What a pleasure to learn this morning from Corriere della Sera that, in 1974, the opinion of Famiglia Cristiana was taken into such great consideration by Italian families. But what a disappointment to discover, at the same time, that Anna Maria, the daughter of the future president Francesco Cossiga, was unable to go to the cinema to see American Graffiti due to the judgment of our newspaper. And how amazing, finally, to remember that a father could once have such authority and that a daughter, then thirteen years old, obeyed without question.
The opinion that Cossiga reported, after having consulted, as was apparently his habit, the pages dedicated to cinema within the column The judgments of the CCC the Catholic Center of Cinemafu: “Unbecoming, ambiguous”. Enough to prevent his teenage daughter from going out.
The CCC, ecclesiastical authority in the field of film criticism, which has its origins in the publication of Cinematographic reports commissioned by Pius Famiglia Cristiana therefore also reported weekly the information relating to the films in theaters.
Those were different times and, perhaps, American Graffiti was not suitable for a thirteen-year-old at the time (today they would propose it to elementary school students), but were we really so categorical in judging a film, between drama and comedy, portrait of a generation in the dark years of the Vietnam War? A work that everyone recognizes as a cornerstone of cinematography and that l’American Film Institute placed in seventy-seventh place in the ranking of the best American films of all time?
Fortunately our judgment was, in some respects, a little more forgiving. In fact, we wrote “Questionable, difficult”. Severe, therefore, but not unnecessarily censorious and with the awareness that watching a complex film is still possible.