Film is widely credited as having performed a central role in the re-building of an Italian sense of nationhood following the collapse of the fascist regime and World War II. Viewed from both within and outside Italy, Italian cinema of the immediate postwar years was interpreted as a chronicle of the challenges facing ‘ordinary’ Italians in their everyday lives and, by extension, of the issues which faced the nation. This module interrogates this supposition, associated heavily with neorealist cinema, and pursues the questions it raises through selected films made in the decades from the 1940s to the present day. Looking closely at examples which include the auteur cinema of the 1960s, internationally-renowned ‘classics’ of the 1970s, and both mainstream and art-house successes from the 1990s-2000s, the module traces through these films themes such as regional and national identities, landscape, gender relations, changing social structures, and political commitment. You will encounter significant figures and movements in Italian cinema history and form a sense of the interactions between them, whilst developing a complex understanding of factors which have influenced and shaped Italian cinema, from both film-makers’ and spectators’ points of view.

Outline Syllabus

Introduction (term 2, week 1): Paisà (Roberto Rossellini, 1946)
Section 1. Cinema and society
Week 2: Accattone (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1961)
Week 3: Vogliamo anche le rose (Alina Marazzi, 2007)
Week 4: Il Divo (Paolo Sorrentino, 2008)
Week 5:  Gomorra (Matteo Garrone, 2008)
Week 6: Reading week
Section 2. Cinema and history
Week 7: Il conformista (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1970)
Week 8: Buongiorno, notte (Marco Bellocchio, 2003)
Week 9: Nuovomondo (Emanuele Crialese, 2006)
Week 10: Lamerica (Gianni Amelio, 1994)