‘Io posso offrirle soltanto l'immenso calore del mio affetto’: Masculinity in Italian Cinematic Melodrama

Abstract

This article addresses the representation of masculinity in Italian film melodrama of the 1950s. The introduction outlines the reasons for which Italian film studies has tended to focus above all on female characters in this popular genre. The subsequent argument is structured in four parts. In the first, I offer a typology of the various masculinities employed within these films. In the second, I examine the relationship between the dominant models of masculinity in the melodrama and socio-political changes in gender dynamics that took place in Italy during the 1940s and 1950s. In relation to two examples (Traviata ’53, L'angelo bianco), in the third part I analyse the ways in which melodrama, in its representation of a masculinity in crisis that is opposed to fascist virility, engages with emasculation. The conclusive fourth section offers a brief reflection on the relationship between male desire and the melodramatic trope of the suffering heroine.