01  SUMMER 2025

Our contemporary use and understanding of the word ‘history’ entails a variety of possible definitions: the recorded past, the past per se, or an event elevated to a particular level of importance. Yet to Herodotus, ‘history’ meant something quite different: ‘This is the display [ἀπόδεξις, apodexis] of the inquiry [Ιστορίαι, historiai] of Herodotus of Halicarnasus’. ^[1] To Herodotus, a matter of history was a matter of inquiry. Nevertheless, his method was not sufficient for his successor, Thucydides: ‘[...] and no one should prefer [...] the writings of the chroniclers, which are composed more to make good listening than to present the truth, being impossible to check and having most of them won a place over time in the imaginary realm of fable. My findings, however, you can regard as derived from the clearest evidence available.’ ^[2] This distinction established by Thucydides between ‘fable’ [τὸ μυθῶδες, to mythōdes] and ‘evidence’ [τᾰ̀ σημεῖᾰ, ta sēmeia] will permeate all understanding of the field. The other key word in Herodotus’ introductory sentence is apodexis, ‘display’ (better known to us in its Attic form, apodeixis). If all histories are, in one way or another, a representation, a retelling, or a ‘display’, then the form of presentation is as important as the ‘inquiry’ itself. It is through the display that we appreciate the methodical differences between Herodotus and Thucydides. For the sake of this text, apodeixis is taken as an issue of découpage, mise en scène and montage. Specifically, I propose to consider the parallels and contradictions in the ways in which Roberto Rossellini and Vittorio Cottafavi display history. To create a historical through-line and to narrow down Rossellini’s forty hours of historical cinema and Cottafavi’s roughly sixty television works — many of which are related to history — I will limit myself to four films: Vita di Dante (Vittorio Cottafavi, 1965), L’età di Cosimo de’ Medici (Roberto Rossellini, 1972), La Prise de pouvoir par Louis XIV (Roberto Rossellini, 1966) and Oliver Cromwell: Ritratto di un dittatore (Vittorio Cottafavi, 1969). The first two films take place in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Florence, respectively, and the second pair in seventeenth-century Europe.

Vittorio Cottafavi’s Vita di Dante opens with a chain of illustrations and maps depicting the Rome of 1300. A narrator informs us of the hustle and bustle of the city, the comings and goings of pilgrims, and the Holy See. As the sequence reaches its end, the voice of the narrator gives way to one belonging to an ‘illustrious Florentine’, who describes what he saw in his voyage to the Eternal City. The film’s first diegetic shot introduces us to Dante Alighieri (Giorgio Albertazzi) in an extreme close-up of the poet’s eyes. Why the eyes? Notably, the shot that follows, while not being an exact POV shot, shows us what Dante is looking at — his friends and counselors, his brother and his wife. The figure of Dante remains hidden; only his voice is heard, and he speaks first before everyone else and before we see his full figure. The conversation between Dante and his companions concerns the political maneuvers between factions in Florence, which will not be completely elucidated until the second part of the (three-part) TV film, yet already, through the quasi-POV reverse shot, we witness the scene from Dante’s perspective; through his concealment, we are led to focus particularly closely on how the others observe him. The only things we know about him are his political positions as he states them. We have to pay close attention to the acts of his wife, as she brings her husband his tunics. In essence, she is ‘dressing’ the image of Dante as we know him, in the official attire of the Republic of Firenze. This image will be questioned, recreated and reformulated throughout the 229 minutes of the film.

The following sequence is even more revealing. It begins with (1) an establishing shot of a church (built in a studio lot in such a way that it looks more like the ‘concept’ of a church, rather than a ‘real’ church). At the entrance, at the bottom left corner of the frame, a beggar sits despondently, while a group of seven pilgrims are making their way in. Only one hooded figure stops to give the beggar a coin, as the others proceed towards the altar to cast theirs. This is followed by (2) a shot which follows two priests as they saunter, almost on the sly, towards the altar with a broom and a shovel, and proceed to collect the tossed coins. A camera movement frames Dante, first staring and then kneeling. We cut to (3) another angle of the pilgrims, zooming in closer on Dante, before (4) we cut closer to the broom collecting the coins. We cut back again to (5) the pilgrims, now zoomed out and changing the angle to exclude Dante from the frame, as we see two of them casting some coins again. We cut to (6) the close-up of a coin, as it falls near Dante’s knees; the camera tilts up, and begins to zoom even closer on Dante’s face and his expression of disapproval. In total there are six shots which each contain a discrete idea which is juxtaposed with the idea in the next shot, all underlying Dante’s perception of the unethical practice of simony as carried out by the Catholic Church. This is followed by a documentary section, which ends with the introduction of Pope Boniface VIII, who, in Dante’s Commedia, is destined for Malebolge, the eighth circle of Hell, where the simoniacs reside.

Let us look now at how Rossellini opens L’età di Cosimo de’ Medici. A medium shot of a corpse, laid on a table, his head wrapped in a bandage supported on a purple cushion. As we zoom out, a group of nuns and priests are introduced into the frame; a clergyman recites a prayer for the dead man, and we follow the shifting focal length as the camera pans to the left, introducing two kneeling figures, their hands closed in prayer, both staring at the deceased. The camera begins to zoom into these two men until the rest of the scenery has been completely removed from the shot, framing them in close-up over a black background. This is significant, as we are immediately made to understand that the man on the left, who is in focus, is Cosimo de’ Medici. This profile angle was very common in Renaissance portraits. Some of the most well known portraits of Cosimo de’ Medici, such as the marble relief made in the workshop of Antonio Rossellino (c. 1460), and the posthumous representations found in the cast of a Florentine medal (c. 1465, that is, a year after his death), Pontormo’s portrait (c. 1519–1520) and Bronzino’s portrait (c. 1565–1569), all have Cosimo posed in profile. The black background and the frontal lighting shared by Pontormo’s and Bronzino’s portraits do something more than merely reminding us of these previous images; they present the subject as he would have been presented in early fifteenth-century Florence, when portraiture was taking on an important role in the cultural activity of the noble and bourgeois families. This exact style of lighting and background can be found in Masaccio’s Profile of a Man (c. 1426–1427), one of the earliest examples of Florentine secular portraiture, whose influence can be seen in the similar compositions of Paolo Ucello’s Profile of a Man (c. 1430–1440), Domenico Veneziano’s Profile of a Man (c. 1440–1442), and Pietro della Francesca’s particularly striking Portrait of Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta (c. 1451). By using this angle, this light and this black background, Rossellini introduces us to the figure of Cosimo de’ Medici through an image already associated both with Medici and with the Florence of his time, an image that already conveys the meanings that such a composition suggest: ‘The first generation of autonomous painted portraits consists of profiles, adapting the formula familiar from the donor portraits of sacred painting and adopting its virtuous connotations. Ancient coins [whose portraits were mostly in profile], already a collector’s items, cherished by Petrarch as tangible historical records that allowed for the identification of “the faces of the heroes engraved upon them”, added authority to the format.’ ^[3] Yet the shot continues, and the camera begins to zoom out again, moving towards the left of the scene. The Rucellai family are announced as they enter the chamber. The composition, for the most part ordered horizontally over a black background, is now altered by a shaft of light coming from a doorway, a diagonal line on the z-axis that creates a new sense of depth as a group of men enter the room. They proceed to offer their respects, while the camera zooms out, framing the entrance and the Medici brothers. We hold this frame until they leave and the Buondelmonti are introduced, who act likewise. The camera begins to zoom in ever so slightly, and as they proceed towards the adjoining room, we follow them with a lateral movement. There, we let them pass and stop at the Rucellai, who are talking. This begins the next phase of the sequence, where many of the families that have been and will be introduced will talk and gossip, and thus inform us of what has happened: who the dead man is (Giovanni di’ Bicci de’ Medici, founder of the Medici Bank), how unfathomably wealthy he was, and in what position of power has he left his sons. As more people arrive, they will share words of praise for the Medici, or harsh criticisms.

What can we gather from these sequences? Through his découpage, Cottafavi brings us closer to his subject’s state of mind by having the camera act as a participant in the scene. Rossellini, on the other hand, takes up a position outside of the filmed event, maintaining a removed perspective from which to analyze and assimilate history as it is. To Rossellini it is a matter of presenting the events as objectively as possible, what Daney called ‘the Rossellinian utopia: absolute transparency’. ^[4] That is why, for instance, in the vigil scene in L’età di Cosimo de’ Medici, there’s the need to listen to the tributes paid by one and the criticisms raised by another. Cottafavi, meanwhile, starts his films with ‘...a state of mind. A generic state of mind about a problem, a theme, a feeling, which slowly takes shape in the character.’ ^[5] This establishes his films already on the premise of the subjective, a ‘state of mind’ that puts us on the intellectual and psychological terrain of his characters. What is it, ultimately, that ‘slowly takes shape in the character’? In Dante it is nothing other than La Commedia, his masterpiece, through which he will filter all his lived experiences and thoughts; in Cromwell, it is his blind belief in divine providence and his role in carrying it out. These are the ways in which Rossellini and Cottafavi looked at their films and found their means of understanding how their chosen medium, television, could precipitate interactions between works and their audiences. Rossellini sought ‘[...] a comprehensive education that would provide substantial direction. To be able to understand all that surrounds us, and thus not be victims, but protagonists. That is to me an issue of fundamental importance. And these mediums have that possibility because they can show things as they are.’ ^[6] To Cottafavi, however, the entrance of the television into the private space of the spectator already created a psycho-emotional effect in them: ‘the relationship between the spectator and the television program, despite remaining limited to the psychological and emotional variants, not the aesthetics of the medium, conditions and determines the characteristics of the “communication”’. ^[7]

One immediately notable element of the sequences described above is that there are more zooms in Rossellini than there are in Cottafavi. His use of this technique differentiates Rossellini from his peers during the 1960s and 1970s, and is the result of a technological innovation he himself helped develop, the Pancinor. What differentiated the Pancinor from the rest of the available zoom technologies was that it allowed for a remote control which was operated by Rossellini himself, away from the camera operator: ‘My system has two interlocking motors, and one of them acts as a counterweight to stop the lens from oscillating as it moves, so that you don’t get a zoom effect. This gives me great mobility — for example, I can zoom from an angle of 25º to one of 150º, and this opens up more possibilities’. ^[8] Let us consider the division between the painter’s montage and the filmmaker’s montage as posited by Cottafavi: ‘In a painting, the painter gives us movement in the same way as in montage, i.e., the eye comes upon one thing before all the others: the painter has given us a point of view, a particular light on things, which strikes us first. Then the eye travels and sees something else. Or, the painter has given us a totality, the eye catches this totality then travels and sees the details. This is the painter’s montage, and this movement suggests a direction that gives the painting a magnitude even beyond its material limits. Cinema, on the other hand, doesn’t need to invite the eye to determine the shot – since it does this for itself.’ ^[9] Jean-Luc Godard had this to say about Rossellini and the Pancinor: ‘Someone who made a great use of the zoom and who invented a small one for himself, because of laziness, but also due to a pictorial tradition, was Roberto. He invented a zoom which he could operate from his chair without moving. He had both [zoom technologies], but was one of the first to resume the [practice of the] zoom and made very pictorial movements that hailed from Italian painting.’ ^[10] Godard is referring to the developments that took shape in Italian painting during the early stages of the Renaissance, begun with the experiments carried out by Brunelleschi on perspective and continued in the subsequent treatises on the matter by Piero della Francesca and Leon Battista Alberti (one of the protagonists of L’età di Cosimo de’ Medici, and previously protagonist of the second episode of Rossellini’s 1965 didactical TV show, L’età di fero, who thought that the study of mathematics and geometry was essential for the painter’s work), and ultimately by Leonardo da Vinci, who considered art to be a science of observation.

In La Prise de pouvoir par Louis XIV, Louis XIV enters the ante-chamber to Cardinal Mazarin’s death chamber through a door on the right side of the scene, and walks into the middle of the room. After he has delivered his lines, ‘We have just lost a good friend. But rest assured you have found a good master’ to the Marshal — thus beginning the titular ‘taking of power’ — Louis moves out of the frame along with the rest of the court, and Rossellini proceeds to zoom into a close-up of two courtiers, as one explains to the other why the king doesn’t enter the death chamber to pay his respects: ‘it would be unseemly for the king to be seen in contact with death’. In this shot the zoom creates distance — by zooming in or out, it brings something closer to us, or takes us further away from it — but also manipulates depth and perspective: starting from a shot with a visible and well-established vanishing point, the camera zooms in to the close-up, and the space and its perspective are flattened until the background only consists of the wall and some paintings hung upon it. When the information has been delivered and we return to the matter at hand, the camera returns to its previous position, gracefully navigating space through a lateral tracking shot and zoom-out, and by the time Louis has moved past the center of the room to the left of the scene, we can discern another door, leading to Mazarin’s death chamber. The camera navigates the horizon line of the composition, and both doors serve as vanishing points on opposite sides of that line, which create a sense of depth and perspective — not unlike the doorway in the previously described scene of L’età di Cosimo de’ Medici. This might be likened to some paintings by Masaccio (The Tribute Money, c.1425), Fra Filipo Lippi (Annunciation, c.1440) or Pietro della Francesca (Flagellation of Christ, c.1459-1460); for like a Renaissance painter, Rossellini is studying, through the art of observation, the movements of bodies, the configuration of humans in three dimensional space rendered over a two dimensional plane, their movement through vanishing points, that horizontal line and the perspective grids that these points and the surrounding environment (the contours of the objects and bodies in the room, the carpets, the framed paintings, etc.) create.

Did the cinema of Rossellini reach an approximation of the montage of the painter, by making the eye of the camera (the Pancinor) emulate the eye of the spectator (of the painting)? By making the camera the witness of the event, the observer of the scene at a remove from the action, that camera emulates the searching eye. We are introduced to a scene, the camera travels through it, we see the whole, and then we move to some details. When asked why there was a constant ‘zooming in on Louis’ in La Prise de pouvoir par Louis XIV, Rossellini replied: ‘What do you do with your own eyes? The eye is tremendously mobile. It takes in a lot. I try to have a lens which is like the eye.’ ^[11] In another interview he further explains how he goes about ‘organizing the scene’: ‘Normally you take a shot showing the set as a whole, then the actor comes on, you cut in nearer to the actor, follow him, etc. With the travelling lens you don’t need to alter the distance. It’s all linked in the context of the scene, which has to follow a certain pattern and bring over a particular meaning.’ ^[12] There is one shot, but that doesn’t exclude the possibility that many contradictions might arise within this shot, since with each zoom in or out and each camera movement, a new idea is formed. As Engels argues in his Anti-Dühring, ‘the position is quite different as soon as we consider things in their motion, their change, their life, their reciprocal influence on one another. Then we immediately become involved in contradictions. Motion itself is a contradiction.’ ^[13] The essence of Rossellini’s montage is in his absence of montage and is that absence of montage. Rossellini’s camera-eye observes the scene with the precision of a microscope, very much in a scientific fashion: ‘There are these zooms, these transfocators [sic] which I command during the filming. What I search for is to accumulate in a scene, in a sequence, the largest amount of data available. So that each person, according to their nature, finds a way to understand and orient [themselves] according to the data that suits them.’ ^[14]

For Cottafavi, in contrast to Rossellini, importance is placed on psychological construction, and so montage plays a greater role in the display of history. In fact Rossellini, who aimed to ‘show, not demonstrate’, saw in montage a manipulation of truth, a way for the filmmaker to dictate to the spectator what to think: ‘Montage [...] is already a way to suggest to the spectator what should impress them. On the other hand, I’ve always looked to start from things that were part of reality, so the spectator could receive it as they wish. To give them freedom. Thus, it’s either a procedure of arrogance, or a procedure of information. You can show or you can demonstrate. I want to show, not to demonstrate. That’s the reasoning.’ ^[15] In the end of the first part of Dante, after the death of Beatrice, Dante’s muse and the subject of his unrequited love, we have three sequences. 1) Dante lies in bed, delirious, shaking with fever, being treated by his sisters and family; as we zoom in to two close-up angles on him, Cottafavi superimposes images (illustrations and paintings) depicting demons and other monstrous figures on top of Dante’s face, as a somber voice offscreen whispers, ‘you will die, you are dead’. Another gentler voice adds, ‘Dante, don’t you know your admirable woman has abandoned this world?’ In his delirium, Dante proceeds to wish for death, to call on death; when his mother and sister hold his arms, he lifts his body up, again in a close-up, and we see Albertazzi’s eyes wide open as he exclaims: ‘Beatrice!’. 2) In the next sequence, we rhythmically cut from close-ups of tolling bells to wide shots of bell towers as the narrator describes how, despite life going on, ‘Dante was still searching for Beatrice in the familiar places of his youth’. 3) This fades into a profile shot of Beatrice, before a sequence in which we see Dante and Beatrice’s first encounter for a second time, but presented differently to the sequence we had seen thirty minutes previously. Now relayed in stills, à la La Jetée (Chris Marker, 1962), its textures are different from the previous iteration (whether this is a conscious intervention from Cottafavi or a result of the process of filming the stills is hard to establish, but the effect is the same regardless): the blacks have faded, and a ghostly white, almost mist-like, translates the moment into memory.

Another striking example of Cottafavi’s montage style occurs at the end of the second part of Cromwell. Cottafavi cuts between present and past, taking us into the psyche of the character via passages through time and memory. In the scene where Oliver Cromwell admits that the Stuarts haven’t been deposed to crown a Cromwell as king, he encounters his mother — the only weight that grounds him to the reality of the world and to his old self — sitting on the throne. He notes how her legs can’t reach the floor; ‘these kings had to have long legs’, she jokes, and Cromwell, moved, rushes to embrace her. We then immediately cut to her funeral. Cromwell follows the casket, and we cut to a close-up of the man, internally defeated, as he mutters: ‘My God, don’t take from me the certainty of what I am doing…’, before the image dissolves to black. We return to a more aged Cromwell, with longer and whiter hair, playing skittles. Two camera angles, both in close-up, isolate him from the rest of the scene; the main focus is Cromwell and the ball. An advisor attempts to reach him —‘Your highness, I beseech you’ — and though the external world breaks into his thoughts it is soon dismissed. Holding on these two close-ups, Cottafavi inserts various scenes from the film that depict Cromwell at different points of his life — events that have been previously depicted, and now are further recontextualized by his newfound position and emotional state, as, broken, he remembers: 1) when he demanded the return of rights for landless farmers to graze on common land; 2) when he asserted that God had taken the crown from Charles I; 3) when he posed to his son the question of whether the power of the king could be laid on Parliament, and we begin to see that Cromwell — by the force and the gravitas of his persona — has converted himself into Parliament; 4) another rhetorical question: ‘Where is the strength that will make of England the kingdom of God on Earth, the Empire of the faith and purity?’; Cromwell’s terminology is beginning to show a deep inner betrayal; as he attempts to throw the skittle ball, he slips and falls, in a shot angled from the pins at the end of the tunnel through which the ball is thrown, we cut to a final flashback, which depicts 5) Cromwell storming Parliament, screaming, ‘Me! I’m the instrument of God’s vengeance!’; 6) finally, we return to the end of the tunnel, a framing we had seen previously when Cromwell was at the height of his power, standing at the end of the tunnel looking in; now his body has fallen inside, and the camera zooms into his expression as he screams: ‘God doesn’t forgive those He doesn’t hold in his graces, God does not forgive!’

The use of geometry in Cottafavi is no less interesting than in Rossellini. For instance, we have established how Rossellini — in his role as observer — depicts the movement of bodies through space. But if Cottafavi’s camera is a participant, couldn’t that imply that the spaces and the geometries that it configures could also participate in the character’s interiority? We noted how the church in the sequence from Vita di Dante analyzed above is more the ‘concept’ of a church, an abstraction rather than a real church. In both this film and Cromwell, the narrative action largely takes place in these expressionistic sets. These are not void of meaning, and their abstraction reflects the minds that inhabit them: from the Goyaesque decors and frescos in Pope Boniface VIII’s Vatican office, simmering with corruption, to Dante’s office, almost empty save for a single painting and a window, since his poetry is the space where he most passionately lives. In the final shot of that sequence from Cromwell, as the title character lies flat on his stomach, framed by the semi-circle of the tunnel, our impression is not one of him falling into the depths, into the light, but on the contrary, as the camera zooms in, one of the shadows slowly overtaking him.

This level of interiority, however, is not only reached by the effects of montage. There is another underlying essential element that differentiates these films, and that is the use of professional (Cottafavi) or non-professional (Rossellini) actors. For Rossellini, who aimed at ‘starting things from reality’, the amateurishness and spontaneity of the actors were elements to be included in the film, unadulterated by any professionalism. These somewhat irregular performances maintained a closer relationship with reality. ‘He refused to discuss their characters with the actors. “No! No! Why does [the player] have to be involved, poor thing? If he gets involved he suffers all the time. He must not be involved at all. He has only to be capable enough to attract our attention.”’ ^[16] In contrast, in his work with professional actors, Cottafavi sought another kind of reality, brought about by a complete emotional honesty in the work of his actors, a work that included a fair amount of collaborative effort: ‘The cinematographic specificities (shot and montage), in the continuous recording of television, become themselves tools for the actor, who must measure and situate himself in the rhythm of the various shots, cuts and travellings that accompany him in his “self-expression”.’ ^[17]

Rossellini treats his subjects as matters of fact. He carried out an extensive period of research before tackling each film. Cottafavi, on the other hand, isn’t as strict about the facts, and allows himself more leeway when engaging with the sources. Now, being more or less ‘factually’ correct doesn’t necessarily entail being more or less truthful; sometimes, by creating something more straightforward than the entire complexity and ambiguity of historical events, one can reach another kind of truth. This is what Cottafavi seeks, for instance, in his historical fiction feature Le legioni di Cleopatra (1959). Rossellini has a much more ‘scientific’ aim in his historical films, which also translates to his film form: ‘I’m very strict in this respect, and don’t allow myself to make anything up. I perhaps allow myself some interpretation of the psychology of the character, but none of it is invention. [...] I think it’s enough to know what happened; there’s no need to think up fables.’ ^[18] Some of this ‘interpretation’ of the psychology of a character might have to do more with working with non-professional actors and their needs, than — as in the case of Cottafavi — really engaging with the psyche of the subject: ‘Patte [the actor who played Louis XIV] was painfully timid, had terrible stage fright, and could not remember a single line. “Stay the way you are. I’ll use your timidity”, Roberto told him. Patte’s fright became Louis’ motivation for taking power. Patte’s inability to remember became the majesty of a king who searches for words and rarely looks at people — because Patte’s eyes were busy elsewhere, reading dialogue from a blackboard.’ ^[19]

Cottafavi allows himself a certain portion of what Thucydides would have called ‘fable’. This is the case in the first part of Oliver Cromwell. Charles I enters his bedroom chamber, where his wife, Henrietta Maria of France, is already lying down in bed. They begin to talk politics, discussing the scheming of the members of Parliament, and the scene reaches a climax when Henrietta produces — à la Salome — a grotesque death mask of John Pym — a revolutionary member of Parliament. This will induce Charles to assault Parliament with the help of armed men, in an ultimately failed attempt to arrest Pym and four other members, who have already left the House of Commons. Cottafavi employs an underlying bitterness and sardonic humour here, since this is the act that will in turn strike the match for the beginning of the Civil War, which will end with Charles’ own decapitation. Was there ever a grotesque mask of John Pym? Probably not. But that matters little, if what it aims to convey is the truth. In the case of La Prise de pouvoir par Louis XIV, Rossellini intends to portray only the character of Louis XIV and the titular event. He follows as scientifically as possible the causality of the events from the death of Mazarin to the taking of power itself. Everything has to be detailed and seen to be finally understood. This stipulation is even present in his contemporary-set films, such as Viaggio in Italia (1955): ‘First one has to live within the context and after that arrive at the images [...] If the character doesn’t go through all the rooms, they can never reach the museum. If they never reach the museum, they can’t discover the bodies [in the ruins of Pompeii].’ ^[20] Thus, we have to see Mazarin dying, and proceed through the many conversations Louis has with his mother, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, and Nicolas Fouquet; we must see how the latter underestimates Louis’ drive and how Louis prepares and carries out his arrest; all of which reaches a zenith with Louis’ personal supervision and design of the ‘fashion’ that would characterize the period of absolutism, the highest stage of feudalism, which saw the construction of a State maintained by the creation of a ‘need’.

In the case of Cottafavi, however, we should pay attention to the subtitle of Oliver Cromwell: ‘Portrait of a Dictator’. Doesn’t the indefinite article entail an idea of non-specificity, that this is Cromwell, but it could be any dictator? The thesis of Oliver Cromwell might be read as a refutation of Hegel’s view, whereby world-historical characters are moved by the world-spirit without their knowledge. To Cottafavi, it seems very clear that characters predisposed to tyranny always know that they are working through something bigger than themselves — and thus, bigger than everyone else. Cromwell’s belief that he is operating according to divine providence is a stark example of this. Cottafavi himself didn’t believe in destiny or fate as an external driving force; in his notes on the mise en scène of his television production of Antigone (1958) he writes: ‘Fate isn't a fact external to man, imposed upon man; it grows within man itself, out of man itself, and determines events through man's voluntary actions: thus man participates in divinity.’ ^[21] Brecht, in his diary notes for his own adaptation of Antigone, writes the following: ‘The reason for the changes, which obliged me to write whole new sections, is that I wanted to get rid of the Greek moira [destiny]; in other words, I try to uncover the underlying popular legend.’ ^[22] Cottafavi’s understanding of the more violent and confrontational nature of television and his use of montage to bring forth the contradictions — an element that Brecht had brought to theatre — creates in the spectator a realization of the inner workings of the narrative and a reflection on their own perception of it. This is how Cottafavi uncovers the truth of a dictator. The great theatrical performance of Sergio Fantoni, carrying on his shoulders the gravitas and self-delusion of a narcissist who believes himself an agent of fate, embodies all tyrants and dictators. Some of the audience might have perceived similarities with figures such as Caesar, Robespierre or Napoleon. But in Italy in 1969, what they most probably saw in Fantoni’s Cromwell was the figure of Mussolini; in the ‘Roundheads’, the ‘Black shirts’; in Cromwell’s genocidal military campaigns in Ireland and Scotland, the Italian campaigns in Libya and Ethiopia. Cottafavi begins from a character and their perspective, their interiority, and finds in them the shared experiences that have shaped many lives. In Dante’s first meeting with Beatrice, Cottafavi fades into the profile of his actress on top of a profile portrait of ‘Beatrice’. However, the figure in that portrait isn’t actually Beatrice. It is sourced from a detail of a larger painting by Andrea da Firenze, La chiesa militante e trionfante (c. 1365–1367), depicting Laura de Noves, the muse of Petrarch, another foundational figure for Italian poetry and the evolution of the Italian language. Moreover, at the end of the third part of Vita di Dante, the narrator mentions that while writing La Commedia, Dante journeyed ‘in search of lost time’ — not a phrase used by chance, and one that reflects a notion that is mirrored in the film’s episodic structure. Like La Commedia, Vita di Dante is separated into three parts: first, Beatrice and youth; second, Florence, civil conflict, the poet torn between political factions and friendships; third, exile, destitution, until Dante finds his home once again, this time in language, and his desire to reunite all Italians through it, in one last attempt at reconciliation. Here we can see mirrored the journey in La Commedia. From Hell — from exile — the poet retraces his steps back to the light, to Paradise, to Beatrice and to ‘the familiar places of his youth’. This places the keystone works of the fourteenth through the twentieth century into a lineal tradition. After all, what does an ‘artist’ do but navigate politics, reciprocated and unrequited romances, allies and enemies, friends and family, life and death, and at the end, process it, translate it, give thought form as art? That is the work, that is the hard thing.

Why have we compared and analyzed the visions of history in the works of these two filmmakers? What have we gathered from them? That despite their differences, despite their opposed approaches to history and its filming, they are united by a stronger common will to inquire, to investigate. That beyond going from macro to micro — as Rossellini did — or micro to macro — as Cottafavi did — the result is strikingly similar. Beyond fact or fable, there is something else. But what? We could refer to the title of Michel Delahaye’s article, translated in this issue: ‘The sense of history’. One 26th October 1941, Brecht wrote the following in his journal: ‘plays like SHAKESPEARE’S histories, dramatisations of chapters of chronicles, always seem to me closest to reality’. ^[23] Indeed, be it Shakespeare’s Julius Cæsar or Rossellini’s L’età di Cosimo de’ Medici or Cottafavi’s Vita di Dante, all these carry that sense of history, the drive to inquire, which leads us to a deeper understanding, not only of the society that was, but of the people that inhabited it, of the underlying behaviour and experiences that, despite the passage of time, have not changed drastically. A history that is, to use Delahaye’s phrase, ‘truer than true’. ^[24]