A History of Italian Cinema

Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
Acknowledgments
Preface
Chapter 1: An Ancient Cradle for a Newborn Medium: The Rise of Silent Cinema in Italy
	Italy’s Visual Culture and the Cinema
	Filoteo Alberini and the First Years of Italian Silent Cinema
	Film Genres in the Silent Era
	Dante and the Silent Cinema
	The Historical Epic
	Divismo and the Italian Star System
	Comic Clowns and Adventure Film Serials
	Realism in the Silent Cinema
	Silent Film and the Avant-garde: Italian Futurism
	Italian Intellectuals and the Silent Cinema: The Case of Luigi Pirandello
	The Decline of the Italian Film Industry before the Coming of Sound
Chapter 2: Industry and Ideology: The Talkies during the Fascist Era
	Signs of Revival
	Fascist Support for the Italian Cinema
	Critical Reassessment of Cinema during the Fascist Period
	The Search for a New Film Realism
	Film Realism during the Sound Period: A Rediscovered Tradition
	Augusto Genina and the Fictional Documentary Genre
	Francesco De Robertis, Vittorio Mussolini, and Film Realism
	Roberto Rossellini’s “Fascist Trilogy”
	Blasetti and Camerini: Studies in Style
	Vittorio De Sica: From Matinee Idol to Director
	In Praise of Military Prowess: Carmine Gallone’s Scipio Africanus
	Nationalism and Fascism in Feature Films during the Sound Era
	Literary Adaptation and Calligraphers
	Hollywood Withdraws from the Italian Market
	New Directions during the Twilight of the Fascist Regime
	Visconti’s Obsession: The Discovery of America and a New Cinema
Chapter 3: Neorealism: A Revolutionary and Problematic New Film Aesthetic
	Problematic Definitions of Italian Postwar Neorealism
	Literary Antecedents of Italian Neorealism in Film
	Neorealist Films as a Small Fraction of Italian Film Production
	Rossellini’s “War Trilogy”
	Vittorio De Sica’s “Trilogy of Solitude”
	Luchino Visconti and Verga: The Earth Trembles
Chapter 4: Neorealism’s Many Faces: Widening the Range of the Camera’s Eye
	Partisan Films: Outcry and The Tragic Pursuit
	Antonioni’s Short Documentary Sanitation Department
	Luigi Zampa’s To Live in Peace and the Comedy of War
	From War Themes to Postwar Social and Economic Themes
	A Change in the Political Climate in Italy and the Response of the Italian Cinema
	Melodrama, Popular Comedy, and “Rosy” Neorealism
	Rossellini, De Sica, and Visconti: Questioning the Power of the Movie Camera
	Italian Neorealism and Italian History
	Zavattini and the “Film Inquiry”: Neorealism as Reportage
Chapter 5: The Cinema of the Reconstruction and the Return of Melodrama
	Rossellini and The Ways of Love
	Voyage in Italy: Rossellini and Ingrid Bergman—Toward a Cinema of the Reconstruction
	Michelangelo Antonioni’s Early Films: Documentary, Film Noir, and the Psychological Film
	Fellini (and Pirandello) and the Road beyond Neorealism
	Fellini’s “Trilogy of Character”
	Federico Fellini and the “Crisis of Neorealism”: The “Trilogy of Grace or Salvation”
	De Sica, Visconti, and the Return of Melodrama
Chapter 6: Entertainment on an Epic Scale: The Italian Peplum
	Italian Film History, the Classical Tradition, and “Hollywood on the Tiber”
	The Peplum’s Defining Features
	The Mystique of the Bodybuilder
	Peplum Classics: A Representative Sampling
	The Italian Film Market and the Economic and Social Place of Popular Genre Films
Chapter 7: Commedia all’italiana: Social Criticism for Laughter’s Sake
	The Comic Genius of Monicelli and Comencini
	Comedy Sicilian Style: Pietro Germi
	Comic Views of Conformity in Society
	Lina Wertmüller’s Feminist Comedy
	Comedy in an Era of Rapid Social Change: The New Monsters
	Ettore Scola and Metacinematic Comedy
	Comedies Related to Commedia all’italiana: Franco and Ciccio, the Fantozzi Series, the Erotic or Sexy Comedy
	Comedy, Italian Style
Chapter 8: The Italian Art Film: Auteurism in Visconti, Antonioni, Fellini, and De Sica
	Luchino Visconti: History, Literature, and the Family Romance in Rocco and His Brothers and The Leopard
	Visconti’s “German Trilogy”: The Damned, Death in Venice, and Ludwig
	Michelangelo Antonioni and New Ways of Seeing in the “Trilogy of Alienation”
	Antonioni’s Experiment in Color: Red Desert
	Antonioni’s English-language Films: Blow-Up, Zabriskie Point, and The Passenger
	Antonioni’s Identification of a Woman and Two Documentaries (on China and Michelangelo)
	Vittorio De Sica and Box-Office Success
	Fellini, the Director as Superstar: La Dolce Vita
	Fellini and Dreams: 8½ and Juliet of the Spirits
	Rome as Metaphor: Fellini Satyricon and Fellini’s Roma
	The Political Fellini: Amarcord
	Fellini and Sexuality: Fellini’s Casanova and City of Women
	Fellini and Moviemaking: Interview
	Auteurs and Other Lesser Mortals
Chapter 9: Neorealism’s Legacy to a New Generation, and the Italian Political Film
	Roberto Rossellini’s Return to his Neorealist Origins
	“One Cannot Live without Rossellini”
	Vittorio De Seta and Francesco Rosi
	Pontecorvo and Revolution in the Third World
	Olmi’s Postneorealist Dramas of Intimacy
	The Versatile Lightness of Pupi Avati
	The Taviani Brothers: The Sublimation of Reality in Myth
	The Early Postneorealist Work of Pier Paolo Pasolini
	Bertolucci and Bellocchio’s Authorial Moves beyond Neorealism
	The Rise of the “Political” Film
	The Political Films of Elio Petri
	Francesco Rosi’s Postneorealist Political Cinema
	Expanding the Boundaries of Political Cinema: Montaldo, Bellocchio, and the Taviani Brothers
	Towards an Operatic Cinema: Literature and Politics in Tavianis’ Films
	Liliana Cavani’s Political Cinema
	Ermanno Olmi’s Vision of Italy’s Past
	Music in Zeffirelli, Rosi, and Cavani
	The Heritage of the Postneorealist Generation and the Italian Political Film
Chapter 10: Myth, Marx, and Freud in Pier Paolo Pasolini and Bernardo Bertolucci
	Pasolini’s Exploration of Mythological Consciousness Viewed through the Prism of Marx and Freud
	Pasolini’s “Trilogy of Life”
	Pasolini and the Marquis de Sade: An Unhappy Ending to a Director’s Career
	Bertolucci’s Intellectual Background and the Trajectory of His Career
	A Quantum Leap of Quality: Bertolucci’s Films on Fascism
	Last Tango in Paris: Bertolucci’s International Success
	Bertolucci’s Marxist Epic: 1900
	Luna and The Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man: A Return to Freud
	Triumph at the Oscars: The Last Emperor
	Bertolucci’s “International” Films: The Sheltering Sky, Little Buddha, Stealing Beauty, Besieged, and The Dreamers
	Marco Bellocchio: Another Restless Emilian
Chapter 11: The Spaghetti Nightmare: The Heyday of Italian Horror Films
	The Background of the Spaghetti Nightmare Film and its Different Phases of Development
	Freda and Bava: The Classic Italian Horror Film
	More Gothic Horror: Giorgio Ferroni, Antonio Margheriti, and Mario Caiano
	The Horror Films of Dario Argento: The “Trilogy of the Three Mothers”
	The Italian Horror Film: Zombies, Monsters, and Cannibals
	Michele Soavi and the End of the Spaghetti Nightmare Era
Chapter 12: A Fistful of Pasta: Sergio Leone and the Spaghetti Western
	The Rise of an Italian Variant on a Classic American Film Genre
	The Classic American Western Formula and the Italian Spaghetti Western Variant
	Leone’s Clint Eastwood Westerns: A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly
	Once Upon a Time There Was a Myth: American Mythology and the Leone Western
	Leone’s Legacy: Django Westerns
	Leone’s Legacy: Sartana, Ringo, Sabata, and Trinity
	The “Zapata-Spaghetti” Plot: Mexican Revolution and Political Ideology in Damiani, Corbucci, and Leone
	The Apex and Decline of the Spaghetti Western: Western Comedies and Genre ‑Parodies in They Call Me Trinity, Trinity Is Still My Name, and My Name Is Nobody
Chapter 13: Mystery, Gore, and Mayhem: The Italian Giallo
	The Term Giallo
	The Giallo as Filone
	The Birth of the Giallo: Mario Bava
	Dario Argento and the Giallo
	Post-Argento Gialli: Luciano Ercoli, Paolo Cavara, and Lucio Fulci
	Luciano Ercoli
	Paolo Cavara
	Lucio Fulci
	Post-Argento Gialli, Continued: Sergio Martino, Giuliano Carnimeo, Emilio Miraglia, and Aldo Lado
	Other Thrillers by Andrea Bianchi, Luigi Cozzi, Pupi Avati, Antonio Bido, Lamberto Bava, and Lucio Fulci
	Argento’s Later Gialli: Tenebrae, Opera, The Stendhal Syndrome, Sleepless, and The Card Player
	The Giallo: An Assessment
Chapter 14: The Poliziesco: Italian Crime Films from the 1970s to the Present
	The Origin and Historical Matrix of the Italian Crime Film
	Cinematic and Literary Antecedents for the Italian Crime Film, Domestic and Foreign
	King of the B’s: Fernando Di Leo
	Umberto Lenzi
	Damiano Damiani
	A Constellation of Crime Film Directors: Sollima, Dallamano, Massi, Castellari, Tarantini, and Ausino
	The End of the Classic Poliziesco and the Rise of a More Complex Italian Crime Film
	Leone’s Once Upon a Time in America
	The Prestige of Genre: Recent Developments in Crime Film
	Toward an Italian Noir
Chapter 15: Italy’s Truly Popular Genre: Tragicomedy from the 1980s to the Present
	The Industry’s Crisis at the End of the Century and the Bastion of Comedy
	The Last Comedies of Ettore Scola, Mario Monicelli, Nanni Loy, and Lina Wertmüller
	The Poetic Comedies of Maurizio Nichetti, Massimo Troisi, and Roberto Benigni
	Gabriele Salvatores’s “Road” Comedies
	The Classical Harmony of Paolo Virzì’s Tragicomedy
	Social Identity and Sense of Place in the Comedies of Silvio Soldini and Davide Ferrario
Chapter 16: A Fellinian Ascendant: The Auteur in Contemporary Italian Cinema
	Nanni Moretti
	Giuseppe Tornatore
	Paolo Sorrentino
	Matteo Garrone
Chapter 17: Weaving Present and Past: The Contemporary Italian Drama
	Traditional Threads into the Twentieth-First Century: Paolo and Vittorio Taviani, Marco Bellocchio, Gianni Amelio, and Ermanno Olmi
	The Present in the Past: Forms of the Historical Drama
	The Past in the Present: Forms of the Contemporary Drama
Notes
	Chapter 1
	Chapter 2
	Chapter 3
	Chapter 4
	Chapter 5
	Chapter 6
	Chapter 7
	Chapter 8
	Chapter 9
	Chapter 10
	Chapter 11
	Chapter 12
	Chapter 13
	Chapter 14
	Chapter 15
	Chapter 16
	Chapter 17
Bibliography
	I. Reference and Background
	II. Italian Cinema Histories
	III. Themes
	IV. Film Criticism (exclusive of history or theory)
	V. Italian Directors
	VI. Interviews with Directors
Photo Credits
Index