The Famous Fascist Who Started the Venice Film Festival

The festival circuit is an important part of the film industry. After all, how would you know a movie has any artistic cred if it doesn’t have any little leaves on its poster? The oldest of the “Big Five” festivals, the Venice Film Festival, is nearly as old as Hollywood itself, founded in 1932. That’s all well and good until you consider what else was going on in Italy in 1932. 

Yep, the Venice Film Festival was brought to you by Fascism.

Specifically, by Giuseppe Voldi, a lifelong bureaucrat who was Mussolini’s Minister of Finance from 1925 to 1928. By the ‘30s, he’d largely dedicated himself to artistic matters, most importantly the Venice Biennale, an annual international culture festival. In ‘32, recognizing the rising importance of movies to the Italian public, he added the film festival. Hey, even Fascists contain multitudes.

The Venice Film Festival was initially noncompetitive, but in 1934, organizers began presenting the festival’s first awards: the Mussolini Cup for Best Italian Film and the Mussolini Cup for Best Foreign Film. Exactly one American film was bestowed the honor of a Mussolini Cup, Clarence Brown’s 1935 adaptation of Anna Karenina. They presumably didn’t advertise this.

Remarkably, it took five whole years to get weird. In 1937, Mussolini himself stepped in to ensure that La Grande Illusion wouldn’t win his cup on the grounds that it was a) anti-war and b) French. The next year, he and Hitler came right out and overruled the jury to award Best Italian Film to Mussolini’s son’s war movie and Best Foreign Film to a Nazi-produced documentary of the 1936 Berlin Summer Olympics, which wasn’t even eligible on account of it being, uh, a documentary.

This cinematic tyranny was the whole reason for the creation of the Cannes Film Festival — French filmmakers were mad about not getting trophies over a little thing like bitter geopolitical enmity. They certainly had a point — from then until 1943, Mussolini Cups were awarded pretty much exclusively to Fascist and Nazi propaganda, though to be fair, few countries besides Italy and Germany even participated. It was just two bros’ sad little movie night. The festival wasn’t held again until 1946 for obvious reasons.

As for Volpi, he could excuse Fascism, but he drew the line at teaming up with Hitler. That got him thrown out of the party and arrested by the S.S. while fleeing to Switzerland in 1943, but he was eventually acquitted of all crimes both for and against the party under the Togliatti amnesty declaration, which basically decreed that both sides did bad stuff so let’s call it even. 

His daughter and granddaughter became important figures in the Italian film industry, which is probably a more appealing legacy. To this day, the Best Actor and Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival win the Volpi Cup, which is less recognizably horrible but still only a little bit better than the Mussolini Cup.