This collection of carefully-researched essays forms a multifaceted, functional, and up-to-date reference volume that should be on the shelf of every cinephile and student of Italian cinema.
Federico Pacchioni, Associate Professor of World Languages and Cultures, Chapman University, USA
The writers assembled here by Joseph Luzzi - some of them well-known scholars at the top of their game, others new voices emerging with power and flair - engage us at all stages of this rich new volume on Italian cinema. Here is a reference work that makes good its title promise - to cover an entire history, from the age of silent screen to digital images of more than a century later. The various chapters weave pathways into existing knowledge, extending lines of inquiry in a variety of enticing directions. Individual film critics here take different approaches, but in all cases the writing styles are cogent, intriguing, and a challenge both to other scholars and to the general reader. A clear overall chronology by Mattia Acetoso leads the volume. Each further chapter has a comprehensive bibliography and filmography of the particular aspect of Italian cinema under consideration. In all respects the contributors prove worthy of the volume’s dedicatee, Millicent Marcus, whose pioneering work in the field has for decades drawn others magnetically to it, and whose own contribution here is one of many pieces of exemplary exploration. Those readers who are well acquainted with aspects of Italian cinema will find their senses of it revitalised, discovering unknown films to watch and old favourites to consider in new ways. Those by contrast who so far know relatively little will receive guidance here, and stimulation to commence their own exploration with fascination and in bold individual ways. Here is a volume that will enhance love of and expertise about Italian cinema - and indeed Italian culture more generally, since all the contributions are richly contextualised - for many years to come.
Jonathan White, Professor Emeritus in Literature, University of Essex, UK
List of Contributors
Glossary
Mattia Acetoso (Boston College, USA)
Chronology
Mattia Acestoso (Boston College, USA)
Introduction
Joseph Luzzi (Bard College, USA)
Part I - Chronologies and Movements
1. Italian Silent Film
Antonio Costa (Università di Padova, Italy)
2. Futurism and Film
Michael Syrimis (Tulane University, USA)
3. The Never-Ending Story of Film and Fascism
Vito Zagarrio (Università di Roma Tre, Italy)
4. Neorealism
Giuliana Minghelli (McGill University, Canada)
5. The Orphaned Generation: Cinema of the 1980s and 1990s
Alessia Ricciardi (Northwestern University, USA)
6. Persistence of Vision: Realism and the Popular in Italian Cinema of the New Millennium
Millicent Marcus (Yale University, USA)
Part II - Gender, Genre, Theory
7. The Five Faces of the Italian Femme Fatale
Stephen Gundle (University of Warwick, UK)
8. Italian Women's Cinema and the Wounded Filmic Body
Dana Renga (The Ohio State University, USA)
9. The Cinematic Evolution of Commedia all'Italiana
Marcia Landy (University of Pittsburgh, USA)
10. Popular Italian Cinema
Catherine O'Rawe (University of Bristol, UK)
11. Italian Film Theory, 1907-2015
Gabriele Pedullà (Università di Roma Tre, Italy)
Part III - Relations and Debates
12. Film Music: "Kaos and the Taviani"
Daniela Bini (University of Texas, Austin, USA)
13. Photography and Film
Sarah Carey (McGraw-Hill Education)
14. Television and Film
Stefano Baschiera (Queen's University Belfast, UK)
15. Italian Documentary and the Predicaments of the Auteur
Luca Caminati (Concordia University, Canada) and Mauro Sassi (Independent Scholar)
16. The Global Impact of Italian Neorealism
Laura E. Ruberto (Berkeley City College, USA) and Kristi M. Wilson (Soka University of America, USA)
Part IV - Films in Focus
17. Cabiria
Robert Rushing (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA)
18. Senso
Brendan Hennessey (Binghamton University, USA)
19. Bitter Rice
Charles L. Leavitt IV (University of Notre Dame, USA)
20. La strada
Federico Pacchioni (Chapman University, USA)
21. L'avventura
John David Rhodes (University of Cambridge, UK)
22. Once upon a Time in the West
Maryann McDonald Carolan (Fairfield University, USA)
23. Theorem
Robert S.C. Gordon (University of Cambridge, UK)
24. The Conformist
Michael Cramer (Sarah Lawrence College, USA)
25. Love and Anarchy
Bernadette Luciano (University of Auckland, New Zealand)
26. The Best of Youth
Alan O'Leary (University of Leeds, UK)
Part V - Behind the Scenes
27. Sound and Soundtrack in Italian Cinema
Monica Facchini (Colgate University, USA)
28. Screenwriting
Cosetta Gaudenzi (University of Memphis, USA)
29. Open-Air Cinema
Allison Cooper (Bowdoin College, USA)
Index