The Silent Denunciation of Popular Cinema
Elvira Notari (Salerno, 1875 – Cava de' Tirreni, 1946) was an extraordinary entrepreneur and author. She founded and managed Dora Film in Naples with her husband, producing over 60 feature films and hundreds of shorts, primarily targeting a popular audience, particularly Italian emigrants in the United States.
While the bourgeois cinema of the time favored polished narratives, Notari immersed herself in the reality of the poor, bringing the sceneggiate (popular folk dramas) to the screen—dramas inspired by daily life, organized crime, and, above all, the most brutal family and social dynamics.
Looking at her films, one recognizes in the characters those faces that would become so dear to Pier Paolo Pasolini, faces that reflect that forgotten world of poverty, misery, and abandonment of the underclass. Notari showed us the urban "plebs" with a gaze that we can define as proto-neorealist, well before the genre was codified.
In her films, such as the famous 'A Santanotte (1922), stories of passion, jealousy, and, too often, femicide were enacted. Notari did not limit herself to narrating the tragedy but offered an authentic look at the consequences of destitution, the lack of female autonomy, and the logic of male possession. The woman, for Notari, was a subject seeking redemption, but who, in most cases, succumbed to male violence and abuse—a tragic constant of the era's reality.
From Canvas to Ink
Although Notari's cinema represents a pioneering mass denunciation, it is necessary to acknowledge the women who, in other fields, had already broken the wall of silence:
Dramatic Art: Consider Artemisia Gentileschi (17th century) who, after suffering violence, transformed her trauma into a powerful artistic outcry, painting biblical scenes where female figures like Judith sought vengeance against male oppressors.
Autobiographical Literature: Sibilla Aleramo, with her novel Una donna (1906) (A Woman), gave voice to the psychological and physical violence suffered in her bourgeois marriage, establishing one of the first and most courageous literary denunciations against the domestic prison imposed on women.
Anticipating History
Elvira Notari did not aim to start a political movement; her imperative was artistic and commercial—to tell the "truth" of her people. Yet, in doing so, she created one of the first and most extensive works of visual documentation of gender-based violence in Italy.
Her cinema, realistic and dialectal, was so powerful and so contrary to the ideal of the "Italian woman" propagated by the regime that she was hit by Fascist censorship until she was forced to close Dora Film in 1929. Her work, which fell into obscurity for decades, is today an invaluable testimony: Elvira Notari was a beacon that, with her camera, illuminated the dark drama of violence, making it, for the first time, not a private matter, but a social and visible one.
Recovering her figure is not just about giving her due historical credit, but recognizing in her a voice that, a century ago, spoke about what we continue to call by the names she already knew: abuse, injustice, and femicide.
APPROFONDIMENTI
Donati G. 2025, 14 Oct "Elvira Notari. Beyond the Silence": An Act of Justice for a Forgotten Pioneer Scienceonline
Donati G. 2025, 14 Ott "Elvira Notari. Oltre il silenzio": un atto di giustizia per una pioniera dimenticata Scienzaonline
CS Cnr-Irpps 2020, 25 Nov Violenza da lockdown: esasperazione della coppia e stereotipi di genere Scienzaonline
CS I.F.C Pisa 2023, 24 Nov I dati sulla violenza di genere in Italia
CS UNI Pisa 2020, 02 Lug MedicinaConseguenze di genere ai tempi del Covid: al via una campagna di sensibilizzazione in tutta Europa Scienzaonline
https://www.scienzaonline.com/medicina/item/2556-conseguenze-di-genere-ai-tempi-del-covid-al-via-una-campagna-di-sensibilizzazione-in-tutta-europa.html
*Board Member, SRSN (Roman Society of Natural Science)
Past Editor-in-Chief Italian Journal of Dermosurgery
