Italian neorealist cinema

A History of Italian Cinema, 2nd edition is the much anticipated update from the author of the bestselling Italian Cinema – which has been published in four landmark editions and will celebrate its 35th anniversary in 2018. Building upon decades of research, Peter Bondanella and Federico Pacchioni reorganize the current History in order to keep the book fresh and responsive not only to the actual films being created in Italy in the twenty-first century but also to the rapidly changing priorities of Italian film studies and film scholars. The new edition brings the definitive history of the subject, from the birth of cinema to the present day, up to date with a revised filmography as well as more focused attention on the melodrama, the crime film, and the historical drama. The book is expanded to include a new generation of directors as well as to highlight themes such as gender issues, immigration, and media politics. Accessible, comprehensive, and heavily illustrated throughout, this is an essential purchase for any fan of Italian film.

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DE ESCIPIÓN A BERLUSCONI. UNA HISTORIA DE ITALIA EN 50 PELÍCULAS
Cuenta André Breton que, cuando el grupo surrealista acudía al cine, acostumbraba a entrar comenzada la proyección, y la abandonaba al poco tiempo para volver a irrumpir en otra sala, donde se exhibía otra película, en cualquier momento de la función. Al final de la jornada, las secuencias dispersas, cubiertos los huecos en la imaginación, iban construyendo en la memoria un nuevo argumento, a partir de la lógica irracional, fragmentaria y elíptica del inconsciente. Algo de la visión «sonámbula», y profundamente liberadora, que reivindicaba el surrealismo, subyace en el viaje por el imaginario histórico a través del cine italiano que recorre las páginas de este libro. Los autores proponen un itinerario punteado de elipsis, saltos, pasadizos subterráneos, flashbacks y flashforwards, un recorrido transhistórico que se apoya en el asincronismo entre el tiempo que señalan las tramas, a partir del cual se ha ordenado la selección de los films, y el de su producción y estreno en sala. En resumen, lo que este volumen plantea es una de tantas historias posibles de Italia —tantas como antologías probables— a través del objetivo de la cámara.

Negli anni Cinquanta, l’intreccio tra divismo e immagine materna emerge in ruoli chiave che producono letture identitarie e metaforiche, in particolare quelle rappresentate da Anna Magnani, come Pina in Roma città aperta (Rossellini, 1945), madre della Resistenza uccisa dai tedeschi e prefiguratrice della rinascita italiana dopo la guerra; la madre volitiva di Bellissima (Visconti, 1952); quella tragica di Mamma Roma (Pasolini, 1962). Il mio intervento vuole analizzare il rapporto tra stardom e maternità nel cinema del dopoguerra attraverso l’esempio di Anna Magnani, il cui corpo costituisce un’immagine divistica segnata dall’ibridazione, per usare il termine di Morin, tra i suoi personaggi on screen e la sua maternità off screen, illustrata e raccontata dalla stampa popolare (Morin 1995).

This book series aims to bring together the most influential texts from the history of thinking about Film and Media. The second volume  is a collection of key texts from the classical era and the dawn of modern Film Theory, between 1945 to 1976, ranging from pioneers like Maya Deren, Alexandre Astruc, François Truffaut and Pier Paolo Pasolini to influential authors such as André Bazin, Andrew Sarris, Christian Metz and Laura Mulvey, some of which had not been translated to Dutch before.

This book series is a Dutch/Flemish co-production by the unversities of Groningen, Antwerp, Utrecht, Amsterdam, and the EYE film museum, the Netherlands, and will be used in teaching. Editors: Annie van den Oever, Frank Kessler, Philippe Meers, Patricia Pisters & Steven Willemsen.

"Cinema is the most powerful weapon " – Benito Mussolini's motto loomed in capital letters over the 1937 inauguration of the massive production hub being built in the outskirts of Rome, reminding the film industry what was expected of it. Notwithstanding the effort to deploy cinema as a key technology for governing the nation and the empire, in the early 1940s film became a battlefield for the Regime. This excavates from the closet of memory the story of the Cinema cell, the group of young film enthusiasts who, in fascist Italy, engaged in what today we would call " media activism " : they put their lives on the line, infiltrated the film industry, and shouldered the movie camera as their initial weapon of combat against a defiant totalitarianism. Here, I focus on how the underground formation elaborated an iteration of filmic realism that countered the implantation in the body politic of racialized fantasies of national identity. In tracing the cell's efforts to develop a gaze on the nation that would oppose the race-driven realism advocated by Mussolini's son Vittorio, among others, I establish a genealogy for Visconti's 1943 Ossessione and its display of queerness as the authentic alternative to fascist life. By way of conclusion, I disentangle the system of intimacy and affectivity harnessed by this film from the one that postwar neorealism contributed to securing.

The high interpretative value of chromatic symbolism has rightfully been underlined in multiple occasions, mostly in order to explain some of the many political identities who defined themselves through auto-representations and exclusivist stereotypes. During the course of Italian history, colors have become interpreters of collective consciousness: their role apply to politics, science, religion, arts, star system, and their combinations sum up values and ideals. The structure which they acquire one next to another in a never accidental order (whether this happens on a flag or into a liturgy - religious or political) lights up a phenomenon and its context (spatial, temporary, cultural)...

In an article with the challenging title ‘Against Realism’, Alan O'Leary and Catherine O'Rawe (2011) argued that Italian cinema studies needed to move forward. In their view, the abuse of ‘realism’ as a prescriptive as well as descriptive term had stunted research into Italian cinema of the postwar period, channelling it exclusively towards neorealist trends and thus devaluing study of the other forms, movements, auteurs and productions that emerged during the same period. This historiographical tendency, which Christopher Wagstaff aptly called the ‘institution of neorealism’ (2007, 37), encouraged the development of reverential study and by the 1960s had assumed the form of a canon. While the position taken by O'Leary and O'Rawe was certainly provocative, it has served to stimulate thinking about the areas of postwar Italian cinema that had remained in the shadows and unexplored. Starting to focus on an ‘other’ cinema has not had to mean ‘forgetting’ neorealism, but has brought changes to the way that it is studied. Almost ten years later, the challenge seems to be to rethink neorealism as a transnational phenomenon that straddles different periods, genres and contexts; while it has its roots in postwar European culture, it continues to be influential on a global level.

The main purpose of this paper is to provide a theoretical investigation into how comedy films in post-World War II Italian cinema handled neorealism's social content, historical actuality, and political commitment. Are comedy films serious enough to depict the pressing problems of the time or do they simply ignore the socialist political agenda? When discussing the characteristics of comedy films, I draw specifically on female representations' role in the constructions of narration. Through detailed film analysis, the paper highlights Renato Castellani's Due soldi di speranza (1952). This study aims to illustrate how the comic mode is created, by which signs we recognize that we are in the presence of a comic work. For the representation of female characters, feminist film theory serves as the basis of the chosen theorization and the method of text interpretation.

The acclaimed Italian directors Luchino Visconti and Federico Fellini had very different life trajectories that led them to become major figures in the history of cinema. Similarities, however, can be found in their debuts with the neorealist genre, their personalities, creative styles and politicocultural involvement, and ultimately in the neurological disease that struck them at the end of their careers. Both suffered a right-hemispheric stroke that left them hemiplegic on the left side. We review their life and career to put that event into perspective, and then discuss its aftermath for both artists in the light of our current knowledge of right-hemispheric functions. Visconti showed a tremendous resilience following the accident and managed to direct several films and plays as an infirm, whereas Fellini had to put an end to his career but still was able to display his talents to the neuropsychologists that treated him. A speculative account is given of the links between right-hemispheric symptomatology and the premorbid personality of these highly prolific patients.

Filmin adından yola çıkıldığında, filmde işlenebilecek olanlar ile gerçekte işlenenler arasındaki uyumsuzluk ve bisiklet hırsızlığının kişinin imgesel anlamda zihninde daha önce kurduğu ilişkilerinin sarsılışı metne konu olan filmimizin başarısını ifade etmektedir. Şeyi olduğu halde sunmak yerine, şeylerin zihnimizdeki imgelerini değiştirmek sanatçının kendine atfettiğinden fazlası değildir.
Gerçeklik bağlamında sunulan ve İtalyan Yeni Gerçekçiliği geleneğinin bir meyvesi olarak izlenen bir filmin, şeyi ve temsillerini olduğundan farklı hallerde sunuşu bir çelişki değil midir? Gerçekçilikten, olanı olduğu gibi işlemeyi çıkarımlarsak ortaya pek tabii bir çelişki çıkacaktır.
Olmakta olanın, olması gerektiği gibi olmasını işleyen bir gerçekçilik ise, tüm bu çelişkileri ortadan kaldıracaktır. Film, kişinin filmi izlemeden önceki değer yargılarını, anlam ve düşüncelerini sorunsallaştırmakta, odak değişikliği yaratmaktadır.

Nel dicembre del 1959, poco dopo il trionfo della rivoluzione, Zavattini fu invitato a Cuba per dirigere un gruppo di sceneggiatori nel lavoro di selezione, di analisi critica e di sviluppo di diversi soggetti. Era sotto la sua guida che quei giovani intellettuali ‘senza esperienza’ intendevano gettare le basi del nuovo cinema cubano. Fu un vero laboratorio di creazione, nel quale nacquero, si svilupparono o vennero abbandonate un gran numero di idee. José Massip, che ebbe l’incarico di coordinare quel gruppo di scrittori, fu colpito dal metodo di lavoro del maestro. Un metodo ―o un ‘non-metodo’― che si avvicinava alla maieutica socratica, poiché Zavattini non imponeva la sua visione, ma lasciava che le idee dei suoi discepoli prendessero forma, per sottoporle poi ad un attento esame dialettico.

La discussione sul naturalismo e l’imitazione della natura (o realtà storico– sociale) è antica. Per restringere il discorso al verismo e all’opera di Verga che, come vedremo, è alla base di ogni discorso sul neorealismo di Bernari e Zavattini, bisogna considerare che l’equivoco della verità, un personaggio di Cervantes si chiede se è vero quello che scrivono i libri, è insito nel nome stesso del movimento letterario. Verismo dovrebbe infatti significare rappresentazione di ciò che è vero, pur nella finzione letteraria. Le cose non stanno però così. Il saggio completo è pubblicato col titolo "I più segreti legami" sinergie neorealiste tra letteratura e arti visive  nel carteggio Bernari-Zavattini (1932-1989) da www.rivistadistudiitaliani.it  diretta da Anthony Verna

This book is the first to establish the relevance of same-sex desires, pleasures and anxieties in the cinema of post-war Italy. It explores cinematic representations of homosexuality and their significance in a wider cultural struggle in Italy involving society, cinema, and sexuality between the 1940s and 1970s. Besides tracing the evolution of representations through both art and popular films, this book also analyses connections with consumer culture, film criticism and politics. Giori uncovers how complicated negotiations between challenges to and valorization of dominant forms of knowledge of homosexuality shaped representations and argues that they were not always the outcome of hatred but also sought to convey unmentionable pleasures and complicities. Through archival research and a survey of more than 600 films, the author enriches our understanding of thirty years of Italian film and cultural history.
The downloadable file includes the front matters and the introduction.

This paper investigates from an interdisciplinary perspective Antropofagia’s entrenchment in autochthonous culture and its comprehension of the ontological dimension of Tupi cannibalism. Tarsila do Amaral and Oswald de Andrade’s interaction with Parisian cubists and surrealists is seen as driven by equalising intellectual affinities and a collaborative cosmopolitanism – rather than as motivated by the wish to obliterate perceived hegemonic-subaltern cultural power asymmetries. If their cannibalism-engendered agenda had something to ‘devour’ it was the local aesthetic-literary establishment and its discourse, based on distinctions between white-Brazilian high culture and native, Afro¬-Brazilian and mixed-ethnicity popular culture.
By juxtaposing Antropofagia to Paul Rincoeur’s paradox (namely, how to reanimate an ancient civilisation whilst taking part in a universal one), the paper shows that this Brazilian modernist movement mitigated the tension between the universal and the particular through a specific rationale: to adopt the philosophical ethos of local civilisation against the homogenising traits of modernism, and, by doing so, to also reject the Eurocentric approach to the so-called ‘primitive’. Equally, the paper proves that certain aspects of Kenneth Frampton’s Critical Regionalism are recognisable in the ways in which Antropofagia consciously criticised the western root of dominant Brazilian culture. Here a main difference between Antropofagia and Frampton’s category surfaces: whilst Frampton’s Arrière-Garde is more preoccupied with cultural colonisation from without, the anthropophagic one focuses on producing hybrid aesthetic-literary forms in order to reconfigure a local cultural field crippled by issues from within, that is, by coloniality.

L’eclisse by renowned filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni intrigues for its film poetic expressiveness. Its remarkable visual language simultaneously engages and exceeds the emotional density of the film in quite distinct ways that this essay would like to address. It will be argued that the hermeneutic phenomenology by French Philosopher Paul Ricœur proposes to shift from an experience-expression relation to an expression-interpretation relation in order to find the poetics of expression closely aligned with the critique of ideology and utopian imagination. This dialectical shift to hermeneutic phenomenology will be first described from the perspective of Ricœur’s philosophical work, and then explored in relation to its value to film phenomenology.

The notion that the cinema facilitates hitherto unrealized opportunities for democracy and empathy to take root in the spectator is put forth by the film realist Siegfried Kracauer. The valorization of the cinema as a necessary facilitator in any empathetic examination of the human condition is however problematized as the process by which such empathy is potentially engendered in the spectator is mediated by alienation and implicit violence. In Vittorio De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves, active engagement is crucial as the spectator has to critically receive and work through the alienation and violence being projected onscreen in order for the promise of cinema to (potentially) come to pass.

Keywords: Kracauer, Italian Neorealism, Bicyle Thieves, Democracy, Cinematic Alienation and Empathy

The title of this article, “What is Italian cinema?,” intentionally recalls Bazin (I refer also to Deleuze and “world cinephilia”), but an additional clause might read, “and how do we think we know?.” In this article I analyze the means and priorities that have been employed to study Italian cinema in the Anglophone academy. The success of films like the Oscar-winning La grande bellezza (The Great Beauty, Paolo Sorrentino), the family-friendly comedy Sole a catinelle (Buckets of Sunshine, Gennaro Nunziante) and the poetic documentary Sacro GRA (Sacred GRA, Gianfranco Rosi), all released in 2013, confirmed the continued and perhaps surprising vitality and variety of Italian cinema. This variety tended to be ignored in what might be called the Standard Model of Italian cinema history, which emphasized the realist and auteurist traditions in Italian cinema, even if it allowed a notional ‘best’ of genre cinema access to an otherwise exclusive canon. The second half of the article considers the contents of three edited companions to Italian cinema (two recently published and one forthcoming) in order to grasp the current concerns of Italian cinema studies and so to signpost the state of knowledge about Italian cinema, at least as it exists in English. I suggest throughout some methods and approaches, especially that of ‘distant reading’, for better grasping the various forms of cinema in Italy over its history. But I finish by noting that the Pantheon of World Cinema has also tended to distill cinema in Italy to neorealism and the “golden age” auteurs and so has obscured both the range and the particularity of Italian cinema.

This presentation provides a brief overview of representations of the city of Rome in Italian cinema. It focuses on several important films by Italian directors who have given the world a unique portrait of the “eternal city”. From Italy’s struggle for a secular Republic (La presa di Roma 1905) to an endless search of the meaning of this Republic (La grande bellezza 2013), the city of Rome has been and continues to be the film set in which this drama unfolds.

With its use of contemporary events, location shots, and a plot that mixes comedy, tragedy, and passion play, Roberto Rossellini's 1945 film Rome, Open City founded the movement known as " Italian Neo-Realism. " The film vividly presents the Christian teaching on the relation between religion and politics. Rossellini asserts that a Christian Europe can be reconstructed only on a foundation of charity rather than hate, vengeance, or even justified punishment for Nazi crimes. It is not on the basis of tales of resistance that Italians and Europeans can be reborn, Rossellini argues, but on the basis of the Christian command to " love your enemies. " European rebirth means the installation of a moral order that makes parenthood feasible and respectable. By reflecting on Rossellini's masterpiece, I examine the triumph and the tragedy of the Christian Democratic Europe that Rome, Open City foretold and helped to found.

Guardarsi allo specchio: Ladri di biciclette di Vittorio De Sica. in «Rifrazioni. Dal cinema all'oltre», anno 8, n° 16, maggio 2016, pp. 216-225. Vittorio De Sica 1 La Bal(l)ade dell'attacchino Ladri di biciclette (1948) esce nelle sale italiane nel momento in cui sta imperversando un'aspra polemica che vede coinvolte le forze politiche e il Neorealismo, reo di offrire un'immagine poco edulcorata del paese. A distanza di ormai tre anni dalla fine delle ostilità, il cinema italiano dimostra il proprio interesse nel raccontare il tessuto sociale post bellico, di cui un primo esempio era stato Sciuscià (1946, Vittorio De Sica), dove i due giovani lustrascarpe «sono un po' gli stracci che volano durante e dopo la grande tempesta. Sono i sottoprodotti della storia dell'epoca di ferro dei dittatori» . La stessa strada viene nuovamente percorsa da De Sica e Cesare Zavattini per Ladri di 2 biciclette, opera che affronta le problematiche sociali connesse al dopoguerra, ma nella quale si può riscontrare anche una riflessione più profonda sui traumi di una nazione che si è lasciata alle spalle una dittatura, una guerra mondiale e una guerra civile. Vagamente ispirato all'omonimo romanzo di Luigi Bartolini , Ladri di biciclette si nutre della realtà dell'epoca e di esperienze vissute in prima 3 "L'esperienza della guerra fu determinante per tutti noi. Qualcuno sentì il folle desiderio di buttare all'aria tutte le vecchie storie del cinema italiano, di posizionare la macchina da presa nel mezzo della vita reale, nel mezzo di tutto quello che colpiva i nostri occhi inorriditi. Cercammo di liberarci dal peso dei nostri errori, volevamo guardarci in faccia, e dire la verità, scoprire chi eravamo veramente". Vittorio De Sica, «La table ronde», n° 149 (1960), cit. in Jean A. Gili, La naissance d'un cineaste, in 1 «Bianco&Nero», n° 9 (1975), pp. 64-65. Carlo Lizzani, Il Neorealismo: quando è finito, quello che resta, in Lino Micciché (a cura di), Il 2 Neorealismo cinematografico italiano, Venezia, Marsilio, 1975, p. 99. Per un confronto fra romanzo e film, Cfr. Guglielmo Moneti, Ladri di biciclette, in Lino Micciché (a cura 3 di), De Sica, Venezia, Marsilio, 1992, pp. 247-252.

La giovinezza è il periodo più spensierato delle tappe della vita umana. La spensieratezza è la cosa che forse colpisce di più dei bambini. Questi piccoli grandi uomini che cercano di imparare ma che hanno anche molto da insegnare. La tematica del bambino nel cinema italiano ma anche a livello internazionale ha una grande importanza. Basti pensare a vari capolavori del regista, Vittorio De Sica, in cui i protagonisti sono proprio loro.

Following the presentation made on similarities that La Grande Bellezza (2013) and La Dolce Vita (1960) share with each other, this write-up will provide a more in-depth look into the significance of Italy’s capital, Rome, as well as propose the reasons why this city was chosen by Federico Fellini and Paolo Sorrentino as a main backdrop for both films’ narrative.

The following thesis focuses on the Italian director, Luchino Visconti and his first feature film, Ossessione.  It evaluates his film in relation not only to the director’s biography but also to its historical and cinematic context.  It deals with the manner in which Ossessione was adapted from an American roman noir, refashioning it in its own distinctive way.  In addition, it analyses the film’s relation to generic modes of representation, specifically realism and melodrama, and concludes by situating the work as a precursor of the Neorealist movement of the mid-20th century.

Through the filmic lens of West Bengali director Satyajit Ray’s masterpiece The Big City (Mahanagar 1963), this article focuses on the symbolic meaning of the bra in postcolonial India. It reveals the ways in which the semi-hidden bra in the film functions as a contested site of patriarchal Indian modernity versus Euro-Western modernity and, in the style of neorealist cinema, a utopia of postcolonial and postnational feminine agency. Through textual analysis, the article delves into the influences of Italian neorealist cinema on Ray’s aesthetic choices and compares power, dress and femininity across western and non-western contexts. It articulates cultural similarities and differences and how dream-like cinematic narratives of everyday practices of power dressing provide a window into neoliberal performativity and utopian ambitions for feminine agency during periods of modernization and change.

Tutti i saggi pubblicati sono stati sottoposti a un processo di peer review del tutto anonimo (double blind), ad opera di due referee esterni alla rivista, specialisti del tema trattato ed appartenenti a istituzioni diverse da quelle degli autori.

Although the very existence of neorealism has been under scrutiny at least since the 1950s, an obstinate outlook on Italy's cinema history still reduces all national films to anticipations, prolongations, or betrayals of this elusive new wave. Why is this the case?

In this article, I explain the persisting critical hegemony of neorealism from the point of view of ideology critique. I argue that Bazin's and Deleuze's influential accounts of neorealism as a revolutionary, anti-narrative, zero-degree cinema have streamlined the fantasy of an innocent post-war Italy, of a child-like nation that redeemed itself from its past and was ready to start afresh. In this light, I suggest that the attachment to neorealism ought be recognized as a collective defense mechanism repressing the aborted "de-fascitizzazione" of Italian post-Fascist society.

Keywords: Neorealism, Fascism, Deleuze, Bazin, film theory & history, ideology, historical guilt, trauma

Traducción de "Un solo rudere", declamado en "La ricotta" (1963) e incluído en "Poesia in forma di rosa" (1964); y "Marilyn", recitado en "La rabbia" (1963), ambos, de Pier Paolo Pasolini. Mis traducciones se pueden consultar en la pág. 119.