Nick Havely
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199584628
- eISBN:
- 9780191739095
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199584628.003.0019
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature, Poetry
This chapter revisits Italy and turns to Dante on screen. It considers the role of early Italian cinema, giving particular attention to the cultural and political contexts of the 1911 Milano-Films ...
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This chapter revisits Italy and turns to Dante on screen. It considers the role of early Italian cinema, giving particular attention to the cultural and political contexts of the 1911 Milano-Films Inferno — a project that took shape during a decade which also saw significant developments in Italian nationalism before the country's entry into the First World War.Less
This chapter revisits Italy and turns to Dante on screen. It considers the role of early Italian cinema, giving particular attention to the cultural and political contexts of the 1911 Milano-Films Inferno — a project that took shape during a decade which also saw significant developments in Italian nationalism before the country's entry into the First World War.
Giorgio Bertellini
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780823256235
- eISBN:
- 9780823261741
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823256235.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, Economic History
Italian-produced films found a vast audience in New York City theaters, encompassing motives of emotional longing and diasporic nationalism among immigrant spectators well into the 1920s. The essay ...
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Italian-produced films found a vast audience in New York City theaters, encompassing motives of emotional longing and diasporic nationalism among immigrant spectators well into the 1920s. The essay investigates whether and how 1920s Italian American film culture resonated with assertive transnational connections. In particular, it looks at how the largest Italian American newspaper, Il Progresso Italo Americano, articulated self-assured ideas of cultural dialogue and exchange through film reviews, reports about film reception and stars, and advertisements for new films or talent agencies. The evidence Il Progresso provides reveals a dense circuit of newsmaking and popular response, indeed a culture of film consumption, that positioned Italy and America not as opposed, but in dialogue with one another. For an emigrant community long accustomed to endure racial and cultural prejudice and perceived to be strenuously attached to European customs and lifestyles, the 1920s saw the emergence of a geocultural confidence that impacted ideas and practices of film consumption turning manifest and inescapable affiliation into choice.Less
Italian-produced films found a vast audience in New York City theaters, encompassing motives of emotional longing and diasporic nationalism among immigrant spectators well into the 1920s. The essay investigates whether and how 1920s Italian American film culture resonated with assertive transnational connections. In particular, it looks at how the largest Italian American newspaper, Il Progresso Italo Americano, articulated self-assured ideas of cultural dialogue and exchange through film reviews, reports about film reception and stars, and advertisements for new films or talent agencies. The evidence Il Progresso provides reveals a dense circuit of newsmaking and popular response, indeed a culture of film consumption, that positioned Italy and America not as opposed, but in dialogue with one another. For an emigrant community long accustomed to endure racial and cultural prejudice and perceived to be strenuously attached to European customs and lifestyles, the 1920s saw the emergence of a geocultural confidence that impacted ideas and practices of film consumption turning manifest and inescapable affiliation into choice.
Neepa Majumdar
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617031229
- eISBN:
- 9781617031236
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617031229.003.0011
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter explores 1950s discussions of realism in India as catalyzed by what filmmakers and audiences described as the eye-opening experience of watching the three Italian neorealist films that ...
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This chapter explores 1950s discussions of realism in India as catalyzed by what filmmakers and audiences described as the eye-opening experience of watching the three Italian neorealist films that were screened at the first International Film Festival in India, held from January 24—February 1, 1952. Specifically, it considers this festival’s impact, and its echoes in cinematic and journalistic discourse in the early 1950s. Within the discourse of realism, one can find a continuum of films ranging from mainstream studio products such as Footpath (Zia Sarhady, 1953) to hybrid independent and studio films such as Do bigha zamin (Two Acres of Land, Bimol Roy, 1953) to state-supported independent films such as Pather panchali.Less
This chapter explores 1950s discussions of realism in India as catalyzed by what filmmakers and audiences described as the eye-opening experience of watching the three Italian neorealist films that were screened at the first International Film Festival in India, held from January 24—February 1, 1952. Specifically, it considers this festival’s impact, and its echoes in cinematic and journalistic discourse in the early 1950s. Within the discourse of realism, one can find a continuum of films ranging from mainstream studio products such as Footpath (Zia Sarhady, 1953) to hybrid independent and studio films such as Do bigha zamin (Two Acres of Land, Bimol Roy, 1953) to state-supported independent films such as Pather panchali.
Laura Heins
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252037740
- eISBN:
- 9780252095023
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252037740.003.0002
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter attempts to delineate the generic and aesthetic differences between film melodrama in Third Reich and classical Hollywood cinema, and to a lesser extent, between German and Italian ...
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This chapter attempts to delineate the generic and aesthetic differences between film melodrama in Third Reich and classical Hollywood cinema, and to a lesser extent, between German and Italian Fascist film. Hollywood cinema's greater emphasis on the communicative codes of mise-en-scène, dynamic editing, and camera movement was countered in Nazi cinema with a greater stress on bodily displays and a theatrical acting style that subordinated the intimacy of the face in close-up to the authority of the actor's voice and scripted dialogue. Subtle formal and narrative differences in the Nazi melodrama also encouraged a more aggressive form of voyeurism than was common in the Hollywood melodrama. Instead of the masochistic aesthetic of many Hollywood melodramas, therefore, the Nazi melodrama distinguished itself by its formally encoded appeals to spectatorial sadism and by the masculinity of its pathos.Less
This chapter attempts to delineate the generic and aesthetic differences between film melodrama in Third Reich and classical Hollywood cinema, and to a lesser extent, between German and Italian Fascist film. Hollywood cinema's greater emphasis on the communicative codes of mise-en-scène, dynamic editing, and camera movement was countered in Nazi cinema with a greater stress on bodily displays and a theatrical acting style that subordinated the intimacy of the face in close-up to the authority of the actor's voice and scripted dialogue. Subtle formal and narrative differences in the Nazi melodrama also encouraged a more aggressive form of voyeurism than was common in the Hollywood melodrama. Instead of the masochistic aesthetic of many Hollywood melodramas, therefore, the Nazi melodrama distinguished itself by its formally encoded appeals to spectatorial sadism and by the masculinity of its pathos.
Domietta Torlasco
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804758024
- eISBN:
- 9780804786775
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804758024.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics
This book interrogates the relationship between time and vision as it emerges in five Italian films from the 1960s and 1970s: Antonioni's Blow-Up and The Passenger, Bertolucci's The Spider's ...
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This book interrogates the relationship between time and vision as it emerges in five Italian films from the 1960s and 1970s: Antonioni's Blow-Up and The Passenger, Bertolucci's The Spider's Stratagem, Cavani's The Night Porter, and Pasolini's Oedipus Rex. The center around which these films revolve is the image of the crime scene—the spatial and temporal configuration in which a crime is committed, witnessed, and investigated. By pushing the detective story to its extreme limits, they articulate forms of time that defy any clear-cut distinction between past, present, and future—presenting an uncertain temporality which can be made visible but not calculated, and challenging notions of visual mastery and social control. If the detective story proper begins with a death that has already taken place, the death which seems to count the most in these films is the one that is yet to occur—the investigator's own death. In a time of relentless anticipation, what appears in front of the investigator's eyes is not the past as it was, but the past as it will have been in relation to the time of his or her search.Less
This book interrogates the relationship between time and vision as it emerges in five Italian films from the 1960s and 1970s: Antonioni's Blow-Up and The Passenger, Bertolucci's The Spider's Stratagem, Cavani's The Night Porter, and Pasolini's Oedipus Rex. The center around which these films revolve is the image of the crime scene—the spatial and temporal configuration in which a crime is committed, witnessed, and investigated. By pushing the detective story to its extreme limits, they articulate forms of time that defy any clear-cut distinction between past, present, and future—presenting an uncertain temporality which can be made visible but not calculated, and challenging notions of visual mastery and social control. If the detective story proper begins with a death that has already taken place, the death which seems to count the most in these films is the one that is yet to occur—the investigator's own death. In a time of relentless anticipation, what appears in front of the investigator's eyes is not the past as it was, but the past as it will have been in relation to the time of his or her search.
Mariano Mestman
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617031229
- eISBN:
- 9781617031236
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617031229.003.0010
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter examines the influence of Italian postwar neorealist films on the so-called New Latin American Cinema (NLAC) of the 1960s, and narrates a story that goes from the 1950s cinema of ...
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This chapter examines the influence of Italian postwar neorealist films on the so-called New Latin American Cinema (NLAC) of the 1960s, and narrates a story that goes from the 1950s cinema of Fernando Birri to the 1970s films of Glauber Rocha. It suggests that the neorealist “influence” on the NLAC was mediated by an intricate, complex network of cultural and political processes that developed throughout the years between the immediate postwar period and the 1960s.Less
This chapter examines the influence of Italian postwar neorealist films on the so-called New Latin American Cinema (NLAC) of the 1960s, and narrates a story that goes from the 1950s cinema of Fernando Birri to the 1970s films of Glauber Rocha. It suggests that the neorealist “influence” on the NLAC was mediated by an intricate, complex network of cultural and political processes that developed throughout the years between the immediate postwar period and the 1960s.
Silvia Carlorosi
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617031229
- eISBN:
- 9781617031236
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617031229.003.0015
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter looks at examples of neorealism in recent Italian cinema. It focuses on two films—Andrea and Antonio Frazzi’s Certi bambini (A Children’s Story, 2004), and Matteo Garrone’s Gomorra ...
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This chapter looks at examples of neorealism in recent Italian cinema. It focuses on two films—Andrea and Antonio Frazzi’s Certi bambini (A Children’s Story, 2004), and Matteo Garrone’s Gomorra (Gomorrah 2008)—which demonstrate how contemporary Italian cinema is dealing with its neorealist legacy, pushing it in the direction of what we can call, using Pier Paolo Pasolini’s intuition, a “cinema of poetry.” The chapter analyzes how the “cinema of poetry” of these films can be considered the contemporary legacy of neorealism, with its main interest in representing the real, even in its multifaceted expressions.Less
This chapter looks at examples of neorealism in recent Italian cinema. It focuses on two films—Andrea and Antonio Frazzi’s Certi bambini (A Children’s Story, 2004), and Matteo Garrone’s Gomorra (Gomorrah 2008)—which demonstrate how contemporary Italian cinema is dealing with its neorealist legacy, pushing it in the direction of what we can call, using Pier Paolo Pasolini’s intuition, a “cinema of poetry.” The chapter analyzes how the “cinema of poetry” of these films can be considered the contemporary legacy of neorealism, with its main interest in representing the real, even in its multifaceted expressions.
Arthur J. Pomeroy
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199678921
- eISBN:
- 9780191760259
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199678921.003.0009
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval, Plays and Playwrights: Classical, Early, and Medieval
Le fatiche di Ercole (1958) initiated a line of Italian adventure films set in the ancient world and turned their body-builder protagonists into stars. Their female love ...
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Le fatiche di Ercole (1958) initiated a line of Italian adventure films set in the ancient world and turned their body-builder protagonists into stars. Their female love interests also reflect the fantasies of contemporary Italian audiences. Sylva Koscina as Iole appears as both the ‘modern’ female and fairy-tale princess. Hercules is immune to the charms of the more typical Mediterranean seductress in his first outing, but, once he is married, the tension in later films arises from the attractions of other women. Either Hercules is unfaithful unintentionally or, as family man, he becomes a reluctant hero, while an associate assumes the romantic lead. The loss of dramatic interest in Iole (or Deianeira) after marriage reflects the mores of the time: the female is now restricted to the domestic sphere, while her husband must attempt to balance duty to family and country.Less
Le fatiche di Ercole (1958) initiated a line of Italian adventure films set in the ancient world and turned their body-builder protagonists into stars. Their female love interests also reflect the fantasies of contemporary Italian audiences. Sylva Koscina as Iole appears as both the ‘modern’ female and fairy-tale princess. Hercules is immune to the charms of the more typical Mediterranean seductress in his first outing, but, once he is married, the tension in later films arises from the attractions of other women. Either Hercules is unfaithful unintentionally or, as family man, he becomes a reluctant hero, while an associate assumes the romantic lead. The loss of dramatic interest in Iole (or Deianeira) after marriage reflects the mores of the time: the female is now restricted to the domestic sphere, while her husband must attempt to balance duty to family and country.
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804758024
- eISBN:
- 9780804786775
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804758024.003.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics
This introductory chapter discusses the theme of this volume which is about crime in Italian films in the early 1960s and late 1970s. It explores the phenomenology and provides a psychoanalysis of ...
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This introductory chapter discusses the theme of this volume which is about crime in Italian films in the early 1960s and late 1970s. It explores the phenomenology and provides a psychoanalysis of the films Blow-Up and The Passenger directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, The Night Porter directed by Liliana Cavani, Oedipus Rex directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini and The Spider's Stratagem directed by Bernardo Bertolucci. These films revolve around the image of the crime scene and present a crime to be “seen” in the folds of the landscape as well as on the faces of people and things. This volume discusses the vicissitudes of cinematic vision through an intermingling of media and proposes a writing of spectatorship that attempts to retrace the patterns and rhythms through which each film says or shows that something “will have been.”Less
This introductory chapter discusses the theme of this volume which is about crime in Italian films in the early 1960s and late 1970s. It explores the phenomenology and provides a psychoanalysis of the films Blow-Up and The Passenger directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, The Night Porter directed by Liliana Cavani, Oedipus Rex directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini and The Spider's Stratagem directed by Bernardo Bertolucci. These films revolve around the image of the crime scene and present a crime to be “seen” in the folds of the landscape as well as on the faces of people and things. This volume discusses the vicissitudes of cinematic vision through an intermingling of media and proposes a writing of spectatorship that attempts to retrace the patterns and rhythms through which each film says or shows that something “will have been.”