the houses and villas of the ruling
class in Venice during the Risorgimento. The contemporary settings and
working-class characters so vital to Neorealist practice were abandoned for
historical melodrama of the ruling class.
What seems like such a thorough departure from Neorealist norms
by one of its leading practitioners created much debate. Critics across the
ideological and political spectrum bemoaned or praised Visconti’s stylistic
06-T0618 8/26/99 3:16 PM Page 128
choices, yet each camp grounded its conclusions using Neorealism as the
standard by which Senso was judged.2 At the time of Senso’s release, however,
Neorealism was almost ten years old. The sense of immediacy so crucial to
its aesthetic had already undergone one evolution, from representing the
anxiety of the war, occupation, and the fall of Fascism (as in Rome: Open
City) to representing the anxiety of living in postwar reconstruction (as in
Bicycle Thieves and La terra trema). By 1954, however, even the postwar era
was no longer an immediate experience. The referendum on the monarchy
had been decided eight years previously, with Alcide De Gaspari’s successful
elimination of the left from the government occurring only one year later, a
move Paul Ginsborg describes as the end of anti-Fascist coalition govern-
ment.3 In its place came the majority of the right which would stabilize and
stagnate the political landscape of the country and the government itself.
Indeed, as Elisa Carrillo notes, “Between 1953 and 1958 immobilism became
the dominant feature of Italy’s Christian Democratic governments.” 4
By 1954, then, the immediacy of postwar experience— of life under a
culture in transition—had given way to an established politics of parlia-
mentary government, which, though internally volatile, managed to close
off any possibility for political transformation. The need for a Neorealist
cinema to symbolize and recontain the anxiety of a culture caught in the
balance and threatened by instability had, by this time, declined signifi-
cantly. Senso’s departure from or betrayal of Neorealism should thus be read
as a specific response to the changing conditions that Neorealist practice or-
ganized itself around— conditions which no longer existed by the time of
Senso’s production.
The significance of a film like Senso—which so clearly holds complex re-
lationships to an established signifying practice—for a text-based psycho-
analytic ideological critique is the reexamination of the relationship between
text and culture. Rather than taking a determinist approach, which in some
ways sees the text as a reflection or symptomatic of the culture under which
it is produced, a Lacanian analysis recontextualizes the relationship dialecti-
cally: as a specific signifying encounter with the social symbolic system that
both produces and is produced by the text.
In this respect, Senso can be read as an attempt to transform Neorealism
again, to reconstitute a signifying system of immediacy and anxiety within a
culture lacking both. This lack within culture is articulated within the film’s
signifying practice as a dialectic between immediacy and distance. Indeed,
for the contemporary audience this dialectic is established within the very
opening, as the use of Technicolor immediately asserts the film’s distance
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Senso 129
and aesthetic difference from standard Neorealist practice. The desperate fi-
nancing, low budget, and search for film stock which characterized Rome:
Open City are immediately exorcised by Senso’s use of color, which demands,
at the very least, a large budget.5
Distance and immediacy are further articulated by the very structure
of the plot, where the relationship between exposition and actional dynam-
ics advances the plot, but at the same time functions to distance the narra-
tive conflict. Both the opening of the film—which establishes this relation-
ship—and the credit sequence which precedes it articulate this process, as
they share the same diegetic space: a scene from Giuseppe Verdi’s Il trovatore,
finishing with Manrico’s aria “Di quella pira.” As Manrico raises his sword
and moves downstage to the footlights, the camera follows then continues,
revealing first the orchestra then the audience—largely made up of Austrian
soldiers— on the main floor.
Later, the film cuts to a medium shot of a man in tuxedo and top hat,
walking among Austrian soldiers in their dress uniforms. As in many expo-
sitional modes, the shift from the establishing long shots to the more exclu-
sive medium shots signals a shift toward specificity. The character’s actions
confirm this specificity: he looks over his surroundings uncomfortably, sug-
gesting a degree of uncertainty and a lack of the habitual and recurring (if
not a definite shift itself from the exposition to the actional dynamics of the
plot). The next two shots confirm that this shift has taken place. The first is
a medium shot of the upper tier, rendering its occupants in more detail than
the earlier long shot. This quickly gives way, however, to the opposite angle,
showing the backs of the people as a man in black cape and top hat taps on
the shoulder of a man facing the performance. The other man puts his hand
behind his back and receives a stack of handbills. The handbills are soon
passed through the crowd to the front of the box as ladies begin to take tri-
colored bouquets of flowers (in the Italian nationalist colors of red, white,
and green) out from beneath their dresses.
Despite the smooth efficiency with which the actions are taken, the open-
ing clearly shifts between expositional modes and actional dynamics. The
intertitle which follows the credits establishes the time of the story, while the
slow and elaborate panning of the space of the theater functions to establish
the space of the action. The clandestine nature of the actions defines them as
out of the bounds of normal opera spectatorship, thereby confirming their
specificity and function as actional dynamics.
That the actions involved in the handbills and tricolored flowers function
within the plot’s actional dynamics is further confirmed as the plot advances.
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As the scene from Il trovatore ends, the audience in the theater applauds en-
thusiastically. This enthusiasm, however, is transformed into political pro-
test when a woman in the upper tier shouts, “Foreigners out of Italy,” fol-
lowed by tricolored bouquets and handbills (printed on red, green, or white
paper) showering the largely Austrian audience below. Shouts of “Long live
Italy” and other political /patriotic slogans are heard as the entire theater be-
comes engulfed in political demonstration.
The transformation of the crowd’s enthusiasm into political action begins
to problematize the relationship between the exposition and the actional dy-
namics. The demonstration takes not only its cue from the opera but, as the
scene makes clear, its inspiration as well. Thus, the function of establishing
what Millicent Marcus has described as a “spectacle within a spectacle” is
to transform the exposition into the actional dynamics itself, remaking the
space of allegory into action.6
This transformation, however, marks a significant reversal of Neorealist
practice. In La terra trema (as discussed earlier) the exposition functions to
transform actional dynamics into the exposition itself, inscribing the struc-
ture of anxiety within the plot. In Senso, however, the opposite occurs, as ac-
tional dynamics, however retroactively, transforms the exposition (here the
initial setting) into the specificity of the plot action. In this reversal, the text
marks the absence of anxiety from the sphere of culture through its absence
in the structure of the text.
The transformation of exposition into actional dynamics functions in-
stead within the immediacy-distance dialectic that structures the signifying
system of the film. By transforming the exposition into actional dynamics,
the plot combines the space of allegory with the space of action, sweeping
all the elements of the story world into revolutionary struggle. The exposi-
tion’s transformation is evidenced in the undermining of narrative contain-
ment characteristic of its function. Without the expositional function, the
narrative erupts into a massive spectacle, subsuming all of the diegetic space
within its sphere and thus producing a sense of immediacy to the scene.
The plot’s first use of shot/reverse-shot, however, signals a return toward
narrative containment and a movement away from political spectacle by
subsuming both the crowd and the space of the theater into individual char-
acters that can support narrative identification. This movement occurs when
Livia Serpeiri, who will become the main character, looks out into the pan-
demonium and spots her cousin Roberto Ussoni on the floor of the audito-
rium. Roberto sees her gaze and returns it, throwing her a bouquet of tri-
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Senso 131
colored flowers. Livia’s gesture of kissing the bouquet after she catches it
functions to suggest a kind of romantic interest between the couple—a sug-
gestion that the narrative will leave suspended (and permanently) by the in-
troduction of Franz Mahler.
The introduction of Mahler, and its suspension of the Livia-Roberto in-
terest, reestablishes a distance between the spectator and the text, asserting
the dialectic of the film once again. In addition to suspending the interaction
between Livia and Roberto, however, Franz offers an interpretation of the
outburst, commenting to his fellow Austrians: “This is the kind of war that
suits the Italians: showers of confetti to the sound of mandolin.” Consistent
with the structure of the dialectic, however, Franz’s comment effects both
immediacy and distance in its function in the text. Although it functions to
suspend interest in Livia and Roberto, it provides a clear allusion to the re-
lationship between historical representation and its contemporary context,
referencing ethnic prejudices and accusations whose power to incite is pos-
sible only with the weight of history and its contemporary parallels.
Franz is a member of the Austrian military, which currently occupies the
Veneto area of Italy. In their diegetic context, his disparaging comments on
the fighting ability of the Italians carry the judgment of centuries of the oc-
cupation of Italy by foreign armies. The significance of the statement, how-
ever, is in the extradiegetic parallels to the film’s contemporary context. The
Austrian attitude that Italians are more inclined to the spectacle rather than
to the substance of fighting finds its support in a contemporary parallel to
the figure of Mussolini and his infamous threat of 8 million bayonets as a
metaphor for military prowess. The enormous failures of the Italian military
in the African wars of colonialism and in World War II demonstrated that
Mussolini’s threat was only a part of his posturing, the bella figura which
lacked substance. Franz’s contempt for Italian fighting ability, coming as it
does from a Germanic figure, thus references Nazi Germany’s attitude to-
ward Italy, linking past myths of Italian fighting ability to more contempo-
rary accusations and, in the process, figuring the relationship between the
film’s history and its present context.
Franz’s observation, however, also functions to inscribe distance within
the structure of the plot. To begin with, his observation attempts to symbol-
ize, and therefore contain, both the political and narrative threat engendered
in the spectacle through the Symbolic function—which, as Lacan argues,
enforces “the distance of a certain prescribed order.” 7 Indeed, despite the
fact that Franz’s comment causes an outburst from Ussoni, its function as
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Symbolic containment is evidenced diegetically by the manner in which the

demonstration draws to a close. What was a pluralistic event, a mass demon-
stration by the Italians against their Austrian occupiers, becomes contained
by its transformation into the specifics of individual action (Ussoni’s chal-
lenge to Mahler).
Here, too, the exposition functions to establish distance. Although the ef-
fect of Mahler’s statement on Ussoni is rendered in medium close-up, the
actual confrontation with Ussoni’s challenge is rendered in long shot. As
Mahler walks away from the challenge, the camera abandons both of them
to pan up to Livia and her reactions to the event. Although the camera ac-
tion functions to once again link the spectacle of the theater to the audience
itself, this abandonment of the conflict between Ussoni and Mahler further
serves to both foreground and foreshadow the plot’s abandonment of this
specific conflict as the principal narrative conflict.
Indeed, the camera soon cuts to a reverse angle of Livia, abandoning both
Mahler and Ussoni entirely to concentrate on her preparations before she
enters into the space of action. As she walks out into the foyer her own voice
serves as voice-over, commenting on the narrative action as past events.
With the voice-over, the plot confirms that the conflict between Ussoni and
Mahler is not primary, but, rather, is subordinated to the figure of Livia. Its
function is therefore limited to the effect it has on her future actions. The ar-
ticulation of plot thus establishes distance within the immediacy of action by
retroactively assigning the actions and disruptions of the opening scene to a
subordinate position within the narrative. Revolutionary struggle, even as
figured within the characters of Roberto and Franz, functions only as an
elaborate pretext for the principal narrative interest: the melodrama center-
ing around Livia.
This subordination is foregrounded diegetically when Livia comments to
Mahler: “I don’t care for it [opera] offstage, or for people who act like melo-
dramatic heroes.” The incongruity between Livia’s own actions and her
statement, however, draws attention to the manner in which not only revo-
lutionary struggle (and its repression) but history itself is subordinated to
Livia’s melodrama or what Geoffrey Nowell-Smith describes as “degenerate
melodrama.” 8
In his work on defining the melodramatic mode, Peter Brooks ar-
gues: “The expressive means of melodrama are all predicated on this sub-
ject: they correspond to the struggle toward recognition of the sign of virtue
and innocence.” 9 For Brooks, then, the melodramatic mode is characterized
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Senso 133
by the manner in which narrative is organized around the sign of virtue and
its struggle toward recognition. In this respect, Nowell-Smith’s descrip-
tion of Senso as degenerate melodrama accurately characterizes the film’s
narrative organization. Rather than depicting the struggle toward virtue,
narrative progression in Senso functions in opposition: as Livia’s virtue de-
grades further with the plot’s advance. In a manner not unlike Visconti’s ear-
lier film La terra trema, Senso appropriates a particular narrative form (melo-
drama) only to reverse its structure as a means of establishing a distanced
spectatorship.
This reversal is evidenced in the lack of conflict or moral struggle in
Livia’s movement toward romantic liaison. There is a pronounced lack of
clear motivation within the scene where Franz and Livia spend the night to-
gether walking the streets of Venice. Earlier in the scene, Livia dismisses
Franz and attempts to walk away from him. When he insistently follows, she
continues to reject him. It is only through a deus ex machina (Livia comes
upon a dead Austrian soldier in the canal) that a space is opened up for Livia
to accept Franz’s company, if not Franz himself. As Marcus notes, the func-
tion of this deus ex machina is to advance the plot in favor of romantic union
over the specifics of resistance to the Austrian occupation: Franz uses the
death of the soldier as a means to win sympathy from Livia and further his
advances.10
Here, too, however, there is an absence of struggle with whatever conflict
Livia has regarding Franz. The plot neither examines nor explicates her mo-
tivations for staying out on the deserted streets with Franz. Rather, her voice-
over merely reflects: “We walked a long time together through the deserted
streets. My prejudice was vanished . . . the time did not exist anymore. Only
the pleasure of not admitting . . . what I felt in hearing him speak . . . in hear-
ing him laugh.”
The absence of a moral struggle—precisely what determines the film’s ef-
fect as a degenerate melodrama—is thus accomplished by the exposition’s
refusal to clarify, or translate, the internal operations of Livia’s character.
Indeed, there are several aspects of her character which are never explicated:
the age difference in her marriage, the underlying relationship between her
and Roberto, and, subsequently, her actual interest in saving him from exile
(political or romantic). The effect of this refusal to explicate or translate is to
distance Livia’s character by withholding the means for Symbolic identifi-
cation. The anxiety that Livia experiences throughout the film as a result of
union with Franz is thus lacking from the structure of the plot itself.
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Fig u r e 9. Livia walks through the streets of Venice with

Franz. Her reserve toward him is conveyed through her dress,
with its tight lines and drawn hair and veil. A deus ex machina
provides the means for her to accept him. courtesy of
the m useum o f m odern art , film stills archive.
Rather than encourage identification with anxiety, the plot withholds in-
ducements to identify with Livia and thus distances the spectator from her
anxiety. In this respect, the film can be seen to reverse the relationship be-
tween spectator and text within Rome: Open City. In the latter (as discussed
previously), the film encourages identification with character, building the
spectator’s investment in character, only to remove the character from the
narrative, forcing a decathexis and redirection of spectatorial desire. Senso,
however, discourages identification with the main character, sustaining a
distance between character and spectator through the film. There is no loss
and subsequent decathexis within the process of the film characteristic of
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Senso 135
Rome: Open City. Rather, the absence of the structure of anxiety, replaced by
a distance between main character and spectator, signifies the distance in so-
cial conditions between the two films: the anxiety of war and of revolution-
ary struggle has been consigned to the past.
The exposition’s aversion to “translating” Livia’s character is not the only
means by which the plot establishes distance between the spectator and main
character. The plot’s focalization is structured to prevent a Symbolic identi-
fication which authorizes Imaginary identification and jouissance, structur-
ing instead a detached and analytical spectatorship. Analyzing the plot’s fo-
calization demonstrates this point. Rather than creating a proximity between
spectator and character that is characteristic of the classical text, the external
focalization in Senso constructs a separate position for its spectators that al-
lows them to judge Livia negatively. The groundwork for this position is laid
in the opening of the film, in the elaborate panning shot of the auditorium
of La Fenice. The cut that precedes this shot serves to separate the space of
the orchestra seating, which is made up largely of the Austrians, from the tier
seating, made up largely of the Italians in the auditorium.
The elaborate nature of the pan, with its back and forth motion, ex-
treme angles, and length of time, serves to draw attention to itself as plot
function—as a process of presentation. The continuity inscribed within its
workings emphasizes the continuity of space in the tiers, drawing attention
to the space as the space of the Italians—the space of the collective where
revolutionary struggle will take place. The camera’s fascination with the
space that it attempts to join together through a pan, however, ultimately
rests on the architecture of the space as segmented into levels, a separation
that costume will further emphasize. As the camera moves higher across the
space, differences in costume articulate class difference, with the upper class
seated in the boxes of the lowest tier and the middle to lower classes stand-
ing close together in the highest tier.
As the scene plays out, the function of this segmentation of space by class,
and the panning shot which emphasizes it, becomes even clearer. The rela-
tionship between camera movement and mise-en-scène articulates the pro-
cess of collective struggle: organization and direction come from the upper
class (from leaders like Ussoni), action itself from the lower classes (all of
whom remain nameless in the narrative). In this manner, revolution is tied
to nationalism and diverted from class struggle itself, ensuring the process of
transformismo from the very beginning.
Most significantly for the normative system of the text, Livia is a part of
that class which will transform the class struggle into a nationalist struggle, a
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transformation whose function is the very preservation of class structure.

What is essential for the evaluative norms of the text is that, despite its revi-
sionist treatment of the Risorgimento and the myths that surround it, the
primary ideal of the text is collective struggle.
Against this ideal, which Livia herself alludes to when she expresses her
disdain for off-stage melodrama, Livia’s character is measured and found
lacking. Her relationship to the normative system of the text, however, is not
readily apparent, as a result of the subterfuge through which the external fo-
calization of the text operates. Specifically, Livia’s voice-over narration seems
to provide access to her psychological orientation. In addition the narrative
is organized around her character, all of which works to indicate an internal
focalization. A closer analysis, however, demonstrates that the plot is ren-
dered through an external focalization, with the pretense at internal focal-
ization serving a rhetorical function: the inscription of the film’s immediacy-
distance dialectic. By constructing the appearance of internal focalization,
the text seems to offer the kind of immediacy between spectator and char-
acter that internal focalization can establish, only to contradict that rela-
tionship and establish Symbolic distancing through the process of external
focalization.
The primary indicator of the text’s external focalization is its “bird’s eye
view” of the narrative.11 This position is not so much the view of simulta-
neous actions in different narrative spaces, as in Rome: Open City. Rather, in
keeping with the facade of internal focalization, the plot mostly limits the
external focalization to the spatial boundaries of character, not the percep-
tual. It is here that the external focalization is afforded a bird’s-eye view. Two
scenes between Livia and Franz demonstrate this point. The first occurs in
the room they share for their romantic liaisons. In this scene, Franz walks
about the room, while Livia remains in bed. The first indicator of the exter-
nal focalization comes from Franz, who talks about all the little noises in the
room: the rustle of curtains, the sound of moths against the window.
As the rest of the scene plays out, Franz’s allusion to the moth articulates
the position of the spectator with respect to the characters. In so intimate a
setting, whose justification is passionate liaison, little is imparted to the spec-
tator as to the emotional involvement of the characters. Franz and Livia say
nothing to each other about their feelings or their passion. Instead, a psy-
chological game of one-upmanship seems to characterize the discourse, dis-
guising the emotional positions and involvement of the characters. The
spectator, like the moth against the window, can only see the room and its
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Senso 137
external physical elements—the internal orientation of the characters is

made almost impenetrable.
The confirmation of the external position of the focalization occurs
toward the end of the scene when Livia gives Franz the elaborate locket she
has been wearing, in which she has just placed a lock of her own hair. While
Livia does not see his reactions to her gift, the spectator does (from the point
of view outside the window that the moth might have). This discrepancy
in the range of knowledge between the spectator and Livia with respect to
Franz’s reactions is a key indicator of the plot’s external focalization. What
the plot makes clear is that Franz’s interest in the gift lies in its status as an
object of value rather than a token of affection. Indeed, once it is in his pos-
session, he has little interest in Livia. She interprets this disinterest as part of
the psychological one-upmanship they have been engaged in previously, yet
the plot later confirms to both the spectator and Livia herself that Franz’s in-
terest centered around the material object, as demonstrated when Livia finds
the lock of hair, without the locket, in Franz’s quarters.
This manner of revealing Franz’s inner nature through external observa-
tion is repeated later in the film in the granary scene where Franz coyly lures
Livia into his plan to obtain a fraudulent discharge with her money. Through
facial gesture, the plot reveals that Franz is monitoring Livia’s reactions as he
drops his hint; as in the earlier scene in the rented room, his actual inten-
tions are confirmed by his contact with Livia’s wealth. When she hands over
the money for the revolution to Franz, spilling much of it on the ground, he
places his head in her lap and speaks words of endearment while at the same
time frantically picking up the money.
The insistence of Livia’s presence for external revelations of Franz’s char-
acter is a significant aspect of the text’s external focalization. Information
about Franz’s intentions, as well as his character in general, is visible to
the naked eye and not the privilege of omniscient narration. Rather, Livia’s
character has access to this information, but refuses to see it or—more
accurately—incorporate it. Even when she has no choice but to see into
Franz’s character—as when she comes upon the lock of hair—she is too ob-
sessed with her melodrama to withdraw her affections. In this manner, the
text disallows sympathy for Livia by giving her the means to avoid Franz’s be-
trayal and usury. Livia knows that he is a rogue, but prefers to cling to fan-
tasy and illusion.
Livia’s unwillingness to accept what she knows about Franz thus places
her in a separate Symbolic space from that created for the spectator, who is
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Fig u r e 10. The effects of Livia’s degenerate melodrama visibly register here: gone
are the tight lines of face and clothing, the tied-up hair and veil. courtesy of the
museum of modern art, film stills archive.
encouraged by the external focalization to judge Franz negatively. The sepa-

ration of these Symbolic spaces thus creates a distance between the charac-
ter and the spectator, who, rather than identify with Livia through the Imag-
inary, is encouraged instead to judge her negatively through the Symbolic.
This Symbolic separation is articulated in the text by Livia’s journey to
Verona. Dressed in flowing black robes with a sheer black veil over her face,
she enters her carriage at dawn in front of the villa and is driven off. As the
carriage makes its way through the Italian countryside, the film emphasizes
Livia’s withdrawal from it. To begin with, her voice-over narration reflects
her belief that she has left her home and her people forever, a statement that
will be emphasized in the mise-en-scène. Livia sits alone in the carriage with
black shades drawn over the window. The striking hues of the Italian coun-
tryside are shut out as she withdraws into her melodramatic fantasy: reread-
ing a letter from Franz within the confines of the carriage. The degree to
which Livia has withdrawn from the world is articulated when the carriage
crosses over into Austrian territory. This moment is excluded from the im-
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Senso 139
age track, reduced only to extraneous outside noise that attempts to crowd
in on Livia’s reflections on the letter.
Here, too, the film asserts its degraded melodrama over history, con-
signing the Risorgimento to offscreen space—a momentary obstacle which
barely intrudes upon Livia’s pursuit of her fantasy. Indeed, the position of
this scene within the plot indicates the text’s assertion of melodrama over
history. Livia’s departure to Verona occurs after Ussoni’s attempt to engage
his forces in the battle of Custoza. Even in light of the governmental censor-
ship that occurred with respect to this scene,12 the plot abandons the his-
torical specificity of the battle—its aftermath and implications within the
movement—to resume Livia’s degraded melodrama. The historical “facts”
of the battle are consigned to off-screen space (moments of fleeting dia-
logue), its specificity as class struggle repressed. The narrative thus supplants
history for Livia’s journey, a movement which takes place on three planes:
the physical (going from Aldeno to Verona), the individual-psychological
(Livia’s deterioration into fantasy and madness), and the social-psychologi-
cal (Livia’s movement from una Italiana vera [a true Italian] to una Veneta
[her regional identification and thus her abandonment of national unity]).
The text’s negative evaluation is not limited to Livia, however. There is
a consistent refusal to construct a positive position from which to autho-
rize Imaginary identification. Neither the collective nor Ussoni, for example,
comes to fill that position. Indeed, despite the fact that Livia’s journey is in
the opposite direction from the collective, the external focalization does not
encourage Symbolic identification with this position either. Rather, through
the character of Ussoni, the text makes clear that the collective struggle, in-
augurated in the text through the opera, never leaves the realm of fantasy
and melodrama: from the beginning, the collective struggle is coopted into
the movement for national unity, exchanging revolutionary struggle for or-
ganization and direction from the upper class.
The segmentation of space according to class within La Fenice signifies
this relationship. Ussoni, a member of the upper class, moves within the
space of the auditorium floor. His apprehension as he walks through the
crowd is the result of his position as organizer of the demonstration that will
occur. The actual carrying out of the demonstration, however, is conducted
by the middle and lower classes, who occupy the highest tier. The historical
argument of the plot is thus articulated through the space of La Fenice,
which maintains the topographical as well as dialectical structure of the na-
tional unity movement. The actual collective basis for the movement, its
support and power base, is the lower class, who nonetheless look to the up-
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per class for leadership and direction. Through its articulation of space Senso
concludes that the process of transformismo—the Italian term which ex-
presses the ability for class structure to maintain itself through political
restructuring—is assured by the structural origins of the struggle for na-
tional unity which preserved the very relationship between the classes that
collective struggle seeks to dismantle.
It is in the context of the preservation of this relationship that both
Ussoni and the working class are evaluated negatively. Even though Roberto
goes against his class and works to preserve the revolutionary aspects of the
struggle, the text does not take up a position that is sympathetic to his char-
acter. Rather, like the working-class members that he leads, Roberto fails to
see that the process of transformismo is already assured. As a result, his char-
acter functions as a political double of Livia. Whereas she retreats into a
world of erotic and melodramatic fantasy, withdrawing increasingly further
from the reality that surrounds her, Ussoni lives in a world of political and
melodramatic fantasy, failing to see the political reality entrenched around
him. Indeed, the introduction of his character establishes this as his primary
trait. A leader of the underground, he unnecessarily exposes himself and po-
tentially the movement when Franz, an insignificant Austrian officer, insults
the Italian national identity. Roberto’s exaggerated reaction is conveyed in
the dramatic camera angle which registers his outrage and his response. His
challenge to a duel further underscores how far into melodramatic ideals
and away from historical-political reality he is, a fact that is brought home in
the text by the ease with which he is arrested and exiled.
Even his confrontation with the general of the regular military forces
(edited out by the censors), in which Ussoni reveals the generals’ motives as
class based, fails to modify this construction of his character. Rather, like
Livia finding the lock of hair, it serves to underscore the degree to which
Roberto refuses to accept the political circumstances confronting his ideals.
Unable to bring his irregular military forces to bear on the battle of Custoza,
Roberto nonetheless enters into the battle himself. The events of the battle,
however, are impervious to the kind of idealism and dedication that he
brings. This is articulated in the plot by the artillery brigade, who echo his
earlier bravado as they attempt to make a stand against the advancing Aus-
trians, unaware that they are being charged from the rear as well. Fur-
thermore, as the intertitle in the opening and then later Count Serpeiri make
clear, not only are the idealism and enthusiasm for national unity irrelevant
to the political events, but so is the battle of Custoza—the unification of
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Senso 141
Italy being determined more by external pacts between countries than by the
battles against Austria.
The text’s external focalization thus refuses to align itself with any char-
acter, preventing Imaginary identification authorized through the Symbolic
and establishing instead a Symbolic distance between character and specta-
tor. It is therefore significant to understand the relationship between the
external focalization and the characters within the diegesis. Unlike earlier
Neorealist works, where external focalization aligns itself with characters (as
in Rome: Open City) or aligns itself with characters only to withdraw itself
later (as in Bicycle Thieves or La terra trema), in Senso the external focaliza-
tion resists aligning itself with character altogether.
Thus, even though the highest normative ideal of the text, the point from
which all other actions are evaluated, is the class struggle within the move-
ment for national unity (the site of the collective) the text refuses to align it-
self with the members of the working class itself. They are either as politically
naïve as Ussoni (like those who turn to Livia for leadership) or oblivious to
the struggle (like those who go about their daily chores as the war rages on
about them). The significance of this nonalignment with character is the
manner in which it allows the normative system of the text to remain ab-
stract and removed from the events of the diegesis, as intangible as history
itself.
That the authoritative position of the text is withheld from the characters
and removed from the diegesis serves to diminish the influence of all the
characters and their actions on the dramatic events that occur. Even within
the degraded melodrama that occurs at the expense of history, the major
conflict in the struggle over virtue—Livia’s choice between Franz and the
Italian patriots with respect to the money she is entrusted with—is super-
fluous to the diegetic world. For all its internal divisiveness within Livia,
there is no consequence for the action: no masses killed for want of arms or
food, no public exposure of her betrayal. Indeed the general’s refusal to ac-
cept Ussoni’s group makes clear that her actions are irrelevant to the ongo-
ing events.
Even the count himself, the primary signifier of transformismo, does
nothing to shape narrative events. Despite all his deal making, first with the
Austrians then with Ussoni and the patriots, the count is not in a position of
power with respect to the events within the diegesis. Rather than shape
events, the count reacts to them. Unlike classical narration, therefore, the ex-
ternal focalization in Senso does not function to authorize (and in the pro-
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cess promote identification with) the actions of characters as they control

and orient narrative events. The structure of the plot refuses to allow any
character to take control of narrative events or the diegetic world. The ex-
ternal focalization, therefore, evaluates all the characters in terms of their in-
ability to understand how little their actions influence or control events.
The Symbolic position created for spectator identification through exter-
nal focalization does not seek to authorize characters, but rather to promote
a historical judgment of characters, the social set they represent, and the so-
cial process under examination. The abstract nature of the external focaliza-
tion thus functions to articulate a Marxist evaluation of the social process of
the Risorgimento as the Symbolic position of the text. Thus, as Livia degen-
erates into melodramatic romantic fantasy and Ussoni into melodramatic
political fantasy, the spectator is symbolically detached from both, identify-
ing instead with the evaluation of the text that no character influences the
sweeping events of the diegetic world. Indeed, as the introduction to the
film makes clear, Italy itself as political entity is not as much in control of
events as are the European countries making shifts in their alliances. Even
here, though, the text does not conclude that the level of the political deter-
mines events of the narrative world. As Franz’s observation about the end of
a world implies, events of the narrative occur as a result of Europe beginning
to change from mercantile-colonial capitalism (where Italy remained in a
position as the third world of Europe) to industrial capitalism.
The place of the historical spectator in this process—the historical speci-
ficity of this Symbolic position— can be determined at that site where both
the external focalization and the Symbolic position it constructs function as
a specific signifying response to social conditions. In this respect, Nowell-
Smith’s observation that “there is an implicit parallel between the events of
1866 and those of 1943 – 45” merits further analysis.13 Indeed, it is not diffi-
cult to see that the Austrian soldiers of Senso stand in for the occupying forces
of Nazi Germany in 1943. Furthermore, as Nowell-Smith points out, both
the Risorgimento and World War II contained populist uprisings that failed
to carry over into political movements or were co-opted by larger political
entities—the former by the Cavour government, the latter by the Allies.
The position of the historical spectators, therefore, is constructed around
their historic position within the aftermath of transformismo. Thus, in Senso,
the events of 1943 –1945 are not the Real—as social formations and events at-
tempt to present themselves—but, rather, already history: already a matter
of interpretation. As a Symbolic encounter with the effects of those social
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Senso 143
events, Senso attempts to translate not just the Resistance and events of 1943 –
1945, but their representation—their construction as history. The Risorgi-
mento is not the only hallowed historical event under reexamination: within
this parallel, Senso asserts that the Resistance was as superfluous to Ger-
many’s withdrawal as the nationalist movement was to Austria’s retreat some
sixty years previous. In this respect, Roberto Ussoni is just as much a cor-
rective to Rome: Open City’s Manfredi as he is to the Risorgimento itself. As
with La terra trema, then, Senso seeks to impose the Symbolic position of the
text between the historical spectators and their translation of the Resistance
as a culturally purifying or penitential act, insisting that the liberation of
Italy, as in the past, was the result of external political machinations inde-
pendent of Italy itself. Moreover, by constructing this polemic, the film ar-
ticulates the basis for transformismo: the cooptation of class struggle into
largely irrelevant political struggle.
The social condition with which the text is a Symbolic encounter is thus
not the Resistance but its aftermath: Italian culture after the process of trans-
formismo. It is from this position that the signifying praxis of the text ex-
amines the Risorgimento and the Resistance as sites of undeveloped class
struggle.
The film’s inscription of Gramscian theory with respect to its examina-
tion of the Risorgimento, a stylistic choice that several scholars have com-
mented on, serves more than a rhetorical function. With its insistence on
larger social processes as determinants, and its deemphasis on individual ac-
tions and ideals, Senso inscribes Gramsci’s position with respect to not only
revolution but the political stagnation of Italy. In his writings from prison,
Gramsci argued that, conditions in Western democracies being what they
were, a direct assault upon the state was doomed to failure.14 As a result, rev-
olutionaries in Western democracies needed a separate and distinct strategy
from the one followed by the Bolsheviks in the Russian Revolution. Rather
than a “war of movement,” Gramsci argued for a “war of position,” where
the working class would gradually establish political and cultural hegemony
within society. He concluded that such a process would make the seizure of
power unnecessary, if not historically obsolete.
In his capacity as leader of the Italian Communist Party, Palmiro Togliatti
maintained this “war of position” during the armed struggle for liberation,
insisting that all other goals of political and social transformations be subor-
dinated to national unity. Thus, he wrote in 1944, “the insurrection that we
want does not have the aim of imposing social and political transformations
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in a socialist or communist sense. Its aim is rather national liberation and the
destruction of Fascism.” 15 Togliatti continued to lead the party in a war of
position through the liberation of Italy and the formation of the new state.
Indeed, in many respects, it is within the context of 1954 and the en-
trenchment of parliamentary government that the war of position really be-
gan for the Italian Communist Party. As Ginsborg observes, in 1954 the party
reached its highest membership: “however, [this] masks the real isolation of
the party in Italian society, where the intense propaganda of the Cold War
had stigmatized them as the lepers of the nation.” 16 Furthermore, he con-
cludes that 1954 “was not a period of innovation in terms of general strategy.
The party’s perspectives for the transition to socialism continued to be based
on political coalition and class alliances.” 17
The translation of the position of Togliatti and the Italian Communist
Party in the aftermath of transformismo is inscribed into the signifying sys-
tem of the text in the narration’s insistence on larger social processes as de-
terminants and its deemphasis on individual actions and ideals. Senso makes
clear that the Risorgimento was not a failed revolution precisely because the
agrarian working class was without revolutionary consciousness, as well as
without political and cultural hegemony. In structuring Symbolic identifi-
cation through the process of the narration’s external focalization, Senso in-
sists that the historical spectator identify with this Gramscian position by
foreclosing the feasibility of other positions. The Symbolic position of the
external focalization alone is the place of knowledge within the text, linking
all others to either psychological fantasy (as in the case of Livia) or political
fantasy (as in the case of Ussoni). Indeed, the degree to which Franz’s char-
acter is able to gain lucidity and complexity within the evaluative system of
the text is determined by his ability to understand how events are being
shaped by larger social determinants and how these are shifting.
In constructing such a position, however, Senso, much like La terra trema,
forecloses the possibility of the pleasure afforded through Imaginary iden-
tification in favor of a detached and analytical Symbolic identification with
an ideological position. The ideological function of this strategy is to inscribe
the relationship between the historical spectator and the Real effects of social
conditions within the structure of the text itself. The text affords no place for
the spectator to occupy with respect to pleasure because there is no such
place within the social conditions of the postwar (but pre– economic resur-
gence) period within which the film is situated. Within these conditions the
revolutionary potential of the Resistance could not reach its potential, and
the “war of position” with respect to transforming the state and the capital-
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Senso 145
ist mode of production could only wait for an entrenched system to exhaust
itself. The Real effect of social conditions is thus a lack of hope for individ-
ual jouissance because the possibility of collective fulfillment is historically
foreclosed. The only option the text and social conditions can afford to the
historical subjects is Symbolic recognition of their alienation.
The degree to which the process of transformismo has so thoroughly fore-
closed the possibility—and hope—for a collective transformation of Italian
culture is inscribed in the text at the execution of Franz. Livia’s action of
sending Franz to a firing squad—though coded as the result of betrayal—
nonetheless functions to confirm the Imaginary limitations placed on her
desire. For, as Lacan argues, the only outcome of desire locked within the
constraints of the Imaginary is “the destruction of the other.” 18
Livia’s destruction of Franz is thus not the result of a “betrayal” as much
as it is determined by a narrative logic that defines betrayal as the term limit
of nonrecognition of desire. As Lacan further argues, “desire is susceptible
to the mediation of recognition, without which every human function would
simply exhaust itself in the unspecified wish for the destruction of the
other.” 19 Precisely what the text affords to Livia is the lack of recognition of
her desire: Franz refuses to take his place in her degenerate melodrama. Her
desire is thus limited to the structure of the Imaginary, the articulation of
which fails to induce Imaginary identification.
Like La terra trema, Senso leaves no position for the spectators to assume
with respect to pleasure, only the Symbolic recognition of their alienation.
The execution of Franz, constructed as it is, functions to reverse the signify-
ing operations of Rome: Open City, structuring instead a recognition of the
subject’s position within a history with no possibility of collective transfor-
mation of Italian culture.
The collective possibilities engendered in the Resistance—transposed
into Rome: Open City in the figure of (among others) Don Pietro—allow for
at least a vision of a moral transformation of society. With Don Pietro’s exe-
cution, the film offers the possibility that the Resistance youth who identify
with the priest will return to Rome and contribute to a rebirth of Italian so-
ciety based on the ideals and sacrifice of the Resistance. In Senso, however,
no such image arises. As opposed to a partisan hero, Franz is an Austrian de-
serter whose own side shoots him, a reversal of Don Pietro, upon whom the
Fascist soldiers refused to fire. Moreover, the actions of Livia after Franz’s
execution function as a correction to the Resistance youth of Rome: Open
City. Whereas the image of the Resistance youth seems to offer the promise
that the social ideals of the priest will live on, no such collective redemption
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is afforded to Franz. Livia’s frantic calling out of his name confirms that his
existence beyond death will be limited to a highly subjective memory.
As a reversal of the execution in Rome: Open City, Franz’s execution by
firing squad is the text’s translation of how far social conditions have changed
from revolutionary possibility to the complete entrenchment of transfor-
mismo. No image of the possibility of collective transformation is offered, at
least in part because no such image is needed by the spectator, the question
of how Italian culture will be rebuilt having long been settled through the
parliamentary process. The execution of Franz is thus the corrective to Rome:
Open City, denying the image and the discourse of hope for a collective
transformation of culture. Both Neorealism and the culture of revolutionary
potential which spawned it had passed into history.
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7
Psychoanalysis,
Cinematic Representation,
and Cultural Studies
With the passing of time Italian neo-realism has become not only his-
torically remote, but conceptually nebulous. That something existed— or
happened—which at the time received the name neo-realism, remains un-
doubted. But there is an increasing uncertainty (not to mention indiffer-
ence) as to what that something was.
Geoffrey Nowell-Smith 1
In his discussion of American film capital and Italian Neorealism, Michael

Silverman warns against the dangers of essentialism, of treating Neorealism
as a kind of entity unto itself. Engaged in a polemic against traditional film
scholarship, Silverman points to the manner in which essentialism allows
Neorealism— ontologically—to become the cause of its own creation: in-
fluencing, as it does, the very films which comprise it.2 Silverman’s position
reflects a kind of Foucaultian perspective that is echoed by one of the prac-
titioners of Neorealism itself, Vittorio De Sica. In discussing his position
within Neorealism, De Sica argues: “It’s not like one day we sat at a table on
Via Veneto, Rossellini, Visconti, myself and others and said, ‘now let’s create
neorealism.’ ” 3
By displacing the focus on Neorealism as a thing in itself and using it
instead as a test case for revising psychoanalytic film theory, this study has
abandoned the concerns of traditional Neorealist scholarship, which ar-
gue issues of scope, causality, and impact. Rather, this study demonstrates
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a diversity in the relationships between individual films of Italian Neoreal-

ism and the subversive utopian impulse within Italian culture that found
strength in the fall of Fascism and the rise of the Italian Resistance. The “new
realism” of Italian cinema did not so much betray this impulse as constitute
a variety of signifying practices constructed around it. While the signifying
practices of individual films exercise strategies of containment, Neorealism
as a whole could not be said to have caused this containment. The “increas-
ing uncertainty” that Nowell-Smith points to is precisely what occurs when
cultural containment is confined to only one arena—such as film—rather
than examined as a complex hegemonic process.
Indeed, while the destabilizing effects of the war created a space for revo-
lutionary potential, it would be a grave oversight to ignore the manner in
which it also created the means for a transition from one mode of produc-
tion—industrial capitalism (which had exhausted itself by the 1930’s)—to
the next mode of production— consumer capitalism (though admittedly
consumer capitalism did not dominate the Italian social system until much
later than in the United States and other countries). The vitality of an emerg-
ing mode of production engendered the means to recontain a subversive
utopian impulse long before Neorealism could betray it.
The preceding detailed analyses of select films within (and on the periph-
ery of ) Italian Neorealism focus on strategies of containment not so much
to prove something about Neorealism as to demonstrate that a text-based
mode of psychoanalysis can make crucial contributions to studies of repre-
sentation and the ideological processes they engender.
At least one such issue, as discussed earlier, is the manner in which chal-
lenges to and subversions of dominant signifying norms—such as classical
film narrative— do not in and of themselves constitute radical critique, as is
the case, I argue, with Rome: Open City, Bicycle Thieves, and Bitter Rice. Cul-
tural studies in general have long since concluded that adopting the language
and modes of representation of the dominant constitutes a form of ideologi-
cal acquiescence if not a form of cultural colonialism. This argument was put
forth with respect to cinematic signifying practice by Jean-Louis Comolli
and Jean Narboni, who argue:
The situation is the same at the level of artistic form . . . [with] films [that] totally
accept the established system of depicting reality: “bourgeois realism” and the
whole conservative box of tricks: blind faith in “life,” “humanism,” “common
sense,” etc. . . . [they] do not effectively criticize the ideological system in which
they are embedded because they unquestioningly adopt its language.4
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Psychoanalysis, Cinematic Representation, & Cultural Studies 149
What has not been so clearly evidenced in cultural studies, however, is the
manner in which problematizing or subverting the language of the domi-
nant will not necessarily engender radical ideological critique. Indeed, from
Comolli and Narboni to early feminist work like Mulvey’s, the concept of re-
jecting the language of the dominant and, to use Mulvey’s term, “the de-
struction of pleasure as a radical weapon” have attracted a strong theoretical
following, but have not been subjected to the kind of scrutiny they warrant.5
The value of text-based modes of analysis lies precisely here, in their ability
to analyze both signification and the structures of signification which deter-
mine meaning and set the boundaries and possibilities for radical critique.
In its analysis of both Rome: Open City and Bicycle Thieves, this study
demonstrates that within signifying structures and the process of significa-
tion a strategy of acknowledgment—the articulation or imaging of problem,
default, or crisis— can be a principal strategy of ideological recontainment.
Furthermore, this study demonstrates that this is indeed a major ideological
strategy of each film. In the former, as discussed earlier, the devastation of
the war and the issue of collaboration are articulated by the text in a strategy
of containment that includes displacing Fascism onto occupation for the
purpose of sanctioning a patriarchal-capitalist culture that will rise from the
ashes of war in the form of a Christian Democrat coalition government. In
Bicycle Thieves, the social problems of unemployment and the ineptitude
of government, unions, and the church are all imaged, but as a means for
demonstrating the necessity and legitimacy of patriarchal capitalist culture.
Furthermore, these strategies of containment are achieved through the pro-
cess, or structures, of signification: the subversion of the expositional func-
tion and disruption of identification in Rome: Open City and the complex
shifting of focalization and Symbolic identification in Bicycle Thieves.
Within the “horizon of expectations” of their reception, to employ Hans
Robert Jauss’s concept, Rome: Open City and to a somewhat lesser extent
Bicycle Thieves can be seen to mount an intensive assault on the language of
the dominant, as many traditional scholars have pointed out. The manner in
which this subversion of the dominant is ultimately recontained, however,
is beyond reception study, pointing toward the necessity of psychoanalysis
as a fundamental coordinating framework for narratology, reception study,
and Marxist critical theory. Combined, these methodological approaches
can approach textual analysis as a means of delineating how textual strate-
gies (and the norms they may subvert) address a historical spectator through
signification, at the level of identity and through the operations of desire, for
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the purpose of ideological persuasion and consent. It is through these opera-

tions that, for example, films like Rome: Open City, Bicycle Thieves, and Bitter
Rice can exercise subversion or challenge to established norms as strategies
of acknowledgment for the purpose of recontainment. What might other-
wise appear to constitute a radical critique in its subversion or challenge to
dominant norms is recontained through the process of the narrative, the ar-
ticulation of its signifying strategies, and its relationship to the spectator.
Although Rome: Open City, Bicycle Thieves, and Bitter Rice each refused a
classical Hollywood ending— especially the happy ending—and each could
be said to have at least problematized the relationship between narrative and
pleasure, each fails to constitute a radical ideological critique.
This stands in stark contrast to La terra trema and Senso, both of which
construct their radical critique at the site of refusing to provide the kind of
narrative jouissance so prevalent in classical narration. The difference be-
tween the two groups of films lies in the manner in which different signify-
ing structures mobilize Symbolic identification. In all of these films, Sym-
bolic identification functions to allow a detached spectatorship—a vehicle
for identification detached from the unpleasure of anxiety. In the former
group, pleasure is withheld but recovered in an implied future outcome: the
Resistance youth in Rome: Open City, Bruno’s salvific act (or his own future)
in Bicycle Thieves, and the restoration/redemption of Francesca in Bitter
Rice. With La terra trema and Senso, however, this Symbolic identification is
at the expense of dominant culture and its myth of the jouissance of the sub-
jugated, integrated, and subsequently whole being. The spectator can escape
unpleasure through identification with the place of the Other(A)—the place
of knowledge and authority—more than through the recognition of his/her
own Other(A), but only by seeing through the myths of dominant culture.
For La terra trema, this means the spectator must see through the impossi-
bility of fulfillment within cultural formations organized around individual
exploitation; for Senso, the inability of the individual to effect social change,
to make history.
The anxiety that each of these films structures, by threatening the conti-
nuity of the Other(A) of its historical spectators, is thus contained through
an identification with the authority of the Other(A), its place as guarantor of
knowledge and truth (or in Lacan’s terms the place where there is a mythi-
cal someone “supposed to know”). The denial of pleasure is thus exchanged
for the containment of unpleasure. The signifying practice of both La terra
trema and Senso constitutes radical critique, but at the expense of pleasure,
raising important questions for psychoanalysis and the study of culture with
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regard to pleasure, ideology, and cultural change. Specifically, the question

remains as to whether ideological critique is necessarily at the expense of
pleasure.
Here a psychoanalysis grounded in textuality and committed to a coor-
dinating role makes important contributions. In his classic investigation of
Lacanian psychoanalysis, Fredric Jameson examines Freud’s work with jokes
as one of psychoanalysis’s fundamental frameworks for textuality. The sig-
nificance of studying Freud’s work on jokes as a precursor for entering into
the Lacanian oeuvre is not coincidental. Lacan’s work repeatedly turns to The
Interpretation of Dreams, Jokes and Their Relationship to the Unconscious, and
The Psychopathology of Everyday Life as the core of psychoanalysis.6 Sig-
nificantly, each of these works is grounded in textuality—if not signifying
process—and its relationship to the individual. Lacan’s work provides the
means to refocus on textuality as it relates to the functioning of identity.
Such a refocusing provides the means to address the important issues of
pleasure and ideological critique.
A libidinal attachment to the signifier, so clearly brought out in Lacan’s
work, but less so in Freud’s, can nonetheless be fathomed in Freud’s discus-
sion of children’s language development. Freud argues that
during the period in which a child is learning how to handle the vocabulary of his
mother-tongue, it gives him obvious pleasure to “experiment with it in play” to
use Groos’s words . . . Little by little he is forbidden this enjoyment, till all that re-
mains permitted to him are significant combinations of words.7
Still somewhat overdetermined by what he sees as the development of the

superego, Freud’s discussion nonetheless references the subject’s Imaginary
attachment to words—the word as a thing that can be played with in combi-
nations of alliteration and assonance—and Symbolic attachments—in the
significant combinations that allow access to the adult world.
Furthermore, Freud establishes the groundwork of the effects of the sig-
nifier on the formation of identity when he evidences the dialectic of recog-
nition within the process of signification, as the now (in)famous discussion
of fort-da suggests. Lacan’s work, in addition to further elaborating the dia-
lectic of recognition at stake in signification, demonstrates the continuity
between identifications and language located at the site of the Other(A).
Jameson’s discussion, in however a fleeting manner, examines the possibility
of detaching this continuity without creating anxiety or unpleasure. Thus, in
what Jameson describes as the poetic process, the function of textuality is no
longer to maintain this continuity, but to engage subjects in formal play—
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to inscribe them in a trajectory, aesthetic or otherwise—that allows for the

disengagement of the defenses necessary for decathexis of the signifier. The
textuality of the poetic process, in a manner similar to what Freud describes
in the joke-work, functions as subterfuge to allow the cathexis invested in
the signifier to transfer elsewhere. In this respect the formal play of poetry
functions in a related manner: providing pleasure through the transfer of the
signifier, its formulation of new associations and oftentimes evacuation of
literalness. It is in this moment of pleasure achieved by the transference that
the subject can experience—however momentarily—the arbitrary nature
of the signifier, its artificiality, without cause for anxiety.
What a psychoanalytic framework demonstrates, therefore, is the possi-
bility of the transformation of cultural signifiers—itself a potential means of
ideological critique, resistance, or rejection—without the necessity of alien-
ation. In this respect, a psychoanalytic model offers the potential for social
change, allowing it to overcome limitations of earlier Marxist critical theo-
ries, while incorporating their contributions into the analysis. It is not diffi-
cult, for example, to see in texts like Rome: Open City, Bicycle Thieves, and
Bitter Rice the process that the Frankfurt School describes, where cultural
texts are impositions “of the forms and categories of mass production onto
the domain of thought, imagination, and consciousness,” to use the concise
summary of Lawrence Grossberg.8 Indeed, as the analyses here demonstrate,
the discourse of patriarchal capitalism—in the form of Christian Demo-
cratic coalition— can be determined in Rome: Open City as well as in Bitter
Rice, where it is combined with the containment of the feminine.
The problem with textual determinism—where the purpose of analysis
is to find the determinants of representation—is not that it has no viability
(it certainly does), but, rather, that it cannot address how such discourses
or determinants of representation find their mark with the spectator—
perform the ideological task assigned (or at least attributed) to them. Here
the coordinating role that psychoanalysis can perform becomes indispens-
able for analyzing the structure of signification as a social process intersect-
ing the structure of individual identity. Psychoanalysis returns to ideological
critique a dialectical model, where the production of texts can be mediated
through the operations of the spectator they address.
In this respect, Italian Neorealism is an important domain of investiga-
tion whose lessons and implications can make important starting points for
other areas of media studies—the dramatic growth of U.S. Afro-American
television programming being an immediate example. In each case, groups
of texts which present themselves as alternative texts can be seen as either
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compromised and contained or appropriated through the language of the

dominant. What psychoanalysis provides cultural studies is the means for
determining how these texts are finding their audiences—why their ideo-
logical operations resonate, persuade, and win acceptance.
In this respect, psychoanalysis, with its insistence on the dialectic of
identity, makes another (though certainly not its final) contribution. Ideol-
ogy and ideological operations are conducted in and through the Symbolic,
which, as Lacan asserts and Zizek so clearly emphasizes, is incomplete and
unable to fulfill (since ultimately the symbol cannot become the thing or a
thing in itself, and conversely the thing cannot become the symbol). The im-
plications of the limitations of the Symbolic for ideological critique are an
important lesson in resisting the tendency toward totalizing the ideological
operations that analysis and interpretation uncover—an orientation that
finds its source in the operations of the Imaginary. In other words, no ideo-
logical operation can be complete, can manage to defuse or recontain en-
tirely. Here Jameson’s work on the political unconscious makes a consider-
able contribution when he argues that both the impulses which must be
managed and the textual or aesthetic incentives offered for their abandon-
ment or reformulation engender the utopian impulse. As Jameson notes:
Marxist analysis of culture . . . can no longer be content with its demystifying vo-
cation to unmask and to demonstrate the ways in which a cultural artifact fulfills
a specific ideological mission, in legitimating a given power structure, in perpet-
uating and reproducing the latter, and in generating specific forms of false con-
sciousness (or ideology in the narrower sense). It must not cease to practice this
essentially negative hermeneutic function . . . but must also seek, through and be-
yond this demonstration of the instrumental function of a given cultural object,
to project its simultaneously Utopian power . . .9
Jameson’s assertion that such dual objectives return to criticism a positive

hermeneutic contains much potential for a field like cultural studies that is
still waiting to realize its potential within mainstream culture.
As Jameson so accurately notes, the negative hermeneutic— exposing
ideological operations—is essential, but its contributions are ultimately lim-
ited. The analysis of ideological operations can demonstrate to individuals
how consciousness is colonized by this or that cultural practice or text and
therefore—in a sense—free hearts and minds, but the lesson goes no fur-
ther: it does not teach how to live free, how to image collective possibilities
and consciousness. If cultural studies is going to have an impact on trans-
forming systems of inequity and oppression, it must provide those lessons
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and recover, or rather uncover, images of the utopian impulse and collective
potential that narrative works so hard to contain.
The earlier discussion of Rome: Open City, for example, demonstrates
how the utopian impulse is effectively recontained by its reformulation
through the structure of the individual and individual renunciation. What is
also important for ideological critique, however, is the remainder of that
process, the historical dimensions through which the Symbolic mandate will
find its failure and, as Zizek asserts, determine the fantasy that will seek to
compensate for it.
The closing shot of Rome: Open City provides at least an indication of
both. Throughout the film the structure of individual renunciation is artic-
ulated at many sites, as discussed earlier. What the film refrains from imag-
ing, however, is the organizing site of renunciation and hence the allegorical
function of Christianity and Christian iconography within the film. In con-
temporary Italian culture the function of individual renunciation would find
its organizing site within the system of patriarchal capitalism, rather than
some form of Christian egalitarianism. Recontaining the utopian impulse is
thus also achieved by the refusal to image this organizing site.
Its allegorical replacement, however, is also historically unable to support
the Symbolic mantle assigned to it. The image of St. Peter’s cathedral in the
final shot serves an allegorical function but cannot be separated from the hi-
erarchical institution it serves and the evolution of Christianity from small
faith communities living in common to an organization of principalities.
The Resistance youth, bound together in their shared suffering and commit-
ment to the ideals of the slain priest, will find no collective egalitarianism in
a church paranoid about communism, women, and the lower classes it at-
tends to. The fantasy that arises from the inevitable failure of Italian society
to transform itself with such radically egalitarian ideals is then imaged in
Bicycle Thieves, where the collective is the problem, not the promise.
Even in its denunciation of the collective, however, Bicycle Thieves images
the potential of the collective for social transformation. This is evidenced in
the film’s tacit lack of faith in the state’s ability to control the masses, articu-
lated in the police station with the routine jumble and scramble to mobilize
for riot control and in the scene involving the finding of the thief, where the
police officer frankly admits to Antonio Ricci that there is not much he can
do in the face of the collective (they could all lie for the thief ). Here there is
a begrudging acknowledgment that, unified, the collective is a most power-
ful agent of social will. Indeed, the criticism the film levels at unions and the
07-T0618 8/26/99 3:17 PM Page 155
church for their hypocrisy belies a wish that unions would be for the work-
ers and that the church would be the champion of those in need.
Furthermore, Bicycle Thieves alludes to the kind of individual fulfillment
through material culture that is just out of Antonio’s grasp, but never really
images that promise within the film. The one site in the film that evidences
the comfort of material culture—the restaurant scene—is critical of the
pretentiousness and lack of humanity to be found there. There is an uneasi-
ness in Bicycle Thieves over the promise of material culture and its replace-
ment of the more collective traditional Italian culture—a wariness that is
evidenced in the magnitude and insensitivity with which the Italian econ-
omy must first be transformed. The film’s mandate that individuals ulti-
mately will be able to transcend these limitations through recognition of and
encounters with the truly transforming—unconditional love—finds its ex-
pression in the final scene, where Bruno’s anguish over his father transforms
and contains collective will (the angry mob disperses in the face of Bruno’s
agony).
The historical limitations of this mandate are evidenced in an inability to
image a transformation of material culture and Italian society’s seemingly
inevitable movement toward it. Bruno’s actions can restore to his father his
place of dignity, but they are not a means of transcending the lack of dignity
and individual worth that comes from taking one’s place in the economic
cog of material culture. The family as site of collective organization, com-
mitment, and willing sacrifice is not yet a means for revolutionary potential
to realize itself.
The fantasy that rises in the failure of this mandate can be seen both in La
terra trema—where personal sacrifice for the sake of the family will clearly
not change contemporary society—and, as Millicent Marcus asserts, in Il
posto, where the main character (who would be Bruno’s age) inherits the
soulless material culture society struggling to erect itself in Bicycle Thieves.
In each of these, the absence of collective consciousness is the site of a pro-
found lack, the void that must be filled. The potential for filling that void is
evidenced dialectically in La terra trema, even if it is not achieved: the col-
lective potential of the fishermen is demonstrated but not realized, and the
transcendent is imaged in the simple kindness of the girl who speaks with
Antonio as he examines his boat.
The necessity for a positive and negative hermeneutics is also demon-
strated—indeed, dramatically so—in Bitter Rice. Here the implications of
negative hermeneutics weigh heavily: the threat of the feminine is recon-
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tained through punishment of the transgressor (Silvana) and redemption of

the penitent (Francesca). The historical limitations of the film’s Symbolic
mantle are imaged in the wedding scene, where the proud parents and happy
couple provide credibility for the life Silvana seeks to escape. Behind the fa-
cade of the celebration, however, is the omnipresent rice field, where the
young woman may well return, next year or in the future, kept out only by
the demands of child rearing and not through economic mobility. Indeed,
the image of woman’s tenuous place in society through her position in mar-
riage pales by comparison to or—at the very least—fails to vanquish or di-
minish the collective spirit and potential of the women workers who unite
behind the fallen Silvana in both compassion and solidarity. Their Symbolic
gesture offers a powerful image of the potential of collective organization
and action: the little that each gives becomes a bountiful aggregate. Although
narrative operations may seek to punish Silvana for her unbridled sexuality
and refusal to submit, the image of collective solidarity and action manifest-
ing itself is not so contained. Left undisturbed, it functions as a barely rec-
ognized promise of potential waiting to be realized.
Senso also effectively recontains images of collective solidarity and ac-
tion, necessitating a recovery of Symbolic excess as well. As discussed pre-
viously, the text refuses to construct the character of Roberto as a heroic
figure, defining him (and his actions) instead as naïve and immature—
especially in a political sense. This is emphatically brought home by the man-
ner in which the collective that his actions inspire—the artillery crew—is
soon to be wiped out by counterattacking forces. The excess that stands out
from this containment, however, is the ease with which Roberto abandons
his class interest for the good of the collective. The manner in which he
stands in stark moral contrast to the Count cannot be completely covered
over as youthful naïveté and stands as a haunting specter of revolution from
within to the privileged class. Further, the film draws a parallel to Roberto’s
revolutionary enthusiasm with the aforementioned artillery crew. Though
Roberto’s leadership will lead the men nowhere in terms of revolution or
their own survival, the ease with which they pick up his zeal for the struggle
evidences a potential for collective solidarity and action.
In addition to the problematics of representation, then, at least part of the
pervasive indeterminacy of Neorealism that Nowell-Smith speaks of is due
to the lack of a dialectical hermeneutic that can recover what remains after
strategies of containment have completed their operations. Certainly, Neo-
realism found itself in a period of revolutionary potential, yet, as argued ear-
lier, it also found itself in a period of transition from one mode of produc-
07-T0618 8/26/99 3:17 PM Page 157
tion to another, a process which enhances revolutionary potential while at

the same time creating a wealth of resources for its containment. What a psy-
choanalytic investigation of Neorealism contributes to studies of represen-
tation is an awareness that the dialectic of identity, as well as the dialectic
of textual operations, is far too unstable a process to complete the “coloni-
zation of consciousness” that earlier media theories ascribed to it. Here,
too, it is not so much that “colonizing” theories have no validity as that they
leave out an important part of the process. The hegemony of corporatized
media—as in contemporary U.S. culture, where even the Public Broadcast-
ing System (PBS ) is given over to a Byzantine-like bureaucracy which feeds
itself more than it produces programming and leans overwhelmingly to-
ward mainstream texts— demonstrates that the colonization of conscious-
ness is at the very least an ongoing process of economic institutionalization.
What a dialectical hermeneutic demonstrates is the necessity of recover-
ing the positive if cultural studies (and theories of representation) are going
to play a role in effectively resisting such hegemonic forces. The value of
“gatekeeper” theories is that they demonstrate the degree to which alterna-
tive images and ways of thinking are effectively silenced. A dialectical her-
meneutic provides the means to recover them within the margins. A new
psychoanalysis committed to its dialectical principles and to coordinating
other theoretical paradigms provides a central place for the complex role of
the subject, the operations of identity, and the dynamic of desire, whose con-
tinual functioning and demand for recognition constitute the bedrock of de-
mand for the supply of social texts. For studies of representation and cul-
tural studies in general to create greater inroads and have more of a voice in
mainstream culture, they must be able to intercede in the process of de-
mand: to assist or play a role in transforming the demand for social texts as
a demand for the utopian impulse.
08-T0618-END 8/26/99 3:17 PM Page 159
Notes
Introduction
1. Christopher Norris, Deconstruction: Theory and Practice, 24.

2. Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory: An Introduction, 117.
3. Ibid., 117.
4. See, for example, Jean-Louis Baudry, “Ideological Effects of the Basic Cinematic
Apparatus,” Film Quarterly 28, no. 2 (Winter 1974 –1975); Jean-Louis Comolli,
“Technique and Ideology: Camera, Perspective and Depth of Field,” in Film
Reader 2 (1977); Janet Staiger, “Mass Produced Photo-Plays: Economic and Sig-
nifying Practices in the First Years of Hollywood,” in Wide Angle 4, no. 3 (1980);
and David Bordwell, Janet Staiger, and Kristen Thompson, The Classical Holly-
wood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960.
5. See Thomas Elsaesser, “Film History and Visual Pleasure,” in Cinema Histories,
Cinema Practices, ed. Patricia Mellencamp and Phil Rosen.
6. Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, 207.
7. See, for example, Chapters 1 and 2 in Theresa Brennan, History after Lacan.
8. Ellie Ragland-Sullivan, Jacques Lacan and the Philosophy of Psychoanalysis, 58.
1. Revisiting Psychoanalysis and the Cinema
1. Charles F. Altman, “Psychoanalysis and Cinema: The Imaginary Discourse,”

Quarterly Review of Film Studies 2, no. 3 (August 1977).
2. Edward Buscombe, Christine Gledhill, Allan Lovell, and Christopher Williams,
“Why We Have Resigned from the Board of Screen,” Screen 17, no. 2 (1976): 106 –
109.
08-T0618-END 8/26/99 3:17 PM Page 160
160 Notes to Pages 11–17
3. Jacques Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book I: Freud’s Papers on Technique,
trans. John Forrester, 262.
4. Todd Gitlin, The Whole World Is Watching: Mass Media in the Making and Un-
making of the New Left, 2.
5. Fredric Jameson, “Imaginary and Symbolic in Lacan: Marxism, Psychoanalytic
Criticism, and the Problem of the Subject,” Yale French Studies 55/56 (1977): 338.
6. Ibid., 339.
7. Engaging the desires of the subject is thus understood as the process by which the
film text becomes the object that desire is directed toward.
8. Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts, 126.
9. Jacques Lacan, Ecrits: A Selection, trans. Alan Sheridan, 19.
10. Ibid., 314.
11. The clearest image of this mode of identification is perhaps the manner in which
people identify with the pure effect of instrumental music (without lyrics). The
sense in which they “become” or “take up” the music they hear is an identifi-
catory process that finds its source in premirror identification.
12. Lacan, Ecrits, 251.
13. Christian Metz, The Imaginary Signifier: Psychoanalysis and the Cinema, 49.
14. Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious, 153.
15. Ibid., 152.
16. As with many of the terms and concepts Lacan employed, the “Other” signifies
several different kinds of operations and relationships defined by the develop-
mental context. The designation “Other(A)” was developed by Ellie Ragland-
Sullivan as a means of distinguishing between, for example, the (m)Other and the
object petite a. See Ellie Ragland-Sullivan, Jacques Lacan and the Philosophy of
Psychoanalysis, Chapters 1 and 2.
18. Jacques Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book II: The Ego in Freud’s Theory
and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis, 1954 –1955, trans. Sylvana Tomaselli, ed.
Jacques-Alain Miller, 155.
19. See, for example, Lacan, Ecrits, 285.
20. See, for example, ibid., 67.
21. See, for example, Lacan, Book I, 166 –170.
23. See, for example, Lacan, Book I, 282, and Ecrits, 138.
24. Lacan, Book I, 166.
26. Lacan, Book II, 169.
27. This is not to maintain a cultural determinism, however. The subject’s identity
through culture is itself overdetermined by the individual “history” in the for-
mation of what Lacan terms the moi. See, for example, Chapter 8 in Book I and
Lacan’s discussion on intersubjectivity in Chapter 15, Book II.
08-T0618-END 8/26/99 3:17 PM Page 161
Notes to Pages 18 –19 161
28. Stephen Heath, “Narrative Space,” in Questions of Cinema, 27.

29. See, for example, Metz, The Imaginary Signifier; and Jean-Louis Baudry, “The Ap-
paratus: Metapsychological Approaches to the Impression of Reality in Cinema”
and “Ideological Effects of the Basic Cinematographic Apparatus,” in Narrative,
Apparatus, Ideology: A Film Theory Reader, ed. Phil Rosen.
30. In “Narrative Form in American Network Television,” in High Theory/Low Cul-
ture, ed. Colin MacCabe, 103, Jane Feur argues that “the ‘implied spectator’ of
television is not the isolated, immobilized pre-Oedipal individual . . . but rather,
a post-Oedipal, fully socialized family member.”
31. Ann Friedberg, “Theories of Cinematic Identification,” in Psychoanalysis and
Cinema, ed. E. Ann Kaplan.
32. Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, “A Note on Story/Discourse,” Edinburgh Magazine 1
(1978): 26 –32.
33. See, for example, Barbara Klinger, “Digressions at the Cinema: Reception and
Mass Culture,” Cinema Journal 28, no. 4 (Summer 1989); and Noel Carroll, Mys-
tifying Movies: Fads and Fallacies in Contemporary Film Theory, 75 –78.
34. Nowell-Smith, “A Note on Story/Discourse,” 26 –32.
35. Thomas Elsaesser, “Primary Identification and the Historical Subject,” Cine-
Tracts 11 (Fall 1980): 43 –52.
37. Any subject, of course, has the ability to resist or reject the Symbolic identifi-
cation which the text constructs; however, to assume such a position is to fore-
close the Imaginary pleasure the text constructs from the continuity between
specific identifications and language. I will return to this point later in this dis-
cussion.
38. Rather, traditional psychoanalytic film theory implies that subjects construct
themselves as ideal unities through identification with the unity of discourse.
This process is ahistorical since any unified discourse could be used as a basis of
identification.
39. Culture’s fundamental role in mediating the text-subject relationship, however,
is precisely what precludes the possibility of a text establishing uniform spectator
response with respect to pleasure. There are numerous positions the subjects can
take vis-à-vis subjugation to the Law and the Symbolic Order in the formation
of their identity. As a result, introjection of the Law (culture)—the specific basis
for continuity between identifications and language—is a variable process which
some subjects will come to accept and others will reject, as a matter of identity.
This makes the basis for Symbolic identification variable within any given culture
and precludes uniform spectator response.
40. Seymour Chatman, Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film,
150.
41. Ibid., 150.
42. Elsaesser, “Film History,” 69 (emphasis added).
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162 Notes to Pages 20 –23
43. See, for example, Bill Nichols, ed., Movies and Methods, Vol. 2, 15.
44. Jameson, The Political Unconscious, 34.
45. See, for example, “The Ego’s Era,” in Theresa Brennan, History after Lacan.
46. Jacques Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book VII: The Ethics of Psycho-
analysis, 1959 – 60, trans. Dennis Porter, 98 –143.
47. Fredric Jameson, The Ideologies of Theory, vol. 2, 149.
49. See, for example, William Downing, Jameson, Althusser, Marx: An Introduction to
The Political Unconscious, 84; as well as Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Nar-
rative Cinema,” Screen 16, no. 3 (Autumn 1975), where Mulvey appropriates psy-
choanalysis for a feminist analysis as a means of “examining patriarchy with the
tools it provides.”
50. Ragland-Sullivan, Jacques Lacan and the Philosophy of Psychoanalysis, 223.
51. Given the individual contingencies that play into the construction of identity,
the possibility that an individual subject will identify with a subculture rather
than a dominant culture is always a distinct one. The value of a concept like the
Other(A) is its insistence on the identifications with the signifying pacts of a col-
lective in order to construct and maintain identity.
52. The collective potential of the heterosexual coupling, frequently one of the ma-
jor goals within classical film, is contained and redefined within the structure of
the individual through the ideology of patriarchy, which defines (and limits)
woman as object of male desire. Narrative structures thus promote a sense of the
male protagonist’s wholeness in the end: it was he who controlled narrative and
obtained the object (the woman) in the end which will make him whole.
53. Indeed, even in those films which define the achievement of wholeness more
collectively, as, for example, with the protagonist’s integration with the collective,
the structures of identification still promote an individual jouissance for the
spectator.
55. See, for example, the discussion in Slavoj Zizek, The Sublime Object of Ideology,
110 –129.
60. Zizek, The Sublime Object of Ideology, 127.
61. Ibid., 133.
62. Indeed the revisionist work of Slavoj Zizek has focused on Hitchcock and/or
Hollywood, as with Enjoy Your Symptom! Jacques Lacan in Hollywood and Out,
though, as the title suggests, there is some examination of non-Hollywood film;
Vicky Lebeau’s recent Lost Angels: Psychoanalysis and Cinema examines recent
Hollywood films.
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63. See, for example, Denis Mack Smith’s discussion in Italy: A Modern History, 5.
64. James Hay, Popular Film Culture in Fascist Italy, 5.
65. Paul Ginsborg, A History of Contemporary Italy: Society and Politics, 1943 –1988, 17.
67. Ibid., 291.
68. Clearly, however, the focus of this book is directed toward developing and apply-
ing a model and cannot address this particular concern.
69. P. Adams Sitney, Vital Crises in Italian Cinema: Iconography, Stylistics, Politics.
70. See Millicent Marcus, Italian Film in the Light of Neorealism; and Pierre Lepro-
hon, Italian Cinema, trans. Roger Greaves and Oliver Stallybrass.
71. See, for example, Mira Liehm, Passion and Defiance: Film in Italy from 1942 to the
Present, 84.
74. Ragland-Sullivan, Jacques Lacan, 61.
2. Rome: Open City
1. Quoted in Roy Armes, Patterns of Realism, 69.

2. Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, Luchino Visconti, 33.
3. See, for example, Ben Lawton’s introduction and discussion with Giuseppe De
Santis in Antonio Vitti, Giuseppe De Santis and Postwar Italian Cinema.
4. See, for example, Lacan’s discussion of the Symbolic in Book II.
5. Stephen Heath, “Jaws, Ideology, and Film Theory,” in Movies and Methods, Vol. 2,
ed. Bill Nichols, 513.
6. Ibid., 513.
7. Heath, “Narrative Space,” 36.
8. The degree of this disruption is, however, historically, culturally, and individually
contingent. Certainly, for example, American spectators of the 1990’s have inher-
ited the cultural legacy that has responded to Jean-Luc Godard and other figures
who challenged classical norms through narrative disruption. In addition, these
spectators routinely engage a system of television which regularly breaks narra-
tive diegesis for the insertion of paid programming. Within their “horizon of ex-
pectations,” then (to use Hans Robert Jauss’s concept), the degree of disruption
is probably not very high. While there are figures predating Neorealism who also
challenged classical norms through narrative disruption (Sergei Eisenstein being
one) it would not be accurate to project contemporary levels of accommodation
back onto Italian spectatorship. Rather, it is likely that the spectator the text ad-
dresses experiences the sequence disruptively.
9. Luigi Chiarini, “A Discourse on Neorealism,” in Springtime in Italy: A Reader on
Neorealism, ed. and trans. David Overby, 149.
10. See, for example, Part 4 in Overby’s introduction to Springtime in Italy; Peter
08-T0618-END 8/26/99 3:17 PM Page 164
Bondanella’s discussion in Chapter 2 of Italian Cinema; and Marcus’s discussion

in Chapter 1 of Italian Film.
11. The literary basis of Sternberg’s work, however, does not allow for a fully accu-
rate characterization of the relationship between exposition and actional dynam-
ics in narrative film. In literature the substitution between the two modes occurs
through the medium of language, making the relationship, at the level of plot, a
substitution occurring in a strict linearity. In narrative film, however, this sub-
stitution occurs through several matters of expression. It should thus be charac-
terized more as a balance in favor of one over the other. This allows for dissemi-
nation of information in a vertical accumulation in addition to the horizontal
linearity of plot.
12. The German officer’s eagerness to answer the phone plays up the numerous pos-
sibilities that the call represents. It could be a friend of Manfredi’s, who might
be tricked into giving up his location. It could also be one of the members of
Manfredi’s circle, who could be lured into a trap. When Marina begins asking for
Manfredi, the first possibility continues to hang over the scene.
13. In this respect, narrative drive as outburst, break, or disruption can be under-
stood as a lack of expositional containment.
14. This is not to argue that the structural relationship between the moi and the je has
determined the functional relationship between actional dynamics and the expo-
sition. Establishing a correspondence between structures is an attempt to move
away from causality. It is not a matter of whether the psyche determined narra-
tive or whether narrative determined Lacan’s model. Rather, what is significant is
identifying a correspondence between structures as a means of mediating be-
tween the boundaries of the social and the individual.
17. Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text, trans. Richard Miller.
18. Jameson, “Imaginary and Symbolic in Lacan,” 373.
19. See, for example, Edward Branigan’s discussion of narrative in Chapter 1 of Nar-
rative Comprehension and Film.
21. Roland Barthes, S/Z, 90.
22. Vladimir Propp, Morphology of the Folktale.
23. Crane discusses the power of plot within narrative in “The Concept of Plot and
the Plot of Tom Jones,” reprinted in Narrative/ Theory, ed. David H. Richter.
24. See, for example, David Bordwell and Kristen Thompson’s discussion of narrative
and desire in Film Art: An Introduction.
26. Ibid.
27. Ibid., 44.
28. See, for example, Lacan, Book II, 155.
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Notes to Pages 36 – 43 165
29. See, for example, Lacan, Ecrits, 2.

33. Sigmund Freud, Inhibitions, Symptoms, and Anxiety, trans. Alix Strachey, 64.
34. See, for example, Ragland-Sullivan, Jacques Lacan, 270.
35. Jacques Lacan, “Aggressivity in Psychoanalysis,” in Ecrits, 28.
36. See, for example, Lacan’s discussion of anxiety as related to symbolization in
Book II, 164.
37. This type of opening gap is fairly typical of most narratives. What is unique about
this opening and its inscription of anxiety is that all of the characteristics of anx-
iety are present in this sequence (and the others), something that is not necessar-
ily the case with other narrative gaps or disruptions.
38. With Marina’s disruption, the search for Manfredi is delayed. In Laura’s disrup-
tion, Manfredi’s desire to connect with Francesco is suspended by the intrusion
and its function of introducing a new character and further defining character
relationships.
39. Certainly, Manfredi’s involvement in the wartime Resistance brings him into
threat of physical danger, but Francesco’s conversation with Pina indicates that
the risk of physical danger is undertaken to avoid an even greater danger: the in-
dividual psychical helplessness that occupation represents.
40. Indeed, the term “occupation” vividly demonstrates what is at stake in a concep-
tion of culture as the domain of signification. In a social organization that justifies
and perpetuates inequity, which institutionalizes powerment/disempowerment,
“occupation” is nothing more than a failure in cultural signifying practices,
whereby individual subjects “see” an “other” in positions of power and their own
disempowerment as a result. In this respect, the only thing real about occupation
(it is a signifier) is, as for all signifiers, its effects.
41. The manner in which the film stabilizes around these characters in the first half
is evidenced in the meeting between Pina and Manfredi. Whereas the earlier sub-
stitution of the exposition that introduces Marina creates disruption and confu-
sion, Pina’s sequence with Manfredi unobtrusively substitutes different expo-
sitional modes that clarify the ongoing progression of narrative: filling in gaps
(explaining where Manfredi went after escaping the Germans via the roof ), ex-
plaining character action (why he came to the building), introducing new char-
acters (Francesco), and establishing character relationships (both characters
know Francesco but do not know each other). Thus, within this brief exchange
between Pina and Manfredi, the exposition unobtrusively shifts several times.
Furthermore, although there are several different types of expositional informa-
tion, they all serve to clarify the narrative. This is in marked contrast to Marina’s
exposition, which served to disrupt the narrative by confusing the action.
42. As in Bicycle Thieves, it is a redirection from adults to children, from the past to
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166 Notes to Pages 43 – 47
the future—a redirection that serves an important ideological function (as dis-
cussed below).
43. For a full treatment of women’s participation in the Resistance, see Chapter 6,
“Women of the Resistance,” in Maria de Blasio Wilhelm’s The Other Italy: Italian
Resistance in World War II .
44. This peril is then parodically articulated later in the film through the figures of the
children, when Marcello is told by Andreina that women can also be members of
the Resistance.
45. Much more work needs to be done on the representation of women in Neoreal-
ism, work that is beyond the scope of this limited study. Here it is worth noting,
however, the manner in which Pina’s character is constructed sympathetically
and Marina and Laura’s characters are constructed negatively. Neither of these
constructions is independent of the issue of class. Pina is content with her work-
ing-class situation (a “good woman” is content with what she has), while Marina
and Laura are judged negatively for their upward mobility.
46. Indeed, it would be possible to argue that the institutionalization of Christianity
by the Roman state was a successful containment of a subversive threat by the
process of appropriation. For a more thorough reading of the subversive nature
of Christianity and the early Christian movement, see Ched Meyers, Binding the
Strong Man; or Rosemary Radford Ruether, Sexism and God-Talk: Toward a Fem-
inist Theology, for more information on the containment of the subversive as-
pects of Christianity.
47. Bondanella, Italian Cinema, 41.
48. And, as Don Pietro predicted, through prayer, since Don Pietro suffers and prays
for Manfredi during the torture.
49. For detailed analysis that leads to this conclusion, see Vincent F. Rocchio, “Cin-
ema of Anxiety: A Lacanian Reinvestigation of Italian Neorealism.”
50. Marcus, Italian Film, 38.
51. The efficiency of such a construction for securing the identification of a mass au-
dience lies in its ability to include those who do not assume the Symbolic iden-
tity the text addresses. Anti-Fascists and others who did not “see” themselves as
guilty of complicity could take up positions of vindication, self-righteousness,
and empathy against “those” who are to “blame.” This kind of inclusiveness of
identities toward one Symbolic position is crucial for popular success.
52. Francesco here uses the words “tutti si illudevano,” which is the third person
plural and thus does not include himself and Pina. If it were inclusive, to say,
for example, “we were all deluded,” the verb would have been “illudiamo.” De-
spite this designation, the sequence still fails to define Francesco and Pina as pre-
war anti-Fascists and thus suggests a level of complicity with prewar political
structures.
53. The source of such guilt would be the result of internalizing the prevalent dis-
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Notes to Pages 47– 61 167
course of blame about Fascism. In Italy, 1943 –1945, 103, David Ellwood notes that
Winston Churchill stated publicly that “when a nation has allowed itself to fall
into a tyrannical regime it cannot be absolved from the faults due to the guilt of
that regime, and naturally we cannot forget the circumstances of Mussolini’s
attack on France and Great Britain when we were at our weakest, and people
thought that Great Britain would sink forever . . .” Ellwood further suggests that
Churchill’s sentiments were reflected, if not vocalized, in the conduct of officers
administering the Allied occupation of Italy. There was thus no lack of public dis-
course on guilt which could be internalized.
54. This is a reversal of the misrecognition that took place earlier in the film with the
Austrian soldier. In that scene, Don Pietro’s misrecognition of the soldier’s iden-
tity brought on a fear of death when the latter removed his pistol from its holster.
In the execution scene Hartmann’s presence leads to the expectation that Don
Pietro might be spared, given the disgust with all the killing that Hartmann ar-
ticulated just prior to the execution.
55. Sitney, Vital Crises in Italian Cinema, 35.
56. Giuseppe Mammarella, Italy after Fascism: A Political History of 1943 –1963, 76.
3. Bicycle Thieves
1. André Bazin, What Is Cinema? Volume II, trans. Hugh Gray, 58.
2. Ibid., 49.
3. See, for example, Michael Silverman, “Italian Film and American Capital,” in
Cinema Histories, Cinema Practices, ed. Patricia Mellencamp and Phil Rosen; and
Frank Tomasulo, “Bicycle Thieves: A Re-reading,” Cinema Journal 21, no. 2
(Spring 1982).
4. David Bordwell, Narration in the Fiction Film, 206.
5. Tomasulo, “Bicycle Thieves,” 5.
6. See, for example, Chapter 6 in Meir Sternberg, Expositional Modes and Temporal
Ordering in Fiction.
7. It is the presence of all four of these functional characteristics which determines
the structure of anxiety within the loss of narrative drive, and not the loss of nar-
rative itself.
8. Freud, Inhibitions, Symptoms, and Anxiety, 64.
9. Liehm, Passion and Defiance, 76.
11. Tomasulo, “Bicycle Thieves,” 3.
12. Overby, Springtime in Italy, 10.
13. Marcus, Italian Film, 66; Bondanella, Italian Cinema, 59.
14. Shlomith Rimmon-Kennan, Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics, 71.
15. Ibid., 72.
08-T0618-END 8/26/99 3:17 PM Page 168
16. See, for example, Chapter 4 in Bordwell, Narration in the Fiction Film.
17. Mieke Bal, “Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative,” excerpted in
Narrative/ Theory, ed. David H. Richter.
18. Branigan, Narrative Comprehension and Film, 100.
19. Rimmon-Kennan, Narrative Fiction, 81.
20. Sitney, Vital Crises in Italian Cinema, 94.
21. Rimmon-Kennan, Narrative Fiction, 81. The bracketed statement is my own.
22. Ibid., 74.
23. Ibid., 74.
28. See, for example, Jean-Louis Baudry, “Ideological Effects of the Basic Cinemato-
graphic Apparatus”; and Metz, The Imaginary Signifier.
32. Ibid., 73.
33. Ibid., 89.
34. Ibid., 82.
37. For a more detailed discussion of the cognitive dimension of focalization, see
Rimmon-Kennan, Narrative Fiction, 79.
38. Bazin, What Is Cinema? 60.
40. Ibid., 81.
41. See, for example, Bazin, What Is Cinema?; Bondanella, Italian Cinema; and Mar-
cus, Italian Film.
42. Dorrit Cohn, Transparent Minds: Narrative Modes for Presenting Consciousness in
Fiction, 100.
43. Ibid., 111.
44. Ibid., 117.
45. Indeed, rather than being positioned, the spectator is in a continuing process
of negotiation with the text, which provides incentive for and inducements of
Imaginary pleasure in exchange for Symbolic identification. In this respect, the
text must enjoin the subject at the level of the Symbolic— correspond to the Sym-
bolic organization, or je identity of the subject, if Imaginary modes of identifica-
tion are to be engaged. Likewise, the subject must come to take up or identify
with the Symbolic system of the text to obtain Imaginary pleasure.
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Notes to Pages 74 – 83 169

47. Lacan, Book VII, 307.
48. Ibid., 308.
50. Ibid., 65.
51. See Sitney, Vital Crises; and Marcus, Italian Film, for a discussion of the ir-
relevance of “the people” in the consciousness of the union organizers and
performers.
52. Overby, Springtime in Italy, 10.
4. La terra trema
1. Sergei Eisenstein, “Dickens, Griffith, and the Film Today,” in Film Form, trans.
Jay Leyda, 234.
3. Bazin, What Is Cinema? 2: 51.
4. All translations, unless otherwise noted, are my own, taken from the Italian
screenplay and the film.
5. Genette’s discussion of iterative narrative in Narrative Discourse: An Essay in
Method functions to delineate the manner in which the narration of recurring
and nonspecific actions manipulates plot temporality. To begin with, Genette
makes a distinction between external and internal iterative. The former concept
refers to iterative sections which extend the “temporal field” beyond the scene
itself. The concept of internal iterative is then used to describe when recurring
action “extends not over a wider period of time but over the period of time of
the scene itself ” (119). In addition, what Genette describes as iterative narrative’s
distinguishing characteristics— determination, specification, and extension—
further delineate the manner in which plot temporality is manipulated through
the narration of recurring action.
6. The scene of Antonio and his brothers returning from the storm is another ex-
ample that demonstrates this operation. In this scene, they set out to sea in their
newly purchased boat and get caught in a storm. The plot, however, works to
transform the specificity of this narrative action. Throughout the scene the storm
is ritualized, placed in a cycle of events. It is introduced by the ringing of the
town’s bell (a practice used to warn of coming storms), and the plot focuses on the
local shoreline, where the surge and recession of the pounding surf emphasize
cyclical and generalized action over specific and linear processes. Furthermore,
the voice-over narration attempts to place the events within cyclical time. In ad-
dition to describing the storm as the cycle of the sea, the voice-over narration un-
dermines the distinguishing feature of this storm by stating that “almost no one
thinks of [Antonio and his brothers] anymore.” With the fate of Antonio and his
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brothers removed from the townspeople’s minds, there is nothing left to differ-
entiate the storm from any other. It is, rather, just a small part of the unbroken
cycle of life in Trezza (indeed, life in the town seems unchanged when the narra-
tion comes upon it). In this way, the linearity of the storm as specific action is
transformed into the structure of cyclical temporality.
7. One could conclude that constructing the storm as “cause” of Antonio’s failure
severely weakens the film’s Marxist position—relying on chance and not the
capitalist system itself. The film’s specific construction of the story world weak-
ens such a conclusion, however. In a reversal of the capitalist ideological formu-
lation of risk as the justification of inequity, the film assigns the risk of the fishing
business to the fishermen, rather than the dealers. As a result, the system is able
to appropriate even nature itself to ensure its perpetuation. It is from within this
framework that Raimondo’s parable of the worm and the stone takes on its
significance.
8. See, for example, Chapter 8 in Freud, Inhibitions, Symptoms, and Anxiety.
9. Mary Ann Doane, “The Voice in the Cinema: The Articulation of Body and
Space,” in Film Sound, ed. Elisabeth Weis and John Belton, 168 (second emphasis
in the quotation added).
10. Ibid., 168.
11. Pascal Bonitzer, quoted in Doane, “The Voice in the Cinema,” 168.
13. Ragland-Sullivan, Jacques Lacan, 271.
14. Mirto Golo-Stone, Lacan Study Group notes, L’angoisse, New York University
(unpublished).
15. For a further discussion of how Imaginary constructions within the text “abso-
lutize” themselves, see Jameson, “Imaginary and Symbolic in Lacan.”
16. See, for instance, Jameson’s description of the Imaginary in ibid., 357–371.
17. See Liehm, Passion and Defiance, 82.
18. Antonio Gramsci, “The Southern Question,” in Selections from Cultural Writings,
ed. David Forgacs and Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, trans. William Boelhower, 36.
20. Ibid., 154.
21. Lacan, Book III, 268.
23. The manner in which the structure of identity organizes the film text can be de-
termined by analyzing narrative’s organization of the image flow. In his descrip-
tion of shot/reverse-shot in “Narrative Space,” Heath argues on page 54 that “a
reverse shot folds over the shot it joins and is joined in turn by the reverse it po-
sitions; a shot of a person looking is succeeded by a shot of the object looked at
which is succeeded in turn by a shot of the person looking to confirm the object
as seen . . .” The effect of the shot/reverse-shot sequence Heath describes is the
08-T0618-END 8/26/99 3:17 PM Page 171
maintenance of continuity: a perspective of intelligibility which becomes inter-

preted as a unified discourse. A Lacanian framework, however, demonstrates that
this unity of discourse is precisely only an effect: the successful regulation of moi
paranoia. The logic which structures the shot/reverse-shot sequence is the spec-
ular logic of the moi. Limited to its specular logic, the moi can only experience it-
self in relation to other objects and the gaze of others. It is precisely this specular
logic which confirms the identity of the moi— experiencing itself via specular re-
lationships with the object world and, thus, regulating its paranoid demands for
recognition. Heath’s argument draws attention to the necessity of the third shot
(the confirmation shot) within the shot/reverse-shot sequence. What is con-
firmed, however, is not so much the object of the look but the identity of the look.
Within the sequence, the original shot functions as a source of identity: provid-
ing the specular image of a corporal unity. By defining the reverse-shot as the
look of the identity established in the first shot, the sequence inscribes the spec-
ular logic of the moi, which can only experience itself in relation to external ob-
jects and the gaze of others. The return to the original shot is therefore a confir-
mation of the source of identity as it has experienced itself in relationship to the
external image or the gaze of the reverse-shot.
The intelligibility of such a sequence is an effect: the result of inscribing the
specular logic of the moi and its paranoid request for recognition. Spectators read
such a sequence—shot/reverse-shot/original shot or identity/object/identity—
“naturally” because it corresponds to the logic and the structure of their own psy-
chical organization. This “natural intelligibility” organizes the image flow and
thus allows the construction of multiple points of viewing to be regulated and
contained: defined by its relation to identity. Heath recognizes the crucial role
that specular logic and identity play in the organization of the image-flow when
he argues on page 44 that “the spectator will be bound to the film as spectacle as
the world of the film is itself revealed as spectacle on the basis of a narrative or-
ganization of look and point of view that moves space into place through the
image-flow; the character, figure of the look, is a kind of perspective within the
perspective system, regulating the world, orienting space . . .” Narrative organi-
zation of look and point of view is thus constructed around the pure signifier of
the structure and logic of the moi.
25. Lacan, Book III, 200.
27. Ibid., 95.
28. Quoted in Roy Schleifer, “The Space and Dialogue of Desire: Lacan, Greimas,
and Narrative Temporality,” in Lacan and Narration, ed. Robert Con Davis, 874.
08-T0618-END 8/26/99 3:17 PM Page 172
31. Ibid., 222.

32. See, for example, Lacan’s concise critique of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution
in Book I, 177.
33. Ragland-Sullivan, Jacques Lacan, 180 (emphasis added).
34. Mack Smith, Italy: A Modern History, 2.
36. Nowell-Smith, Luchino Visconti, 35.
5. Bitter Rice
1. See, for example, Lacan, Book I, 169.

2. See, for example, Bondanella, Italian Cinema, 82; and Marcus, Italian Film, 79.
4. Leprohon, Italian Cinema, 35.
6. Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” in Visual and Other
Pleasures, 19.
7. A more complete treatment of this issue can be found in D. A. Binchy, Church
and State in Fascist Italy.
8. Elizabeth Clark and Herbert Richardson, Women and Religion: A Feminist Source-
book of Christian Thought, 226.
9. Ibid., 226. Although Casti Connubi was written in the 1930’s, Clark and Richard-
son conclude (227) that “starting in the middle 40’s, Pius XII delivered a number
of speeches on women’s roles in which he stressed the spiritual equality of men
and women, and acknowledged the new social role of women, but nonetheless
firmly upheld the more traditional attitudes toward family life.”
10. Matthew 7 : 1–5, on not judging others. See, for example, Luke 4:18, itself an allu-
sion to Isaiah 61, for the ambivalent attitude toward prison. In addition, the sto-
ries of John the Baptist, especially Matthew 14:3 –12, demonstrate the propensity
to use prison as a political weapon.
11. Jacques Lacan, Feminine Sexuality: Jacques Lacan and the Ecole Freudienne, ed.
Juliet Mitchell and Jacqueline Rose, 144.
12. See, for example, Jacques Lacan, “The Signification of the Phallus,” in Ecrits, 285.
13. The phallic signifier’s relationship to wholeness results from its introduction of
the Symbolic, which, as Lacan maintains, functions as a totality. See, for example,
Book II, 29. Here Lacan argues that “everything that is human must be ordained
within a universe constituted by the symbolic function.”
14. Lacan, Feminine Sexuality, 82.
15. See, for example, Jacques Lacan, “A Love Letter,” in Feminine Sexuality, 150.
17. Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure,” 14.
08-T0618-END 8/26/99 3:17 PM Page 173
19. Ibid., 167.

20. Ibid., 142.
21. Ibid., 151.
22. Ibid., 75.
23. Ibid., 154.
24. Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure,” 14.
26. Ibid., 144.
29. Ibid., 147.
6. Senso
1. Although not Visconti’s first choice, Granger was nonetheless an American lead-
ing role figure who could “ensure” a certain level of box office returns.
2. See, for example, Marcus, Italian Film; Liehm, Passion and Defiance; and Bonda-
nella, Italian Cinema.
3. Ginsborg, A History of Contemporary Italy, 112.
4. Elisa A. Carrillo, “Christian Democracy,” in Modern Italy, ed. Edward R. Tan-
nenbaum and Emiliana P. Noether, 95.
5. This is not to imply that Senso was the first big-budget film either within the
bounds of Neorealism or outside them. Whereas other Neorealist films had large
budgets, however, stylistic choices were made to hide this fact. See, for example,
Bondanella’s discussion of Bicycle Thieves in Italian Cinema.
9. Peter Brooks, The Melodramatic Imagination, 28.
12. For more information on the governmental censorship of Senso, see Nowell-
Smith, Luchino Visconti; Angela Dalle Vacche, The Body in the Mirror: Shapes of
History in Italian Cinema; and Luchino Visconti, Senso.
14. Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, ed. Q. Hoare and Geoffrey
Nowell-Smith, 238.
15. Palmiro Togliatti, quoted in Ginsborg, A History of Contemporary Italy, 43.
16. Ginsborg, A History of Contemporary Italy, 195.
17. Ibid., 195.
19. Ibid., 171.
08-T0618-END 8/26/99 3:17 PM Page 174
7. Psychoanalysis, Cinematic Representation, and Cultural Studies
1. Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, “Cinema Nuovo and Neo-Realism,” Screen 17, no. 4

(Winter 1976 –1977): 111.
2. Silverman, “Italian Film and American Capital.”
3. Quoted in Gian Piero Brunetta, Storia del cinema italiano dal 1945 agli anni ot-
tanta, 367.
4. Jean-Louis Comolli and Jean Narboni, “Cinema/Ideology/Criticism,” Cahiers du
Cinéma 216 (October 1969). Cited here from Movies and Methods, Vol. 1, ed. Bill
Nichols, 26.
5. Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.”
6. See, for example, Lacan, Book I, 280.
7. Sigmund Freud, Jokes and Their Relationship to the Unconscious, trans. James
Strachey, 153.
8. See the section on “Critical Theory” in Lawrence Grossberg, “Strategies of Marx-
ist Cultural Interpretation,” in Critical Perspectives on Media and Society, ed.
Robert K. Avery and David Eason.
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Index
actional dynamics: characteristics of, Bakhtin, M.M., 2 –3

72, 164; and narrative movement, 72, Bal, Mieke, 61, 168
78; relationship to exposition, 74; as Barthes, Roland, 34 –35, 164
corresponding to the moi, 79 Baudry, Jean-Louis, 3, 18, 66, 159, 161,
—and Rome: Open City, 73 168
—and Bicycle Thieves, 113 –114, 117, Bazin, Andre, 53 –54, 70, 80, 167, 168
120, 125 Bondanella, Peter, 45, 59, 163 –164n,
—and La terra trema, 162, 163 172n, 173n
—and Bitter Rice, 213 –215, 217, 219, Bonitzer, Pascal, 88, 170
222 Bordwell, David, 3, 36, 54, 159n, 164n,
—and Senso, 253 –256 168n
Altman, Charles, 9, 159 Branigan, Ed, 35, 61, 164n
anxiety, 25, 51, 151; definition of, 51, 82; Brennan, Theresa, 6, 10, 21, 159n, 162n
and Post-war Italian Culture, 55 –56, Brooks, Peter, 35, 132 –133
105, 128; and plot structure, 82, 167; Buscombe, Ed, 9
characteristics of, 83; and Lacan, 83,
88; as signal, 83 capitalism, 3; and the cinema, 3; as cul-
—and Rome: Open City, 41– 42, tural system, 6; and Italian culture,
45 – 47, 50, 165 6 –7, 44, 148; structures of, 21; and
—and Bicycle Thieves, 54, 56, 57–59 narrative structure, 60
—and La terra trema, 83 – 86, 90, 92, —and La terra trema, 80, 85, 91–92
102, 150 —and Senso, 142
—and Bitter Rice, 119 —and Bitter Rice, 152
—and Senso, 133 –134 —and Rome: Open City, 152, 154
Armes, Roy, 163 Carrillo, Elisa, 128
10-T0618-IX 8/26/99 3:18 PM Page 182
Carroll, Noel, 18 and fantasy in, 123; and jouissance

Casti Connubi, 115 in, 124, 126
celibacy: signifier of, 45, 49 —and Senso: and exposition in,
character: and narrative movement, 129, 133, 135; and main, 130; and
35 –36, 95; and relationship to focal- identification in, 133 –134, 137–138,
ization, 61, 63 – 65; and represen- 142; and focalization in, 135 –138,
tation of consciousness, 71; and 140 –142; and organization of nar-
narrated monologue, 72; and move- rative in, 136, 142; and fantasy in,
ment of desire, 95; and structure of 139; and definitions of, 156
identity, 95 –97; as effect, 96 –97; as —and Il Posto, 155
site of dialectical structure, 96 –97; Chiarini, Luigi, 31
analysis of, 98 Christian Democratic Party (DC), 50,
—and Rome: Open City, 40; and 91, 128, 149, 152
definitions in, 33, 45 – 46, 102; Christianity, 166n
and process of displacement in, —in Rome: Open City, 45 – 46, 154
37; and expositional function —in Bitter Rice, 117–118, 120
in, 38, 165n; and redirection of cinema, 3 – 4, 9, 28; German, 24; and
identification in, 43 – 45, 49 –50, narrative, 30; Italian, 53, 77; Neo-
134 realist, 127–128
—and Bicycle Thieves: and iden- cinema studies, 3, 9, 14
tification in, 56, 58, 60; and struc- Clark, Elizabeth, 115, 172n
ture of desire in, 60; and eval- CLNAI (National Resistance
uative system in, 61, 77; and Committee for Upper Italy), 25
attributes in, 64 – 65; and focal- cognitive psychology, 4, 10
ization in, 69, 71–72 Cohn, Dorrit, 72
—and La terra trema: and exposi- collaboration, 40 – 43, 46 – 47, 50, 149
tional function in, 81, 103; and Communism: representation of, 44;
desire in, 84, 93, 95, 99; and focal- and the church, 154
ization in, 89 –91; and identifica- Communist Party (PCI), 50, 143 –144
tion in, 90 –91, 101; and Imaginary Comolli, Jean-Louis, 148
jouissance in, 90; and definitions costume, 120, 127, 135
in, 96, 98 cultural containment, 24, 148
—and Bitter Rice: and expositional cultural instability, 26
function in, 108, 112, 116 –117; and cultural repression, 41, 80, 86, 100,
narrative containment in, 109; 102 –103
and plot organization in, 110; cultural studies, 2 –3, 5, 10 –11, 148 –149,
and focalization in, 113 –114; and 153 –154, 157
dynamics in, 117; and class simi- culture: American, 6, 157; post-war
larity in, 118; and idealization of, Italian, 6, 24 –26, 28 –30, 148, 154 –
118; and Symbolic identification 55; and identity, 17; Italian, 24 –26,
in, 118 –119; principle in, 119; con- 37, 49, 54, 76; and alienating effects
struction of Francesca in, 120, 126; of, 80
10-T0618-IX 8/26/99 3:18 PM Page 183
Index 183
—and La terra trema, 91, 103 —and Rome: Open City, 34, 41,
—and Bitter Rice, 106, 113, 114 –115, 42, 47
119 —and Bicycle Thieves, 54, 56 –58, 60
—and Senso, 128, 143, 145 –146 —and La terra trema, 83, 84 – 85, 99
Custoza: battle of, 139 –140 —and Bitter Rice, 109
disruption: and the discourse of the je,
Darwin, Charles: and theory of evolu- 28; narrative, 30 –31
tion, 172n —and Rome: Open City, 30 –33,
de Blasio Wilhelm, Maria, 166n 38 – 43, 149, 163n, 165n
decathexis, 49, 119, 134, 152 —and Bicycle Thieves, 54 –56, 58 –59
DeGaspari, Alcide, 128 —and La terra trema, 80 – 81
De Saussure, Ferdinand, 2, 9 —and Bitter Rice, 113 –114, 119, 126
De Sica, Vittorio, 26, 71, 127, 147 —and Senso, 132
desire: of the subject, 4, 15; and dis- diva, 105 –106
course, 7, 157; dynamics of, 7, 28 –29, Doane, Mary Anne, 88
35, 121–123, 145; movement of, 37,
95 –96; structure of, 37; redirection Eagleton, Terry, 3, 159n
of, 38; narrative, 65 – 66; and rela- ego, 5 – 6, 14 –16, 28, 34 –36, 42, 66;
tionship to the je, 65 – 66, 74, 95; structure of, 6; and anxiety, 38 –39
and the gaze, 66 – 68; and the moi, Eisenstein, Sergei, 79, 92, 163n
95 –96; and the Symbolic, 98 –99; Elsaesser, Thomas, 3 – 4, 18 –19, 163n
feminine, 118, 120; operations of, exposition, 32, 96, 149, 164n; character-
150 istics of the expositional mode, 33;
—and Rome: Open City, 36 –37, function of, 33; and relationship
44 – 49 to the je, 37
—and Bicycle Thieves, 54, 56, 58, 60, —and Rome: Open City, 33 –34, 38,
62; and the character of Antonio 43, 165n
in, 72; and the character of Bruno —and Bicycle Thieves, 54 – 60
in, 73, 76 —and La terra trema, 80 – 83, 96, 99
—and La terra trema, 82 – 86, 95, —and Bitter Rice, 106 –108, 110,
99 –100, 103; and the character 112 –113, 116
Antonio in, 81, 88 –92, 97–98 —and Senso, 129 –130, 132 –133, 135
—and Bitter Rice, 113, 117; and the
character Silvana in, 112, 118 –119, fantasy, 22 –23, 154 –155
123 –126; and the character of —and Bicycle Thieves, 76 –77
Marco in, 124 —and Bitter Rice, 119, 122 –123, 126
—and Senso, 134, 145 —and Senso, 137–142, 144
deus ex machina, 133 Fascism, 24 –26; reinterpretations of,
displacement: and the je, 17, 28, 37, 24; collapse of, 28, 42, 91, 114, 128,
65; and narrative, 18; and anxiety, 148; and super-ego anxiety, 46 – 48,
39, 41; and relationship to the sub- 50, 166 –167n; and patriarchy, 76,
ject, 122 106, 114, 119; and the church, 114 –115
10-T0618-IX 8/26/99 3:18 PM Page 184
—and Rome: Open City: and repre- identification, 17, 26, 32, 79 – 80; pre-
sentation of culpability for, 37, linguistic, 4; and psychoanalytic
46 – 47; and the plot’s displace- film theory, 12 –14, 18 –19; and the
ment of, 41, 46 – 47, 149 Imaginary, 13, 21; premirror, 13 –14,
—and La terra trema, 101–103 160; and identity, 15, 17, 21; and the
focalization, 61– 62, 64, 68; and narra- moi, 16 –17, 36; Symbolic, 17–19,
tive, 61, 64; and ideology, 62; char- 21–22, 24, 53, 150 –151, 161–162n;
acteristics, 64 – 65; and correspon- Imaginary, 18 –19, 21–22; and Italian
dence to the je, 64 – 65; ideological culture, 30; structural, 34 –35; and
facet of, 64; and symbolic identifi- its role in securing mass audience,
cation, 64 166n; and its relation to Imaginary
—and Bicycle Thieves, 60, 64, 67–73, pleasure, 168n
149 —and Rome: Open City, 40 – 47,
—and La terra trema, 87–90, 92 –93 49 –51
—and Bitter Rice, 113 –115, 120 —and Bicycle Thieves, 53 –54, 57–58,
—and Senso, 135 –137, 139 –144 61– 62, 64 – 68, 71–76
framing: and anxiety, 42, 47, 50 —and La terra trema, 83 – 84, 86 –92,
Frankfurt School, 152 97, 99, 101–103
Freud, Sigmund: and continuity of —and Bitter Rice, 113, 117–120, 126
works, 5; and concept of repression, —and Senso, 130, 133 –135, 139, 141–
6; and concept of ego, 15, 34 –35; and 142, 144 –145
definition of anxiety, 38 –39, 57, 84; identity: as fictive, 4; and the subject,
and textuality, 151 4, 12; and the ego, 6; and texts, 12,
Friedberg, Ann, 18, 161n 17, 19, 41; and the premirror stage,
13, 15; and culture, 17; and mask-
gaze, 66 – 67 ing of alienation, 17, 99; and Sym-
—and Bicycle Thieves, 67– 68, bolic identification, 19, 53, 73 –74;
73, 76 and the Symbolic, 22, 37, 151–152;
—and La terra trema, 92 Italian, 24, 47, 100, 102, 140; and
Ginsborg, Paul, 25, 128, 144 process of negotiation with texts,
Gledhill, Christine, 9 41, 150; and logic of, 63 – 64; and
Gramsci, Antonio, 2, 7, 92, 143 focalization, 65; structure of, 79,
Greimas, A.J., 95 92; and recognition, 92; and struc-
Grossberg, Lawrence, 152 ture, 92, 95 –96, 152; functioning
of, 99, 151; and the super-ego, 100;
Hay, James, 24 and gender, 122; dialectic of, 153,
hegemony, 7, 12, 23, 143, 157; and hege- 157; Lacan’s concept of (see Lacan
monic processes, 7, 9 –10, 148; and and concept of identity); and the
Fascism, 50 Other(A) (see Other(A) and iden-
hermeneutics, 155 tity); and repression (see repression
horizon of expectations, 149 and identity)
10-T0618-IX 8/26/99 3:18 PM Page 185
Index 185
—in Rome: Open City: structures ments, 128; and history of occupa-
of, 47 tion, 131, 144, 166 –167n; unification
—in Bicycle Thieves: structures of, of, 140 –143
60, 74 –75 —in Bicycle Thieves: represented,
—in La terra trema: structures of, 56, 76
95 –98, 101–103 iterative narration, 80 – 83
ideology: and language, 3; and hege-
monic processes, 7; and cultural Jameson, Fredric, 12; and Lacanian the-
texts, 17; Lacanian criticism of, ory, 14, 91; and interpretation, 20;
22 –23, 67, 151; and the Symbolic, and structural limitations, 21; and
22, 153; and Symbolic identifica- utopian impulse, 25; and narrative,
tion, 66, 74; of the Roman Catholic 34, 37, 91, 95; and Freudian theory,
church, 116; of patriarchy, 162n; 36, 151; and Marxist critical theory,
and focalization (see focalization 45, 153
and ideology) Jauss, Hans Robert, 149, 163n
Il Trovatore, 129 je, 16, 37, 74, 97; characteristics of, 16 –
Imaginary, 13 –15, 28, 65, 153; and mis- 17; relationship to moi, 28, 95 –96;
recognition, 4; and identification, and the Symbolic, 37; definition of,
13 –14, 18 –19, 21, 66, 74; and plea- 65; and identity, 65; and structure,
sure, 19 –20, 22, 25, 161n, 168n; and 65; focalization (see focalization);
unity, 19, 122; and desire, 22, 145; correspondence to exposition (see
and libidinal attachments, 22, 151; exposition, correspondence to);
and fantasy, 23; and discourse, and Symbolic identification (see
28; and narrative, 34, 37, 170n; and identification, Symbolic)
the moi, 36; and psychoanalytic —and La terra trema, 103
film theory, 66; and woman, 122 jouissance, 19, 21; and narrative film, 20,
—and La terra trema, 86, 90 –91, 97, 22, 37; definition of, 90; structure of,
103, 144 90; and women, 125
—and Senso, 135, 138 –139, 141 —in La terra trema, 86, 90, 97–99,
Italian cinema, 53, 77 150
Italian culture: 24, 37–38, 100, 154 –55; —in Bitter Rice, 124 –126
post-war, 6, 24 –26, 28, 76, 113; and —in Senso, 135, 140, 150
resistance movement, 29 –30; and
patriarchal capitalism, 76, 91, 103; Kermode, Frank, 96
and patriarchy, 106, 119; and Roman Klinger, Barbara, 18, 161n
Catholicism, 114 –115; and trans-
formismo, 143 –146; and utopian Lacan, Jacques: and concept of dis-
impulse, 148 course, 4, 28, 35, 53, 79; and concept
Italian film, 24 of recognition, 4, 35, 79; and concept
Italy, 77, 80, 102, 106; post-war, 6 –7, 49, of the signifier, 4, 11, 29, 93 –94, 122;
105; and patriarchy, 114; and govern- and dialectical theory, 5, 12, 17, 20,
10-T0618-IX 8/26/99 3:18 PM Page 186
151; and return to Freud, 5, 12, 151; 21–22, 49, 151; film as a series of, 18;
and concept of language, 11; and lan- and Italian culture, 25, 100 –101; and
guage, 12, 22; and developmental the je, 65; and narrated monologue,
stages, 13 –15; and theory of identity, 72; and women’s subjugation, 123,
13, 60 – 61, 64 – 65, 95, 151; and cogni- 125; and the Real, 125; and the domi-
tive model, 14; and concept of the nant, 148 –149; and childhood devel-
Other(A) , 14, 122, 150; and concept opment, 151; and Lacan’s concept of
of consciousness, 15, 67; and theory (see Lacan and concept of language)
of personality, 15 –17, 32, 34 –37, 42; Lebeau, Vicky, 162n
and theory of identification, 18, 66; Leprohon, Pierre, 106
and concept of alienation, 20 –21, Liehm, Mira, 57, 105 –106
96, 121–122; and history, 20; apply- Lovell, Allan, 9
ing theories of, 23; and theory of
anxiety, 39, 42; and concept of the Mack Smith, Denis, 101
gaze, 66, 68; and concept of the Mammarella, Giuseppe, 50
paternal function, 74; and concept Marcus, Millicent
of jouissance, 90, 125; and concept —and Bicycle Thieves, 46, 58 –59, 64,
of the point de capiton, 92; and 68, 75, 169n
signification, 93 –94, 151; and con- —and Rome: Open City, 46, 58 –59,
cept of desire, 98, 145; and theory 100 –101
of feminine sexuality, 120 –123, 125; —and Senso, 130, 133
and concept of Symbolic function, —and Il Posto, 155
132, 153 Marx, Karl, 2, 9
Lacanian psychoanalysis, 4 – 6, 10 –11; Marxist critical theory, 5, 10 –12, 26, 149,
and the study of film, 4 –7, 9, 152 –153; and representation of, 80,
170n; and Neorealism, 7; as critical 91–92, 100, 142
method, 12 –14, 17, 19, 22; and his- Marxists: representation of, 44 – 45
tory, 21–22; and analysis of texts, 23, melodrama: organized around the
27–28, 128, 170n; and criticism of struggle of virtue, 132 –133
ideology, 23, 29 –30, 32, 53; and this —and Senso, 127, 132 –133, 137–142,
study, 27–28, 53, 73, 79; and focaliza- 145
tion, 62 – 64; and music, 71–72; and Metz, Christian, 10, 14, 18, 66
narrative analysis, 93, 95 –96; and Meyers, Ched, 166n
earlier Freudian models, 98; Fredric mirror stage, 13, 15, 18
Jameson’s study of, 151 mise-en-scène
—and Bicycle Thieves, 74 —and Bicycle Thieves, 53
—and Bitter Rice, 105 —and La terra trema, 102
Lacanian psychoanalytic film theory, —and Senso, 135, 138
10; in the 1970s, 4, 13, 15, 19, 30 –31 misrecognition, 25, 67, 80, 92, 98 –99
La Fenice, 135, 139 moi: characteristics of, 15 –17, 28, 37; and
language, 2 –3, 5, 11, 15 –17; continuity mirror stage, 15; definition of, 16, 34;
between identifications and, 18 –19, as paranoid, 16; and discourse, 28;
10-T0618-IX 8/26/99 3:18 PM Page 187
Index 187
and recognition, 28; and structure redirection of desire in, 43, 45 – 46,
of, 28, 42, 84; and form, 35 –36, 74; 48; logic in, 44 – 45
and narrative structure, 35 –37, 95 – —and Bicycle Thieves, 53, 58, 72,
97; irreducibility of, 36; and neutral- 76 –77; drive, 54 –56; effect in, 54,
izing function, 36; and drive, 65; 60; movement in, 54, 56 –58, 76;
and identification, 66 structure in, 54, 62 – 64, 66; space,
—and La terra trema, 86, 97–98 56, 60, 69; as object in, 57, 59;
Mulvey, Laura, 109, 122 –123, 149 replacement of, 57, 59; contain-
Mussolini, 25, 103, 131 ment in, 58 – 60; premise in, 62;
and identification in, 72 –73; and
Name of the Father, 15 –16, 122 music in, 72
narrated monologue, 72 —and La terra trema, 88, 93; and
narration, 61– 62, 68, 70; cinematic, 22, subversion of classical in, 80,
61, 71–72; classical, 150 83 – 86, 98 –100; movement in,
—and Bicycle Thieves, 54 –57, 68 –71; 81, 84; and desire, 82 – 84; space,
and narrated monologue in, 72 82; stability in, 82; and voice-over
—and La terra trema, 79, 82 – 83, in, 88
86 –90; and voice-over in, 80 – 82, —and Bitter Rice, 107–108, 123,
88 –91, 101; and its subversion of 156; and control in, 108 –110,
classical, 86, 92 –93, 95, 97–99 112 –113; and the figure of Silvana,
—and Senso, 136 –138, 141–142, 109 –113, 119, 123; progression
144 in, 109 –113, 119; and spectacle,
narrative: and containment, 7, 30 –34, 109; and subordination, 109;
154; and ideological functioning, expositional modes in, 116; and
7, 103; and identification, 18 –19; disruption in, 119; and closure
process of, 18, 31–32, 37, 95 –96, in, 124
150; master, 20, 23, 34, 37; classical —and Senso, 131; conflict in, 129,
Hollywood, 22, 24, 37, 148; cine- 132; containment in, 130; and
matic, 30 –31; conventions, 31; and identification in, 130; threat to,
structure, 32 –37, 95; and the Imagi- 131; action in, 132; organization
nary, 34; and the Symbolic, 34; drive, in, 133, 136; progression in, 133;
73; and realism, 94; and action, 95; and external focalization in,
and character, 95 –96, 98; and move- 136; events in, 141–142; logic in,
ment, 95, 98; and the diva genre, 145
106; as organized around the melo- Neorealism, 7, 24 –30, 147–148, 152,
dramatic mode, 132 –133; and plea- 156 –157; transformations, 53, 105 –
sure, 150; and focalization (see focal- 106
ization); and the moi (see moi and —and Senso, 127–128, 146
narrative structure) Nichols, Bill, 162n
—and Rome: Open City, 31–34, No of the Father (see Name of the
36 –38, 103; disruption in, 31, Father)
38 – 43; movement in, 36 –37, 59; Norris, Christopher, 5
10-T0618-IX 8/26/99 3:18 PM Page 188
Nowell-Smith, Geoffrey, 18, 101; and Real, 4, 11, 14; and jouissance, 21; defi-
Neorealism, 29, 147–148, 156 nition, 22, 26; and anxiety, 26; and
—and Senso, 132, 142 Neorealism, 28; and the Resistance,
29, 102; and Fascism, 42 – 43, 48; and
Oedipal stage, 15, 34, 74 paternal function, 74; and the signi-
off-screen space fier, 92 –94; and meaning beyond
—and Rome: Open City, 38 language, 125 –126
—and Bicycle Thieves, 55 –56, 58 – 60, —and Senso, 142, 144
67 reception studies, 4
—and La terra trema, 81 recognition: and language, 2, 4, 17;
—and Bitter Rice, 109 –110 and identity, 4, 99, 151; and the Sym-
—and Senso, 139 bolic, 4; and the moi, 17, 28, 37, 171n;
Other(A) : definition, 14 –15; and conti- and culture, 19; and discourse, 28,
nuity between identifications and 35, 79; and form, 35; and narrative
language, 17–19, 21–22, 151; and mis- drive, 37; and text-subject relation-
recognition, 25; and separation, ships, 79, 157; and structure, 92; and
49 –50; and identity, 50, 99; and movement of desire, 96, 144; and
the gaze, 67; and meaning, 99; and melodrama, 132 –133; and alienation,
woman, 122; and identification, 150 144 –145
—and La terra trema, 101 —and Senso, 144 –145, 150
Overby, David, 58, 75 relations to authority, 28, 60, 79 – 80,
87
PCI (Communist Party), 62 repression, 6; and identity, 6; primary,
penance, 45 – 46 16; and language, 17; of history, 20,
penitential, 48, 143, 156 102 –103, 132; and cultural signifying
phallic signifier, 15, 28 practices, 32; and the redirection
phallus, 56, 121–122, 125 –126 of desire, 39; cultural, 41– 42, 80,
Pius XI, 115 –116 100; and the signifier of occupation,
poetic process, 151–152 41– 42; and narrative desire, 82 – 85;
point de capiton, 92 –94 political, 117–118
premirror: as stage, 13, 15; as identifi- Resistance (Italian), 6 –7, 102, 114, 148;
cation, 14, 72 and Neorealism, 29; as signifier,
Propp, Vladimir, 36, 95 –96 29 –30, 102; and women’s participa-
tion in, 43, 106, 165n
Ragland-Sullivan, Ellie: and concept —and Rome: Open City, 36, 42 – 44,
of the ego, 6; and concept of the 50 –51, 145, 165n; Resistance youth
father, 15; and relationship between in, 43, 47– 49, 145, 150, 154
modes of identification, 21; and con- —and La terra trema, 102 –103
cept of the moi, 28; and concept of —and Senso, 133, 142 –145
jouissance, 90; and relationship of Richardson, Herbert, 115, 172n
Other(A) to meaning, 99; and con- Risorgimento
cept of the Other(A) , 160n —and Senso, 127, 136, 139, 142 –144
10-T0618-IX 8/26/99 3:18 PM Page 189
Index 189
Roman Catholic Church: and Fascism, 154; of internal splitting in, 49; of
114; and women, 115 –116 the Other(A) in, 50; of the indi-
—in Rome: Open City, 44 – 45, 49, vidual, 154
154 —and Bicycle Thieves, 74; of identity
—in Bicycle Thieves, 62, 75, 149, 155 in, 53, 64; of anxiety in, 54, 56, 58;
—in Bitter Rice, 114 –116, 118, 120 of narrative in, 54; of point of
Rossellini, Roberto, 26, 29, 100, 147 view in, 55; of classical style in, 56;
Ruether, Rosemary Radford, 166n of object loss in, 56 –57; of the
paternal function in, 75 –76; of
St. Peter’s Cathedral, 49, 154 fantasy in, 76; of the individual
Silverman, Michael, 147 in, 76
Sitney, P. Adams, 27, 50, 62, 169n —and La terra trema: of classical
Southern Question, 92, 101 narrative in, 80, 83 – 84, 86; of
Staiger, Janet, 3 identity in, 80, 86, 95, 97; of privi-
Sternberg, Meir, 32 –33, 36, 40, 83, 96; lege in, 80; and the process of
literary basis of the model, 164n misrecognition in, 80; of repres-
structure: and meaning, 2; of identity, sion in, 80; of narrative stability
4, 12, 15, 37; and the individual, 6, 22; in, 82; of plot, 83 – 84, 88, 91–92;
and continuity, 18; and identifica- of anxiety in, 86, 90; of Symbolic
tion, 22, 32, 34, 113; of fantasy, 23; of identification in, 87; and its sub-
Fascism, 24; and textual significa- version, 93, 95, 99 –100; of desire
tion, 24; and the social domain, 26; in, 99 –100
of plot, 28; of relationship between —and Bitter Rice: of anxiety in, 119;
the moi and the je within discourse, of the text, 119; of control in, 120;
28; and Symbolic identification, 74; of desire in, 124; of jouissance in,
of Griffith montage, 79; and signifi- 124
cation, 92, 149, 152; and the text, —and Senso: of the plot in, 129 –131,
92, 95 –96, 152; and character as 133, 142, 144; of melodrama in, 133;
dialectical, 96; desire, 96; and pri- of anxiety in, 135; of class in, 136;
mary, 98; of the je (see je and struc- of the national unity movement
ture); of jouissance (see jouissance, in, 139; of the Imaginary in, 145;
structure of ); of the moi (see moi); of privilege in, 156
of narrative (see narrative); and super-ego, 6
the Resistance (see Resistance as —and Rome: Open City, 46 – 47, 50
signifier) —and La terra trema, 100
—and Rome: Open City, 31–32, 37, Symbolic, 11–12, 26, 29, 92, 121–125; and
41– 43, 45 – 47; temporal in, 31; Lacan’s cognitive model, 14; order,
of Lacan’s theory of personality 17, 19, 21–23, 121; mandate, 23, 74 –75,
in, 34; of anxiety in, 38 –39; of 154; function, 37, 105, 121, 125, 131–
penance in, 46, 48 – 49; and moral 132; and the gaze, 67– 68, 76; and the
and ideological in, 47; and indi- paternal, 74; and desire (see desire
vidual renunciation in, 49 –50, and the Symbolic); and the je (see je
10-T0618-IX 8/26/99 3:18 PM Page 190
and the Symbolic); identification unity of discourse, 28, 32, 79, 161n, 170n
(see identification, Symbolic); and —and Rome: Open City, 30 –31
ideology (see ideology and the Sym- —and La terra trema, 80
bolic); and narrative (see narrative utopian impulse, 25, 148, 153 –154, 157
and the Symbolic); and recognition —and Rome: Open City, 30, 43 – 44,
(see recognition and the Symbolic) 49 –50
—and Bicycle Thieves, 72 –73, 76 —and La terra trema, 91–92
—and La terra trema, 86 – 88, 91,
97–98, 102 Verdi, 129
—and Bitter Rice, 107, 117, 119, 123 – Visconti, Luchino, 26, 127–128, 147, 173n
126, 156; and woman in, 121–125
—and Senso, 137–138, 141–144, 156 Williams, Christopher, 9
“THE” woman, 121–122 Zizek, Slavoj, 10, 22 –23, 94 –95, 153 –154,
Togliatti, Palmiro, 143 –144 162n
Tomasulo, Frank, 54, 58
transformismo, 135, 140 –146

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University of Texas Press, Austin

Copyright © 1999 by the University of Texas Press

First edition, 1999

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Rocchio, Vincent F. (Vincent Floyd), 1960 – Cinema of anxiety : a psycho-

Vincenzo ed Antonia Rocchio

Anthony, mio padre nobile

5. Bitter Rice 105

7. Psychoanalysis, Cinematic Representation, 147

Notes 159 Bibliography 175 Index 181

language becomes malleable, subject to the needs of the dominant mode of

Lacan’s description of the relationship between the signifier and identity

The American Frenchspeak ghetto has complicated things by maintaining

cipline seeking to establish itself through new discourses and paradigms).

Revisiting Psychoanalysis & the Cinema 11

language cannot be conceived of as the result of a series of shoots, of buds, com-

Expanding on the semiotic framework, Lacan points to the manner in which

Revisiting Psychoanalysis & the Cinema 13

that encompass and regulate the parameters of the text-subject relationship.

different modes of identification into a response to lack. This results in a fail-

THE L ACANIAN SUBJECT

Revisiting Psychoanalysis & the Cinema 15

to the secondary unconscious, but rather is that point of continuity between

Thus, for Lacan, the je is more than a grammatical term, it is a functional

Revisiting Psychoanalysis & the Cinema 17

Lacan’s dialectical framework provides for a more expanded model beyond

Revisiting Psychoanalysis & the Cinema 19

A Lacanian model of text-subject relations, therefore, has to take into ac-

stead a homogenous cultural identity through Imaginary identification.

Revisiting Psychoanalysis & the Cinema 21

closed phenomenon, immune to history, an inevitable process precisely be-

subjects constantly reconstitute their identities within a synchronic, cultural sig-

A Lacanian framework can thus articulate the manner in which textual

Revisiting Psychoanalysis & the Cinema 23

the classical text seeks to eradicate difference through the libidinizing of a

role of exercising cultural containment and unanimity. Placing such an in-

Revisiting Psychoanalysis & the Cinema 25

The achieved collectivity or organic group of whatever kind— oppressors fully

Revisiting Psychoanalysis & the Cinema 27

realist. The effect of auteurist perspectives can be seen in the constitution of

In his discussion of Neorealism, Geoffrey Nowell-Smith argues that “the real

Rome: Open City 31

each of which inscribes a different point of viewing or perspective. The struc-

of the primary disruptions of the text into a continuous maintenance of

Rome: Open City 33

guishing between expositional modes (characterized by their general, decon-

priation destabilizes the narrative, contributing to confusion rather than

Rome: Open City 35

been seen as a mode of organization, a position clearly articulated with re-

Rome: Open City 37

The equivocation Lacan describes—the alternation of an action (already

calm discussion, however, a loud, angry voice is suddenly heard off-screen.

Anxiety thus acts as a signal which engages the mechanism of repression to

begin with, narrative disruptions are constructed as temporal dimensions—

Rome: Open City 41

This process is articulated by the text in the scene where Francesco

Rome: Open City 43

nifiers of occupation and collaboration functions to direct spectatorial iden-

between the characters. Pina, a working-class woman who admits to believ-

Rome: Open City 45

By describing themselves in this manner, Pina and Francesco characterize

Rome: Open City 47