The Cinema of Italy examines recurring historical, thematic and stylistic features of 24 of the most important Italian sound films. Viewing Italian cinema at the intersection of history, politics, art and popular culture, the 24 concise essays of this anthology contextualise each film within both Italian and Western film culture. Alongside the crucial lessons of neorealist masterpieces such as Rossellini's Paisan and De Sica's The Bicylce Thieves, this collection looks at how Italian cinema has confronted both the nation's history (1860, Senso, The Conformist, Lamerica), the so-called 'Southern question' (Salvatore Giuliano, Padre Pedrone), as well as modern configurations of labour and gender relationships through the films of Camerini, De Santis, Olmi, Pasolini, Antonioni, Wertmüller and the Taviani Brothers. The Cinema of Italy also considers the very personal works of Fellini, Ferreri and Moretti and gives special attention to those filmmakers (Argento and Leone) whose cinema directly addresses such international film genres as horror and the western.

Giorgio Bertellini teaches in the Film and Video Studies Program and the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Michigan, and is the author of Emir Kusturica (1996).

2004
288 pages
978-1–903364–98–7    £18.99 (pbk)
978-1–903364–99–4    £50.00 (hbk)


view contents


chapter samples
List of contributors
Preface by Gian Piero Brunetta
Introduction by Giorgio Bertellini


reviews
'This attractively produced volume, part of the new ’24 Frames’ series which focuses on national and regional cinemas across the world, is aimed principally at anglophile undergraduate and general audiences, and brings together twenty-four new essays on key Italian films. The focus of the volume is on these films as exempla, as ‘significant’ “apertures” to some of the most important traits of Italian film culture’. The articles therefore go beyond analysis of the individual films to contextualize these films both within Italian and international film history, and in relation to the politics and society of twentieth-century Italy.
A volume of this kind runs the risk of perpetuating the narrow canon of Italian films welcomed internationally, so it is good to see that although the focus is certainly on a long-established canon, a couple of less anthologized directors are represented (Ferreri and Argento), as are a few films of less international renown (Olmi, for example, is represented by Il Posto, not L’albero degli zoccoli).
The essays in this volume provide readers with clear introductions to the films and to the political and cinematic culture which those films reflect. The essays that explore the period from 1946-77 are probably as comprehensive as any introductory anthology could hope to be. After three essays on Neorealism, including an interesting one by Carlo Celli, which discusses Ladri di bicilette in relation to Italian communism, interpreting the bicycle as a ‘class-identifying object’, the 1960s get deserved attention. Here clear and lively essays draw attention to links between film and society (predictably, Rocco e i suoi fratelli deals with the leftwing ideology and the North–South divide, and the well-argued essay by Patrick Rumble situates Accattone in terms of Italy’s economic modernization and consumption, placing Pasolini’s ideology outside the ‘institutionalized discourses of faith and revolution’). The economic miracle and its effects is well represented with further articles on Divorzio all’italiana, Il posto, and the industrialization of Il deserto rosso. The mafia is discussed in Salvatore Giuliano, and three films re-value Fascism (Amore e anarchia, Il portiere di notte, and an interesting article by T. Jefferson Kline on Il conformista). But not all is history and politics. Brunette’s article on Il deserto rosso reads the film in terms of subjectivity and identity, focusing on gender issues, especially the female protagonist’s ‘reluctance to accept a pre-determined female subjectivity’. The issue of gender and female subject positions in fact comes up in a number of article, including Divorzio all’italiana and Il portiere di notte, and the volume draws attention to female directors in its inclusion of key films by Liliana Cavani and Lina Wertmüller. Popular international genres are also treated in Christopher Frayling’s essay on the spaghetti western and Giorgio Bertelinni’s on the horror genre (Dario Argento’s Profondo rosso).
Clodagh Brook, Italian Studies

'Zooms in on 24 shrewdly-chosen films to offer an innovative and highly accessible introduction to the richness of Italian film culture. Matching each film with a top scholar, this volume opens our eyes to cinema's relation to the political and cultural transformations of modern Italy, and provides fresh and informative readings of films you'll want to see, whether for the first time of the fiftieth.'
Prof. Barbara Spackman, University of California, Berkeley

‘The wide-ranging anthology will encourage those interested in Italian film to explore further.’
Mary Wood, Birkbeck College, University of London

‘For a book aimed mainly at film students it is highly readable, and most importantly conjures an enthusiasm for the films that will encourage readers to track down and view any that are unfamiliar … the introduction is excellent giving an overview of the history of Italian cinema and setting the context and breadth of the writing.’
www.close-upfilm.com

‘Wallflower Press’s eclectic 24 Frames series de-emphasizes the linear coherence of national film histories and instead advances epistemic affinities as its organizational principle. Each volume in the series analyzes 24 films, which serve as invitations into the cultural, historical, thematic, and stylistic features that characterize specific geo-political traditions. In opting for the necessarily subjective and limiting selection of 24 films, the series eschews the risks of constructing a comprehensive, nation-based, cinematic narrative. Although retaining a textual coherence that is rare in edited volumes, the individual essays do not feign inclusiveness, but instead promote a discontinuous representation that emphasizes the instability of “national cinema” as a critical construct. … These concise essays from leading Anglo-American and Italian academic specialists fill a void in English language criticism and constitute a welcome contribution to the rapidly expanding literature on the film industry in Italy … Giorgio Bertellini masterfully succeeds in designing a volume that will be of use and interest to students, cinéphiles, and scholars. Although the films discussed are all from the sound period, one of this anthology’s strengths is its implicit attention to the historical context and the cinematic traditions that inform each of these visual texts. For the most part, the essays avoid self-congratulatory erudition in favor of clarity and readability. More significantly, they also betray a refreshing enthusiasm for the material, which makes for infectious reading/viewing. While their methodological approaches are by no means uniform, the contributors share a tendency to address the cinematic texts, either explicitly or implicitly, in terms of authorial poetics. Although these analyses were composed for a general audience, the initiated will find much to savor in this collection. Each chapter summarizes the film’s plot, the director’s career, and the pertinent critical debates before going on to provide a sensitive reading that is frequently quite innovative. To minimize pedantry, the chapters are devoid of reference notes (opting instead for a brief “works cited” bibliography) and are also uniformly held to a ten-page limit. For classroom use this synthetic exposition is ideal … Rather than linking the films thematically, the chapters are prudently arranged in chronological order, which facilitates the adoption of this text for classroom use. If the organization of materials is traditional, the selections are moderately more eclectic … Bertellini reconstructs a cinematic history that includes the usual as well as a few unusual suspects.
The Cinema of Italy is remarkable for the clarity, conciseness and quality of the contributions as well as for the caliber of its contributors. Bertellini has succeeded in melding the case studies of renowned specialists into a coherent and stimulating text … each essay is impressive in its ability to provide readers with comprehensive and vivid portraits of the films under consideration … The Cinema of Italy’s user-friendly format makes it ideal for classroom use … its up to date bibliography should prove a fruitful point of departure for student research projects or for further reading. Facilitating this application is the availability of these films … Although not intended for a specialist audience, these essays merit space on the shelves of aficionados and academics alike.’
Piero Garofalo, Quarterly Review of Film and Video

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