Popular Italian Cinema [Hardcover]

Exciting new critical perspectives on popular Italian cinema including melodrama, poliziesco, the mondo film, the sex comedy, missionary cinema and the musical. The book interrogates the very meaning of popular cinema in Italy to give a sense of its complexity and specificity in Italian cinema, from early to contemporary cinema.List of Figures Notes on contributors Acknowledgements The Fair and the Museum: Framing the Popular; S.Rigoletto & L.Bayman Italian Cinema, Popular?; C.Wagstaff The Prettiness of Italian Cinema; R.Galt The Pervasiveness of Song in Italian Cinema; R.Dyer Melodrama as Seriousness; L.Bayman Moving Masculinity: Incest Narratives in Italian Sex Comedies; T.Nakahar Laughter and the Popular in Lina Wertm?ller's The Seduction of Mim?; S.Rigoletto Strategies of Tension: Towards a Re-Interpretation of Enzo G. Castellari's The Big Racket and The Italian Crime Film; A.Marlow-Mann 'Il delirio del lungo metraggio': Cinema as Mass Phenomenon in Early Twentieth Tentury Italian Cinema; I.Lottini Dressing the Part: 'Made in Italy' Goes to the Movies with Lucia Bos? in Chronicle of a Love Affair; R.Buckley Hercules versus Hercules: Variation and Continuation in Two Generations of Heroic Masculinity; D.O'Brien On the Complexity of Cinepanettone; A.O'Leary Cinema and Popular Preaching: the Italian Missionary Film and Fiamme; F.Piredda The Italian Mondo Documentary Film; M.Goodall Index

'This volume really does represent a shift in thinking on Italian cinema, and the many fine, young scholars who contribute to this book show the direction that future criticism of Italian film will take. It is a valuable contribution to cinema studies on many levels, and I was delighted to have read it.' - Peter Bondanella, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature, Film Studies and Italian, Indiana University, USA

R?KA BUCKLEY Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Portsmouth, UKRICHARD DYER teaches Film Studies at King's Collegeló¤