Italy in Early American Cinema

by Bertellini, Giorgio

• ISBN13: 9780253221285
• ISBN10: 0253221285
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-10-26
• Publisher: Indiana Univ Pr

Summary

Once associated with landscape painting in Northern Europe, the picturesque painting style came to symbolize Mediteeranean Europe through comforting views of distant landscapes and exotic characters. Showing readers how this aesthetic traveled to America and was transferred from nineteenth-century painters to early twentieth-century photographers and filmmakers, Bertellini moves from Western films and travelogues to urban melodramas featuring Southern Italians, the picturesques original characters. Book jacket.

Author Biography

Giorgio Bertellini is Assistant Professor of Screen Arts and Cultures and of Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Michigan. He is author of Emir Kusturica. His edited and co-editor volumes include The Cinema of Italy and (with Richard Abel and Rob King) Early Cinema and the "National."

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. ix
Introduction Transatlantic Racial Culture and Modern Visual Reproductions	p. 1
Picturing Italy's Natural and Social landscapes
Picturesque Mode of Difference	p. 19
The Picturesque Italian South as Transnational Commodity	p. 47
Picture-Perfect America
Picturesque Views and American Natural Landscapes	p. 95
Picturesque New York	p. 134
Black Hands, White Faces	p. 165
White Hearts	p. 205
Performing Geography	p. 236
Aftetrword: "A Mirror with a Memory"	p. 276
Notes	p. 293
Filmography	p. 367
Bibliography	p. 375
Index	p. 421
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