“It is the time of monsters”: films about Gramsci

Picture: From Antonio Gramsci: The Days of Prison

Gramsci never wrote that. Although often quoted, it seems to have been conjured up by pseudo-Marxist Gob-on-Legs Slavoj Žižek in New Left Review in 2010 as a rewording of a line from Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks.

Coming across the non-quote, I thought it would be worthwhile to look at what is on offer in terms of the onscreen Gramsci. Usually, I only write about films I have seen but I’ll make an exception for Lino Del Fra’s Antonio Gramsci: The Days of Prison (1977) which covers his incarceration and his famous notebooks. It looks interesting, if you can access it. Trevor Griffiths’ play Occupations, first performed in Manchester in 1970 and adapted for Granada TV in 1974, focusses on the factory occupations in Turin in 1919 in which Gramsci — and the newspaper he edited, L’Ordine Nuovo (New Order), played a crucial leading role. There was some controversy about the inclusion of a fictional Comintern representative, Christo Kabak, with whom (in the film) Gramsci vehemently disagrees. Finally, there is the Channel Four drama-documentary Everything that Concerns People (Mike Alexander, 1984). If you want an overall picture of Gramsci’s politics, particularly his thoughts on culture and hegemony, it is a good introduction. It is a bit of a faff trying to access these films but try solidaritycinema.com for the Del Fra film (number 452 in their catalogue). For Occupations and Everything try YouTube.