Italian Cinema Research Articles

Federico Fellini’s effect in Argentine cinema: The case of Leonardo Favio

A self-taught artist initially trained alongside Leopoldo Torre Nilsson, and considered today by both his country’s critics and his peers as one of the most important Argentinean directors, if not the most important, Leonardo Favio (1938–2012) often expressed his views on Italian cinema and Federico Fellini’s films without openly acknowledging their effect on his films. Despite this positioning, I intend to illustrate in this article how Favio’s cinematic universe has been traversed and shaped by Italian cinema, as by a red thread. More precisely, I aim to highlight how Favio, after incorporating several themes, characters and approaches of neorealist cinema in his only short and in his first film, included dialogues with Fellini’s cinematic universe in almost all his subsequent releases. The encounter with the cinema of Italian Maestro, without ever diminishing the originality and specificity of Favio’s films, turns them into a sort of resonance box for Fellinian echoes.

Writing and rewriting Italian cinema and media history: Five new dissertations

Writing and rewriting Italian cinema and media history: Five new dissertations

‘Neorealism is a scam’: Fernando Vallejo, the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia and Italy’s connection to Colombian cinema

This article analyses the connection between Italian and Colombian cinema through the novels and films of Colombian author and filmmaker Fernando Vallejo (1942–present). It examines Vallejo’s autofictional novel, Los caminos a Roma (The Roads to Rome) (1988) where he recounts his experience as a student at Rome’s Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in 1966, criticizes Italian neorealism and auteurism, and articulates his embryonic idea to create a film set during Colombia’s civil war. In his critique of Italian cinema, I argue that Vallejo embodies a certain hostility towards European film, its institutions and especially Italian neorealism that was percolating in the Latin America of the 1960s and 1970s. Exploring the historiography of Italy’s relationship with Latin American cinema, I remark on an emergent (and problematic) privileging of Italian neorealism as a prototype for New Latin American Cinema (NLAC) and consider how Vallejo’s filmmaking was shaped in opposition to Italian archetypes.

The international vocation of the Centro Sperimentale: Oral history, personal memories and an interview with Roberto Perpignani

This article seeks to provide an overview of the rich history of the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia (CSC) in Rome, as well as show the importance of preserving its institutional legacy. First, this article details the school’s connection to the Italian State, with particular attention to its fluctuating political affiliations over the years. Next, this article considers the international vocation of the CSC and offers reflections on the school’s pertinent influence on film abroad, with a specific focus on the CSC’s connection to the Escuela Internacional de Cine y TV (EICTV) in Cuba and its lasting mark on its alumni from across the globe. All of this will be followed by an interview with Roberto Perpignani, a prestigious Italian film editor and editing instructor at the CSC.

Working in the dream factory: gendering women's film labour under Fascism

AbstractThis 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.

Ivo Blom, Quo Vadis?, Cabiria and the ‘Archaeologists’: Early Italian Cinema’s Appropriation of Art and Archaeology

Ivo Blom, <i>Quo Vadis?, Cabiria and the ‘Archaeologists’: Early Italian Cinema’s Appropriation of Art and Archaeology</i>

Myth and reality in the work of Italian neorealists

The object of research is Italian neorealism of the 1940-1950s. The subject of research is the work of neorealist directors Roberto Rossellini, Cesare Zavattini, Giuseppe de Santis, Vittorio de Sica, Alberto Latuada. Features of neorealism are also inherent in the early work of directors Luchino Visconti («Obsession» 1943, «Earth Trembles» 1948), Federico Fellini («The Road» 1954, «Nights of Cabiria» 1957), Piero Paolo Pasolini («Accatone» 1961, «Mama Roma» 1962), Michelangelo Antonioni «People from the Po River» 1947). Neorealism develops under the influence of French poetic realism, as well as, under the influence of verism, especially, the work of L. Pirandello. The focus of the neorealists was a person in interaction with society, the environment. The purpose of this study is to consider the features of realism and neorealism, to consider the space created by directors. This study uses various research methods - phenomenological, intertextual, comparative, hermeneutic, content analysis in their combination and complementarity. The scientific novelty of this study lies in the opposition of mythological and real space in the films of Italian directors, as well as in the application of an integrated approach. The main conclusion of this study is the thesis that myth and reality in the work of Italian neorealists interact with each other. Despite the documentary approach to filming, neorealists create their own, special reality, turn to history and myth. The concept of "neorealism" is quite complex, many of its representatives called themselves realists. The focus of neorealism becomes a person in interaction with society, with the environment. As the principles of neorealism, one can single out chorality, that is, the interaction of people. A separate feature of neorealism is the appeal to fantasy. F. Fellini and M. Antonioni open a new chapter in the history of Italian cinema.

Between Invisibility and Hypervisibility: Race, Genre, and Politics in Summertime and Zero

Italian media depictions of Black and brown bodies tend to be split into two opposing types. On the one hand, in images and stories about immigration, which are ubiquitous in the news and within national consciousness, these bodies have become hypervisible. On the other hand, these stories often neglect the quotidian realities that many children of immigrants face, particularly in terms of their lack of citizenship, which leaves the plight of second-generation Italians invisible. A similar pattern of invisibility is evident in Italian film and television, where Black protagonists have long been absent. At the time of their releases, the Netflix series Summertime and Zero offered intriguing possibilities for the representation of race, approaching the issues of hypervisibility and invisibility and exploring the tensions between these extremes through the protagonists and narratives at their heart. Through a comparative analysis of these two series informed by postcolonial, critical race, and film theories, I ask what it means that Summertime, a show that conforms to norms regarding race, genre, and politics, was renewed for three seasons, whereas Zero was canceled after only one season—despite its offering a more nuanced representation of being Black in Italy. I argue that the latter show was canceled precisely because it failed to calm social fears about race.

Narrating the Nation: Language and the Landscape of Time in Scego’s Adua

In Adua (2015), Igiaba Scego illuminates the legacy of Italian colonialism by chronicling the intergenerational trauma passed from Zoppe, a Somali translator working for Italians during the fascist ventennio, to his daughter Adua, an actress exploited by the Italian film industry. This study analyzes Scego’s use of perspective to represent fundamentally different experiences of time in Adua, emphasizing Scego’s unique contribution to a postcolonial aesthetics that combats colonial temporality as defined by Johannes Fabian. In Time and the Other, Fabian asserts that time has not yet been decolonized, and thus has not been deconstructed as an ideological instrument of power. Scego unflinchingly documents the effects of colonial chronopolitics through her third-person narration of Zoppe’s perspective, which deteriorates into a series of invectives that portray his complete arrest in time. Adua endures similar traumas, but she embraces narration as a means of refashioning her voice and restoring community. In depicting Adua’s story as a triumph over colonial temporality, Scego champions first-person narration as a tool for the construction of a postcolonial chronopolitics that decolonizes time in order to work towards a more ethical geopolitical order.

Narratives of Mediterranean migrants in Italian cinema: The camera angle and close-up in Terraferma and Fuocoammare

Over the last two decades, Italian cinema has turned its gaze towards the Mediterranean Sea to dismantle the narratives constructed by populist political parties and mainstream European media, which have emphasized the rhetoric of border protection, security and legality through the systematic depersonalization of migrants. Film counter-narratives to this have been effectively developed, and cinema has responded to the materiality and fixity of migrants’ bodies by composing stories in which these migrants recover their sociopolitical agency. This article provides a close analysis of the characterization in Emanuele Crialese’s Terraferma (2011) and Gianfranco Rosi’s Fuocoammare (Fire at Sea) (2016) in relation to technical and stylistic forms of filmic representation. Particular attention is paid to the correlation between the aesthetic level of the films and the social dimension of the characters, which is primarily expressed through framing in which the migrant occupies the central position, establishing a dialectical relationship with the other characters and their social space.

Italian Film in the Present Tense by Millicent Marcus (review)

Italian Film in the Present Tense by Millicent Marcus (review)

ANCIENT HORROR STORY ABOUT A WEREWOLF IN PETRONIUS’ NOVEL “SATYRICON” AND FEDERICO FELLINI’S FILM “A MARRIAGE AGENCY”

The article makes an assumption about a probable reference to Petronius’ Satyricon, occurring in Federico Fellini’s novel A Marriage Agency (Un’agenzia matrimoniale), which is part of the anthology film Love in the City (L’amore in città, 1953) made by a group of Italian film directors. Many a time did the Italian film maker admit that he had discovered Petronius as early as his years at the lyceum in Rimini. The author of the article adduces arguments testifying to a possible influence Petronius may have had on Fellini; he draws parallels between the ancient horror-story told by a freedman, Niceros, at the feast held by Trimalchio (Sat. 61–62) and the modern story created by Federico Fellini. These parallels in the stories about werewolves (versipellis), found in Petronius’ Satyricon and in Fellini’s A Marriage Agency, are credible coincidences. Fellini chose the tale about a werewolf, which may have been inspired by Petronius’ novel that had had a great influence on him in his green years. And the horror-story about a lycanthrope told by Niceros is undoubtedly one of the most memorable ones at the cena Trimalchionis. If the assumption in the article is true, then the story A Marriage Agency is Fellini’s yet another film that, along with Satyricon, features the Petronius subject, and, what is most important, this happened half a decade before his ‘historiographic’ masterpiece.

Satyajit Ray: A Film Director and Filmmaker.

Satyajit Ray is well known as one of the greatest film directors or filmmakers in the world. He directed thirty-six movies, of which there are twenty-nine feature films, five documentary films, and two short films. He was inspired by a Hollywood film named ’Bicycle Thieves', also known as ‘The Bicycle Thief', directed by Italian film director Vittorio de Cica during his trip to London. Returning to India, Ray made his ultimate decision to make his first film, ‘Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road) (1995). He became famous for his three films, ‘Pather Panchali(1995), ‘ 'Aparajito' (1956), ‘Apur pur Sangsar' ( also known as the Apu Trilogy. The Apu Trilogy is one of his masterpieces. This paper aims to bring up Satyajit Ray’s contribution and his reflections on the Indian film industry.

Gli accordi Anica-Mpea e l’impiego dei capitali americani nel nostro cinema / Parte 2 – Dal finanziamento dei film al finanziamento dell’Anica

The agreements between the industrial and trade organizations ANICA and MPAA/MPEA regulated Italian-American film relations between 1951 and 1962, promoting the growth of “Runaway productions” and joint productions in Italy, but also supporting the distribution of Italian films abroad by US companies. The article, based on extensive archival research, reconstructs for the first time the development and implementation of these agreements, also following the paths of American money in Italian cinema.

OcchioPinocchio. Il Pinocchio apocrifo – e maledetto – di Francesco Nuti

Severely criticized almost unanimously at the time of its release, Francesco Nuti’s “OcchioPinocchio” (1994) represents a rare case of a “cursed” Italian film from the 1990s. It became notorious for its extremely costly and troubled production, whose release was delayed by a year, as well as for the massive flop that followed, so severe that it marked the decline of Nuti’s career and personal life, despite his previous success as a comedian and director. Twenty years after its release, perhaps it is time to reevaluate its worth, if not critically, then at least by scientifically identifying the prominent place it occupies within the myriad of cinematic adaptations of Collodi’s Pinocchio. Nuti’s film is indeed, not only in Italy but also in the international Pinocchio galaxy, the creator of an apocryphal Pinocchio: an adult yet somehow a child due to life’s circumstances, the son of a Geppetto who wants to make him a puppet, forced to flee through a land of toys that is the wildest and most inhospitable America, in love with a dark version of the fairy whom he ultimately helps. A disoriented Pinocchio made of flesh that must learn to discover itself, even timidly encountering sexuality, unable to lie and thus unsuitable for a world of deceitful adults (starting with his father); a Pinocchio thrown brutally into a world of violence, where he must fend for himself without help (no critique has dwelled on the fleeting yet essential moment when he crushes an insect with his shoe while uttering “Fuck you, cricket”, thereby affirming his solitude). Thus, “OcchioPinocchio” juggles various aspects of the Collodian discourse, both diegetically (up to the bad ending), and in terms of the physical and psychological construction of the character, who is hurled from Tuscany to the United States, embodying a specific form of Italian identity.

Nancy w Krainie Wieprzy. Kilka uwag o "Co?" Romana Polańskiego i recepcji filmu we Włoszech

Nancy in the Land of Swines: A Few Reflections on Polanski’s What? and the Film’s Reception in Italy The article discusses Roman Polanski’s lesser-known film What?, made in 1972 in Italy, in Carlo Ponti’s villa. Despite not very favorable general reception immediately after the premiere and later in time, the film was appreciated by Italian critics who admired its intertextual values, self-citations and references to Italian cinema, such as ironic allusions to commedia all’italiana, or Federico Fellini’s works and oneiric atmosphere. The main aim of the text is to present some ways of reinterpreting and reevaluating Polanski’s underrated and almost forgotten movie.

Mille canzoni per un burattino che canzonava

The article examines some of the many songs inspired by Collodi’s book, in particular those that are part of film soundtracks. The author distinguishes between the songs about Pinocchio and those song by Pinocchio. Pinocchio does not sing much in the novel, he mainly likes mocking and is easy-go- ing, interested in plays and loves partying. He furthermore pollutes the soundscape with his wooden feet and is altogether a noisy and naughty child. Italian films generally respect Pinocchio’s sponta- neous childish musicality, whereas foreign musical films, such as those produced by Disney and Del Toro have used the episode of Mangiafuoco’s theater to underline Pinocchio’s identity as a showman, who is actually a puppet. Moreover, also the authors of the songs about Pinocchio interpreted and celebrated him in many ways (e.g.the inauguration of the park in Collodi) highlighting the ambiguity and richness of the character and his adventures. Even the music (melodies, arrangements, sounds) are influenced by the bittersweet complexity of the elusive puppet.

Motifs of the Media Narrative ‘Female Migrant Worker’ in Ukrainian, Polish, and Italian Cinema

Lately, the image of a woman-wage earner, a migrant from another country, has become a particular symbol of the economic disadvantage of some countries and a symbol of the search for a better life in a foreign land. In the Ukrainian cultural context, the image of a wage earner in literature is classic: starting with oral folk art and fiction and ending with film images of the modern period. Instead, our study proposes to change slightly the aspect of view to the problem and to analyse it through the prism of gender and national stereotypes, highlighting the critical narratives of the history of migration and employment of women, not only Ukrainian but also Polish. This will remove some of the connotations of cross-national insults or under-appreciation and open up areas for further exploration of such narratives in film content. Stereotyped images broadcast in film material through rigid narratives are even more important for research because, on the one hand, they reflect specific structures of collective ordinary consciousness. On the other hand, they form them. It is, in particular, about the processes of the transgression of stable consciousness concepts through mass media. While analysing film images, we can trace certain constructs of narratives related to a migrant woman trying to earn money in another country. First of all, she appears as rightless, unadapted to another culture, the one who can apply for unskilled work (usually due to the language barrier and other factors), and under challenging conditions, her country is poor and does not give her opportunities; also women earn for family, that suits men completely, so there is an emphasis on the inability of some people at the expense of others, on gender stigmatisation.

Between Domestication and Foreignization: A Study of How an Italian Film Remake Got Lost in Translation in the Arab World

Film remakes represent a form of cinematic translation that reconstructs various elements of the original text. This article relies on the translation strategies of domestication and foreignization to analyze “Āṣḥāb Wālā Āʿāz”, the Arabic remake of the Italian film “Perfetti Sconosciuti” or “Perfect Strangers”. This study shows that the Arabic remake, which sparked controversy across the Middle East, replicates many of the syntactic elements of the original film, such as the narrative and the plot structure, as well as cinematographic and paralinguistic elements. Still, it attempts to adopt a transformative approach in order to generate a cultural production. The result shows that the use of domestication in film remakes alters the rhetorical effect of the original version and that, although foreignization may promote an audience’s interest in foreign cultures, it may contribute to the reproduction of otherness due to the dissatisfaction of the targeted audiences.

Этторе Скола. Исторические и семейные хроники 1980-х

The article explores the language and themes of the films made by Italian film director Ettore Scola in the 1980s. The author of the article considers this period of Ettore Scola’s career in the context of the general evolution of his cinematography and the development of Italian cinema — movement from early Italian-style comedies to historical frescoes and parables of elusive time. Scola’s films not only reflect the social, political and cultural changes in the Apennine Peninsula in the last three decades of the 20th century, but also address universal, philosophical themes. These melancholic stories often contain a warning of danger and a reminder of responsibility for our actions which can lead to irreparable consequences. In 1983, the director made one of his best and most famous films, Ballando, ballando, in which the characters do not speak a word. Presenting a Parisian ballroom as a model of history, Scola argues that the value of a person’s private life is undeniable, and that it is he, the hero emerging from the elements of everyday life — funny, absurd, and contradictory, but able to hope in spite of unbearable circumstances — who is its main protagonist. In The Family (1986), this model is a flat in Rome, where the protagonist’s family has lived for decades. Finally, Skola’s What Time Is It? (1989) develops the findings from his previous films, but unlike them, it does not present a group portrait in an interior setting against the backdrop of the 20th century but a dialogue between two characters — father and son — taking place during a city walk on a single day. However, this chamber family chronicle is also imbued with reflections on the relationship between an “ordinary” man and the time of big history.