Tourists may still flock to catch a glimpse of the Trevi Fountain, where a buxom Anita Ekberg splashed about in Fellini's La Dolce Vita, but homegrown Italian cinema is struggling to stay afloat, a recent study shows.
The number of Italian films produced and screened increased slightly last year, but the situation overall is not positive, according to findings published by the national association of cinema industries, ANICA.
In 2006, 116 Italian films were produced, and that looks quite good compared to the 98 films produced the previous year.
But three years ago, 134 Italian films were produced, and in 1980, Italy churned out 163 homegrown reels.
Though the market quota of Italian films grew slightly last year, the lion's share continues to go to the United States, which produces roughly two thirds of films screened in Italian theatres. Of the 92 million box office seats sold last year, only about a quarter were for Made in Italy productions, the ANICA study found.
Italian cinema is in a rut because it is produced on a razor-thin budget, experts say.
ANICA found that average production costs for Italian films have remained stable for the past five years, at 2 million euros. In France five years ago, the average budget was 5 million euros, whereas in the UK it was 7.2 million, according to the European Audiovisual Observatory of the Council of Europe.
Analysts say that a high production budget is an important factor in guaranteeing a film's success. That is because high budgets mean better quality and, more importantly, better advertising.
A QUESTION OF MONEY.
Money is why the United States film industry is able to get such a big share of the Italian market, experts agree.
In 2005, the big American companies spent an average of 96.2 million dollars on each film they created. Over a third of that sum went into marketing, according to data released by the Motion Picture Association of America last year.
"We don't have enough money in Italy to do it right," the Production Chief of the National Cinema Association, Riccardo Tozzi, said.
Tozzi has been working to re-launch the struggling industry for the past 30 years, and in 1997, he founded his own film and production house, Cattleya.
"When it comes to funds, Italy really lags behind its European neighbours," Tozzi said. "Over a billion euros were invested in French films last year, but Italian investments only amounted to around 257 million euros".
The Italian film industry complains that it suffered two major blows last year, when the Berlusconi government further reduced state funds for cinema production and when one of Italy's leading film producers, Cecchi Gori, was forced into bankruptcy.
At its peak in the 1990s, the Cecchi Gori Group produced numerous award-winning films, like Il Postino and Life is Beautiful, which won the foreign-language Oscar in 1999.
NEW FESTIVAL.
However, Italy's film industry may soon take a turn for the better, with the creation of a new film festival in Rome this past October, and the upping of government funds for new filmmakers. Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli, has vowed to earmark 540 million euros for the National Arts Fund (Fondo unico per lo spettacolo) by 2008.
But until the native film industry gets a boost, Italian moviegoers are likely to continue to prefer products made in the USA.
The two movies that topped the charts in Italy last year were Sony Picture's Da Vinci Code and the Buena Vista adventure flick Pirates of the Caribbean, with Johnny Depp, which together earned almost 49 million euros in box office sales.
The two most seen Italian films, which together earned just under 37 million euros at the box office, were light comedies, Carlo Verdone's Il mio miglior nemico (My best enemy), and Natale a New York (Christmas in New York). The second movie, set in the Big Apple, stars Christian De Sica, son of Vittorio De Sica, one of the founders of neorealist cinema in Italy.
