The Italian Film Industry (1945–1985)

Except for comedy, Italian popular cinema in the postwar era was mainly characterized by ephemeral genres and subgenres that would follow the model of a successful national or foreign movie and then exploit it to the point of complete saturation. A good example is the spaghetti Western, which became extremely popular in the wake of Sergio Leone’s 1964 success Per un pugno di dollari (A Fistful of Dollars), only to disappear within about a decade. One of the main reasons for this phenomenon is the fact that, unlike the Hollywood studio system, the Italian film industry was utterly disorganized, comprising countless short-lived, small production companies with no interest in building up fashionable filmic formulas for long-term use. Thus among successful genres such as the film operistico (opera film), the peplum (sword and sandal), and the giallo (thriller), comedy appears to be the only exception. As old as Italian cinema itself, comedy not only survived every crisis in the movie industry but also became increasingly important, and it is now the only popular form of Italian film (all the other genres disappeared or moved to television). This can be explained by the Italians’ well-known passion for comedy. Long before the birth of film, comedy had a long-standing tradition in Italian theater, going back at least as far as the renowned commedia dell’arte in the sixteenth century, characterized by farce, irreverent parody, mockery, and biting satire.

Music Publishers and Synchronized Scores: Mascagni, Ricordi, and <i>Rapsodia satanica</i>

This article addresses the apparent reluctance to engage with feminist film theory and gender studies in the mainstream of Italian film studies, particularly those originating within Italy. The roots of this neglect lie in a patriarchal critical tradition and a tendency for Italian feminism to function outside academia. The article contends that this situation has led to an impoverished understanding of Italian film history and potentially negative consequences for the Italian film industry. Emphasizing a need for sensitivity to the differences between Italian and Anglophone feminist approaches, the article considers the ways in which more attention to feminism and its theoretical debates could lead to a very different picture, indeed a second take on the Italian film industry, as illustrated with the example of 1950s melodrama and spectatorship theory. Finally, the article maps some other ways in which scholars, particularly Anglophone, might approach this second take, and why they should.

Taking into account the EU policies aimed to strengthen the industrial-financial condition of its audiovisual system, the Italian broadcasters’ economy and the historical development of its relationship with the national film industry, our study will tackle the Italian free-to-air television policies in national feature films broadcasting. The study analyzes the trends of Italian feature films programming in the national free-to-air television market during the last 10 years, referring to the following issues: a) volume and origin of feature films; b) broadcaster (public and commercial); c) time slots. The results show how Italy has been experiencing a much more dramatic downturn in fiction programming in respect to the other European countries and it discloses that the increase in national TV fiction programming is accompanied by a contraction of domestic feature films slots (despite the good state of health the Italian film industry has been experiencing during the past decade) and an increase of the American ones.

In the global film market, China is gaining more and more importance. The Chinese box office and film admissions are growing year after year and Chinese film and related companies are able to make business more and more abroad. On the contrary, US and European film markets are flat and the production costs of their film are growing. Both are trying to enter the Chinese film market and cooperate with Chinese film companies. The article reviews the Hollywood strategies towards China and analyses the advantages and problems that will be found following this way and the reason why China is interested to cooperate with Hollywood. But also, in that case, there are advantages and problems to analyse. The place of European film industry and market is different because Europe has a lot of problems to deal with: industry and market fragmentation, little cooperation among member states, lacking distribution of European film outside national markets and too large box office share of Hollywood films. European companies would like to improve cooperation with China, but they have few financial resources to invest in co-productions, they do not have blockbusters to push the China box office and they have no know-how to offer for gaining on the global film market. They can only offer cultural, artistic and creative competences, but is that what Chinese film industry is looking for?

Francesca Archibugi is one of the major women in the Italian film industry whose work represents a significant contribution to contemporary cinematic art and who has obtained unanimous international recognition. This article examines Archibugi's filmography from an aesthetic perspective, while analysing her narratives and realistic cinematography in relation to the Italian familyscape where tradition and modernity coexist in a dialectic relationship. Archibugi sets her narratives in a milieu of national events and cultural transformations, weaving together private spheres and public events. In her most recent film Flying Lessons (2007) the director proves to be also perceptive to national and diasporic identities, post-national contexts and trans-cultural contacts. Characterised by aesthetic minimalism and realistic narratives, her authorial work goes beyond the intimate, the personal, the private and transcends the local and the national, as it assembles these elements in a montage of human micro-history and recomposes them as the tiles of an Italian social and inter-cultural mosaic.

This article draws on a broad range of under-explored historical sources to document the career trajectories of the women who worked in the Italian film industry between 1930 and 1944. Challenging established histories that normalise male dominance in Italian cinema during and after Mussolini's regime, the article sheds light on women's overlooked contribution to Italy's sound film industry and explores the multilayered, shifting dimension of their precarious and gendered labour. Engaging with key questions raised by historians of Italian Fascism and by feminist research in film and media history, the article delineates intersectional barriers to film employment faced by women in the years of the dictatorship and points to their historical legacy.

The yearbooks and almanacs printed between the beginning of the Second World War and the end of the Fifties collect rare and hardly accessible data on the Italian film industry and the professionals involved in it. As such, they are both sources, whose use can be extremely profitable in production studies, and objects of investigation that might reveal the rhetoric and the discursive strategies through which different social actors have promoted an image of that production system as a fully-fledged and rationally organized industry. The article describes these yearbooks and interprets such discourses, in order to better understand the tensions that characterize this phase of important changes for the Italian film production.

Starting in the late 1950s, exploitation filmmakers operating in Italy sometimes used pseudonyms, allonyms or prestanomi. This article examines the multiplicity of motivations behind this practice, and attempts to untangle some of the implications of the use of pseudonyms in Italian exploitation cinema, especially as it relates to the complex dynamics of gender and nationality in the film production sector. It compares the case of the alias O. Hellman, which appears in a small number of exploitation films in the 1970s, with similar ones from that period, including ones in which the ambiguity of authorial attribution involves husband and wife teams – an ambiguity fascinatingly compounded by the protectionist measures of Italian film policy and the contradictory evidence of primary and secondary sources. Finally, the article reflects on the implications of this practice on data-based gender research in the Italian film industry.

This paper examines the evolution and effects of the tax credits systems introduced in the Italian film industry. We have studied the economic and juridical roots of State subsidies, enabling the readers to understand their legitimacy and providing them with the main international best practices. An empirical analysis is performed, assessing whether recent measures introduced in Italy have influenced the domestic theatrical distribution of a sample of 399 Italian films released in the last 4 years. Tax incentives are found to have a positive relation to the number of prints distributed. However, direct contributions do not have a statistical influence on theatrical distribution, supporting the recent wave of reforms aimed at shifting the mix of resources from direct to indirect public support.

In conclusion to our 2013 book, Reframing Italy, in which we considered new trends in Italian women’s filmmaking, we broach the topic of the marginalisation and stereotyping of women in a highly patriarchal film industry and the problems involved in articulating an aesthetics that speaks directly to female audiences. While our book highlights the exceptional, often invisible, production by Italian women filmmakers, for most women filmmakers in Italy their opportunities in the film industry are still limited and their films appear against all odds. In our contribution to this volume, we expand on our previous work and focus more directly on the ongoing struggle for gender equality in the Italian film industry. A recent 2017 report by DEA (Donne e audiovisivo) confirmed our own findings that Italian women directors find themselves less likely to attract funding or to gain the confidence of producers. In fact, the study shows that only 12% of public financing for films goes to women, 21% of the films produced by the state agency RAI are directed by women, and only 9.2% of the films directed by women reach mainstream movie houses.

This paper explores the prospects of Asian American book-to-movie adaptations in the Hollywood industry. There have been a large number of book-to-movie adaptations in the history of the American film industry, such as Great Expectation (1946), The Silence of the Lamb (1991), and The Great Gatsby (2013) to mention just a few. Some have also been reported to gain fame and economic success in the global film market. The mentioned book-to-movie adaptations were based on Western authors. Meanwhile, history has witnessed the emergence of Asian American writers such as: Bharati Mukherjee, Amy Tan, Khaled Hosseini, Anchee Min, among others who have played an essential role in the field of American literature. This paper uses a qualitative method by analyzing data from selected Book-to movie adaptations. It is evident that some of them received prestigious awards. Tan’s book-to-movie adaptation The Joy Luck Club (1993), Hosseini’s book-to-movie adaptation The Kite Runner (2007) and Kevin Kwan’s Crazy Rich Asians (2018) have entered Hollywood to participate in the extremely competitive film market. The study results show that Asian American writers have emerged recently. Second, Asian American book-to-movie adaptations offer unique narratives to American audiences, although only a handful of Asian American book-to-movie adaptations have been produced. In conclusion, despite the promising growth of Asian American literature, readers can realize that Asian American book-to-movie adaptations have to struggle to be able to tap into the Hollywood industry.

This study examines the perceived association between financial risk management and beliefs of small business owners about the financial performance of their new small business ventures in the service and manufacturing industries of India. The survey shows that the perceived valuation of financial risk management positively affects the beliefs of small business owners about the financial performance of their new small business ventures in both the service and manufacturing industries of India. Results show that financial performance is significantly higher among new small business ventures with adequate internal financing sources relative to new small business ventures without adequate internal financing sources. This study contributes to the literature on the relationship between financial risk management and financial performance of new small business ventures. The findings may be useful for financial managers, production and service firm owners, investors, consultants, and other stakeholders.

This study examines the perceived association between financial risk management and beliefs of small business owners about the financial performance of their new small business ventures in the service and manufacturing industries of India. The survey shows that the perceived valuation of financial risk management positively affects the beliefs of small business owners about the financial performance of their new small business ventures in both the service and manufacturing industries of India. Results show that financial performance is significantly higher among new small business ventures with adequate internal financing sources relative to new small business ventures without adequate internal financing sources. This study contributes to the literature on the relationship between financial risk management and financial performance of new small business ventures. The findings may be useful for financial managers, production and service firm owners, investors, consultants, and other stakeholders.

ABSTRACTAlong with the rising position of Asian film markets in Hollywood's global marketing strategy and the development of Chinese commercial cinema, an increasing number of Chinese actors have been recognized as ‘global’, ‘international’ or ‘transnational’ stars whose names are intended to appeal to audiences across different sections of the global film market. The rise of Chinese stars in the global film market accordingly raises the question of how the presence of these stars are used to sell films across different markets, and how their cross-border stardom should be understood in local contexts. In this article, I use Chow Yun-fat as a case study to explore these two questions. Rather than seeing such cross-border stardom as homogeneously applied to the star's public status across different film markets, I argue that in many cases the perception of a star's global status is often restricted to a certain regional and cultural space, and that the recognition of a star's global value is fragmented and plural across different market sectors.