Through the Law, Beyond the Law. Dealing with Fascism and Civil War in Italian Cinema. 1943–1948.

The essay explores transitional justice through the lens of some films that represent a trial, focusing on the case of Italy after the fall of Mussolini's regime in 1943. The Italian case presents similar aspects to what occurred in other European countries after the end of the Second World War and to other experiences of transitional justice. But it is also unique in several respects, highlighting the liquidity between war and peace that puts transitional justice under scrutiny. Indeed, in the period between 1943 and 1948, and in some cases even beyond, three different wars were fought in Italy, at certain moments simultaneously: The Second World War between the Allied army and the German army with the Italian Social Republic; the civil war between fascists and antifascists; and a class war between workers and peasants on one side and agrarians and bourgeois on the other. It is in this convulsive phase, in which homicides reached the highest rates ever recorded in the history of the unified nation, in which the state and the administration of justice were on the rise, that the films I will discuss in this essay must be placed. These films offer a glimpse into the lived experience of transitional justice in Italy.