The Body In the Mirror (ebook)

Argumento de The Body In the Mirror (ebook)

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 paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback 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 1905.0List 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