Telefoni Bianchi (; white telephones) films, also called deco films, were made by Italian film industry in the 1930s and the 1940s in imitation of American comedies of the time in a sharp contrast to the other important style of the era, calligrafismo, which was highly artistic. The cinema of Telefoni Bianchi was born from the success of the Italian film comedy of the early 1930s; it was a lighter version, cleansed of any intellectualism or veiled social criticism. Name The name derives from the presence of white telephones in the sequences of the first films produced in this period, symptomatic of social well-being, a status symbol capable of marking the difference from the "popular" bakelite telephones, cheaper and therefore more widespread, which instead were black. Another definition given to these films is "deco cinema" due to the strong presence of furnishing objects that recall the international deco style, in vogue in those years. Origins The roots of the Telefoni Bianchi film genre can be found in Mario Camerini's cinema of the 1920s, in particular in Rails (1929), in which the director photographed — with reverberations of German expressionist cinema or citing the contemporary Soviet cinematographic avant-gardes — the reality of the crisis years, in real time. The cinema of Telefoni Bianchi was then born from the success of the Italian film comedy of the early 1930s; it was a lighter version, cleansed of any intellectualism or veiled social criticism. The first film of the genre Telefoni Bianchi was The Private Secretary (1931) by Goffredo Alessandrini. Overview In the 1930s and the 1940s, light comedies like those of Telefoni Bianchi were predominant in Italian cinema. These films featured lavish set designs and promoted conservative values and respect for authority, typically avoiding the scrutiny of government censors. Telefoni Bianchi proved to be the testing ground of numerous screenwriters destined to impose themselves in the following decades (including Cesare Zavattini and Sergio Amidei), and above all of numerous set designers such as Guido Fiorini, Gino Carlo Sensani and Antonio Valente, who, by virtue successful graphic inventions led these productions to become a kind of "summa" of the petite bourgeoisie aesthetics of the time. Among the authors, Mario Camerini is the most representative director of the genre. After having practiced the most diverse trends in the 1930s, he happily moved into the territory of sentimental comedy with What Scoundrels Men Are! (1932), Il