Fascism and Film Translation in and between Italy, Germany, and Spain

Mussolini, Hitler, and Franco and their regimes—Italian Fascism, National-Socialism, and Francoism—placed great ideological emphasis on film. This chapter delves into institutional and ideological connections between these regimes, it notes differences and even disagreement in their ideological use of film, and it highlights how these regimes conveyed their ideologies through film translation and the use of language in films. Rather than synthesizing studies that compare the three regimes on a general ideological level, this chapter discusses film fiction—especially L’assedio dell’Alcazar (Sect. 1)—to concretize connections and differences regarding film production, language use, and translation practices. Section 2 signposts that the arrival of film, especially sound film, was already entangled in nationalist battles before these dictators grabbed power. The ensuing sections focus on the ideological functions of film dialogue and film translation in Italy (Sect. 3), Germany (Sect. 4), and Spain (Sect. 5). The chapter shows connections between the film administrations of these regimes, as excellently researched in Film Studies, and it points to a lacuna in Film Studies: the barely recognized the importance of studying the details of translation as materializations of ideology.