Mary Ann Mcdonald Carolan. the Transatlantic Gaze. Italian Cinema, American Film
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Recensioni / Book Reviews / Revues des Livres Mary Ann McDonald Carolan. The Transatlantic Gaze. Italian Cinema, American Film. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2014. Pp. 172. $75. ISBN: 978-1-4384-5025-4. (Hardcover) Mary Ann McDonald Carolan’s book has an exciting premise: through a series of comparative analyses, it seeks to unveil the undeniable impact that Italian cinema has had on American film. The volume is a compilation of five separate studies that investigate different facets of this transatlantic dialogue. This streamlined approach is certainly a welcome return to clarity and legibility, a quality oftentimes underestimated in contemporary film scholarship. McDonald Carolan’s prose is clear and concise, especially when setting up the terms of her comparisons, which focus primarily on storytelling devices, plot, and narrative. In the introduction, McDonald Carolan traces a “brief history of the rela- tionship between the cinemas of Italy and America [that] outlines their intercon- nectedness,” (14) moving from silent cinema to the present day. In chapter two, she discusses how the meta-cinematic devices employed by Federico Fellini in The White Sheik (1952) to comment on star culture and fandom are appropriated by Woody Allen in The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985) and Neil LaBute in Nurse Betty (2000). Although it is hard to disagree with the author when she argues that these titles “demonstrate that the most destabilizing experience for the female fan is her entrance into the fictional world that she adores,” (40) the chapter could benefit from a more nuanced discussion of the different approaches to celebrity in Italian and American culture, as well as for the specific characteristics of the historical periods satirized by the respective films. The third chapter sketches out some of the many narrative and thematic commonalities between Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-up (1966) and Brian De Palma’s Blow Out (1981). This lean section focuses primarily on the protagonists’ relationship with their respective professions and artistic pursuits, discussing how De Palma appropriates, updates, and simplifies Antonioni’s existential concerns. A wider discussion of the emphasis on voyeurism and ocular violence that perme- ated European and American film in the 1960s and 1970s, including such titles as Peeping Tom (Powell 1960), Psycho (Hitchcock 1960), Eyes Without a Face (Franju, 1960), Don’t Look Now (Roeg 1973), and Deep Red (Argento 1975), would have helped to better contextualize both Antonioni’s synchronicity with this trend and De Palma’s deconstruction of it. In the same chapter, McDonald Carolan puts forth an interesting hypothesis: she argues that “Blow-up can be understood as — 285 — Recensioni / Book Reviews / Revues des Livres a conversion narrative in which Thomas comes to an epiphany of sorts when he substitutes faith (belief) for perception as he watches, then hears, the nonexistent tennis ball” during the famous phantom game that concludes the film. (58–59) While worthy of further exploration, Thomas’ “conversion” must be understood in relation to Antonioni’s views on spirituality and religion, and therefore appro- ached with some caution. In fact, as Peter Steinfels reminds us, “of all the other great Italian directors, probably none were as unremittingly secular as Antonioni. His world is severely post-religious, a circumstance that made reflective believers intensely interested in his work, too.” (“Bergman, Antonioni, and the Religiously Inclined.”) Chapter four examines the influence of the Italian-Style Westerns of Sergio Leone, Sergio Corbucci, and others on the work of Quentin Tarantino. The chap- ter’s centerpiece is the author’s call for a reevaluation of Jill, the prostitute played by Claudia Cardinale in Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), and for an under- standing of her character as central to the film’s narrative. (67–74) Intriguing and certainly well-substantiated with textual evidence, this point leads the author to conclude that “Leone transforms the Western genre by investing extraordinary power in women.” (69) While it is true that the empowering of Jill constitutes a novel direction in the genre’s evolution, it did not become widespread practice. In fact, as Maggie Günsberg has demonstrated (2005: 173–214), the Spaghetti Westerns are very much about the fetishization of the male body and of homoso- cial interaction, qualities that preceded Once Upon a Time in the West and that can be easily observed in the films that compound Leone’s trilogy (A Fistful of Dollars, 1964; For a Few Dollars More, 1965; The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, 1966). In chapter five, the author argues that “Precious and Miracle at St. Anna follow the neorealist prescription of honoring humble people in their daily lives.” (91) While it is true that Spike Lee’s 2008 film attempts to recreate the atmospheres and scenarios of films such as Rome Open City (Rossellini 1945), Paisan (Rossellini 1946), and Without Pity (Lattuada 1948), albeit from a markedly American per- spective, it is hard to detect Neorealism in Lee Daniel’s debut feature, other than in the aforementioned interest in the lower classes and the direct citations of De Sica’s Two Women (1960) embedded in the film, which the author discusses at len- gth (95–102). Lee’s opaque visual style, with its numerous cutaways to subjective images and dreamscapes, as well as his use of first-person voiceover narration, could not be farther removed from the transparency sought by most Neorealist di- rectors. Given Neorealism’s focus on how urban environments condition human — 286 — Recensioni / Book Reviews / Revues des Livres communication, and its emphasis on intercultural and interracial relations, an inclusion of Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep (1978), Billy Woodberry’s Bless Their Little Hearts (1984), and even Barry Jenkins’s Medicine for Melancholy (2008) in this discussion might have helped better illustrate Italian cinema’s well-docu- mented influence on African American filmmakers. Focusing primarily on their critical reception, the sixth chapter examines the numerous American remakes of Italian films and the processes of industrial adjustments and cultural reframing that such practice entails. In conclusion, McDonald Carolan’s book is an invitation to discover a long-lasting dialogue between two national industries that have influenced one another in profound ways. The author’s approach is refreshingly nimble, and the volume is enjoyable by both specialized and general audience. Alberto Zambenedetti University of Toronto — 287 —.