So pretty, so vacant. Punk in Italian cinema
Whether stereotyped or self-celebrated, the subculture has left a trace in the history of Italian cinema. We look back to its legacy, from costumes to music.
Is punk dead? This is possibly one of the most frequently asked yet still unsolved questions in subculture history. Although one may argue that the situationist urge of punk prime movers extinguished itself in little more than an Earth’s lap around the Sun in 1977, the legacy of the subculture proliferated over the years taking various shapes.
Like many other industries at the turn of the 1980s, including fashion and music, cinema too didn’t miss the opportunity to jump on the punk bandwagon and portray this new urban youth phenomenon.
As Italy prepares to greet the return – not without controversies of sort – of post-punk legends CCCP – Fedeli alla Linea for their first tour in more than 30 years, we look back at the continuing contaminations between the subculture and the country’s cinema.
CCCP themselves have crossed paths with cinema in 1997, several years after they disbanded, when making an appearance alongside their following incarnation CSI – Consorzio Suonatori Indipendenti and affiliates Üstmamò in the soundtrack of Tutti giù per terra, directed by Davide Ferrario and starring Caterina Caselli and a then up and coming Valerio Mastandrea.




However, long before the 1990s, Italian cinema – as previously done with other youth scenes, like the Beats – saw in punk a juicy lens to comment on the then contemporary society.
For this reason, the Italian punk filmography has to be separated from the more spontaneous and DIY products of the Italian underground that took place in music and publishing, from home-recorded tapes to xerox-printed, self-distributed zines.
At the same time, punk (similarly to other previous outrageous youth scenes imported from abroad like, once again, beat or rock‘n’roll) was instantly intercepted by dominant culture with subculturally hybrid products that nonetheless managed to make pop culture history. Just to mention a few: Donatella Rettore’s punk kamikaze attire for her single ‘Lamette’ or Anna Oxa’s styling at Sanremo 1978 when performing the far-from-punk ballad ‘Un’emozione da poco’. After all, the gonzo punkers Skiantos, albeit coming from the subcultural hummus of post-’77 Bologna, soon rose to national fame thanks to the exposure granted to them by television and radio personality Renzo Arbore.
Comedy, in fact, is the genre that mostly touched upon punk, using the subculture’s members as often farcical characters to highlight the cultural and generational contrast between mature and young people, the mainstream and the underground.
Take, for instance, the screenprinted Jean-Paul Gaultier and Vivienne Westwood-style tops worn by Christian De Sica’s character in Carlo verdone’s Borotalco (1982), a hyperbolic and hilarious homosexual student with the dream of becoming a dancer and showman. Or the stereotyped portrayal of a punk (Andrea Azzarito) dating Lino Banfi’s daughter in Occhio, malocchio, prezzemolo e finocchio (1983).
Whereas in Professione vacanze, the six-episode 1987 TV series, starring Jerry Calà, punks storm the Apulian holiday resort at the centre of the series after winning a package holiday.
The punk gang, captained by Ottone, are portrayed in a stereotyped way, as loud, young and snotty intruders of the village’s peace, driving a derailed van spray-painted with anarchy signs.
They are boorish and come with a Roman accent that seems to draw analogies to RanXerox the punk Frankenstein-like chav, half human-half photocopier machine, comic character conceived by Tanino Liberatore and Stefano Tamburini and popularised in those years by magazine Frigidaire.
Once again Calà is at the centre of a punk-related joke in Vado a vivere da solo (1982). Here, in his modern bachelor flat, the actor boasts a “punk toilet”, a loo connected to a juke-box that blasts music every time it is used, to cover up any undesired noise.
Another insight on the scene from the comedy perspective is Animali metropolitani (Suburban animals), an anthropological mockumentary and late attempt (1987) by acclaimed director Steno to comment on punk culture. The film is a rather absurd comedy work with Mara Venier, Francesco Scali, Karina Huff and Pasolini’s protegee Ninetto Davoli that nonetheless is of some sociological interest for devotees of Italian B cinema and youth culture.
It was, however, another heavyweight of the golden age of Italian comedy, Dino Risi, who first touched upon punk as a phenomenon of custom and rebellion. With Caro papà (Dear papa) in 1979, the director of Il sorpasso inserted a punk girl, with the star of terrorist group Red Brigades drawn on her forehead, into the group of friends of the son (Stefano Madia) of protagonist Vittorio Gassman, for a political and generational drama acclaimed at Cannes and at the David di Donatello Awards.






However, there was still room for independent and avante-garde attempts to punk narration on the silver screen. To stand out is no doubt L’inceneritore (1984), one of the most elusive Italian underground films ever. Directed by Pierfrancesco Boscaro Degli Ambrosi and mostly starring unknown punks casted in the streets of Padova, the film is a grotesque horror in which environmentalist themes connected to the city’s incinerator meet with violence against the subcultural background of youth deviance. After being first screened at the 41st Venice film festival the opus failed to gain distribution, becoming a lost gem of Italian B cinema which, however, is now due for its long-awaited restored version. Its soundtrack, composed by prog and metal legend Richard Benson, further elevates the film to the status of cult.
Even more obscure is Punk Artist The Movie, possibly the most faithful and underground punk film in Italy. The opus was conceived by Graziano Origa, the Sardinian artist and cultural activist who sits among the prime movers of Italian punk. Named after Punk Artist, the magazine he founded and based on his friend Andy Warhol’s Interview, the film directed by Manuel Franceschini casted in Origa’s words “leather boys, killers, maniacs” from the milanese punk scene including Joe Zattere, Big Laura, Marco Cy (and allegedly also Krisma) and entailed “black lipstick, sweat and blood”. After its first screening at night club Primadonna, a temple of extravagance in late 1970s Milan, the reels disappeared, making it one of the lost treasures of Italian independent cinema.
Although less grim, I ragazzi di Torino sognano Tokyo e vanno a Berlino (1986) by Vincenzo Badolisani is another peculiar example of Italian punk cinema. The work is a totally DIY underground cinema experiment, at first started at the beginning of the decade but only completed in 1986 due to the lack of funds. With its gonzo edge, it portrays the lifestyle of the city’s post-punkers and new wavers and their desire for subcultural escapism. Japan is a recurring theme crossing paths with punk, as also manifested by the kamikaze headbands worn with dark, Wayfarer-like sunglasses by the two main characters. The piece of military headwear had been adopted in the very same period also by Donatella Rettore, as previously mentioned. With a score featuring the likes of N.O.I.A. and Gaznevada, I ragazzi di Torino… still stands as a fundamental document to study the subcultural ferment of mid-1980s Italy.

Despite not being a punk film, an opus worth mentioning mostly for its cast is Copkiller (1987) by Roberto Faenza. The thriller set in New York and featuring a soundtrack by Ennio Morricone from the CAM Sugar archive stars punk legend, Sex Pistols and PIL member John Lydon. Copkiller, Lydon’s first and (so far) only appearance in a film, sees the musician in the role of a young New York deviant in a cat-and-mouse game with a corrupt policeman (Harvey Keitel) against a backdrop of murders committed by a mysterious killer targeting police officers.
To a certain extent, the DIY genius of many B-movie maestros, which often preceded punk itself, could be seen as the real extension in cinema of the subculture’s philosophy. Nonetheless, the elusive Italian punk filmography stands as a peculiar tile to compose the mosaic of the broader relationship between dominant and underground culture within Italian cinema.
Opening image: John Lydon in Copkiller, by Roberto Faenza, 1987.