Freddi, Luigi

(1895-1977)

   Journalist, producer, administrator. Much maligned in the postwar period due to his close association with Fascism, Freddi served as the director of the Direzione Generale per la Cinematografia (General Directorate of Cinematography) from its inception in 1934 until 1939, when he relinquished this all-important position in favor of becoming the head of both Cinecitta, which he had been instrumental in creating, and the revived Cines studios. After the fall of Fascism in 1943, Freddi pledged his allegiance to the Republic of Salo and consequently moved to Venice, where he was part of the ill-fated attempt to establish a new center for film production, in lieu of the bombed and now-unusable Cinecitta studios in Rome. In the last days of the war, while attempting to reach Switzerland, he was captured by Resistance fighters and imprisoned. He was eventually put on trial in May 1946 on charges of having unlawfully profited from his official position under the Fascist regime, but he was promptly acquitted and released. Given his past history and association, he was unable ever to work again in the film industry, except for a brief collaboration in 1954 with producer Angelo Rizzoli. Before fading into obscurity, he wrote and published II cinema (Cinema), a two-volume memoir detailing his involvement with the Italian film industry. Although long neglected, the book contains such a wealth of information about the Italian cinema during the Fascist period that it has recently been republished in an abridged form by the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia under the title of Il cinema: Il governo dell'immagine (Cinema: The Government of the Image, 1994).

   Historical Dictionary of Italian Cinema by Alberto Mira