A Companion to Italian Cinema E-Book
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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Serie: CNCZ - The Wiley-Blackwell Companions to National Cinemas
- Sprache: Englisch
Written by leading figures in the field, A Companion to Italian Cinema re-maps Italian cinema studies, employing new perspectives on traditional issues, and fresh theoretical approaches to the exciting history and field of Italian cinema.
- Offers new approaches to Italian cinema, whose importance in the post-war period was unrivalled
- Presents a theory based approach to historical and archival material
- Includes work by both established and more recent scholars, with new takes on traditional critical issues, and new theoretical approaches to the exciting history and field of Italian cinema
- Covers recent issues such as feminism, stardom, queer cinema, immigration and postcolonialism, self-reflexivity and postmodernism, popular genre cinema, and digitalization
- A comprehensive collection of essays addressing the prominent films, directors and cinematic forms of Italian cinema, which will become a standard resource for academic and non-academic purposes alike
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Acknowledgments
Notes on Contributors
Editor’s Notes
Glossary
Preface and In Memoriam
Part I: First Things
1 Introduction
Italian Cinema and (Very Briefly) Visual Culture
Contributors and Aims of This Volume
The Contents of the
Companion
“Metathemes”
Italian Cinema as Other
References
2 Italian Cinema Studies
References
Part II: Historical/Chronological Perspectives
Silent Cinema
3 Silent Italian Cinema
Before 1905: Films about Italy
Domestic Production
Arte Muta
,
Dive
, and Auteurs
Vernacular Realism
The Great War and Beyond
Film Discourse
References
4 Stardom in Italian Silent Cinema
Introduction
Terminology
The Birth of
Divismo
The
Dive
, and the
Diva
Film
The
Divo
References
Fascism and Italian Cinema
5 Genre, Politics, and the Fascist Subject in the Cinema of Italy (1922–1945)
Industrial and Political Efforts to Create a Popular Film Industry
Refashioning Genres: Directors and the Comedy
Comedy and Stardom
The Forms of Melodrama
History, Politics, and Myth: Luis Trenker and Alessandro Blasetti
Melodrama and Stardom
Calligraphism: Melodrama, Formalism, and War
Afterthoughts
References
The Italian Film Industry
6 Staying Alive
References
Cinema and Religion
7 Italian Cinema and Catholicism: From
Vigilanti cura
to Vatican II and Beyond
Introduction
First Stage: Art or Morality?
Second Stage: Catholic Production
Third Stage: The “Folly” of the “Povericristi”
Fourth Stage: Toward the Second Vatican Council and Beyond
References
Neorealism
8 The Italian Neorealist Experience
Introduction
Rossellini’s (Anti‐)War Trilogy
De Sica’s Subversive Orphan Children
The Italian Neorealist Experience: Beyond Camps
References
9 Italian Neorealism
Introduction
Initial Observations on Neorealism
Italian Neorealism Beyond the First Years
Multiple Directions of Influence
Roma città aperta
and
Ladri di biciclette
: Echoes, Parallels, Influence
The Most Quotidian Story, an Epilogue
References
Stardom and the 1950s
10 Italian Female Stars and Their Fans in the 1950s and 1960s
Introduction
Italian Fan Studies
Methodology
The Peculiarity of Fandom in Italy
The Magazines
The Place of Fan Mail in the Stars’ Relationship with Their Fans
The Fans’ Relationships to the Stars
Conclusion
References
Film Comedy—the 1950s and Beyond
11 The Popularity of Italian Film Comedy
From Early Italian Comedy to the Hunger and Harmony of Pink Neorealism
Toward
commedia all’italiana
: Spectacle, Masks, Totò, and Sordi
The Economic Miracle and
commedia all’italiana
After the “Boom”: The 1970s and Beyond
What’s So Funny?
References
12 The Question of Italian National Character and the Limits of
Commedia all’italiana
Cinema and Social Commentary
The Sordi Persona and Italian Modernity
Fellini and National Vices and Virtues
Carlo Lizzani and the Cinema of History and Actuality
Conclusion
References
French‐Italian Film Collaborations into the 1960s
13 Cross‐Fertilization between France and Italy from Neorealism through the 1960s
Before Neorealism
Neorealism between France and Italy
The Case of Rossellini
De Sica and Zavattini
Coproductions
The 1960s
The
Nouvelle Vague
and New Italian Cinema of the 1960s
New Theoretical Perspectives
References
Auteur Cinema (1960s and 1970s)
14 Italian 1960s Auteur Cinema (and beyond)
Theoretical Introduction
Visconti, Popular Auteur
Antonioni, the Modern Auteur Par Excellence
Fellini, from the “World Text” to the “Self Text”
From Modern to Postmodern Auteur
References
Popular Film Genres (1950s to 1970s)
15 Italian Popular Film Genres
The Peplum
The Spaghetti Western
Italian Horror
The Poliziottesco
Conclusion
References
Politics and/of Terrorism (1960s to the Present)
16 The Representation of Terrorism in Italian Cinema
The Warning Signs
Genre Cinema and the Affairs of State
The Auteurs’ Disorientation
The 1980s: Between the Political and the Individual Spheres
A Rendering of Accounts: The 1990s
The New Millennium: “Vintage” and Revival
References
Italian Cinema from the 1970s to the Present
17 From Cinecittà to the Small Screen
Prologue
Introduction
The End of the “Golden Age”
The April 7 Trial
Politics and Economy of the Intimate Screen
1968: “Like Polaroids”
How to Make a Movie in Time of Crisis
Conclusion
References
18 Contemporary Italian Film in the New Media World
References
Part III: Alternative Film Forms
19 Thinking Cinema
The Origins and Development of the Essay Film
Essayist Nonfiction Today
References
20 Italian Experimental Cinema
Sandra Lischi
Avant‐garde, Independents, Experimentalists: A Premise
The Italian Panorama: From the Futurists Onward
The 1960s and Beyond
Boundary Crossings: Pathways in Artist Cinema
Alchemies, Memory, History
Animations, Research, Theater
The Passage to Video
References
21 Notes on the History of Italian Nonfiction Film
Beginnings
Italian Documentary after World War II
References
Part IV: Critical, Aesthetic, and Theoretical Issues
22 A Century of Music in Italian Cinema
The Sound of Silence (1896–1930)
It’s Time to Sing a Song (1930–1945)
Reconstructing the Country: The “Liberation” of Film Music (1945–1960)
Specialists and Film Genres (1960–1980)
The Auteur Is Dead, Long Live the Auteur (1980–2010)
References
23 The Practice of Dubbing and the Evolution of the Soundtrack in Italian Cinema
Celluloid Hybrids and Greta Garbo
Patrolling the Soundtrack
The Visual Regime of Cinema
Crafting Sound in National Cinema
Antonioni and the New Sound of Cinema
Listening to Make Sense
References
24 Watching Italians Turn Around
Rome’s Awkward Modernity
Looking (for Love) in the Neorealist City
Seeing What Is and Is Not There
Conclusion (Looking and Seeing)
References
25 Women in Italian Cinema
From the Silent Era to Fascism
The Post–World War II Period
From the 1980s to the End of the Twentieth Century
The Third Millennium
Conclusion
References
26 Imagining the
Mezzogiorno
Preface
The Sociohistorical Mezzogiorno: A Theoretical Framework
Filmic Representations of the Mezzogiorno, Part 1: Until 1989
Filmic Representations of the
Mezzogiorno
, Part 2: After 1989
References
27 The Queerness of Italian Cinema
Introduction
Queer Cinemas
Queering Italians
The Queer Signature
The New Queer Cinema
References
28 An Accented Gaze
References
29 How to Tell Time
Crisis in the Action‐Image
The Crystals of Time
Pasolini and Free Indirect Discourse
Time, Thought, and Body
References
30 The Screen in the Mirror
The Concept of Reflexivity
The Postmodern Gaze
A Classic Spectacle of Modernity
Cinema’s Modern Conscience
The Archive of Dreams, Bodies, and Tales
References
31 Deterritorialized Spaces and Queer Clocks
Literary and Visual Contexts
Theory
Practice
A Worldwide Hyperfilm
“Queer Clocks”
References
Part V: Last Things
32 Forum: The Present State and Likely Prospects of Italian Cinema and Cinema Studies
Editor’s Introduction
On (the Notion of) Methodology
Cinema,
Impegno
, and the Local
Globalization, Transnationalism, Translocality, Nationality
Ecocinema
The Current Cinematic and Cultural Scene
The Crisis of Exhibition/Importance of Curatorial Work
(Other) Material and Institutional Conditions and Limitations
Current Areas of Investigation
Pleasure, the Popular (Again), Cultural and Gender Studies
Italian Cinema and Cinema Studies: The Road from Here
References
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Tables
Chapter 06
Table 6.1 Coproductions (Gyory and Glas 1992, 168)
Table 6.2 Italian films distributed abroad (Ruggeri 2001, 61–77)
Table 6.3 Foreign films imported into Italy (Bertozzi and Russo 2000, 476–77)
Chapter 17
Table 17.1 Films produced by production companies, 1980–1985
Table 17.2 Average number of films produced annually, by production company
List of Illustrations
Chapter 03
Figure 3.1
Cabiria
(Giovanni Pastrone, 1914). Author’s personal collection.
Figure 3.2 Lyda Borelli in
Carnevalesca
(Amleto Palermi, 1918). Author’s personal collection.
Chapter 04
Figure 4.1 Pina Menichelli (second from right),
Il romanzo di un giovane povero
(Amleto Palermi, 1920).
Figure 4.2 Bartolomeo Pagano as Maciste.
Chapter 05
Figure 5.1 Assia Noris and Vittorio De Sica in
Darò un milione
(
I’ll Give a Million
, Mario Camerini, 1935).
Figure 5.2 The heroic man on horseback:
Condottieri
(Luis Trenker, 1937).
Figure 5.3 Isa Miranda as a woman of two worlds in
Zazà
(Renato Castellani, 1942).
Chapter 07
Figure 7.1 The faithful in search of a miracle in
La porta del cielo
(
Doorway to Heaven
, Vittorio De Sica, 1945).
Figure 7.2 Nannina (Anna Magnani) reenacts the Passion in Roberto Rossellini’s “Il miracolo” (
Amore
, 1948).
Figure 7.3 Actors reenact the Passion in Pasolini’s “La ricotta” (
Ro.Go.Pa.G.
, Roberto Rossellini, Jean‐Luc Godard, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Ugo Gregoretti, 1963).
Chapter 08
Figure 8.1 The Palazzo della civiltà italiana in the background of the partisan ambush:
Roma città aperta
(
Rome Open City
, Roberto Rossellini, 1945). Screen grab.
Figure 8.2 Pricò willfully turning his back on his mother:
I bambini ci guardano
(
The Children are Watching Us
, Vittorio De Sica, 1942). Screen grab.
Figure 8.3 Irene, as the consummate Other, is isolated and confined to an asylum:
Europa ’51.
(
Europe ’51
, Roberto Rossellini, 1952). Screen grab.
Chapter 09
Figure 9.1
La battaglia di Algeri
(
The Battle of Algiers
, Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966). Screen grab.
Figure 9.2
Ladri di biciclette
(
Bicycle Thieves
, Vittorio De Sica, 1948). Screen grab.
Figure 9.3
El mégano
(
The Charcoal Worker
, Julio García Espinosa and Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, 1955). Screen grab.
Chapter 10
Figure 10.1 Gina Lollobrigida surrounded by her fan mail in
La Settimana Incom Illustrata
(November 17, 1951). Author’s collection.
Figure 10.2 Lollobrigida on the front cover of
La Domenica del Corriere
(August 11, 1957). Author’s collection.
Figure 10.3 The first issue of
Primo amore
(February 14, 1954) features Silvana Pampanini on its front cover with the caption “
Silvana Pampanini: Come ho amato per la prima volta
” (“Silvana Pampanini: How I fell in love for the first time”). Author’s collection.
Figure 10.4 Fan art: A portrait of Gina Lollobrigida, made by a fan and sent to the star.
Oggi
(February 17, 1955). Author’s collection.
Chapter 11
Figure 11.1
Guardie e ladri
(
Cops and Robbers,
Mario Monicelli and Steno, 1951). Screen grab.
Figure 11.2
Ieri, oggi e domani
(
Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow,
Vittorio De Sica, 1963). Screen grab.
Chapter 12
Figure 12.1 Alberto Sordi as cowardly antihero in
La grande guerra
(
The Great War
, Mario Monicelli, 1960). Screen grab.
Figure 12.2 Marcello Mastroianni, whose urban, soft, good looks represent a different version of the “flawed” Italian character (Federico Fellini,
La dolce vita, 1960
). Screen grab.
Chapter 14
Figure 14.1 The prince looks at a painting identified in the novel as
La mort du juste
. In fact, the misidentified painting is Jean‐Baptiste Greuze’s
Le Fils puni
(
The Son Punished
, 1778).
Il Gattopardo
(
The Leopard
, Luchino Visconti, 1963). Screen grab.
Figure 14.2 One of the many instances of Claudia waiting in
L’avventura
. (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1960). Screen grab.
Chapter 15
Figure 15.1 Franco Nero in
Django
(Sergio Corbucci, 1966). Screen grab.
Figure 15.2 Letícia Román in
La ragazza che sapeva troppo
(
The Evil Eye
, Mario Bava, 1963). Screen grab.
Chapter 16
Figure 16.1 The camera as inquisitive device in
Colpire al cuore
(Gianni Amelio, 1983). Screen grab.
Figure 16.2 In Marco Bellocchio’s revision of history, Aldo Moro breathes the fresh air of freedom at the end of
Buongiorno, notte
(
Good Morning, Night
, Marco Bellocchio, 2003). Screen grab.
Chapter 17
Figure 17.1 Aldo Moro’s kidnappers watch the news of the kidnapping on television.
Buongiorno, notte
(
Good Morning, Night,
Marco Bellocchio, 2003). Screen grab.
Figure 17.2 Freccia at the local “refuge‐island” bar in
Radiofreccia
(
Radio Arrow
, Luciano Ligabue, 1998). Famed singer–songwriter Francesco Guccini plays the bartender. Screen grab.
Figure 17.3 Diego Abatantuono escapes to Puerto Escondido.
Puerto Escondido
(Gabriele Salvatores, 1992). Screen grab.
Figure 17.4 The growth in number of production companies.
Chapter 18
Figure 18.1
Cannibal Holocaust
(Ruggero Deodato, 1980). Naked, impaled, young woman filmed within the film. Screen grab.
Figure 18.2
Le conseguenze dell’amore
(
The Consequences of Love,
Paolo Sorrentino, 2004). Titta goes to meet the mafia boss in a hotel conference room, suggesting mafia penetration of the world‐at‐large and, in the context of the film, the link between mafia business practices and those of multinational corporations. Screen grab.
Figure 18.3
Io sono l’amore
(Luca Guadagnino, 2009). Characters dwarfed by elegant, dehumanizing surroundings. Screen grab.
Figure 18.4
Pietro
(Daniele Gaglianone, 2010). Pietro bullied by his drug‐addict brother. Screen grab.
Chapter 19
Figure 19.1 Pier Paolo Pasolini taking notes in his essayistic notebook film,
Sopralluoghi in Palestina per il Vangelo secondo Matteo
(1965). Screen shot.
Figure 19.2 Archival footage of Primo Levi in Davide Ferrario’s
La strada di Levi
(
Primo Levi’s Journey
, 2006). Screen shot.
Figure 19.3 Enzo and the environs of Genoa, which the story of his relationship with Mary serves to explore in Pietro Marcello’s
La bocca del lupo
(
The Mouth of the Wolf
, 2009). Screen shot.
Chapter 20
Figure 20.1
Commutazioni con mutazione
and the importance of the filmstrip. Paolo Gioli, 1969.
Figure 20.2
Filmstenopeico (l’uomo senza machina da presa)
, Paolo Gioli, reninventor of the stenopeico, 1973, 1981, 1989.
Figure 20.3 Tonino de Bernardi and Jonas Mekas, Lucca Film Festival, 2008. Photo by Elena Marcheschi. (Rights secured by author.)
Figure 20.4
Planetopolis
, video artist Gianni Toti, 1993. Screen grab.
Chapter 21
Figure 21.1 The humanizing quality of the quotidian in
Uomini sul fondo
(
SOS Submarine)
, Francesco De Robertis, 1941. Screen grab.
Figure 21.2 Three barely discernible human figures, surrounded by the fruits of their labor, capturing the integration of the human and the natural in
Le quattro volte
(Michelangelo Frammartino, 2010). Screen grab.
Chapter 24
Figure 24.1 The Via delle Isole Curzolane: moving from periphery to center. “Gli italiani si voltano” (Alberto Lattuada, 1953). Screen grab.
Figure 24.2 The Mausoleum of Augustus, glimpsed from the Via del Corso: seeing through urban space. “Gli italiani si voltano” (Alberto Lattuada, 1953). Screen grab.
Chapter 25
Figure 25.1 Francesca Bertini, star and recently credited director of
Assunta Spina
(Bertini with Gustavo Serena, 1915). Screen grab.
Figure 25.2 Chiara, representing the future generation of women filmmakers, in possession of the camera in
Il più bel giorno della mia vita (The Best Day of My Life
, Cristina Comencini, 2002
).
Screen grab.
Figure 25.3 Mothers inhabiting the “white space” in
Lo spazio bianco (The White Space,
Francesca Comencini), 2009. Screen grab.
Chapter 26
Figure 26.1
Pane, amore e fantasia
(
Bread, Love, and Dreams
, Luigi Comencini, 1953). Screen grab.
Figure 26.2
Tano da morire
(
To Die for Tano
, Roberta Torre, 1997). Screen grab.
Chapter 27
Figure 27.1 The unnatural palette of queer color.
Gloss—Cambiare si può
(Valentina Brandoli, 2007). Screen grab.
Figure 27.2 The queer court of Madame Royale.
Splendori e miserie di Royale
(Vittorio Caprioli, 1970). Screen grab.
Figure 27.3 The death of the queer subject in
Splendori e miserie di Madame Royale
(Vittorio Caprioli, 1970). Screen grab.
Chapter 28
Figure 28.1 Intercultural rapprochement through sharing food in
Le fate ignoranti
. (
The Ignorant Fairies
, Ferzan Ozpetek, 2000). Screen grab.
Figure 28.2 Crisis outside a newly adapted mosque in
Pitza e datteri
(Fariborz Kamkari, 2015). Screen grab.
Chapter 30
Figure 30.1 Magical machinations:
Due milioni per un sorriso
(Carlo Borghesio and Mario Soldati, 1939). Screen grab.
Figure 30.2 The dissociation of the film‐within‐the‐film:
Stella del cinema
(Mario Almirante, 1931). Screen grab.
Figure 30.3 The neorealist mythology of the “actor from the street” is called into question by the figure of the child in
Bellissima
(Luchino Visconti, 1951). Screen grab.
Figure 30.4 Cinema and/as life and vice versa:
La signora senza camelie
(Michelangelo Antonioni, 1953). Screen grab.
Chapter 31
Figure 31.1 In search of loved ones, Massimo and Harriet traverse the Vasari corridor as the rectangles of light on the pavement resemble a strip of celluloid:
Paisà
(
Paisan
, Roberto Rossellini, 1946). Screen grab.
Figure 31.2 Three Fascist snipers executed by partisans:
Paisà
(
Paisan
, Roberto Rossellini, 1946). Screen grab.
Figure 31.3 The shooting of the three Fascist snipers in
Paisà
is echoed in
La notte di San Lorenzo
(
Night of the Shooting Stars
, Paolo and Vittorio Taviani, 1982) as Tuscan partisans kill a Blackshirt 15‐year‐old in front of his father. Screen grab.
Figure 31.4 Antonio Ricci pasting the poster of Rita Hayworth on the wall as he is about to have his bicycle stolen in
Ladri di biciclette
(
Bicycle Thieves
, Vittorio De Sica, 1948). Screen grab.
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Wiley Blackwell Companions to National Cinemas (CNCZ/2971)
The Wiley Blackwell Companions to National Cinemas showcase the rich film heritages of various countries across the globe. Each volume sets the agenda for what is now known as world cinema while challenging Hollywood’s lock on the popular and scholarly imagination. Whether exploring Spanish, German, or Chinese film, or the broader traditions of Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, Australia, and Latin America, the 20–30 newly commissioned chapters comprising each volume include coverage of the dominant themes of canonical, controversial, and contemporary films; stars, directors, and writers; key influences; reception; and historiography and scholarship. Written in a sophisticated and authoritative style by leading experts, they will appeal to an international audience of scholars, students, and general readers.
Published:
A Companion to German Cinema, edited by Terri Ginsberg & Andrea Mensch
A Companion to Chinese Cinema, edited by Yingjin Zhang
A Companion to East European Cinemas, edited by Anikó Imre
A Companion to Spanish Cinema, edited by Jo Labanyi & Tatjana Pavlović
A Companion to Contemporary French Cinema, edited by Raphaëlle Moine, Hilary Radner, Alistair Fox & Michel Marie
A Companion to Hong Kong Cinema, edited by Esther M. K. Cheung, Gina Marchetti, and Esther C.M. Yau
A Companion to Latin American Cinema, edited by Stephen M. Hart, Maria Delgado, and Randal Johnson
A Companion to Italian Cinema, edited by Frank Burke
A Companion to Italian Cinema
Edited by
Frank Burke
This edition first published 2017© 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
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Names: Burke, Frank editor.Title: A companion to Italian cinema / edited by Frank Burke.Description: Chichester, West Sussex ; Malden, MA : John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2017. | Series: Wiley blackwell companions to national cinemas | Includes bibliographical references and index.Identifiers: LCCN 2016037504 (print) | LCCN 2016056129 (ebook) | ISBN 9781444332285 (cloth) | ISBN 9781119043997 (epdf) | ISBN 9781119006176 (epub)Subjects: LCSH: Motion pictures–Italy–History and criticism.Classification: LCC PN1993.5.I88 C595 2017 (print) | LCC PN1993.5.I88 (ebook) | DDC 791.430945–dc23LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016037504
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In Memoriam, Peter Brunette, 1943–2010To Tyler, Wylie, and Gabe
Acknowledgments
First of all, I must thank the contributors who have been there from the start for their patience with the preparation of this volume which, beginning with Peter Brunette’s death, encountered a series of obstacles and delays. And for those who joined along the way, many thanks for your willingness to participate.
Emilia Griffin provided excellent translations for the Italian‐language essays, and Zipporah Weisberg offered timely and enthusiastic copyediting support. Since virtually all the contributors offered invaluable advice regarding potential new contributors and/or priceless input on contemporary issues in Italian cinema studies, I refer the reader to the “Notes on Contributors” for my thanks on these matters! However, I will single out those who were called upon and responded well above the norm: Marguerite Waller, Millicent Marcus, Louis Bayman, Chris Wagstaff, Alan O’Leary, Tiziana Ferrero‐Regis, Áine O’Healy, Stefania Parigi, Barbara Corsi, and Peter Bondanella. Catherine O’Rawe, though unfortunately not a contributor, always heeded pleas for help.
Jayne Fargnoli has been the kind of editor about whom one can only dream: supportive, kind, positive, and present in a thoroughly enabling way. My project editor for most of this journey, Julia Kirk, offered an uncannily constructive combination of accountability and encouragement. Denisha Sahadevan has kept on top of the manuscript logistics that remained when she replaced Julia.
I owe special thanks to my Lucchesi friends. Romano Giammattei gave me the gifts of the Italian language and his friendship. He, along with Fellini, has been a foundational figure in my Italian experience. Marco Vanelli, whom I first met so appropriately in a Lucca video store, has been not only a great friend but also a huge professional support and resource. He has provided me with a sense of belonging in the world of Italian‐language film criticism. Monica Innocenti has been a source of inspiration and provocative insight in all things Italian and Lucchese.
I also thank Annette Burfoot who helped make it possible for me to live in Italy for extended periods of time, an experience that made my editorship of this volume feasible. The Department of Film and Media, Queen’s University, supported my spending significant time “off world.” University Research Services at Queen’s helped support the costs of translation for this project.
Notes on Contributors
Adriano Aprà has published, among other things, Per non morire hollywoodiani; Stelle & strisce. Viaggi nel cinema Usa dal muto agli anni '60; and In viaggio con Rossellini. In the 1960s, he was a founder and director of Cinema & Film. In the 1970s, he codirected the cineclub Filmstudio 70 in Rome. He has collaborated on numerous festivals, directing those at Salsomaggiore (1977–1989) and Pesaro (1990–1998). From 1998 to 2002, he was director of the Cineteca Nazionale in Rome. He has made a fiction film, Olimpia agli amici, and documentaries such as Rossellini visto da Rossellini. He codirected Rosso cenere with Augusto Contento.
Louis Bayman is a lecturer in Film at the University of Southampton. He is the author of The Operatic and the Everyday in Postwar Italian Cinema; editor of Directory of World Cinema: Italy; and coeditor with Sergio Rigoletto of Italian Popular Cinema. He has written articles on Italian popular culture, melodrama, horror, and serial‐killer cinema.
Giorgio Bertellini is an associate professor in Screen Studies and Romance Languages at the University of Michigan. He is the author of the award‐winning Italy in Early American Cinema: Race, Landscape, and the Picturesque, as well as of Emir Kusturica (published in both Italian and English). He edited Italian Silent Cinema: A Reader and coedited with Richard Abel and Rob King Early Cinema and the ‘National.’ He is currently working on a project titled “The Divo and the Duce: Film Stardom and Political Leadership in 1920s America.”
Peter Bondanella is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature, Film Studies, and Italian at Indiana University; past president of the American Association for Italian Studies; and a member of the European Academy for Sciences and the Arts. He is the author of numerous books dealing with comparative literature, Italian literature, and Italian film, including: The Eternal City: Roman Images in the Modern World; The Cinema of Federico Fellini; The Films of Roberto Rossellini; and A History of Italian Cinema. He is editor of The Italian Cinema Book. He is also the translator and/or editor of numerous Italian literary classics, including works by Boccaccio, Cellini, Dante, Machiavelli, and Vasari.
Lorenzo Borgotallo holds a PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a BA and MA from the Università degli Studi di Firenze. A former lecturer and visiting assistant professor of Italian at Clemson University, he is head of languages within the International Baccalaureate Program at the International School of Turin, Italy, and teaches in the summers at the Scuola Italiana, Middlebury at Mills, California.
Flavia Brizio‐Skov is Humanities Fellow at the University of Tennessee, where she teaches Italian, modern literature, and cinema. In addition to numerous articles in international journals, she has single‐authored two monographs, La scrittura e la memoria: Lalla Romano, and Antonio Tabucchi: navigazioni in un universo narrativo, and has edited Reconstructing Societies in the Aftermath of War: Memory, Identity, and Reconciliation, and Popular Italian Cinema: Culture and Politics in a Postwar Society. She is working on a manuscript that reinterprets the history of the Italian and American western genre.
Réka Buckley is an independent scholar and former senior lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Portsmouth. She has published widely on fashion and glamour, fandom, and the Italian postwar star system. She is currently researching fandom as well as costume and fashion in Italian cinema.
Frank Burke is Professor Emeritus at Queen’s University, Canada. He has published on American, Italian–American, and Italian cinema. His work on Federico Fellini includes Federico Fellini: From Postwar to Postmodern and, with Marguerite Waller, Federico Fellini: Contemporary Perspectives. He provided the commentary with Peter Brunette for The Criterion Collection release of Amarcord. He is currently writing a book on the Italian sword‐and‐sandal film for Edinburgh University Press.
Luca Caminati is associate professor of film studies in the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema at Concordia University in Montreal. He is the author of Orientalismo eretico. Pier Paolo Pasolini e il cinema del Terzo Mondo; Cinema come happening. Il primitivismo pasoliniano e la scena artistica italiana degli anni Sessanta/Cinema as Happening. Pasolini’s Primitivism and the Sixties Italian Art Scene; and the forthcoming Una cultura della realtà: Rossellini documentarista.
Barbara Corsi is a PhD candidate at the Università di Roma Tor Vergata and a journalist/publicist. She has taught the economics of film at the Università di Padua and at Milan’s Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore and Università di communicazione e lingue (UILM). Having worked at the Archivio del Cinema Italiano dell’Anica, she has written essays, biographical entries on producers, and two monographs: Con qualche dollaro in meno and Produzione e produttori.
Emanuele D’Onofrio completed his PhD in film music at the University of Manchester. His main interests are the use of popular music and the presence of discourse and ideology in films and in other forms of communication, particularly in the process of reconstructing social and political memories. He has authored Film music, nazione e identità narrativa. Il cinema italiano contemporaneo rivisita gli anni Settanta and has worked as a producer and as a writer for top‐level Italian media companies. He teaches courses in media and communication, cinema, and popular culture at The John Cabot University and at the American University, both in Rome.
Derek Duncan is a professor of Italian at the University of St Andrews. He has published extensively on issues of sexuality and gender in Italian culture and on questions of postcoloniality. He is the author of Reading and Writing Italian Homosexuality and coeditor with Jacqueline Andall of Italian Colonialism: Legacy and Memory and National Belongings: Hybridity in Italian Colonial and Postcolonial Cultures. He is the founding editor of the cultural studies issues of the long‐established journal Italian Studies. He is currently working on Italian cinema of migration.
Tiziana Ferrero‐Regis is a senior lecturer in fashion theory at the Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane. She has published numerous essays on Italian cinema and on fashion and has authored the monograph Recent Italian Cinema: Spaces, Contexts, Experiences. Her research includes the global division of labor in the creative industries, and film and fashion synergies.
Austin Fisher is a senior lecturer in media arts at the University of Bedfordshire and author of Radical Frontiers in the Spaghetti Western. He serves on the editorial board of the Transnational Cinemas journal, is cochair of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies Transnational Cinemas’ Scholarly Interest Group, and founder of the Spaghetti Cinema festival.
Emilia Griffin received her degree in European Studies at King’s College London before working in international development with PEN International and Transparency International in London and Berlin. In addition to film studies, her translations include art catalogues for NERO magazine, and academic articles. She is bilingual in Italian and English. Currently, she is completing a master’s in International Development Studies at the University of Amsterdam.
Stephen Gundle is a professor of Film and Television Studies at the University of Warwick. He is the author of several books and articles about modern and contemporary Italy. His most recent volumes are Death and the Dolce Vita: The Dark Side of Rome in the 1950s and Mussolini’s Dream Factory: Film Stardom in Fascist Italy. Among his other books are Mass Culture and Italian Society from Fascism to the Cold War, with David Forgacs; Bellissima: Feminine Beauty and the Idea of Italy; and Glamour: A History.
Marcia Landy is Distinguished Professor in English/Film Studies. Her books include Fascism in Film; Film, Politics, and Gramsci; Cinematic Uses of the Past; The Folklore of Consensus: Theatricality in Italian Cinema; Italian Film; Stardom Italian Style; and Cinema and Counter‐History.
Flavia Laviosa is a senior lecturer in the Department of Italian Studies and in the Cinema and Media Studies Program at Wellesley College. Her research interests are in Italian cinema, European women filmmakers, and Mediterranean studies. She has published numerous essays in these areas. She is the editor of the volume Visions of Struggle in Women’s Filmmaking in the Mediterranean. She is also the founder and principal editor of the Journal of Italian Cinema and Media Studies. She is currently working on a book‐length manuscript “Framed Lives and Screened Deaths: Honor Killings in World Cinema.”
Sandra Lischi is a professor of cinema, television and photography at the Università di Pisa, specializing in video art and nonfiction film. She directs, along with Romano Fattorossi, the INVIDEO Festival, Milan. Since 1985, she has been curating Ondavideo at Pisa, devoted to video art. She has written widely about art and new technology, experimental film, and video and nonfiction production. Among her books are Metamorfosi della visione. Saggi di pensiero elettronico (with Rosanna Albertini); Il respiro del tempo. Cinema e video di Robert Cahen; Cine ma video; Visioni elettroniche; Un video al castello; Il linguaggio del video; Gianni Toti o della poetronica (with Silvia Moretti); and Michele Sambin. Performance tra musica, pittura, video (with Lisa Parolo).
Bernadette Luciano is an associate professor of Italian at the University of Auckland. She specializes in Italian cinema and cultural studies. She has published articles and book chapters on Italian cinema, film adaptation, Italian women’s historical novels, women’s autobiographical writing, and literary translation. She is the author of The Cinema of Silvio Soldini: Dream, Image, Voyage. With Susanna Scarparo she has edited Reframing Italy: New Trends in Italian Women’s Filmmaking.
Millicent Marcus is a professor of Italian and Film Studies at Yale University. Her specializations include medieval literature, Italian cinema, interrelationships between literature and film, and representations of the Holocaust in postwar Italian culture. She is the author of An Allegory of Form: Literary Self‐Consciousness in the ‘Decameron’; Italian Film in the Light of Neorealism; Filmmaking by the Book: Italian Cinema and Literary Adaptation; After Fellini: National Cinema in the Postmodern Age; and Italian Film in the Shadow of Auschwitz. She has also published numerous articles on Italian literature and on film, and is currently studying contemporary Italian cinema within the theoretical framework of “post‐realism.”
Áine O’Healy is a professor of modern languages and literatures and director of the Humanities Program at Loyola Marymount University. Her research interests lie in transnational cinema, contemporary Italian film, and migration studies. She has published widely in Italian cultural studies, and is currently completing a book on filmmaking in Italy since the 1980s. With Katarzyna Marciniak and Anikó Imre she coedited Transnational Feminism in Film and Media, and, with Marciniak and Imre, she edits the Global Cinema book series for Palgrave Macmillan.
Alan O’Leary is Director of Research and Innovation in the School of Languages, Cultures and Societies, University of Leeds. In addition to numerous articles on Italian cinema, he has authored Tragedia all'italiana: Cinema e terrorismo tra Moro e memoria (translated into English as Tragedia all'italiana: Italian Cinema and Italian Terrorisms, 1970–2010), and Fenomenologia del cinepanettone. He is coediter with Pierpaolo Antonello of Imagining Terrorism: The Rhetoric and Representation of Political Violence in Italy, 1969–2006, and Terrorism, Italian Style: Representations of Political Violence in Contemporary Italian Cinema, with Ruth Glynn and Giancarlo Lombardi. He cofounded the annual film issue of The Italianist with Millicent Marcus. His ongoing project is titled “Italian Cinemas/Italian Histories” (http://arts.leeds.ac.uk/italian‐cinemas‐italian‐histories/about/), and he is currently working on a monograph on film and history in Italy and another on the 1966 film La Battaglia di Algeri (The Battle of Algiers, Gillo Pontecorvo).
Fulvio Orsitto is an associate professor and director of the Italian and Italian–American Program at California State University, Chico. He has published numerous essays and book chapters on Italian and Italian–American cinema. His recent book publications include the edited volumes L’Altro e l’Altrove nella cultura italiana; Cinema e Risorgimento: Visioni e Re‐visioni; Contaminazioni culturali: musica, teatro, cinema e letteratura nell’Italia contemporanea (with Simona Wright); and Pier Paolo Pasolini. Prospettive americane (with Federico Pacchioni).
Stefania Parigi teaches at the Università di Roma Tre. Her work is dedicated principally to Italian cinema. She has written and edited books on Rossellini, Zavattini, Pasolini, Ferreri, Maselli, and Benigni. Her recent publications include Paisà. Analisi del film; Pier Paolo Pasolini. Accatone; Cinema‐Italy; and Neorealismo. Il nuovo cinema del dopoguerra.
Veronica Pravadelli is a professor of film studies at the Università di Roma Tre, where she directs the Center for American Studies (CRISA). She is a former visiting professor at Brown University and has written and edited many books and articles on Visconti and Italian postneorealist cinema, feminist film theory, women’s cinema, and Hollywood cinema. Her most recent books are Le donne del cinema: dive, registe, spettatrici; Cinema e piacere visivo, a collection of essays by Laura Mulvey; and Classic Hollywood: Lifestyles and Film Styles of American Cinema, 1930–1960.
Laura Rascaroli is a professor and co‐head of Film and Screen Media at University College Cork, Ireland. Her interests span art film, modernism and postmodernism, geopolitics, nonfiction, the essay film, and first‐person cinema, often in relation to issues of social, political, intellectual, and artistic European history. She is the author and editor of several volumes, including Crossing New Europe: Postmodern Travel and the European Road Movie; The Personal Camera: Subjective Cinema and the Essay Film, cowritten with Ewa Mazierska; and Antonioni: Centenary Essays, coedited with John David Rhodes. She is general editor of Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media.
Jacqueline Reich is a professor and chair of the Department of Communication and Media Studies at Fordham University. She is the author of Beyond the Latin Lover: Marcello Mastroianni, Masculinity, and Italian Cinema and The Maciste Films of Italian Silent Cinema. She is coauthor with Catherine O’Rawe of Divi italiani and coeditor with Piero Garafolo of Re‐viewing Fascism: Italian Cinema, 1922–1943. She curates the book series New Directions in National Cinemas for Indiana University Press. In the fall of 2011, she was awarded a mid‐career fellowship from the Howard Foundation at Brown University.
Angelo Restivo is an associate professor in the Program in Moving Image Studies at Georgia State University. He is the author of The Cinema of Economic Miracles: Visuality and Modernization in the Italian Art Film as well as of essays on global art cinemas and on Antonioni.
John David Rhodes teaches film in the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages at the University of Cambridge, where he is a fellow of Corpus Christi College. He is the author and editor of several books, including Stupendous, Miserable City: Pasolini’s Rome; Taking Place: Location and the Moving Image, coedited with Elena Gorfinkel; and Antonioni: Centenary Essays, coedited with Laura Rascaroli. He is a founding editor of the journal World Picture.
Massimo Riva is Royce Family Professor of Teaching Excellence and professor of Italian Studies at Brown University, where he is also a member of the Modern Culture and Media Department and directs the Virtual Humanities Lab. Among his recent books are Il futuro della letteratura and Pinocchio digitale. He teaches course on Italian film and visual culture. He is currently at work on an archaeological study of virtual reality titled “Italian Shadows: Casanova's Polemoscope and Other Tales of Imaginary or Forgotten Media,” selected for the Andrew W. Mellon digital publishing initiative at Brown (https://blogs.brown.edu/libnews/digital‐publishing‐pilot).
Laura E. Ruberto is a humanities professor and co‐chair of the Department of Arts and Cultural Studies at Berkeley City College. She has authored Gramsci, Migration, and the Representation of Women’s Work in Italy and the U.S.; coedited, with Kristi M. Wilson, Italian Neorealism and Global Cinema; and translated Leonilde Frieri Ruberto’s Ma la vita e’ fatta così (Such is Life: A Memoir). She coedits, with Nancy C. Carnavale, the book series Critical Studies in Italian America (Fordham University Press) and is the film and digital media review editor for the Italian American Review.
Mauro Sassi holds a PhD in Italian Studies from McGill University. He has taught television scriptwriting at the University of Turin, and Italian language and Italian cinema at McGill University. He is the author of several articles on Italian television, film theory, and contemporary Italian documentary.
Susanna Scarparo, an associate professor at Monash University, Australia, works on Italian cinema and on literary and cultural studies. She has published numerous articles and book chapters on Italian women’s historical writing, women’s life writing, Italian feminist theory, Italian–Australian literature, and Italian cinema. She is the author of Elusive Subjects: Biography as Gendered Metafiction and has coedited Violent Depictions: Representing Violence across Cultures with Sarah McDonald; Across Genres, Generations and Borders: Italian Women Writing Lives with Rita Wilson; and Reframing Italy: New Trends in Italian Women’s Filmmaking with Bernadette Luciano.
Antonella Sisto teaches Italian and cinema at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She is author of Film Sound in Italy: Listening to the Screen. She contributed to a recent collection on Italian cultural studies with an essay on dubbing and collaborated on the making of a documentary film on Hollywood film music composer Mario Castelnuovo‐Tedesco. Her current projects include a look at the work of film commissions in Italy and Europe, and a study of the trope of reality from neorealism to reality TV.
Christian Uva is a researcher at the Università di Roma Tre, where he teaches institutions of cinema history and criticism, and theory and practice of digital cinema. He is part of the editorial board for the annual film issue of The Italianist and the editor of the cinema book series for the publisher Rubbettino. He has written numerous essays on Italian cinema in relation to history and politics, and on new developments in film initiated by digital technologies. Among his publications: Schermi di piombo. Il terrorismo nel cinema italiano; Impronte digitali. Il cinema e le sue immagini tra regime fotografico e tecnologia numerica; Ultracorpi. L’attore cinematografico nell’epoca della digital performance; and Strane storie. Il cinema e i misteri d’Italia.
Marco Vanelli teaches humanities, media, and language in the Scuola Media Lorenzo Nottolini in Lammari (Tuscany), and the language of mass media at the Istituto Superiore di Scienze Religiose in Pisa. He is the editor‐in‐chief of the journal Cabiria—Studi di Cinema, and has researched for years on the relationship between the Church and cinema and on Christian themes present in the works of the major Italian auteurs, publishing numerous interventions on these matters.
Pasquale Verdicchio is a professor of Italian and Comparative Literature at the University of California, San Diego. He teaches literature, film, cultural studies, and environmental literature. As a translator, he has published the works of Pasolini, Merini, Caproni, Porta, and Zanzotto, among others. His poetry, criticism, and translations have been published by Guernica Editions and other publishers in the United States and Canada. His most recent publication is Looters, Photographers, and Thieves. In 2015, he was awarded the Muir Environmental Fellowship by Muir College, University of California, San Diego.
Christopher Wagstaff retired from his associate professorship in Italian Studies at the University of Reading in September 2014, where he specialized in avant‐garde visual poetry and Italian cinema. He is the author of Italian Neorealist Cinema: An Aesthetic Approach; Il conformista; and numerous essays on Italian cinema and the Italian film industry.
Marguerite Waller is professor in Comparative Literature and Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of California, Riverside. Her research interests include film and visual culture, transnational feminisms, feminist epistemologies, sustainability, and decolonial aesthetics. She is the author of Petrarch’s Poetics and Literary History; coeditor with Frank Burke of Federico Fellini: Contemporary Perspectives; and coeditor with Sandra Ponzanesi of Postcolonial Cinema Studies. She has also coedited Frontline Feminisms: Women, War, and Resistance with Jennifer Rycenge; Dialogue and Difference: Feminisms Challenge Globalization with Sylvia Marcos; and The Wages of Empire: Neoliberal Policies, Resistance, and Women’s Poverty with Amalia L. Cabezas and Ellen Reese.
Kristi M. Wilson teaches rhetoric, writing studies, and humanities at Soka University of America. She has coedited several anthologies, including Italian Neorealism and Global Cinema with Laura E. Ruberto; Film and Genoocide with Tomas Crowder‐Taraborrelli; and Political Documentary in Latin America with Antonio Traverso. She is a film review editor and editorial collective member of the journal Latin American Perspectives.
Mary P. Wood is Emerita Professor of European Cinema and Fellow of Birkbeck College, University of London where she taught film for many years. She is currently in receipt of a Leverhulme Emeritus Fellowship to complete a study of Italian film noir. Her research has mainly been on Italian political cinema and the Italian and European film industries. Her publications include Italian Cinema (2005), Contemporary European Cinema (2007), and numerous articles on aspects of Italian cinema, most recently on Mario Bava, Franco Zeffirelli, contemporary Italian political cinema, and the child in Italian cinema. She contributed to the DVD extras for the 2012 re‐release of Ruggero Deodato’s cult classic, Cannibal Holocaust, and presented Sergio Martino and Enzo G. Castellari at the 2012 CineExcess festival.
Editor’s Notes
It is the practice in this volume to provide English film titles, normally in parentheses, only when films have formally acquired such titles, for purposes of exhibition, distribution, and so on. The goal is to indicate to the reader the existence of an English version. To avoid misleading the reader in this regard, when there is only an Italian title, no parenthetical translation is provided. There is one group of exceptions, in an instance in which the meaning of several Italian titles is crucial, and the exceptions are signaled and explained.
Translations, unless otherwise noted, are the authors’ with the exception of the chapters by Aprà, Corsi, Lischi, Parigi, Uva, and Vanelli. They have been translated in their entirety by Emilia Griffin.
For English titles of films, I follow recent Criterion Collection releases when they represent an improvement over previous titling. For example, Vittorio de Sica’s Ladri di biciclette (1948) had usually been translated into English in the singular—The Bicycle Thief—despite the significantly plural Italian. Criterion has chosen the more appropriate Bicycle Thieves. Similarly, though less significantly, Roberto Rossellini’s Roma città aperta (1945) has been referred to as just Open City or as Rome, Open City. Criterion has kept “Rome” and deleted the unnecessary comma: Rome Open City. My sense is that these recent alterations will soon become standard.
Glossary
The following are terms that recur throughout the volume or within the Glossary and that, while familiar to those working in Italian film studies, might not be to the general reader. They are often contextualized within the body of the chapters in which they occur, but I have glossed the terms to avoid the repeated use of explanatory endnotes when they are not. The glossary is not meant to comprise an exhaustive list of significant terms in the study of Italian culture; it is volume‐specific. The explications remain brief when the full significance of the terms becomes clear in the chapters that reference them.
divismo/Divismo. Small “d” divismo refers to Italian stardom as a whole. Capital “D” Divismo refers to the historically specific phenomenon of Italian silent film stardom, focusing on the diva film and female actresses of the period. The “diva film” refers to a genre of films made in Italy, from 1913 to the mid‐1920s, featuring the most popular actresses of the day. (Gloss adapted from Reich’s article in this volume.)
anni di piombi. The translation of the title of Margarethe Von Trotta’s film Die bleierne Zeit (Marianne and Juliane, 1981), and rendered somewhat awkwardly in English as “the leaden years,” “the years of lead,” or “the years of the bullet” (bullets being colloquially associated with “lead”). The phrase refers to a period of violence and tension in Italy from the late 1960s to the beginning of the 1980s. The most notable originating event of the anni di piombo was the bombing in Piazza Fontana, Milan, December 12, 1969, by neofascists. It is a period marked by left‐wing terrorism but also by the “strategy of tension” (see entry below) in which right‐wing violence sought to disguise itself as left‐wing terrorism in the interests of promoting an authoritarian mood and reaction in Italy. The Piazza Fontana bombing was an important instance of the strategy of tension.
Il Boom. See miracolo economico.
Christian Democrats (CD). See “DC.”
cinema carino. A style of Italian filmmaking of the 1980s and 1990s that was criticized for its retreat from serious or complex issues and for being superficial, unambitious, unchallenging, crowd‐pleasing, and televisual. Rather than being simply critiqued, cinema carino is contextualized in Ferrero‐Regis’s chapter.
cinepanettoni. Highly successful comedies released annually at Christmas time (panettone is a traditional Italian Christmas cake) that deal with the “average Italian” on holiday in various foreign locations. The subgenre began in 1983 with Carlo Vanzina’s Vacanze di Natale.
“Clean Hands” investigations. See mani puliti.
commedia all’italiana. A genre of sophisticated and often quite serious “comedies,” normally considered to originate with I soliti ignoti (Big Deal on Madonna Street, Mario Monicelli, 1958). It paralleled the success of the Italian art film, though with less international exposure, into the 1970s. It was known for its critical view of the effects of the economic miracle and of “the Italian character,” but also criticized for being complicit in the creation of a rogues gallery of figures who were too entertaining and even charming to be the vehicle for bona fide social critique.
DC. La Democrazia Cristiana, Christian Democrats. The conservative ruling party in Italy from the early postwar to the early 1990s. Supported by the Catholic Church and buttressed by Cold War aid from the United States in its rise to power, the party lost its hold on the electorate and dissolved as the result of the mani puliti investigations of the early 1990s—which revealed widespread corruption—and of Mafia investigations that revealed a history of unsavory associations. Its conservatism extended to its film legislation in the early postwar, and to its discouragement of neorealism.
economic miracle. See miracolo economico.
EUR. The initials stand for Esposizione Universale Roma. It was an area of Rome intended for the site of the 1942 world’s fair and to celebrate 20 years of Fascism. Because of the war, it did not serve its original purpose, but construction resumed in the 1950s and 1960s, and major sites were completed for the 1960 Rome Olympics. Cinematic imagery of the EUR district often conveys a sense of sterile Fascist modernity, though the history of the area’s postwar development has given it a significant post‐Fascist identity as well.
FIAT strike, 1980. Defeat of this workers’ strike in 1980 is often seen as a pivotal moment in the decline of the workers’ movement, and workers’ power in Italy. Parallel moments in terms of the weakening of unions were the failed air traffic controllers’ strike in 1981 in the United States and the failed coal miners’ strike in the United Kingdom in 1984–1985.
filone/filoni. A filone is a series of spin‐offs, exploiting the success of an initial film, that never attains the formal status of a genre, partly because it exploits and assimilates other filoni, as well as settings, timeframes, and stories that diverge markedly from the filone’s point of origin. The peplum (see below) is the classic example, unified only by the presence of a strongman hero, operating in a host of different contexts and historical periods as it moves from one film to the next.
fotoromanzi. Comics illustrated with photographs rather than drawings, shot on a set, with actors who become known and “fan”tasized by the public. A kind of static film. The content was principally romantic and the intended audience was primarily female.
giallo. The term derives from the yellow covers on paperback translations of crime and thriller novels published by Mondadori beginning in 1929. In a film context, it refers to an Italian filone that emerged in the 1960s, often combining mystery, crime, and horror with graphic and lurid imagery, associated initially with directors such as Mario Bava and Dario Argento.
fumetti.
