A history of Italian cinema / Peter Bondanella.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bondanella, Peter, 1943-2017.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Motion pictures--Italy--History.

Motion pictures.

Italy.

History.

Physical Description:

xiv, 684 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : Continuum, 2009.

Summary:

A History of Italian Cinema is a major new study from the author of the bestselling Italian Cinema - which has been published in three landmark editions and celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary in 2008. Building upon his decades of research, Peter Bondanella has now written the definitive history of the subject, from the birth of cinema to the present day.

He has rethought, reorganized, and completely rewritten his previous work, which focused on postwar cinema, and has broadened his coverage of the spaghetti western and comedy genres. Bondanella also now covers a huge range of work that was not previously considered, particularly both popular and 'B' genres, including: the sword and sandal epic or "peplum" film of the 1950s; the Italian horror film, the so-called spaghetti nightmare films (including the subcategories of horror, the Italian zombie and cannibal films), that began in the 1950s and continue through the present; the giallo or Italian mystery thriller; and the poliziesco or Italian crime film from the 1970s to the present.

This new book also examines the emergence of a "third wave" of new auteurs born in the 1950s as well as an even younger group of important directors born in the 1960s, who have already made their mark on the direction of the Italian cinema in the third millennium. Finally, A History of Italian Cinema now includes the most comprehensive bibliography on the subject ever to be assembled in an English-language publication. Erudite, comprehensive, and heavily illustrated throughout, this is an essential purchase for any student, researcher, or aficionado of Italian film.

Contents:

Part One: Early Italian Cinema

The silent era

The coming of sound and the fascist era

Part Two: Italian Neorealism

Masters of neorealism: Rossellini, De Sica, and Visconti

Exploring the boundaries of neorealism

The break with neorealism: the cinema of the reconstruction, Fellini's trilogies of character and grace, and the return of melodrama

Part Three: The Golden Age of Italian Cinema

The Italian "Peplum": the sword and sandal epic

Commedia all'italiana: comedy and social criticism

Neorealism's legacy to a new generation, and the Italian political film

The mateur auteurs: new dimensions in film narrative in Visconti, Antonioni, De Sica, and Fellini

The spaghetti nightmare: horror films from the 1950s to the present

A fistful of pasta: Sergio Leone and the spaghetti western

Mystery, gore, and mayhem: the Italian Giallo

Myth, Marx, and Freud in Pier Paolo Pasolini and Bernardo Bertolucci

The Poliziesco: Italian crime films from the 1970s to the present

Part Four: Generational Change in the Contemporary Italian Cinema

The old guard never surrenders: Italy's prewar auteurs in the 1980s and 1990s

The third wave: a new generation of auteurs

Italian cinema enters the third millennium.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 593-645) and index.

ISBN:

9780826417855

082641785X

9781441160690

1441160698

OCLC:

426120543