ABSTRACT
At the end of the Second World War, the Italian film industry was in tatters. Most of the country’s movie theatres had been destroyed during the war years, and in 1945 Cinecittà itself had been requisitioned by the Americans as a refugee camp with much of its equipment having already been looted by the retreating Germans and Fascists. Nevertheless the industry slowly started to function again and, in spite of crushing difficulties, twenty-five films were made in 1945, many of them landmarks of not only Italian but of world cinema.
