Oil's Film Empire: ENI, Esso, and Extractive Capitalism's Impact on Italian Commercial Cinema

This dissertation is a study of oil company branding as it occurs in the cinema of the Italian Economic Boom (circa 1958-1963). It considers the historical and cultural impact of the oil industry and extractive capitalism on Italian society and its cinematic output, with specific reference to two oil conglomerates that each have a major presence and influence in Italy. The first, ENI (l’Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi), is the majority state-owned Italian energy company that was developed from the fascist era entity AGIP (Azienda Generale Italiana Petroli), and the second, Esso, is the trading name for ExxonMobil in Italy, a branch of the Standard Oil Company of Jersey, established in 1870 by the American tycoon John D. Rockefeller, the richest man in modern history.

Italy’s Economic Miracle, particularly within the parameters of oil company marketing, proposed financial prosperity and access to consumer goods as the keys to happiness. With my examination of oil branding, I interrogate the ways in which the cinema of the Economic Boom depicted life for the Italian people, and I determine how these depictions challenge the conception of economic, industrial, and technological advancement in Italy as beneficial to the individual’s quality of life. Rather than sustaining the Boom’s promises of consumer contentment, this analysis establishes that the films undermine them, with depictions of characters who frequently do not realize their ambitions, and are instead endlessly discontent, oftentimes miserable, even when they experience economic prosperity.

Consequently, this dissertation deals with two myths: that economic stability and consumption will ensure the individual’s happiness, and that middle class prosperity was accessible to everyone during the Economic Boom. I contend that the films I analyze from the period document the false promise being sold and, in the same text, critique that promise.