Quaderni di Venezia Arti

Elio Petri, L’assassino (1961): The Nemi Museum and the Ghost of the Ships

crossmark logo

Abstract

The recovery of the Roman ships from Lake Nemi (1928‑33) was celebrated through films, photographs, and press as a symbol of technological progress and Fascist appropriation of the imperial past. The Museum of Roman Ships (1940) embodied this triumph until a 1944 fire turned it into a monument to loss rather than power. The essay explores Nemi as a visual laboratory, from interwar propaganda to Petri’s L’assassino (1961), where the ruined museum turns absence into a cinematic device and a space for critical reflection on memory and history.


Open access

Submitted: Oct. 15, 2025 | Published Dec. 15, 2025 | Language: en

Keywords Propaganda visual culture • Elio Petri • L’assassino (1961) • Void and memory • Museum of Roman Ships

Copyright © 2025 Ilaria Grippa. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.


read this chapter