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Introduction
reviews
'A long-overdue, illuminating introduction to Italy’s most
innovative contemporary film director. The book offers an excellent
discussion of recurrent features in Moretti's films and helps us
fully understand the depth and breadth of his cinematic achievements.'
Guido Bonsaver, Royal Holloway, University
of London
'It places the work of Italy's master satirist within the larger
canvas of Italian (and European) popular culture ... with learned
sophistication the authors interrogate and enlighten Moretti's tragicomic
"autobiographical cinema" through an impressive tapestry
of sociological, psychological and cinematic insights.'
Giorgio Bertellini, University of Michigan
'Identifying Moretti as "the most important Italian filmmaker
of the past thirty years", Mazierska and Rascaroli approach
his work with practical expertise, based partly on his full cooperation
with their enterprise and partly on theoretical circumspection.
All Moretti's distinctive characteristics as an auteur – his
continual self-portraiture; his Italianate attitudes toward individuals,
families, and masculinity; his devotion to tragicomedy and existential
irony; and his postmodern political views – are fully described
and analyzed. In fact, the authors insist on analysis … For
example, even though Moretti's movies are overtly autobiographical
and intensely personal (he uses the diary form and stars in his
own films, frequently playing himself), Mazierska and Rascaroli
refuse to accept those qualities at face value; instead they question
the concept of autobiography, even the very notion of the personal.
Much of this book is a postmodern interrogation of Moretti's life,
work, and culture; thus he emerges from this study/tribute as the
paradigm of a postmodern filmmaker, creating works without "authority" but
certainly with an author, contradicting himself, effacing himself,
thrusting himself into the center of every film. Recommended.'
Choice
‘Mazierska and Rascaroli’s book is about the situation
of a thinking man who is not in accordance with the world …
The authors have constructed the book around four themes found in
Morreti’s films. These are autobiographical traits, the crises
of manhood and family in the West, laughter through tears and relations
between the citizen and the state. Each theme has a dedicated chapter,
however due to the erudition and the variety of issues discussed
… we have four independent essays that would be equally effective,
complete and logical if published separately. Put together they
complement each other and make it possible to look at Moretti’s
work from different viewpoints … The value of the book comes
from the excellent use of proportion, from skilful balancing between
the distancing look of an observer and the authors' true fascination
with the director's films, between unveiling the personal experience
of the text and placing Morreti’s work within the large social
context.’
Katarzyna Taras, Kino
‘This, the first book to be written in English on Nanni Moretti,
is an excellent, thought-provoking introduction to the director,
and finally presents one of Italy’s most important contemporary
filmmakers to the English-speaking world. Unlike the monographs
in Italian that preceded it … this is not a film-by-film
account, but a thematic one, an approach that enables the authors
to make new links and draw conclusions across a substantial body
of Moretti’s cinema in a way that has not been attempted
before.
The book, part of the Directors’ Cuts series, is
envisaged as a comprehensive introduction, aimed primarily at undergraduates
and the general audience, and providing the reader with an introduction
to Moretti’s career, reception, and the key issues emerging
from his work. It is also complemented by an appendix, which sketches
Moretti’s filmography and includes credits for, and a brief
synopsis of, Moretti’s films (including some less widely-known
ones, such as the political documentary La cosa). In addition,
it provides a detailed and up-to-date bibliography, which presents
extensive material on Moretti.
Rascaroli and Mazierska go beyond providing a general summarizing
introduction to the director: instead, the book overturns some
of the commonplaces of Italian criticism on Moretti, and situates
the director firmly both within postmodernity and within a broader
European context. It is divided into four chapters (briefly: autobiography;
crisis of the family and masculinity; humour; politics) … Each
chapter begins with an outline of the main theoretical or socio-political
issues at stake and a statement of approach, and is followed by
an analysis of the relevant films within these theoretical and
thematic frameworks. The analysis broadly reflects a cultural studies
approach, drawing on prominent cultural theorists such as Stuart
Hall.
In the first chapter, contrasting theoretical approaches to autobiography
are introduced and summarized, and the authors conclude that pure
autobiography does not exist; instead one can talk only about ‘autobiographical
effect’ (the viewer’s impression of watching the life
of the film’s author). The chapter then situates Moretti’s
autobiographical cinema in the context of Western portrayals of
filmmakers on screen, and goes on to discuss the diary form in
some depth, aligning it with postmodernism both in its ability
to ‘affirm the multitude and equality of discourses in private
lives and in culture’ and in its openendedness.
The second chapter draws on Paul Ginsborg’s assessments of
contemporary Italian culture, on Robert Bly, and on psychoanalysis
in order to sketch a profile of the family and masculinity in Italy
that is then used as a paradigm for assessing the extent to which
Moretti’s cinema reflects the norms. The authors trace how
changing attitudes to family structures as Moretti’s films
progress correspond to this character’s gradual maturation
from adolescent to father, and from ambivalence about family structures
to a celebration of the family.
In the third chapter, the authors explore Moretti’s humour,
broadly defining it as tragicomedy, and distinguishing it from
the commedia all’italiana with which it shares an
interest in social reality, but from which it differs, the authors
suggest,
in having as its target the director’s own milieu rather
than the shortcomings of a class beneath his. The chapter also
discusses, and attempts to disentangle, instances of existential
irony, parody, and satire in the films, a rather difficult task,
and one which brings mixed results, but which certainly highlights
the wide-ranging nature of Moretti’s humour. They also link
Moretti’s irony in particular to the postmodern condition
of being ‘convinced of the contingency of everything’,
a position that prevents the director from taking himself too seriously.
The final chapter presents a clear portrait of politics in post-68
Italy and a brief history of Marxist views on cinema. The chapter’s
central thesis that Moretti – who has often been painted
as dogmatic and intolerant by critics – is instead a moderate,
postmodern, and post-dogmatic left-winger, is convincingly argued.
The authors conclude by describing Moretti as a liberal ironist
(using Richard Rorty’s terminology), pointing both to his
liberal views and to his acknowledgment that although commitment
is important, in contemporary Italy it appears increasingly contingent …
It is an invaluable book not only for undergraduates, but also
for researchers looking for a new and stimulating approach to Moretti’s
cinema, and is therefore highly recommendable.’
Italian Studies
books of related interest
The Cinema of Italy
The Cinema of Emir Kusturica:
Notes from the Underground
The Cinema of Ken Loach: Art
in the Service of the People
The Cinema of Wim Wenders: The Celluloid
Highway
The Cinema of Kathryn Bigelow: Hollywood
Transgressor
The Cinema of Robert Lepage: The Poetics
of Memory
The Cinema of George
A. Romero: Knight of the Living Dead
The Cinema of Terrence
Malick: Poetic Visions of America
The Cinema of Andrzej
Wajda: The Art of Irony and Defiance
The Cinema of David Lynch:
American Dreams, Nightmare Visions
The Cinema of Krzysztof
Kieslowski: Variations on Destiny and Chance
The Cinema of Mike Leigh:
A Sense of the Real
The Cinema of John
Carpenter: The Technique of Terror
The Cinema of Roman
Polanski: Dark Spaces of the World
The Cinema of Todd Haynes:
All That Heaven Allows
The Cinema of Steven
Spielberg: Empire of Light
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