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SYLLABUS
FILM
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SYLLABUS
The first thing Italian friends ask you as you
come off the plane is usually about so-and-so�s latest
film.More than many other nations, Italians have a passionate
involvement with the movies. One can in fact trace the
vicissitudes of Italian culture and history after WWII, as with no
other community, along the thread of its cinema. The
conflicts, the victories, the defeats of Italian society in all its
aspects are mirrored in its cinema in ways that Hollywood does not for
Americans.Outsiders (and usually not the average spectator at that) have, over the years, experienced a narrow and selective stream of Italian films as pleasant, entertaining, at time innovative and challenging, but on the whole as less than controversial or shocking. Italians of all classes and backgrounds, on the other hand, have engaged with the full range of Italian cinema in a spirit of controversy and with reactions of shock that tell us a lot about the lesser known aspects of Italian culture. One discovers, for instance, that film makers hugely admired abroad (Fellini, Antonioni) are barely watched by Italians, and that genres (Neorealism) we value for the honest and direct access they give us to what delights us about Italy are regarded by Italians as demeaning. Films we would expect repressive Italian political figures (Mussolini) to admire are not, directors we regard as liberal lights (Rossellini) are in fact much more ambiguous. Even genres we perceive as escapist (commedia all�Italiana) and actors we regard as popular film stars (Alberto Sordi, Marcello Mastroianni) turn out to be the true locus of radical social critique. Not to speak of the bluntness with which recent phenomena such as terrorism have been addressed by Italian Cinema. This course will address an alternative reading of Italian Cinema (mostly post-war and much of it quite new to spectators outside Italy) designed to reveal the challenging, animated, often controversial and shocking nature of Italy�s version of this form of expression and its place in Italian cultural discourse. |