A Woman’s Search for Change and Meaningful Relationships in the Films of the 1950s

Abstract

Because of the heavy losses suffered during World War II, Italy in the 1950s was in desperate need of economic aid, and the United States, at the height of the Cold War, used economic assistance through their Marshall Plan to persuade the Italian Christian Democratic Party to reduce Communist and Socialist participation in important decision-making deliberations. American policy was facilitated by the presence of a Christian Democratic Italian Prime Minister Alcide de Gasperi, who, along with Charles De Gaulle of France and Konrad Adenauer of Germany, helped to give Western Europe stability after five years of war. By 1949 economic production had reached prewar levels and the ground was laid for what was called Italy’s “economic miracle”¹ of the late 1950s and 1960s. Indeed, 1958 marks the beginning of Italy’s economic development when Italian economic production climbed to the seventh largest in the world.