A SCHERMO PIENO. Eni nel cinema italiano

A journey through twentieth-century Italy told through one of its most recognisable symbols: the AGIP service station. This is the focus of A SCHERMO PIENO. Eni nel cinema italiano, the exhibition curated by Sergio Toffetti and hosted at the Museo Nazionale del Cinema in Turin from 21 May to 24 August 2026.

Staged on the Reception Level of the Mole Antonelliana and produced in collaboration with Eni, the exhibition uses production stills, film frames, photographs and commercials to explore how Italian cinema transformed petrol stations and service areas into symbolic spaces of modernity, reflecting the country’s social, economic and cultural development. Initially little more than necessary stopping points along the new roads of modern mobility, AGIP service stations gradually became recurring presences and meeting places from which stories emerged across different genres, periods and cinematic worlds.

The exhibition follows a chronological route illustrated by film frames and production stills from 37 films. It begins in 1943 with Luchino Visconti’s Ossessione, continues through Francesco Rosi’s The Mattei Affair from 1972 and concludes in 2014 with Edoardo De Angelis’s Perez.

At the centre of the exhibition is a reconstruction of the AGIP service station in Piazzale Accursio, Milan, designed by Mario Bacciocchi in 1953: a masterpiece of twentieth-century architecture and a symbol of Italy’s post-war economic boom. Inside, a monitor presents two film montages interspersed with commercials, while photographs and drawings on the walls illustrate the evolution of service-station design.

These materials come from the Eni Historical Archive, which documents not only the history of a company, but also that of the Italian landscape and the communities that have inhabited it. Among the images on display is one from 1932, when New York’s Museum of Modern Art presented a petrol pump for the first time, recognising it as a symbol of rationality and modernity.

In Italy during the 1950s, AGIP transformed service-station design through the work of Marcello Nizzoli, who turned the stations into icons by showcasing Luigi Broggini’s six-legged dog logo. These are only some of the examples of collective memory preserved by the Eni Historical Archive, whose significance extends beyond corporate history to encompass the country’s civic and cultural heritage. Its six kilometres of documents, 500,000 photographs, 5,000 audiovisual works and 70,000 technical drawings reveal the changes that transformed Italy’s cities, countryside, infrastructure and workplaces throughout the twentieth century.

As cinema moved from black and white to colour, service stations appeared in Italian road movies as sequences of colour and style. Icons of the economic-boom years, they also became part of a collective imagination in which technology, design and aspirations to prosperity converged. Located along the country’s main roads and motorways—which redefined time and space and reduced distances—service stations and the six-legged dog became some of the most recognisable symbols of an Italy moving towards modernity.

In Italian cinema, the AGIP service station is both a familiar and suspended space: the setting for encounters, departures, night-time stops and moments of personal transformation. It also provides a particularly revealing perspective from which to observe how apparently ordinary places contributed to the creation of Italy’s collective memory.

Through the materials on display, A schermo pieno reconstructs a constantly evolving landscape: that of an Italy shaped by the American myth, the euphoria of the economic miracle and the emergence of new patterns of consumption and social interaction.

The exhibition has been designed in accordance with Design for All principles to ensure an accessible and enjoyable experience for all visitors. At the beginning of the exhibition route, an introduction is available in Italian Sign Language (LIS) and in an easy-to-read version.

The exhibition is accompanied by the catalogue A schermo pieno. Eni nel cinema italiano, published by Allemandi. It features an extensive selection of images and essays by Sergio Toffetti, Giuseppe Lupo, Gianni Canova, Paolo Mereghetti, Giulio Sangiorgio, Marco Grifo, Fabio Pezzetti Tonion, Chiara Alessi and Laura Greco.

To mark the opening of the exhibition, Cinema Massimo will screen Dino Risi’s Il sorpasso on Thursday 21 May 2026 at 8.30 pm (Italy, 1962, 108 minutes, black and white). The film is one of the most compelling portrayals of the different aspects of Italy’s modernisation after the Second World War. Both entertaining and unsettling, it depicts the euphoric cynicism generated by the economic boom and offers an ever-changing portrait of the highs and lows of life in a nation, told through two summer days spent on the road.

Marco Risi will attend the screening.

From 15 to 29 June 2026, Cinema Massimo will also present the film programme A schermo pieno. Eni nel cinema italiano, featuring four works that helped portray Italy’s progress during the 1960s and 1970s.

The programme includes Luchino Visconti’s Ossessione (1943), Federico Fellini’s La dolce vita (1960), Mario Bava’s Kidnapped – Rabid Dogs (1974) and Elio Petri’s We Still Kill the Old Way (1967), all by filmmakers who captured an Italy undergoing profound social change.

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