Rossellini, Roberto

Revistes Catalanes amb Accés Obert

9Cinema Comparat/ive Cinema · Vol. III · no. 7 · 2015
DOCUMENTS · Cinema Comparat/ive Cinema · Vol. III · no. 7 · 2015 · 9-11
Cinema and Television
Roberto Rossellini
 Television is, nowadays, the most powerful and 
suggestive of this two communication media because it has 
a greater audience. Television should be, therefore, the most 
adequate medium to promote integral education; this is to say 
–according to Antonio Gramsci’s words- ‘a new proletarian 
Weltanchauung’, a new concept of life and people. Gramsci 
affirms:
‘One must redo the creation of a new integral 
culture which would have the popular character 
of the Protestant Reformation and the French 
Enlightenment and the classic features of Greek 
civilization and of the Italian Renaissance. This would 
be a culture that (to use Carducci’s words) would 
synthesize Maximillian Roberspierre and Immanuel 
Kant, politics and philosophy, in a dialectical unity 
inherent not only in a French or German society, but 
in a European and world-wide one’.
It is not necessary to add that, in the present time, those who 
control and direct television stations all around the world do 
not have these concerns.  Neither seems to interest them the 
challenge when studying a new form of education; the idea of 
achieving an ‘integral culture’ has not crossed their minds. For 
them, television is nothing but a media to get ‘enjoyment’ and 
popularity; they use it as propaganda to sell certain goods, and 
to gain followers to that ideology, to this or that political party, to 
give or rest importance to certain groups of pressure. The speed 
of television’s development and consolidation, before its rapid 
deterioration and its reduction to an advertisement vehicle of a 
product or an opinion, is obvious. The speed with which it has 
gotten away from all the concrete truth, the intelligence, and all 
authentic knowledge, is obvious as well. But the emergence of 
television has created some other diseases: it has allowed the 
triumph, acceleration and institutionalisation of the process of 
corruption of cinema, just in the moment when more important 
concerns, other than enjoyment or entertainment, were being 
aroused in the cinematographic field. 
The coming into stage of television, triggered an absurd battle 
between the small and the big screen. An infinity number of 
parties from one or the other medium suddenly leaped to 
enunciate ludicrous theories about language, aesthetics, the 
social or ‘cultural’ incidence of cinema or television.
Nobody, or almost nobody, bothered to adopt a fairer 
perspective: that the apparition of this new technique could 
mean an extraordinary vehicle of dissemination of its products 
(films, etc.) to an ever-growing audience.
The war between cinema and television had disastrous 
consequences for media.
Cinema, at the beginning, tried to defeat television by shaking 
the exhibition screens at cinemas, generalizing the use of colour 
and disproportionately increasing the production costs (which 
only achieved to make it harder for new creative talents to be 
incorporated in the progressively stagnated structures).
Television, by its part, took great advantage of the initial times 
of attraction that are always generated by novelties, it was 
benefited by the new living conditions that coincided with its 
appearance: traffic problems, urban decentralization, etc.
Barely introduced, and aimed at accelerating its dissemination, 
it made an effort for making its ‘shows’ progressively popular: 
the games, the songs, the journals and the most banal 
comicalness, were the vectors for its impetuous penetration. 
To counteract television’s success, cinema tried by every mean 
to retain its audience, which was deserting from the screening 
theatres. It then produced more sensationalistic and vulgar 
films, and simultaneously, it disguised its merchandising 
intentions with an advertisement made by opulent words: 
‘beauty’, ‘intellectuality’, ‘commitment’, ‘thirst of liberty’, etc. 
But the only certain thing is that cinema started to debase 
progressively, with scandal and obscenity.
The Cinema Crisis
Cinema is currently going through a severe crisis.
Television has deeply settled in our daily life. Although it 
performs a very similar role everywhere, its organisation 
varies from one country to another. In certain countries the 
so-called commercial television predominates: United States 
constitutes the best example for this. North American television 
10 Cinema Comparat/ive Cinema · Vol. III · no. 7 · 2015
sells almost all its broadcast hours to advertisement. And 
consequently, their shows are conceived to attract the biggest 
amount of television spectators, because the increase in the 
audience ratings determinates a proportional increase in the 
advertisement income. Thus, for every eight or nine minutes of 
a show, one or tow minutes of adds parade through the small 
screen. 
In other countries such as France and Italy, the television 
is a state monopoly. In those countries, the televisual 
organization is funded according to a cannon that the T.V. 
owners are forced to pay (in a matter of fact, the owners of 
radio apparatuses are mortgaged by a similar canon). Thus the 
French Radio-Television stations or the Italian RAI-TV collect 
yearly thousands of millions (of ancient francs or lyres) as a 
compensation for the services they provide to the television 
spectators throughout the year, and whose nature is freely 
decided by the criteria of these organisms.
Definitely, while cinema has to conquer every time, film by 
film, the spectators who pay for its production, the monopolist 
state television broadcasts programs to previously guaranteed 
spectators, who have payed beforehand: it enjoys, then, of an 
incomparable privilege. 
In Italy, cinema and television have almost equivalent annual 
budgets: three hundred thousand lyres each (more than five 
hundred million new francs). Not a lot of imagination is 
required to understand the advantages that would report, both 
to the industries and the audience, the accumulation of both 
budgets, complementing one another instead of competing. We 
will come back to this issue.
Anybody with an idea of cinema, as small as it might be, knows 
that the adventure of producing a film is only possible when the 
minimum budget is guaranteed (under any of these formulas: 
presale, coproduction, advance on tickets, etc.). But even 
those precautions are not enough to reduce or eliminate risks. 
Cinema, then, seeks shelter in the repetition of commercially 
successful formulas, exploits the tendency. How long are those 
formulas valid for? We know from experience that, as much in 
cinema as in any other field, the tendency lasts ‘the blink of an 
eye’.
Cinema is thus condemned to Sisyphus torture, it is a slave of a 
system that forces it to start from scratch, to assume once and 
again the risks implied on guessing the successful in the timely 
quest of what audiences will enjoy, and all of these within an 
incredibly short amount of time.
At its beginnings, however, cinema regulated a very different 
direction: its great moment coincided with the time when 
North Americans turned the old English saying ‘the goods 
follow the flags’ into ‘the goods follow the films’.
Films meant in that time, in effect, an insuperable force, a 
sovereign medium of ‘institutional’ advertisement for a great 
quantity of new products: from the car to the fridge, from the 
vacuum to the toaster, from the fan to the telephone and the 
electric shaving machine. In one word, the one thousand and 
one products that were precise imposing to society (that was 
not yet a consumer society, but was about to become one). 
And cinema, contributed in that sense to the dissemination 
of the new models of life, to create other necessities and other 
desires. Cinema has been a medium for entertainment and, 
simultaneously, the Troyan horse for the consumption society. 
While those were the operative conditions for cinema, the 
funding posed greater problems, because the capital enjoyed 
completely independent advantages of the success of the film. 
The production was abundant, and its abundance allowed, even 
if slowly, to widen the limits of cinematographic art, to try –
even once in a while- new experiences. 
Conditions have drastically changed today. The institutional 
advertisement has fallen in disuse, as it has not a reason of being 
and has achieved a good part of its fundamental purposes. 
From that point of view, the function of cinema and television 
is different nowadays:  they are not useful anymore to foster a 
determined type of society, as the films from other time did, 
but they play their role as the ‘opium for the people’ and make 
everything within the possible – I am not sure if in a way of 
tropism or consciously – to keep the masses in a infantilism 
state, moved by the fanciful sufficiency given by the illusion of 
freedom. This infantilism is convenient, without doubts, for the 
leading figures of our society: it facilitates the propaganda that 
leads the masses towards the alternative that the power or the 
pressure groups create. 
A Service of General Interest
A national television is only justified if it really is, as the law 
prescribes, an ‘indispensable service with a character of general 
interest’ and ‘participates in the cultural and social development 
of the country’.
For achieving a cultural promotion at the service of the people, 
the diverse television stations (at least those from the state), the 
parliamentary control organs and the unions should put into 
practice new procedures for the television shows to contribute 
to the democratization of the country. Which purposes should 
be proposed and which methods? Regarding the purposes, 
one shall remember what the great currents of contemporary 
thought, from Christianism to Islam, from Socrates to Marx 
have stated each in their own way: the only possible purpose is 
that of making human society to mature. All these current of 
thoughts share a common base: faith on men. Mahoma himself 
has said that the diversity and variety of human intelligence 
were the proof and existence of God’s generosity.  Science 
CINEMA AND TELEVISION
11Cinema Comparat/ive Cinema · Vol. III · no. 7 · 2015
proves him right nowadays, by demonstrating the multiplicity 
of intelligence. It is a richness we have to take advantage of.
Regarding the methods, television could develop a cultural 
promotion within everyone’s reach. As it make use of images, 
it would overcome the teaching difficulties, if there is some 
true in Comenius’s affirmation, in a great extent: ‘the difficulty 
on learning comes from the fact that things are not taught to 
the students through direct vision, but through very tedious 
descriptions that print the image of things in the intellect with 
a lot of difficulty; they penetrate memory with such softness 
that they are easily vanished or are understood differently from 
the correct way’.
Television could provide a ‘direct vision’ of things, of men and 
of the history of millions and millions of individuals. History 
teaches us that social changes –unavoidable insomuch as we 
are destined to evolve towards a better world- follow the new 
thinking systems. But thinking systems only evolve when men 
are able to recapitulate what they know. For that, informing 
everyone is crucial, putting knowledge within everyone’s reach, 
and it is crucial as well to constantly update this knowledge. In 
one word, knowledge must be democratized. 
Is it possible for men to accomplish its integrity, as it already 
happened two or three times throughout history? Yes, as long 
as all men, or at least the majority, are able to recapitulate the 
greatest quantity of data as possible. With this purpose, it is 
necessary to develop a cultural information addressed to all, 
disposed to disseminate all knowledge and ideas. Then, and 
only then, all men will be able to make synthesis and orient their 
minds in such a way that they make possible new developments. 
We would thus reach the harmonious participation of all the 
individuals in social affairs.
This would be the ideal, naturally.
Practice, unfortunately, is very different. Television ignores this 
principles and cinema does so even more.
The initiatives of cinema in educative matters are null. 
Television, as opposed, has settled some objectives, but all its 
teaching efforts are calqued from the school model, including 
the professional schools.  However, there is a distinguished 
exception in Italian television, the television film series called 
‘Sapere’. Except from it, television, in the image of school, does 
not seem to have any other purpose but helping students to ‘have 
a career’ within the margins of the current system. Gramsci 
affirmed that the traditional school is an oligarchy, because it 
is addressed to a generation of men whose unique destiny is to 
govern the country. I will add, on my behalf, that these future 
‘governors’ are, in fact, docile and submissive because they have 
limited horizons. Television, for the common wealth, should 
foster those information and cultural forms that the school 
does not provide and that will help with the development  -due 
to consciousness and not to propaganda- of a rigorous critical 
sense, crucial to the progress and the evolution of the social 
current structures. Such evolution would serve everyone’s 
interest, both the privileged and the dispossessed masses. 
Apart from the necessity to modify its purposes, creativity is 
the fundamental factor for television and cinema to survive.  If 
a collaboration was to be settled between both structures, the 
possibilities of fostering the inventive spirit would increase 
undoubtedly, with the consecutive repercussion for the benefit 
of ideas. We have seen that in Italy (as it happens in more or 
less every country) the budget for television and cinema are 
equivalent, around tree hundred thousand lyres, despite the 
television spectator are more numerous than the usual clients 
of the cinema theatres. 
If television participated in the cinematographic production, it 
would share the film’s income, thus relieving its dependency 
on advertisement. The media workers would enjoy a better 
guarantee of their jobs. A wider and healthier market would 
permit to carry out the cultural promotion operations we have 
previously referred and which would contribute in training 
minds: an ‘integral culture’ would have thus a better chance of 
turning into reality.  These promotion methods, once improved, 
would stimulate the implementation of new audiovisual media 
(videocassettes, etc.) - of which so much has been said and so 
much money has been invested, vainly for the moment. 
This text collects part of Rosellini’s Speech in the symposium 
«L’engagement social et économique du cinema» which he 
organized at The Cannes Film Festival on the 13th and 14th 
of May 1977. It was published in: : ROSSELLINI, Roberto 
(1977). Un esprit libre ne doit rien apprendre en clase Libraire 
Arthème Fayard. Paris. Translated to spanish by José Luis 
Guarner in: ROSSELLINI, Roberto (1979). Un espíritu libre no 
debe aprender como esclavo. Escritos sobre cine y educación. 
Gustavo Gil. Barcelona.
ROBERTO ROSSELLINI


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