Telefoni Bianchi

Telefoni Bianchi ("White Telephones") is a genre of films made in Italy in the 1930s in imitation of American films of the time. For example, expensive Art Deco film sets were used, often featuring white telephones as a typical status symbol of bourgeois wealth, and children appeared in curly Shirley Temple hairdos. These films tended to be socially conservative and promoted the values ​​of family, respect for authority, classic, rigid hierarchies, and country life.

The neorealist Italian filmmakers saw their critical films as a reaction to the Telefono Bianco films with their idealized values.