Smog (1962): the critical geographies of Italian migration Film Studies Speaker Series: Dr Shelleen Greene

In 1962, Smog, an Italian-American co-production directed by Franco Rossi, debuted at the Venice Film Festival. The film was the opening screening of the 23rd edition of the festival, but quickly fell into obscurity. Dr Shelleen Greene will examine Smog as a singular vision of the Los Angeles Italian migrant community during the early 1960s, drawing on the sprawling urban landscape as a means to investigate the formation of the Italian diaspora in the post-war era and an Italy still reeling from the legacies of World War II, but also the sudden boon of the so-called “economic miracle” brought about by the US Marshall Plan.

Los Angeles becomes a psychic locale to meditate upon the nature of migration, of resettlement, dislocation, displacement, and the loss of one's sense of self. All the Italian characters, in one way or another, encounter an inevitable clash between the past and present, between the old world and new, within the futuristic imaginary of Los Angeles.

While this film centres on the Italian diaspora in Los Angeles at the beginning of the 1960s. Shelleen approaches the film through a comparative reading of migration of the Italian and African American migrations to Los Angeles during this period. The Los Angeles African American community lingers in the background of Smog, and introduces a racial discourse into the film that resonates with more notable films of the Italian post-war modernist period such as Rocco and his brothers (1960). Shelleen argues that Smog effectively elaborates its commentary on the Italian diaspora through the urban landscape of Los Angeles, through its geography. At once a space of mobility and freedom, where various racial and ethnic groups can associate, it is also divided, hierarchical, and segregated by race and class.