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.
Luca Caminati
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617031229
- eISBN:
- 9781617031236
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617031229.003.0004
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter examines the historical connections between the rise of the documentary in the 1920s–30s; its reception in Italy, and its effects on both critical discourse and filmmaking practices; and ...
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This chapter examines the historical connections between the rise of the documentary in the 1920s–30s; its reception in Italy, and its effects on both critical discourse and filmmaking practices; and the formation of neorealism. It first looks at the ideological and political implications of the post-facto narrative of the genesis of neorealism as a way of re-creating a nationalist historiography of cinema. The chapter then determines the alternative genealogies of neorealism by reconstructing the historical connections between fiction and nonfiction filmmaking in Italy in the 1930s; the emergence of Italian documentary filmmaking and the Istituto LUCE; and the larger international history of prewar documentary cinema and its impact on the stylistic changes in fiction films of that period.Less
This chapter examines the historical connections between the rise of the documentary in the 1920s–30s; its reception in Italy, and its effects on both critical discourse and filmmaking practices; and the formation of neorealism. It first looks at the ideological and political implications of the post-facto narrative of the genesis of neorealism as a way of re-creating a nationalist historiography of cinema. The chapter then determines the alternative genealogies of neorealism by reconstructing the historical connections between fiction and nonfiction filmmaking in Italy in the 1930s; the emergence of Italian documentary filmmaking and the Istituto LUCE; and the larger international history of prewar documentary cinema and its impact on the stylistic changes in fiction films of that period.
Nathaniel Brennan
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617031229
- eISBN:
- 9781617031236
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617031229.003.0006
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter examines the ways in which Italian cinema was promoted to American audiences. The advertising rhetoric of postwar Italian cinema was anchored by two seemingly contradictory poles: One ...
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This chapter examines the ways in which Italian cinema was promoted to American audiences. The advertising rhetoric of postwar Italian cinema was anchored by two seemingly contradictory poles: One emphasized critical merit and aesthetic qualities, the other relied on verbal suggestions and visual intimations of more sordid cinematic content. Each ad depended on the newspaper or magazine in which it was published as much as on the specific character of the theater at which the films were screened.Less
This chapter examines the ways in which Italian cinema was promoted to American audiences. The advertising rhetoric of postwar Italian cinema was anchored by two seemingly contradictory poles: One emphasized critical merit and aesthetic qualities, the other relied on verbal suggestions and visual intimations of more sordid cinematic content. Each ad depended on the newspaper or magazine in which it was published as much as on the specific character of the theater at which the films were screened.
Saverio Giovacchini
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617031229
- eISBN:
- 9781617031236
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617031229.003.0009
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter explores how neorealism viewed race in Italy’s past and present. The rise of Italian neorealism is linked to the self-serving mythology of the Italian as victim rather than perpetrator ...
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This chapter explores how neorealism viewed race in Italy’s past and present. The rise of Italian neorealism is linked to the self-serving mythology of the Italian as victim rather than perpetrator of World War II. Italian neorealism mostly forgot more than just Italian anti-Semitism: the neorealist mythopoesis also erases the Italian colonialist past, which a new generation of historians are currently unearthing in all its bloody details.Less
This chapter explores how neorealism viewed race in Italy’s past and present. The rise of Italian neorealism is linked to the self-serving mythology of the Italian as victim rather than perpetrator of World War II. Italian neorealism mostly forgot more than just Italian anti-Semitism: the neorealist mythopoesis also erases the Italian colonialist past, which a new generation of historians are currently unearthing in all its bloody details.
Saverio Giovacchini and Robert Sklar (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617031229
- eISBN:
- 9781617031236
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617031229.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Intellectual, cultural, and film historians have long considered neorealism the founding block of post-World War II Italian cinema. Neorealism, the traditional story goes, was an Italian film style ...
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Intellectual, cultural, and film historians have long considered neorealism the founding block of post-World War II Italian cinema. Neorealism, the traditional story goes, was an Italian film style born in the second postwar period and aimed at recovering the reality of Italy after the sugarcoated moving images of Fascism. Lasting from 1945 to the early 1950s, it produced world-renowned masterpieces such as Roberto Rossellini’s Roma, città aperta (Rome, Open City, 1945) and Vittorio De Sica’s Ladri di biciclette (Bicycle Thieves, 1947). These films won some of the most prestigious film awards of the immediate postwar period. This collection brings together film scholars and cultural historians to complicate this nation-based approach to the history of neorealism. The traditional story notwithstanding, the meaning and the origins of the term are problematic. What does neorealism really mean, and how Italian is it? Italian filmmakers were wary of using the term and Rossellini preferred “realism.” Many filmmakers confessed to having greatly borrowed from other cinemas, including French, Soviet, and American. Divided into three sections, this book examines the history of this film style from the 1930s to the 1970s using a global and international perspective. The first section examines the origins of neorealism in the international debate about realist esthetics in the 1930s. The second section discusses how this debate about realism was “Italianized” and coalesced into Italian “neorealism,” and explores how critics and film distributors participated in coining the term. Finally, the third section looks at neorealism’s success outside of Italy.Less
Intellectual, cultural, and film historians have long considered neorealism the founding block of post-World War II Italian cinema. Neorealism, the traditional story goes, was an Italian film style born in the second postwar period and aimed at recovering the reality of Italy after the sugarcoated moving images of Fascism. Lasting from 1945 to the early 1950s, it produced world-renowned masterpieces such as Roberto Rossellini’s Roma, città aperta (Rome, Open City, 1945) and Vittorio De Sica’s Ladri di biciclette (Bicycle Thieves, 1947). These films won some of the most prestigious film awards of the immediate postwar period. This collection brings together film scholars and cultural historians to complicate this nation-based approach to the history of neorealism. The traditional story notwithstanding, the meaning and the origins of the term are problematic. What does neorealism really mean, and how Italian is it? Italian filmmakers were wary of using the term and Rossellini preferred “realism.” Many filmmakers confessed to having greatly borrowed from other cinemas, including French, Soviet, and American. Divided into three sections, this book examines the history of this film style from the 1930s to the 1970s using a global and international perspective. The first section examines the origins of neorealism in the international debate about realist esthetics in the 1930s. The second section discusses how this debate about realism was “Italianized” and coalesced into Italian “neorealism,” and explores how critics and film distributors participated in coining the term. Finally, the third section looks at neorealism’s success outside of Italy.
Masha Salazkina
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617031229
- eISBN:
- 9781617031236
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617031229.003.0003
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter explores the relationship between the conceptual framework of the early Soviet avant-garde (of which cinema formed a vital part) and that of neorealism, bringing out the moments of ...
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This chapter explores the relationship between the conceptual framework of the early Soviet avant-garde (of which cinema formed a vital part) and that of neorealism, bringing out the moments of concrete mediation in the dialectical relationship between avant-garde and realism in cinematic history. It presents a broad outline of the dissemination of early Soviet film theory in 1930s–40s Italy (a period encompassing the rise and fall of fascism) and shows how this dissemination helped initiate the formulation of the neorealist discourse. The chapter points to the presence of Italian neorealism in the Soviet cinema of the postwar and post-Stalin period, suggesting aesthetic interdependence between the Cinema of the Thaw in the Soviet Union and Italian neorealism.Less
This chapter explores the relationship between the conceptual framework of the early Soviet avant-garde (of which cinema formed a vital part) and that of neorealism, bringing out the moments of concrete mediation in the dialectical relationship between avant-garde and realism in cinematic history. It presents a broad outline of the dissemination of early Soviet film theory in 1930s–40s Italy (a period encompassing the rise and fall of fascism) and shows how this dissemination helped initiate the formulation of the neorealist discourse. The chapter points to the presence of Italian neorealism in the Soviet cinema of the postwar and post-Stalin period, suggesting aesthetic interdependence between the Cinema of the Thaw in the Soviet Union and Italian neorealism.
Luisa Cigognetti and Pierre Sorlin
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748623082
- eISBN:
- 9780748651122
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748623082.003.0004
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
For a long time, television was blamed for weakening the Italian cinema and reducing it to a very limited part in public entertainment. According to an Order in Council of 1947, radio, and later ...
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For a long time, television was blamed for weakening the Italian cinema and reducing it to a very limited part in public entertainment. According to an Order in Council of 1947, radio, and later television, broadcasting was a State service entrusted to a public company submitted to parliamentary control. When Radiotelevisione Italiana began its television broadcasting, on 3 January 1954, Italian cinema was in its heyday. Many assumed, at the time, that once they would be offered pictures at home, people would have no reason to go out, so that cinema attendance would soon decline. However, with the passing of time, the evolution of both media was not so straightforward; they were in competition but, at the same time, complemented and influenced each other. Opinions about the impact of television on cinema changed during the second half of the twentieth century. Today, when new means of communication, more flexible and interactive, are appealing to a wide public, they can and must be defended from the point of view that a close collaboration is their only chance to survive.Less
For a long time, television was blamed for weakening the Italian cinema and reducing it to a very limited part in public entertainment. According to an Order in Council of 1947, radio, and later television, broadcasting was a State service entrusted to a public company submitted to parliamentary control. When Radiotelevisione Italiana began its television broadcasting, on 3 January 1954, Italian cinema was in its heyday. Many assumed, at the time, that once they would be offered pictures at home, people would have no reason to go out, so that cinema attendance would soon decline. However, with the passing of time, the evolution of both media was not so straightforward; they were in competition but, at the same time, complemented and influenced each other. Opinions about the impact of television on cinema changed during the second half of the twentieth century. Today, when new means of communication, more flexible and interactive, are appealing to a wide public, they can and must be defended from the point of view that a close collaboration is their only chance to survive.
Vito Zagarrio
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617031229
- eISBN:
- 9781617031236
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617031229.003.0002
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter identifies the elements of formal, filmic, representational, or linguistic continuity between fascism and the post-World War II period in Italy. It discusses the new interpretation of ...
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This chapter identifies the elements of formal, filmic, representational, or linguistic continuity between fascism and the post-World War II period in Italy. It discusses the new interpretation of fascist cinema that began in the middle of the 1970s; the beginnings of De Sica’s neorealism; and the broader cultural climate of the 1930s that reflected the poetics of neorealism.Less
This chapter identifies the elements of formal, filmic, representational, or linguistic continuity between fascism and the post-World War II period in Italy. It discusses the new interpretation of fascist cinema that began in the middle of the 1970s; the beginnings of De Sica’s neorealism; and the broader cultural climate of the 1930s that reflected the poetics of neorealism.
Alex Marlow-Mann
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748640669
- eISBN:
- 9780748651214
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748640669.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Vito and the Others (1991), Death of a Neapolitan Mathematician (1992) and Libera (1993), the debuts of three young Neapolitan filmmakers, stood out dramatically from the landscape of Italian cinema ...
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Vito and the Others (1991), Death of a Neapolitan Mathematician (1992) and Libera (1993), the debuts of three young Neapolitan filmmakers, stood out dramatically from the landscape of Italian cinema in the early 1990s. On the back of their critical success, over the next decade and a half, Naples became a thriving centre for film production. This study of one of the most vital and stimulating currents in contemporary European cinema provides a detailed study of this distinct regional tradition. In tracing the movement's relationship with the popular musical melodramas previously produced in Naples, the book reveals how contemporary Neapolitan filmmakers have interrogated, subverted and reconfigured cinematic convention as part of a through-going re-examination of Neapolitan identity. The book analyses more than 45 contemporary Italian films, including Paolo Sorrentino's The Consequences of Love, Mario Martone's L'amore molesto, Antonio Capuano's Pianese Nunzio: 14 in May, and Vincenzo Marra's Sailing Home.Less
Vito and the Others (1991), Death of a Neapolitan Mathematician (1992) and Libera (1993), the debuts of three young Neapolitan filmmakers, stood out dramatically from the landscape of Italian cinema in the early 1990s. On the back of their critical success, over the next decade and a half, Naples became a thriving centre for film production. This study of one of the most vital and stimulating currents in contemporary European cinema provides a detailed study of this distinct regional tradition. In tracing the movement's relationship with the popular musical melodramas previously produced in Naples, the book reveals how contemporary Neapolitan filmmakers have interrogated, subverted and reconfigured cinematic convention as part of a through-going re-examination of Neapolitan identity. The book analyses more than 45 contemporary Italian films, including Paolo Sorrentino's The Consequences of Love, Mario Martone's L'amore molesto, Antonio Capuano's Pianese Nunzio: 14 in May, and Vincenzo Marra's Sailing Home.
Valentina Vitali
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780719099656
- eISBN:
- 9781526109774
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719099656.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
While post-war popular cinema has traditionally been excluded from accounts of national cinemas, the last fifteen years have seen the academy’s gradual rediscovery of cult and, more, generally, ...
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While post-war popular cinema has traditionally been excluded from accounts of national cinemas, the last fifteen years have seen the academy’s gradual rediscovery of cult and, more, generally, popular films. Why, many years after their release, do we now deem these films worthy of study? The book situates ‘low’ film genres in their economic and culturally specific contexts (a period of unstable ‘economic miracles’ in different countries and regions) and explores the interconnections between those contexts, the immediate industrial-financial interests sustaining the films, and the films’ aesthetics. It argues that the visibility (or not) of popular genres in a nation’s account of its cinema is an indirect but demonstrable effect of the centrality (or not) of a particular kind of capital in that country’s economy. Through in-depth examination of what may at first appear as different cycles in film production and history – the Italian giallo, the Mexican horror film and Hindi horror cinema – Capital and popular cinema lays the foundations of a comparative approach to film; one capable of accounting for the whole of a national film industry’s production (‘popular’ and ‘canonic’) and applicable to the study of film genres globally.Less
While post-war popular cinema has traditionally been excluded from accounts of national cinemas, the last fifteen years have seen the academy’s gradual rediscovery of cult and, more, generally, popular films. Why, many years after their release, do we now deem these films worthy of study? The book situates ‘low’ film genres in their economic and culturally specific contexts (a period of unstable ‘economic miracles’ in different countries and regions) and explores the interconnections between those contexts, the immediate industrial-financial interests sustaining the films, and the films’ aesthetics. It argues that the visibility (or not) of popular genres in a nation’s account of its cinema is an indirect but demonstrable effect of the centrality (or not) of a particular kind of capital in that country’s economy. Through in-depth examination of what may at first appear as different cycles in film production and history – the Italian giallo, the Mexican horror film and Hindi horror cinema – Capital and popular cinema lays the foundations of a comparative approach to film; one capable of accounting for the whole of a national film industry’s production (‘popular’ and ‘canonic’) and applicable to the study of film genres globally.
Michael Gott
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780748698677
- eISBN:
- 9781474421966
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748698677.003.0002
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter set the stage for an exploration of contemporary French-language European road movies by tracing the interwoven lines of the tradition in its American and European iterations back to the ...
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This chapter set the stage for an exploration of contemporary French-language European road movies by tracing the interwoven lines of the tradition in its American and European iterations back to the 1960s, the period during which the template for contemporary road cinema crystalized. It argues that the contours of the road movie tradition are not strictly the product of a direct lineage from seminal American films from the late 1960s, such as Easy Rider (Dennis Hopper, 1969, USA), but the result of complex transnational interactions within European cinemas and between European and American cultures. The films covered are Il Sorpasso (Dino Risi, 1962, Italy), Le corniaud/The Sucker (Gérard Oury, 1965, France/Italy) Les petits matins/Hitch-Hike (Jacqueline Audry, 1962, France), Im Lauf der Zeit/Kings of the Road (Wim Wenders, 1977, West Germany), Leningrad Cowboys Go America (Aki Kaurismäki,1989, Finland/Sweden) and Lisbon Story (Wim Wenders, 1994, Germany/Portugal).Less
This chapter set the stage for an exploration of contemporary French-language European road movies by tracing the interwoven lines of the tradition in its American and European iterations back to the 1960s, the period during which the template for contemporary road cinema crystalized. It argues that the contours of the road movie tradition are not strictly the product of a direct lineage from seminal American films from the late 1960s, such as Easy Rider (Dennis Hopper, 1969, USA), but the result of complex transnational interactions within European cinemas and between European and American cultures. The films covered are Il Sorpasso (Dino Risi, 1962, Italy), Le corniaud/The Sucker (Gérard Oury, 1965, France/Italy) Les petits matins/Hitch-Hike (Jacqueline Audry, 1962, France), Im Lauf der Zeit/Kings of the Road (Wim Wenders, 1977, West Germany), Leningrad Cowboys Go America (Aki Kaurismäki,1989, Finland/Sweden) and Lisbon Story (Wim Wenders, 1994, Germany/Portugal).
Pasquale Iannone
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780748695454
- eISBN:
- 9781474421942
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748695454.003.0003
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter examines Western tropes in Italian cinema's ‘neorealist’ phase. Taking as key case studies In the Name of the Law (In nome della legge, Pietro Germi, 1949) and The Bandit of Tacca del ...
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This chapter examines Western tropes in Italian cinema's ‘neorealist’ phase. Taking as key case studies In the Name of the Law (In nome della legge, Pietro Germi, 1949) and The Bandit of Tacca del Lupo (Il brigante di Tacca del Lupo, Pietro Germi, 1952), it explores the complex ways in which Germi worked references to American genres into his work, thereby debunking approaches presupposing an Italian neorealism separated from ‘popular’ cinema, and demonstrating an oft-overlooked precursor to the Spaghetti Westerns of the 1960s and 1970s. Identifying in Germi's two films a representational equivalence between the Italian South and the American West, the chapter charts a lineage of tales of banditry that blended the international and the local.Less
This chapter examines Western tropes in Italian cinema's ‘neorealist’ phase. Taking as key case studies In the Name of the Law (In nome della legge, Pietro Germi, 1949) and The Bandit of Tacca del Lupo (Il brigante di Tacca del Lupo, Pietro Germi, 1952), it explores the complex ways in which Germi worked references to American genres into his work, thereby debunking approaches presupposing an Italian neorealism separated from ‘popular’ cinema, and demonstrating an oft-overlooked precursor to the Spaghetti Westerns of the 1960s and 1970s. Identifying in Germi's two films a representational equivalence between the Italian South and the American West, the chapter charts a lineage of tales of banditry that blended the international and the local.
Hamid Naficy
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617031229
- eISBN:
- 9781617031236
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617031229.003.0014
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter explores the similarities and differences between Iranian neorealism and its Italian progenitor. It shows that Iranian-style neorealism has not been homogenous, exhibiting itself in two ...
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This chapter explores the similarities and differences between Iranian neorealism and its Italian progenitor. It shows that Iranian-style neorealism has not been homogenous, exhibiting itself in two different styles under two different political systems, and that it has been neither a fully formed film school nor a movement, but a moment of convergence in the social history of cinema.Less
This chapter explores the similarities and differences between Iranian neorealism and its Italian progenitor. It shows that Iranian-style neorealism has not been homogenous, exhibiting itself in two different styles under two different political systems, and that it has been neither a fully formed film school nor a movement, but a moment of convergence in the social history of cinema.
Noa Steimatsky
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816665167
- eISBN:
- 9781452946207
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816665167.003.0005
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter explores the conversion of Rome’s Cinecittà film studios into a refugee camp in the immediate aftermath of World War II. It argues that as one recognizes its material and historical ...
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This chapter explores the conversion of Rome’s Cinecittà film studios into a refugee camp in the immediate aftermath of World War II. It argues that as one recognizes its material and historical vicissitudes, its true magnitude, the duration of its existence, and the broader social and political forces that governed its development, the camp emerges as a hidden, obverse figure of neorealism. Archival documents and images, and the gaps that still plague the history of the camp, join in a description of the overlapping uses and meanings, the physical and figurative implications, of a uniquely warped space, at once actual and phantasmatic, allegorical and cinematic.Less
This chapter explores the conversion of Rome’s Cinecittà film studios into a refugee camp in the immediate aftermath of World War II. It argues that as one recognizes its material and historical vicissitudes, its true magnitude, the duration of its existence, and the broader social and political forces that governed its development, the camp emerges as a hidden, obverse figure of neorealism. Archival documents and images, and the gaps that still plague the history of the camp, join in a description of the overlapping uses and meanings, the physical and figurative implications, of a uniquely warped space, at once actual and phantasmatic, allegorical and cinematic.
Louis Bayman
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780748656424
- eISBN:
- 9781474400947
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748656424.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
After the war audiences filled Italian cinemas to watch films of passion and pathos. Highly emotional and consciously theatrical, these melodramas posed moral questions with stylish flair, and ...
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After the war audiences filled Italian cinemas to watch films of passion and pathos. Highly emotional and consciously theatrical, these melodramas posed moral questions with stylish flair, and redefined popular ways of feeling about romance, family, gender, class, Catholicism, Italy, and feeling itself. This book elucidates the insight they give into a post-war society between war and economic miracle, and examines their status as mass products for a still largely peasant culture in which the ephemera of popular enjoyment maintained aspects of ritual devotion. The Operatic and the Everyday argues for the centrality of melodrama to Italian culture. It re-thinks film history in relation to family melodramas, the crime stories of neorealismo popolare, and opera films, considering the popular worldview they construct alongside questions of gender, class and national culture. It provides interpretive frameworks for aesthetics, emotions, ideas and the function of culture within society in light of the combination of generic entertainment and political and artistic radicalism that melodrama enables. As such it sheds new light on established topics in Italian cinema including realism, arthouse auteurism and postwar modernism, considering the revolutionary artistic developments of Rossellini, De Sica and Antonioni in relation to their broader contexts. The book places film melodrama at the intersection of mass cultural forms, connecting Italy’s operatic traditions, the musical theatre of the sceneggiata, iconography, popular literature and magazines, to the canonical melodramatists Visconti and Matarazzo. In so doing it seeks to capture the artistry and emotion of a truly popular form.Less
After the war audiences filled Italian cinemas to watch films of passion and pathos. Highly emotional and consciously theatrical, these melodramas posed moral questions with stylish flair, and redefined popular ways of feeling about romance, family, gender, class, Catholicism, Italy, and feeling itself. This book elucidates the insight they give into a post-war society between war and economic miracle, and examines their status as mass products for a still largely peasant culture in which the ephemera of popular enjoyment maintained aspects of ritual devotion. The Operatic and the Everyday argues for the centrality of melodrama to Italian culture. It re-thinks film history in relation to family melodramas, the crime stories of neorealismo popolare, and opera films, considering the popular worldview they construct alongside questions of gender, class and national culture. It provides interpretive frameworks for aesthetics, emotions, ideas and the function of culture within society in light of the combination of generic entertainment and political and artistic radicalism that melodrama enables. As such it sheds new light on established topics in Italian cinema including realism, arthouse auteurism and postwar modernism, considering the revolutionary artistic developments of Rossellini, De Sica and Antonioni in relation to their broader contexts. The book places film melodrama at the intersection of mass cultural forms, connecting Italy’s operatic traditions, the musical theatre of the sceneggiata, iconography, popular literature and magazines, to the canonical melodramatists Visconti and Matarazzo. In so doing it seeks to capture the artistry and emotion of a truly popular form.
Robert Sklar
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617031229
- eISBN:
- 9781617031236
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617031229.003.0005
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter explores the postwar film work of James Agee, Helen Levitt, and Sidney Meyers, which can be seen as a possible response to Italian neorealism outside of mainstream American cinema. Agee, ...
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This chapter explores the postwar film work of James Agee, Helen Levitt, and Sidney Meyers, which can be seen as a possible response to Italian neorealism outside of mainstream American cinema. Agee, who wrote the first prominent critiques of neorealist films in the United States, was involved in two independent nonfiction film projects, The Quiet One and In the Street, both of which were released in 1948. His participation in these two productions came about through his friendship with the photographer Helen Levitt, and Janice Loeb, a painter of private means who, according to some accounts, financed the making of both works. Loeb produced The Quiet One and brought on Meyers as director.Less
This chapter explores the postwar film work of James Agee, Helen Levitt, and Sidney Meyers, which can be seen as a possible response to Italian neorealism outside of mainstream American cinema. Agee, who wrote the first prominent critiques of neorealist films in the United States, was involved in two independent nonfiction film projects, The Quiet One and In the Street, both of which were released in 1948. His participation in these two productions came about through his friendship with the photographer Helen Levitt, and Janice Loeb, a painter of private means who, according to some accounts, financed the making of both works. Loeb produced The Quiet One and brought on Meyers as director.
John David Rhodes
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816665167
- eISBN:
- 9781452946207
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816665167.003.0002
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter traces the cinematic fortunes of the Esposizione Universale Romana (EUR) suburb of Rome, a neighborhood originally designed by the fascist regime to host the World’s Fair of 1942 that ...
More
This chapter traces the cinematic fortunes of the Esposizione Universale Romana (EUR) suburb of Rome, a neighborhood originally designed by the fascist regime to host the World’s Fair of 1942 that never took place. It examines the responses to EUR registered in the cinematic and architectural cultures of postwar Italy of the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. In a historical era characterized by the pressing concerns of massive migration to cities, debates around urban planning, housing shortages, and the accelerated production of housing, this newly and extravagantly urbanized area of Rome became a visual trope in postwar Italian culture and cinema. Functioning as more than mere location (or setting), EUR served as a historical marker for a shift, or series of shifts, in Italian culture. More precisely, it acted as the medium through which Italian cinema historicized itself in relation to the past. EUR acted as both material embodiment and symbol, something compulsively deployed or assimilated in the variety of responses to the vertiginous acceleration of Italian postwar modernity.Less
This chapter traces the cinematic fortunes of the Esposizione Universale Romana (EUR) suburb of Rome, a neighborhood originally designed by the fascist regime to host the World’s Fair of 1942 that never took place. It examines the responses to EUR registered in the cinematic and architectural cultures of postwar Italy of the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. In a historical era characterized by the pressing concerns of massive migration to cities, debates around urban planning, housing shortages, and the accelerated production of housing, this newly and extravagantly urbanized area of Rome became a visual trope in postwar Italian culture and cinema. Functioning as more than mere location (or setting), EUR served as a historical marker for a shift, or series of shifts, in Italian culture. More precisely, it acted as the medium through which Italian cinema historicized itself in relation to the past. EUR acted as both material embodiment and symbol, something compulsively deployed or assimilated in the variety of responses to the vertiginous acceleration of Italian postwar modernity.
