Have been reading through Mark Betz’s Beyond the Subtitle: Remapping European Art Cinema, which includes a chapter entitled, “Wandering Women: Decolonization, Modernity, Recolonization.” Although the chapter only mentions Antonioni’s Red Desert,…
As Peter Bondanella argues in Italian Cinema: From Neorealism to the Present, the movement we now call “neorealism” is as bound up in its own history as it is in the…
The child scrounger is about as “neorealism” as it gets, pointing toward his counterpart in Buñuel’s Los Olvidados from a couple years later. And it’s not neorealism without a heavy dose…
Having never seen a pre-L’Avventura Antonioni, wasn’t sure what to expect with this one. Was determined, entering into it, not to give it any kind of privileged “Antonioni” reading. Really…
The same year as the previous post’s film was released (8½, in 1963) Luchino Visconti adapted to the screen The Leopard (Il Gattopardo), the novel by Giuseppe di Lampedusa. Was…
The argument is out there that 8½ (Otto e mezzo) is not an autobiographical film and should not be interpreted thus. Cited as evidence is the thematic dialogue within the…
With every beginning to every movement, exaggerations of description abound. For all the importance of Roberto Rossellini’s Roma, città aperta (Rome, Open City) in setting a precedent for Italian Neorealism,…
Precious Bodily Fluids 