Аннотация:This paper demonstrates that the collaboration between leftist intellectuals and filmmakers and the Catholic Church was vital in the birth and development of Italian Neorealism. Many films simply classified as neorealist and therefore often interpreted as the result of a leftist ideology, were – on the contrary – the product of a partnership between communist scriptwriters or directors and Catholic producers or filmmakers. The point here is not to claim that particular films belong to one category or another but rather to explore the ways in which that fruitful collaboration operated. Mario Soldati's Chi è Dio, the only cine-catechism of the period available for study, will be analysed and investigated as one of the first Neorealist films in order to demonstrate how the origin of the Neorealist cinema in Italy took place within the context of communist–Catholic collaboration.
