Abstract. The purpose of the article is to study the history of Italian film production in Soviet culture through the optics of perception set by magazine film criticism. A special feature of the author's approach to the topic is the consideration of the phenomenon of the ideological impact of the Soviet government on foreign cultural products by identifying the dominant position of critics in periodicals and thematic collections about foreign cinema. Using diachronic analysis, the main approaches to the presentation of works of neorealism (including the so-called “pink neorealism”) in the mass media, Italian comedy, socio-political dramas and Italian author’s cinema are revealed. The comparative method allows us to determine the features of the description of Italian artists and aspects of constructing the image of Italy and Italians in the Soviet film discourse.

The analysis of theoretical literature on the history of Soviet film distribution, the everyday life of the post-war period, and texts of Soviet film criticism make it possible to clarify the mechanisms of functioning of the Soviet discourse on Western culture. The most critically acclaimed works were neorealist films and socio-political dramas. The justification for showing films that contradicted the Soviet myth “the Italian is a victim of the capitalist system” was an appeal to artistic value and aesthetic categories.

Key words: Italian neorealism, pink neorealism, Italian-style comedy, socio-political drama, Soviet film criticism, ideological discourse.