Popular Film Culture in Fascist Italy PDF Download

Author: James Hay
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 312

View

Book Description

Author: Stephen Gundle
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1782382453
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 336

View

Book Description
The intersection between film stardom and politics is an understudied phenomenon of Fascist Italy, despite the fact that the Mussolini regime deemed stardom important enough to warrant sustained attention and interference. Focused on the period from the start of sound cinema to the final end of Fascism in 1945, this book examines the development of an Italian star system and evaluates its place in film production and distribution. The performances and careers of several major stars, including Isa Miranda, Vittorio De Sica, Amedeo Nazzari, and Alida Valli, are closely analyzed in terms of their relationships to the political sphere and broader commercial culture, with consideration of their fates in the aftermath of Fascism. A final chapter explores the place of the stars in popular memory and representations of the Fascist film world in postwar cinema.

Author: Jacqueline Reich
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 9780253109149
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 390

View

Book Description
When Benito Mussolini proclaimed that "Cinema is the strongest weapon," he was telling only half the story. In reality, very few feature films during the Fascist period can be labeled as propaganda. Re-viewing Fascism considers the many films that failed as "weapons" in creating cultural consensus and instead came to reflect the complexities and contradictions of Fascist culture. The volume also examines the connection between cinema of the Fascist period and neorealism—ties that many scholars previously had denied in an attempt to view Fascism as an unfortunate deviation in Italian history. The postwar directors Luchino Visconti, Roberto Rossellini, and Vittorio de Sica all had important roots in the Fascist era, as did the Venice Film Festival. While government censorship loomed over Italian filmmaking, it did not prevent frank depictions of sexuality and representations of men and women that challenged official gender policies. Re-viewing Fascism brings together scholars from different cultural and disciplinary backgrounds as it offers an engaging and innovative look into Italian cinema, Fascist culture, and society.

Author: Ruth Ben-Ghiat
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253015669
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 421

View

Book Description
Ruth Ben-Ghiat provides the first in-depth study of feature and documentary films produced under the auspices of Mussolini’s government that took as their subjects or settings Italy’s African and Balkan colonies. These "empire films" were Italy's entry into an international market for the exotic. The films engaged its most experienced and cosmopolitan directors (Augusto Genina, Mario Camerini) as well as new filmmakers (Roberto Rossellini) who would make their marks in the postwar years. Ben-Ghiat sees these films as part of the aesthetic development that would lead to neo-realism. Shot in Libya, Somalia, and Ethiopia, these movies reinforced Fascist racial and labor policies and were largely forgotten after the war. Ben-Ghiat restores them to Italian and international film history in this gripping account of empire, war, and the cinema of dictatorship.

Author: James William Hay
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Motion pictures
Languages : en
Pages : 298

View

Book Description

Author: Steven Ricci
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520941284
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 249

View

Book Description
This study considers Italian filmmaking during the Fascist era and offers an original and revealing approach to the interwar years. Steven Ricci directly confronts a long-standing dilemma faced by cultural historians: while made during a period of totalitarian government, these films are neither propagandistic nor openly "Fascist." Instead, the Italian Fascist regime attempted to build ideological consensus by erasing markers of class and regional difference and by circulating terms for an imaginary national identity. Cinema and Fascism investigates the complex relationship between the totalitarian regime and Italian cinema. It looks at the films themselves, the industry, and the role of cinema in daily life, and offers new insights into this important but neglected period in cinema history.

Author: G. Lichtner
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137316624
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 265

View

Book Description
From neorealism's resolve to Berlusconian revisionist melodramas, this book examines cinema's role in constructing memories of Fascist Italy. Italian cinema has both reflected and shaped popular perceptions of Fascism, reinforcing or challenging stereotypes, remembering selectively and silently forgetting the most shameful pages of Italy's history.

Author: Lorenzo Fabbri
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 1452965366
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 294

View

Book Description
A deep dive into Italian cinema under Mussolini’s regime and the filmmakers who used it as a means of antifascist resistance Looking at Italy’s national film industry under the rule of Benito Mussolini and in the era that followed, Cinema Is the Strongest Weapon examines how cinema was harnessed as a political tool by both the reigning fascist regime and those who sought to resist it. Covering a range of canonical works alongside many of their neglected contemporaries, this book explores film’s mutable relationship to the apparatuses of state power and racial capitalism. Exploiting realism’s aesthetic, experiential, and affective affordances, Mussolini’s biopolitical project employed cinema to advance an idealized vision of life under fascism and cultivate the basis for a homogenous racial identity. In this book, Lorenzo Fabbri crucially underscores realism’s susceptibility to manipulation from diametrically opposed political perspectives, highlighting the queer, Communist, Jewish, and feminist filmmakers who subverted Mussolini’s notion that “cinema is the regime’s strongest weapon” by developing film narratives and film forms that challenged the prevailing ethno-nationalist ideology. Focusing on an understudied era of film history and Italian cultural production, Fabbri issues an important recontextualization of Italy’s celebrated neorealist movement and the structural ties it shares with its predecessor. Drawing incisive parallels to contemporary debates around race, whiteness, authoritarianism, and politics, he presents an urgent examination into the broader impact of visual media on culture and society. Retail e-book files for this title are screen-reader friendly with images accompanied by short alt text and/or extended descriptions.

Author: Mauro Giori
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137565934
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 281

View

Book Description
This book is the first to establish the relevance of same-sex desires, pleasures and anxieties in the cinema of post-war Italy. It explores cinematic representations of homosexuality and their significance in a wider cultural struggle in Italy involving society, cinema, and sexuality between the 1940s and 1970s. Besides tracing the evolution of representations through both art and popular films, this book also analyses connections with consumer culture, film criticism and politics. Giori uncovers how complicated negotiations between challenges to and valorization of dominant forms of knowledge of homosexuality shaped representations and argues that they were not always the outcome of hatred but also sought to convey unmentionable pleasures and complicities. Through archival research and a survey of more than 600 films, the author enriches our understanding of thirty years of Italian film and cultural history.

Author: Stephen Gundle
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781461954538
Category : PERFORMING ARTS
Languages : en
Pages : 337

View

Book Description
This book offers the first extended analysis of film stardom in Fascist Italy, focusing on the period from the start of sound cinema to the final end of Fascism in 1945. The author examines the development of an Italian star system, evaluates its place in film production and distribution, and explores its relationships with the political sphere and with broader commercial culture. The popular press, along with other evidence, is used to assess the extent of public engagement with film stars. Several major stars, including Isa Miranda, Vittorio De Sica, Amedeo Nazzari and Alida Valli, are closely analysed in terms of their screen performances and professional trajectories, including their fates in the aftermath of the Fascist regime. The book makes an original contribution to the understanding of Italian Fascism and the cinema of the period by tackling a field hitherto neglected, despite it being deemed important enough by the regime to warrant sustained attention and interference. A final chapter explores the place of the stars in popular memory and representations of the Fascist film world in postwar cinema. Stephen Gundle is Professor of Film and Television Studies at the University of Warwick. His books include "Between Hollywood and Moscow: the Italian Communists and the Challenge of Mass Culture, 1943-91" (2000), "Bellissima: Feminine Beauty and the Idea of Italy" (2007), "Mass Culture and Italian Society from Fascism to the Cold War" (2008, with David Forgacs), "Glamour: A History" (2008) and "Death and the Dolce Vita: The Dark Side of Rome in the 1950s" (2011). He is co-editor, with Christopher Duggan and Giuliana Pieri, of "The Cult of the Duce: Mussolini and the Italians" (2013).