Over the past twenty-five years, Italy's film industry has produced a remarkable number of award-winning international art-house hits, among them Cinema Paradiso and Life Is Beautiful. Despite these successes, Italian cinema is in a state of crisis: ticket sales for domestic films, which plummeted in the l980's, are only now beginning to recover; television deregulation has engendered a popular culture largely dependent on American programming; and the passing of an entire generation of brilliant auteurs--Rossellini, Viscounti, Pasolini, Antonioni, and Fellini--extinguished the revolutionary impulse which had characterized Italian filmmaking since the Second World War. In After Fellini, Millicent Marcus contends that in the late 1980s and 1990s, a new wave of Italian filmmakers has transcended these obstacles and reasserted Italy's importance in world cinema. Through in-depth critiques of such acclaimed films as The Last Emperor,Caro Diario, and Stolen Children, as well as the immensely popular Cinema Paradiso and Life Is Beautiful, Marcus details how today's auteurs have both reflected and resisted Italy's shifting social, political, and cultural identity, and created a body of work that signals a new beginning for Italian cinema.
Contents:
Acknowledgments Introduction
Looking Back 1 National Identity by Means of Montage in Roberto Rossellini's Paisan 2 Luchino Visconti's Bellissima: The Diva, the Mirror, and the Screen
Italy by Displacement 3 Bernardo Bertolucci's The Last Emperor : Powerless in Peking 4 Mediterraneo and the ""Minimal Utopias"" of Gabriele Salvatores 5 From Salazar's Lisbon to Mussolini's Rome by Way of France in Roberto Faenza's Pereira Declares
Family as Political Allegory 6 Francesco Rosi's Three Brothers: After the Diaspora 7 The Alternative Family of Ricky Tognazzi's La scorta 8 The Gaze of Innocence: Lost and Found in Gianni Amelio's Stolen Children
Postmodernism; or, the Death of Cinema? 9 Ginger and Fred: Fellini after Fellini 10 Giuseppe Tornatore's Cinema Paradiso and the Art of Nostalgia 11 From Conscience to Hyperconsciousness in Maurizio Nichetti's The Icicle Thief 12 Postmodern Pastiche, the Sceneggiata, and the View of the Mafia from Below in Roberta Torre's To Die for Tano
The Return of the Referent 13 Filming the Text of Witness: Francesco Rosi's The Truce 14 The Seriousness of Humor in Roberto Benigni's Life is Beautiful 15 Caro diaro and the Cinematic Body of Nanni Moretti
Appendix: Plot Summaries and Credits Notes Bibliography Videography Index
""Scholars of film as well as those who enjoy Italian cinema will welcome this fine survey by Marcus.""
