Journal of Film Music 8.1–2 (2015) 5-12 ISSN (print) 1087-7142 https://doi.org/10.1558/jfm.37317 ISSN (online) 1758-860X Film Music Histories and Ethnographies: New Perspectives on Italian Cinema of the Long 1960s Guest Editorial ALESSANDRO CECCHI University of Pisa
[email protected] MAURIZIO CORBELLA University of Milan
[email protected] here is no doubt that the 1960s represent Two historical ruptures bookending the decade an exceptional period in Italian film history. characterize this period: the economic boom, TPeter Bondanella labeled the decade from also labeled the “economic miracle,” and the 1958 to 1968 “the Golden Age of Italian cinema, movement of 1968. The development of these two for in no other single period was its artistic quality, phenomena justifies our choice of the label “the its international prestige, or its economic strength long 1960s.” In the case of the economic miracle, so consistently high.”1 Indeed, as David Forgacs which is usually regarded as encompassing the years and Stephen Gundle put it, this was “the only 1958–1963,4 one could in fact consider it, as does time [. .] when [. .] a surge in Italian production Silvio Lanaro, “a quite tangible yet not clamorous was accompanied by a sharp decline in U.S. film acceleration of an expansive process that had started production and export.”2 At any rate, as Gian Piero in 1951–52.”5 Accordingly, Forgacs and Gundle Brunetta remarked, the films made in that period have explicitly challenged the idea of “a unique “were memorable for their quantity