“I due volti di Eva”. L’educazione al femminile nella filmografia italiana degli anni Cinquanta.

Through the study of the Italian Filmography of the 1950s, it is possible to reconstruct the gender identity that were redefining in a period as well crossed by profound changes. In fact, mass cinema was born and developed at this time, that became the main field of cultural action: a building tool for collective identity, a shared experience that created connections, it was primarily an educational space. In particular, the films revealed the profound change of the female identity and of the relationship between the genres, sometimes hindering it, sometimes anticipating or promoting it. The two most popular genres of cinema, the “melò” and the comedy, have an unprecedented female protagonist role, but at the same time deliver us two faces of women, which correspond two different educational models: in the “melò” the image of the woman is reproposed as “angel of the home” (wife and mother), in the comedy emerges an emancipated woman (worker, modern, bearer of new values). It was the sign of a transition that went through the decade, so divided between tradition (return of women to the private sphere) and innovation (new subjective paths of emancipation). The filmmaking of those years, on the one hand, did a job of containment of the transformation instances, on the other hand, it was a contributing factor in the spread of new educational models that matched the unprecedented dynamics of gender identity.