The famous Gioventù perduta case [was] triggered by a letter [signed by 36 directors, screenwriters and intellectuals from the entertainment industry] and would be a unique moment in [Pietro Germi]’s career due to the massive cross-sectional support received, especially from the left, during a veritable press campaign against censorship. Completed in the autumn of 1947, Germi’s second feature film was the undisputed protagonist of it, and perhaps it was approved in January 1948 thanks to this impressive mobilisation…
In both the protest letter from directors and intellectuals and in the press defending Gioventù perduta, a few key arguments stand out. First, there is an equation between anti-fascism and (neo) realism. Additionally, there is an assumption that every good film belongs to the (neo)realist genre. Finally, there is a belief that censorship specifically targets (neo)realist cinema, with Andreotti seen as its ultimate adversary… What disturbed most, however, was the equation between delinquency and the bourgeoisie… Gioventù perduta aimed to depict a cultured and bourgeois version of juvenile delinquency. Here, the “lost” youth is not driven by the need for money but by the desire for it; he does not flee hunger, but wants to escape the humiliation of postwar rationing… It is no coincidence that the film would be considered the precursor of a specific transnational trend that would mark the 1950s with The Vanquished (1953) by Michelangelo Antonioni and Rebel Without a Cause (1955) by Nicholas Ray.
At that time [Germi] was a voracious cinephile who drew inspiration from Hollywood cinema, which had recently returned to Italian screens; a cinema that contemporary critics immediately noted the influence of, commenting on the affinities with the crime genre (or noir) and the similarities between Jacques Sernas and Alan Ladd […]. But he also breathed the “fresh air of reality” of his time, demonstrated here via the news story that inspired the storyline; and this was enough for the same critics to place it in the (neo) realist movement. Indeed, it is true that Gioventù perduta tells “a typical postwar story” intertwined with a reflection on the sins of the fathers and of fascism.

Elena Dagrada, Un inizio contro. Censura e scrittura in “Gioventù perduta”, in Il cinema di Pietro Germi, edited by Luca Malavasi and Emiliano Morreale, Edizioni di Bianco e Nero/Edizioni Sabinæ, Rome 2016