An Investigative Cinema: Politics and Modernization in Italian, French, and American Film

My dissertation traces the development of a category I call investigative cinema, whose main characteristic lies in reconstructing real events, mainly political crises and conspiracies. Concerned with the intersection between politics and form, the films under consideration are rarely discussed by scholars, especially in a comparative perspective. Nor do they fall into commonly recognized film genres or fit auteur paradigms. Because they share a common approach to reality, they are often labeled political; however, they only partially share the revolutionary impulse of Soviet avant-gardes or the reform-minded optimism of early neorealism. In dealing with governmental power as manifested in a Kafkaesque legal system, impersonal bureaucracy, and the repressive forces of the army and police, these documentary-like films refrain from a simplistic reconstruction of historical events and are mainly concerned with producing what does not immediately appear on the surface of events. Consequently, they raise questions about the nature of the "truth" promoted by institutions, newspapers, archives, dossiers, and television reports. By highlighting unanswered questions, they often leave us with a lack of clarity. In fact, while the plot conveys information, the questioning of documentation becomes the actual narrative. Recent studies by Fredric Jameson, Angelo Restivo, and Kristin Ross have demonstrated the possibility of situating 1960s and 1970s cinema in relation to the economic and geopolitical changes brought on by massive modernization. Following this debate, I examine the centrality of investigative cinema in relation to the historical conjunctures of the "economic miracle" in Italy, the simultaneous decolonization and reordering of culture in France, and the post-Watergate climate in U.S. society. Against this background of economic transformation and modernization, the history of investigative cinema is exemplified by Salvatore Giuliano, The Battle of Algiers, and All the President's Men. My research traces the emergence of a constellation of pressing concerns in contemporary critical theory: namely, urbanization and national space, post-colonialism, and above all the impact of television on cinema in both the European and the U.S. contexts.