Italy in early American cinema : race, landscape, and the picturesque / Giorgio Bertellini.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bertellini, Giorgio, 1967-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Italy--In motion pictures.

Italy.

Italian Americans in motion pictures.

Motion pictures--United States--History--20th century.

Motion pictures.

United States.

History.

Physical Description:

xiii, 443 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

Bloomington : Indiana University Press, [2010]

Summary:

Once associated with landscape painting in Northern Europe, the picturesque painting style came to symbolize Mediteeranean Europe through comforting views of distant landscapes and exotic characters. Showing readers how this aesthetic traveled to America and was transferred from nineteenth-century painters to early twentieth-century photographers and filmmakers, Bertellini moves from Western films and travelogues to urban melodramas featuring Southern Italians, the picturesque’s original characters.

Contents:

Transatlantic racial culture and modern visual reproductions

Picturing Italy's natural and social landscapes. Picturesque mode of difference

The picturesque Italian south as transnational commodity

Picture-perfect America. Picturesque views and American natural landscapes

Picturesque New York

Black hands, white faces

White hearts

Performing geography

"A mirror with a memory"

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780253353726

0253353726

9780253221285

0253221285

OCLC:

313659121