Last summer was a cruel one for the great emblems of Italian cinema. First, at the end of July, came the death of Michelangelo Antonioni, the great modernist director who electrified the art-house in the 60s and 70s. Then, on August 9, a fire broke out at Rome's legendary Cinecitta film studios, destroying about 35,000 sq ft of what had been the lynchpin of the nation's film industry since the 1930s. Italy's golden age was over. These twin losses, within the space of a fortnight, only served the highlight the fact.
Decline is relative, of course, and the Italian industry is surely still regarded with envy by many other EU member states - Lithuania, say, or Luxembourg. It boasts a healthy output and an eclectic crop of distinctive directors, ranging from the icy Paolo Sorrentino to the clownish Roberto Benigni and the mercurial Nanni Moretti, who won the 2001 Palme d'Or for his family drama The Son's Room. It is simply that Italian film lacks the impact and the global reach that it enjoyed in the days of Rossellini, De Sica, Antonioni, Bertolucci and the Taviani brothers.
To add insult to injury, the slide of Italian cinema has been mirrored by a rapid ascent for Spanish film.
Both industries found themselves liberated, in part, by the end of fascist rule. The trouble was that Italy's freedom came earlier. The hardships of the post-war era were perversely the best thing that could have happened to Italian film. They brought an end to hide-bound, propaganda movies and paved the way for the rise of neorealism – a strain of deft social dramas, like Bicycle Thieves, that were shot on the cheap, in natural locations and reflected life as it was being lived on the ground.
Spain's liberation came later, with the end of the Franco regime in 1975. Previously, awkward, uncompromising directors such as Luis Bunuel had found themselves exiled from their homeland. Now there was a place for them again. Over in Madrid, a former comic-book writer called Pedro Almodovar tapped into the mood of the time with a series of jubilant, sexually precocious and taboo-baiting works before going on to become a revered elder statesman courtesy of films such as Volver and All About My Mother. In the meantime, many actors who got their first breaks on Almodovar productions – Antonio Banderas, Penelope Cruz, Javier Bardem – are now installed as household names.
But the current state of Spanish cinema is not down to one man alone. Crucially, the country's film industry appears to have benefited from globalisation, allowing it to access major export markets in Latin America and even the US, with its millions of Spanish speakers. Recent years have seen a vibrant cross-pollination with the Mexican film industry - most obviously seen with the Oscar-winning Pan's Labyrinth and the forthcoming The Orphanage - together an unprecedented rise in English-language Spanish productions such as Goya's Ghosts, Basic Instinct 2 and Alejandro Amenebar's The Others, starring Nicole Kidman as a harassed mother battling ghosts on the Channel Islands.
All of which conspires to make Spanish cinema feel fresher, more vital, more outward-looking than its counterpart across the Mediterranean.
Two decades ago, Italians bought twice as many cinema tickets as they did in Spain. Now the Spaniards have overtaken them. Italian cinema has a long and illustrious history, and now is not the time to start talking in terms of a decline and fall - we are not quite in Gibbon territory yet. But the industry gives the impression of being tired and scattered, struggling to find its voice. It sorely needs another neorealist-style renaissance - a local, specific flowering that speaks to the world at large.
