A New Guide to Italian Cinema

by Celli, Carlo; Cottino-Jones, Marga

• ISBN13: 9781403975652
• ISBN10: 1403975655
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-01-09
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

This book, with co-author Carlo Celli, is a complete reworking and update of Marga Cottino-Jones' popular A Student's Guide to Italian Film (1983, 1993). This guide retains earlier editions' interest in renowned films and directors but is also attentive to popular cinema, the films which actually achieved box office success among the Italian public.

Author Biography

Carlo Celli attended the Università of Firenze and Bologna, received a B.A. from the University of Virginia and a Ph.D. from UCLA in 1993 under the direction of Marga Cottino-Jones. He is the author numerous publications on Italian literature and film including The Divine Comic: The Cinema of Roberto Benigni (2001) and Gillo Pontecorvo from Resistance to Terrorism (2005). He is currently Associate Professor at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. Marga Cottino-Jones received a laurea degree from the Università of Torino and a Ph.D. in Romance Languages from the University of Washington in Seattle. She taught at the Department of Italian at UCLA from 1961 to 1998. She is recognized as one of the leading voices in Italian Studies in the United States for her influential publications on Italian literature, theory and film studies including Order from Chaos in Boccaccio's Decameron; Il Dir Novellando:The Renaissance Novella; A Student's Guide to Italian Cinema (1983, 1993) and Michelangelo Antonioni, The architecture of vision : writings and interviews on  Cinema (1996).

Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgements	ix
Remote History	xi
1. Italy from Unification to World War I	1
The Cultural Scene	7
Origins of Italian Cinema	9
Giovanni Pastrone's Cabiria and Gabriele D'Annunzio	10
Divismo	16
2. The Fascist Years (1922-43)	19
The Cultural Scene	24
Film in Fascist Italy	26
Alessandro Blasetti	28
Mario Camerini and White Telephone Comedies	32
Precursors of Neorealism	34
3. World War II	39
The Cultural and Literary Roots of Neorealism	42
Neorealism in Film	44
Roberto Rossellini and Open City (1945)	45
4. Reconstruction and the Late '40's	53
Film: The Late 1940's	56
5. The 1950's	67
The Development of Neorealism	68
The Visconti—Fellini Debate	74
De Sica, Television, and Popular Film in the 1950's	77
6. The Early 1960's	83
The Economic Boom	84
Italian Cinema Boom	85
Commedia all'italiana (Comedy Italian Style)	88
The Spaghetti Western of Sergio Leone	93
7. The Later 1960's	97
Art Cinema	99
Roberto Rossellini	100
Luchino Visconti	101
Federico Fellini	102
Michelangelo Antonioni	103
Vittorio De Sica	104
Art Cinema Newcomers	105
Pier Paolo Pasolini	108
Bernardo Bertolucci	110
8. The 1970's	113
Film and Television in the 1970's and 1980's	115
Comedies and Popular Cinema in the 1970's	117
Political Film/Instant Movie	118
The Poliziesco Crime Genre	123
The Heirs to Italian Art Cinema	125
9. The 1980's and 1990's: A Changing Society	127
The "New Italian Cinema"	129
A Nostalgic Narrative	134
Benigni's La vita è bella	139
10. The Next Millennium	143
The Cultural Scene	144
Italian Cinema in the New Millennium	146
Appendix 1: Short Introduction to Film Study	161
Appendix 2: Box Office	171
Appendix 3: The Major Directors	189
Appendix 4: Italian Political Parties	203
Notes	205
Selected Bibliography	217
Index	225