Dalle Vacche The Body in the Mirror

Shapes of History in Italian Cinema
Course Book
ISBN: 978-1-4008-6254-2
Verlag: De Gruyter
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: 1 - PDF Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 326 Seiten

Reihe: Princeton Legacy Library

This rich, wide-ranging book explores Italy's national film style by relating it closely to politics and to the historicist thought of Croce, Gentile, and Gramsci. Here is a new kind of film history--a nonlinear, intertextual approach that confronts the total story of the growth of a national cinema while challenging the traditional formats of general histories and period studies. Examining Italian silent films of the fascist era through neorealism to modernist filmmaking after May 1968, Angela Dalle Vacche reveals opera and the commedia dell'arte to be the strongest influences. As she presents the whole history of Italian cinema from the standpoint of a dialectic between these two styles, she offers brilliant interpretations of individual films. The "body in the mirror" is the national self-image on the screen, which changes shape in response to historical and political context. To discover how the nation represents, understands, and recognizes this fictional "body," Dalle Vacche discusses changes in the strongest parameters of Italian cinema: allegory, spectacle, body, history, unity, and continuity. In her hands these concepts yield a wealth of insights for film scholars, art historians, political scientists, and those concerned with cultural studies in general, as well as for other educated readers interested in Italian cinema.

Originally published in 1992.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Dalle Vacche, Angela

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Theater- und Filmwissenschaft | Andere Darstellende Künste Filmwissenschaft, Fernsehen, Radio Filmgeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Figures

Acknowledgments

Introduction The Body in the Mirror 3

Shapes of History 10

Ch. 1 Fascism Before World War I, After World War I, and After World War II 18

Unity, Continuity, and Kitsch 18

Continuity: From a Silent to a Fascist Screen 27

Kitsch and the Arts 29

From the Athlete to the Statue to the Phantom 41

Body Builders and Beauty Queens 52

Ch. 2 Fascism After May 1968 57

Operatic Macrohistory in Crisis 57

Representation, Spectacle, Performance 63

Ideology, Consent, Subjectivity 68

The Statue and the Dancer 78

Ch. 3 The Risorgimento Before World War II 93

Unity, Continuity, and Nationalism 93

Unity, Continuity, and Sources 99

Ch. 4 The Risorgimento After World War II 121

Unity and Continuity in the Risorgimento 121

Risorgimento as Melodrama 134

The Body Politic and the Body Erotic: The Battle of the Sexes and the Oedipal Plot 147

Ch. 5 The Risorgimento After May 1968 156

Unity, Continuity, and Utopia 156

The Tavianis' Redoing of Senso in Allonsanfan 162

History as Discontinuity and the Feminine as Utopia 175

Ch. 6 The Resistance After World War II and After May 1968 180

The Eucharistic Body of Neorealism 180

Unity and Continuity in the Resistance 193

Disunity in History 203

Discontinuity in History 204

Biology, History, and Utopia 205

From Historical Discontinuity to Biological Continuity 208

Operatic Macrohistory, Comedic Microhistory 213

Ch. 7 Antifascism After May 1968 219

Unity and Continuity in Antifascism 219

Antifascism and Comedic Microhistory at a Standstill 222

The Statue and the Dancer, Father and Son, Body as Monument, and Body as Document 233

The Battle of the Sexes 237

Mother or Mistress 243

Conclusion Nouvelle Histoire, Italian Style 251

From the Commedia dell'Arte to Late Neorealism 252

French Insights on Postwar and Recent Italian Cinema 259

Gestures and History in Neorealism, Tradition of Quality, and Nouvelle Vague 264

Nouvelle Histoire, Italian Style 276

Bibliography 285

Index 301