Abstract

This article illustrates the importance of archival research in the historical and critical overview of cinema. It compares the documentation behind Zavattini's unrealised film "La cavia", which is preserved in the Zavattini archive (kept at the Biblioteca Panizzi in Reggio Emilia), to the genesis, style and narration of Zavattini's completed film "Il boom" (V. De Sica, 1963). The comparison of these two contemporary projects highlights the connections between Italian neorealism and the «commedia all'italiana», in terms of what Zavattini called a «cinema of cruelty»: a new genre, to follow neorealism, of which "La cavia" should have been the very first example.