Beyond Crises, beyond the Twentieth Century. A Protagonist of the Italian cinematographic industry: Titanus

Within the context of “Business Longevity”, this article reviews the history of Titanus, one of the most important Italian film companies, an enterprise that has experienced success, failure and drastic reorganisation, founded in 1928 and still active today. The founder, Gustavo Lombardo, began to operate in the field of distribution in the early 1900s, going on to launch production in 1916 and continuing in this activity despite the severe crisis that struck the sector in the Twenties. In the postwar period, when the company was led by Gustavo’s son, Goffredo, the problems were equally complex. In addition to integrating the three branches of the industry, Goffredo systematically aimed at differentiating the product, especially the genres, as his father had already begun to do, making high quality the “trademark” of even the commercial films, as well as the more recent television shows. At present, Guido Lombardo represents the third generation of this enterprise that fully “incarnates” some special features of the Italian industrial system, distinguished by a personal/familiar type of capitalism and by the strong presence of small and medium-sized firms.