Introduction

Notes Introduction 1. In an interview with a journalist of the magazine Bianco e Nero 30, no. 1–2 (1972): 1–112. The translation is mine. 2. As stated by Cristine Gledhill in “Recent Developments in Feminist Criticism,” in Film, Theory and Criticism, ed. Gerald Mast, Marshall Cohen, and Leo Braudy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 93. Marcia Landy also considers the phenomenon of stardom in the chapter “The Folklore of Femininity and Stardom” in her book Italian Film (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 261–308. 3. Nancy Chodorov, “Gender as Personal and Cultural,” in The Second Signs Reader: Fem- inist Scholarship 1983–1996, ed. Ruth-Ellen B. Joeres and Barbara Laslett (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 216–44. 4. According to Teresa De Lauretis in Alice Doesn’t: Feminism, Semiotics, Cinema (Bloom- ington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1982), in cinema, as well as in traditional written narrative, woman-as-spectacle stands as obstacle to the narrative action, which is acti- vated exclusively by the male protagonist in his quest to conquer the woman he loves. As clearly explained by Laura Mulvey in Visual and Other Pleasures (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1989), “woman, as object of the male’s desire and gaze, becomes spectacle. As such, she interrupts the flow of the narrative action in cinema, while the eye of the camera, together with the eye of the male hero(s) on the screen and of the male spectators off screen (who identify with the hero on the screen), linger on her as spectacle” (21). This visual process affecting the narrative action of films is clearly formulated in Italian films, where the active role of the male protagonists con- firms the sexual objectification of the female characters they pursue. This process is clearly displayed in most of the silent films discussed in Chapter 2, as well as in several of the later sound films 5. “Sofia” is the Italian spelling that I am using in this book. The American spelling is “Sophia.” 6. Maggiorata fisica means “exceptionally physically endowed,” referring to a woman’s physical beauty, and it was an expression used by Vittorio De Sica as an actor in an episode of Altri Tempi (Other Times; 1951), a film by Blasetti, where he plays a lawyer and uses this expression to refer to Gina Lollobrigida. 7. For a more detailed discussion of the origins of cinema, see my “The Origins of Italian Cinema,” in Carlo Celli and Marga Cottino-Jones, A New Guide to Italian Cinema, 3rd ed. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 9–10. 8. Patriarchy as a system is founded upon the family and the importance it has in society, centered as it is upon a strong, all-powerful male figure, the father, or pater in Latin, and a submissive, nurturing yet powerless female figure, the mother. This view has been strongly supported by Christian ideology from the time of Genesis and its 228 NOTES interpreters, starting with St. Paul and the first fathers of the church. Indeed, according to St. Paul, “Women should be subject to their men . Woman’s authority is nil; let her in all things be subject to man. Adam was beguiled by Eve, not she by him. It is right that he, whom woman led to wrong doing, should have her under his direction, so that he may not fail a second time through female levity.” History of Ideas on Woman, ed. Rosemary Agonito (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1977), 69–72. 9. In the last few decades, psychoanalysis has proposed interesting perspectives on the role that women, and especially mothers, play in society. Consult Chris Weedon’s Fem- inist Practice and Poststructuralist Theory (New York: Blackwell, 1987); E. Ann Kaplan’s Motherhood and Representation (London: Routledge, 1992); and Julia Kristeva’s Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980). Contemporary Italian feminist thought adds an interesting variant to such views based on careful analysis of the everyday experiences of Ital- ian women and formulated according to a different consideration of the effects upon young girls of the pre-Oedipal phase and of the Oedipal complex. Consult Giuliana Bruno’s’ collection of essays in Off-Screen: Women and Film in Italy (London: Rout- ledge, 1988). 10. Psychoanalytical theories, especially Lacan’s, share this Christian view of women as dangerous to men, and both Freud and Lacan, while upholding the importance of motherhood in family and social life, at the same time, support the concept of “differ- ence” on which male-female relationships are founded. 11. When I mention a film for the first time per chapter, I first give the Italian title, fol- lowed by the official English (U.S.) title in parentheses, italicized, and capitalized. When necessary, I give an English literal translation in parentheses, lowercased and not italicized. After that first mention, I only give the Italian title. Capitalization in titles is different, as Italian titles capitalize only the first word and proper names, while formal titles in English capitalize most words. If the film’s title is the same in Italian and in English, capitalization will be the only way to differentiate between the two; that is, La dolce vita is the Italian title, while La Dolce Vita is the English/American title. 12 As already mentioned, this condition was clearly proposed by the church fathers of early Medieval times, as it was by St. Paul, who, around 150 BC, wrote in 1 Corinthians, “The head of every man is Christ, and the head of every woman is man . .” or still, “The man is not of the woman, but the woman of the man. Neither was the man cre- ated for the woman, but the woman for the man” in History of Ideas on Woman, 69–72. 13. As suggested by Kaplan, Motherhood and Representation, 46–48. 14. Ibid., 125–26. 15. Jackie Byars performs similar analyses in her essay “Gazes/Voices/Power: Expanding Psychoanalysis for Feminist Film and Television Theory,” in Female Spectators, Looking at Film And Television, ed. E. Deidre Pribiam (London: Verso, 1992), 110–31. 16. For an exhaustive discussion of this topic, see Christian Metz’s The Imaginary Signifier: Psychoanalysis and Cinema (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1982). 17. For a discussion of this expression, see the introduction to the collection Stardom: Industry of Desire, ed. Christine Gledhill (New York: Routledge, 1991), xiii–xx. 18. Desire, therefore, as the driving force behind pleasure in cinema, is indeed constantly connected with the visual and, more specifically, with looking, an activity that usually proposes a binary opposition between the one who looks and what or who is being looked at. Feminist film theory emphasizes the importance of visualization in cinema and particularly the importance of the look that is often connected with the control of the narrative action in films. Indeed, feminist film critics have substantially demon- strated that the one who does the looking is usually the male protagonist, who is also NOTES 229 the character who controls the narrative action, as Teresa De Lauretis clearly demon- strates in her groundbreaking book, Alice Doesn’t: Feminism, Semiotics, Cinema, especially in the chapter “Desire in Narrative,” 103–57. 19. Jonathan Rosenbaum, Movies as Politics (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1997), 3. 20. This term has been used by Dorothy Dinnerstein in the introduction to her book, The Mermaid and the Minotaur: Sexual Arrangements and Human Malaise (New York: Harper & Row, 1976), 2–3, where she states, “The most potent sources of sexual con- servatism are buried in the dark, silent layers of our mental life. This burial keeps them potent. To articulate them openly, to see them in the light of full awareness, is a necessary condition for growth—away . from tightly, coercively predefined modes of feelings and action.” 21. Ibid. 22 Although, I am fully aware that feminist criticism has been the most successful critical theory that has highlighted the social unfairness that women constantly face even in contemporary society. 23. Readers interested in this approach may consult also the collection of articles in Femi- nism and Materialism: Women and Modes of Production, ed. Annette Kuhn and Ann Marie Wolpe (London: Routledge, 1978) and Marcia Landy’s book, Film, Politics, and Gramsci (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1995). 24. See Timothy Corrigan, A Short Guide to Writing about FILM (New York: Longman, 1997), 88. 25. I am aware that there is a very large body of important, critical, published studies on cinema and on male-female relationships. I hope that Women, Desire, and Power in Italian Cinema will offer its readers an insight into Italian culture. 26. In Il Corriere della sera, of Milan, Italy, December 9, 2002. 27. If my readers need more background information, they can consult the last edition of my History of Italian Cinema that I have reedited with my colleague Carlo Celli and that has been published by Palgrave Macmillan with the title A New Guide to Italian Cinema. In that book, I give ample reference to other scholars in the field who have worked on Italian films in the United States and abroad and to primary works by directors and authors that shed more light on their filmic experience. 28. Celli and Cottino-Jones, A New Guide to Italian Cinema. 29. As the political and economic history of the 1980s and 1990s is interconnected, I have provided in Chapter 8 the historical information that is essential for the 1990s, and consequently the beginning of Chapter 9 provides only some general information about Italian cultural life in the 1990s.

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