Configuring innocence: China and Italy, Wang and Masina personas

By tracing how Wang Baoqiang and Giulietta Masina configure the concept of innocence in four films – Fellini’s Il Bidone/The Swindle (1955) versus Li Yang’s Blind Shaft (2003), and Fellini’s La Strada/The Road (1954) versus Feng Xiaogang’s A World without Thieves (2004) – this article demonstrates that similar human conditions produce similar cinematic responses. The parallel elements here include bankrupt political systems (Maoist socialism and Mussolini’s fascism) accompanied by economic prosperity and the advent of materialism, in which individuals attempt to regain a sense of self through the traditional values of their cultures, whether Confucianism in China or Christian humanism in Italy: the focus on innocence in both Chinese and Italian films has also attracted similar critical responses. This article touches on the relationship between the following responses and the analysis of the films: Italian Neorealism in contrast with Chinese documentary realism, nostalgia for home, Christian and Buddhist humanism, value judgment, post-socialism, consumerism, problems of ethics, populism, Nietzsche’s concept of the innocence of becoming and Heidegger’s conception of homeless. The article concludes by suggesting an examination of Daoism for a comprehensive understanding of the parallelled configuration of innocence, bridging the concepts of Nietzsche and Heidegger and heeding both senses of crisis and senses for hope.