“As Time Goes By...” You Must Not Remember This.
Burying the Past in the Italian Post-War Edition of Casablanca
My contribution sets out to discuss the Italian edition of the film Casablanca (1942) and analyses the extent to which the dubbed version of the film was prepared to be watched by Italian post-war audiences in 1947. I look at the war-related fictional contents of the film and at the legislative background governing the Italian film distribution sector, which will prevent the film from being distributed in the country in 1943, following its successful domestic run in the US, and immediately after the end of the war.
I then discuss the “operational continuity” in matters of film censorship that characterized the Italian state-run film office during and after the dictatorship. Thereafter I analyze the complex process of manipulation performed on the dubbed version of the film which neutralised the references to Fascist Italy, to Italian colonialism in Ethiopia and the presence of Italian characters in the film.