Calligrafismo (En: caligraphism) is an Italian style of filmmaking in the first half of the 1940s.

Characteristics of the style[edit]

A scene from La bella addormentata (1942)

In the 1940s the two most significant styles of the Italian movie scene were the telefoni bianchi (En: white telephones) and calligrafismo.

Calligrafismo is in a sharp contrast to telefoni bianchi-American style comedies and is rather artistic, highly formalistic, expressive in complexity and deals mainly with contemporary literary material,^[1] above all the pieces of Italian realism from authors like Corrado Alvaro, Ennio Flaiano, Emilio Cecchi, Francesco Pasinetti, Vitaliano Brancati, Mario Bonfantini and Umberto Barbaro.^[2]

The most important directors and scriptwriters[edit]

Scene from Tragica notte (1942)

Directors[edit]

• Mario Soldati
• Luigi Chiarini
• Renato Castellani
• Alberto Lattuada
• Ferdinando Maria Poggioli

Scriptwriters[edit]

• Virgilio Marchi
• Gino Carlo Sensani
• Antonio Valente.

References[edit]

Sources[edit]

• Roberto Campari, Il fantasma del bello. Iconologia del cinema italiano, Marsilio, Venezia, 1994. ISBN 88-317-5898-5
• ISBN 88-317-5774-1
• Lontani dalla gloria (Narrativa) (Italian Edition)
• After Neorealism: Italian Filmmakers and Their Films; Essays and Interviews