We know a lot about the directors and stars of Italian cinema’s heyday, from Roberto Rossellini to Sophia Loren. But what do we know about the Italian audiences that went to see their films?
Based on the AHRC-funded project ‘Italian Cinema Audiences 1945-60’, Italian Cinema Audiences: Histories and Memories of Cinema-going in Post-war Italy draws upon the rich data collected by the project team (160 video interviews and 1000+ written questionnaires gathered from Italians aged 65 and over; archival material related to cinema distribution, exhibition and programming, box-office figures, and critical discussions of cinema from film journals and popular magazines of the period). For the first time, cinema’s role in everyday Italian life, and its affective meaning when remembered by older people, are enriched with industrial analyses of the booming Italian film sector of the period, as well as contextual data from popular and specialized magazines.
Table of Contents:
List of Figures
List of Tables
Acknowledgements
Foreword by Professor Martin Barker
Introduction
Part I. THE ACTIVITY OF CINEMA-GOING
1. Cinemas, exhibition practices and topographical memories
2. Only entertainment?: memories inside and outside the cinema
Part II. FILMS: GENRE, TASTE, AND POPULAR MEMORY
3. Audiences and film genre
4. 'Back then I believed in the nation - I don't anymore': re-visiting national film canon through audience memories
Part III. GENDER AND CINEMA-GOING
5. A girls’ eye view of post-war Italian cinema
6. Beyond ‘belle e brave’: female stars and audiences
7. Narrative imaginings of masculinity through cinema
Conclusions
Appendix 1: Questionnaire
Appendix 2: Video-Interview
Appendix 3: List of Thematic Areas
Bibliography
Index
About the Author :
Daniela Treveri Gennari is Reader in Film Studies at Oxford Brookes University, UK, with a research interest in audiences, popular cinema, film exhibition and programming. Amongst her recent publications: the edited volume Rural Cinema Exhibition and Audiences in a Global Context (forthcoming 2018, with Catherine O’Rawe and Danielle Hipkins)
Catherine O’Rawe is Reader in Modern Italian Culture at the University of Bristol, UK. She is the author of Stars and Masculinities in Contemporary Italian Cinema (2014), co-author (with Jacqueline Reich) of Divi: la mascolinità nel cinema italiano (2015), and has published widely on gender and stardom in Italian post-war and contemporary cinema.
Danielle Hipkins is Associate Professor of Italian Studies and Film at the University of Exeter, UK. She has published widely on gender representation in postwar Italian cinema, and has recently written Italy’s Other Women: Gender and prostitution in postwar Italian cinema, 1940-1965 (2016) and co-edited Prostitution and Sex Work in Global Cinema: New takes on fallen women (2017).
Silvia Dibeltulo is Senior Lecturer in Communication, Media and Culture at Oxford Brookes University, UK, where she previously worked on the AHRC-funded Italian Cinema Audiences project and the BA/Leverhulme-funded European Cinema Audiences project. Her publications the edited volume Rethinking Genre in Contemporary Global Cinema (forthcoming 2018, with Ciara Barrett).
Sarah Culhane is currently a Research Fellow at Oxford Brookes University, UK, working on the Italian Cinema Audiences follow on project, ICAMAP (2017-2018). ICAMAP is an online archive that allows users to explore the history of cinema-going in 1950s Italy. Her publications include ‘Street Cries and Street Fights: Anna Magnani, Sophia Loren and the popolana’ (The Italianist, 2017).
Review :
This book is a “master class” in exploring the historical culture of moviegoing in postwar Italy. Using an innovative suite of research methods drawn from the “New Cinema History,” and featuring fascinating ethnographic studies, the authors chart the vibrancy of film attendance as the cultural lynch-pin of Italy in the rapidly changing 1950s. They uncover the tensions pitting local against national and systems of film distribution, and gendered dialogues about differences and similarities between Italian and Hollywood star culture. The Italian Cinema Audiences project expertly demonstrates how post-war Italy’s diverse publics were drawn together into complex communities of entertainment, at a time when discussion of who was allowed to attend the movies was being negotiated and challenged across the nation.
