Abstract

Albeit released at about the same time, "Life Begins Anew" (M. Mattoli, 1945) and "Two Anonymous Letters" (M. Camerini, 1945) offer two very different depictions of post-fascist Italy. While sharing an ambiguous position in relation to the neorealist canon (from which they nonetheless borrow many an element), the two films deploy the melodramatic imagination that forms the core of their narratives in radically different ideological directions. The analysis proposed here will focus on the relationship between their female protagonists and the city they inhabit as a way to investigate the problem of Italian postwar guilt.