Screening confino: Male melodrama and exile cinema

In a 2003 interview, Silvio Berlusconi attempted to revise fascism through explaining that Mussolini did not kill anyone, and instead sent people on island holiday. This article interrogates the formula of internal exile (confino) as vacation through examining nine films, documentaries, and made-for-television movies that depict the exile experience of four prominent Italian intellectuals (Cesare Pavese, Carlo Rosselli, Giorgio Amendola and Carlo Levi). In these texts, all of which fall under the generic classification of male melodrama, the confino event serves as a convenient backdrop to narrate stories that are more pleasant and conform to the traditional logic of desire that dominates the classical cinema. As follows, and in line with Berlusconi’s problematic statement, the distressing events surrounding the practice of confino are disavowed and political confinement is reimagined as holiday.