Copyright by Stephanie Aneel Hotz 2017
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Copyright by Stephanie Aneel Hotz 2017 The Dissertation Committee for Stephanie Aneel Hotz Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: The Italian Musicarello: Youth, Gender, and Modernization in Postwar Popular Cinema Committee: Paola Bonifazio, Supervisor Guy Raffa Daniela Bini Carter Mary Beltrán Jacqueline Reich The Italian Musicarello: Youth, Gender, and Modernization in Postwar Popular Cinema by Stephanie Aneel Hotz, B.S., B.A., M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin May 2017 Dedication I dedicate this dissertation to my family, friends, colleagues, and mentors, all of whom offered me invaluable support, wisdom, and feedback throughout my academic career. I would also like to dedicate this work to all female scholars in the making, to encourage them that their intelligence, persistence, and passion will not go unnoticed. Acknowledgements I would like to extend my deepest gratitude to Professors Paola Bonifazio and Guy Raffa, who have always encouraged me to pursue research that I am truly passionate about. I am grateful for their constant mentorship and dedication to my writing, continually providing me with feedback and opportunities to improve my research as well as my professional development. I would also like to thank all of my dissertation committee members for their encouragement and the time they dedicated to my project. A special thanks to the UT Graduate Writing Center and their consultants for offering me invaluable resources and support while completing my dissertation, as well as to my colleagues and graduate coordinator who made my graduate studies a positive and encouraging experience. v The Italian Musicarello: Youth, Gender, and Modernization in Postwar Popular Cinema Stephanie Aneel Hotz, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2017 Supervisor: Paola Bonifazio The musicarello was a popular Italian film cycle consisting of more than eighty musical films from 1959 through the 1960s, a period that coincided with Italy’s postwar industrialization. During the postwar economic boom, these musical films emerged as a new form of popular cinema that was unique from other Italian postwar genres because of their intended youth audience, and because of their reference to British and North American popular entertainment. The films were primarily star vehicles, promoting and augmenting the careers of emerging young popular musicians such as Mina, Rita Pavone, Caterina Caselli, Gianni Morandi, Adriano Celentano, and Little Tony. This dissertation details how these young stars and their musical film performances represented youth and their consumer and entertainment choices during Italy’s era of modernization and consumerism, and how the films offered empowering representations of marginal, queered, and liminal subjectivities for young Italians. Analyzed within this framework, I argue that the musicarello can be perceived as camp because it represented the way in which youth and gender are performative and fluctuating subjectivities. While there has been an increased attention on popular cinema in Italian film scholarship, there have been few studies on the musicarello in both Italian and English scholarship at large. In this vi extensive study of the musical films, my methodology consists of close text formal analysis and an engagement with American and Italian film scholarship, cultural studies, and gender/queer theories. My formal analyses focus on film narratives, character development, musical numbers, and star status, alongside my examination of recurring themes, narratives devices, and tropes within the cycle. With a heavy emphasis on socio- historical contextualization and youth culture, my project adds to current scholarship on 1960s Italian youth culture and mass media, thereby filling a void not only in Italian film studies, but also in studies on Italian youth representation. vii Table of Contents Introduction..............................................................................................................1 The Evolution of the Musicarello and its Principal Singers...........................5 Investigating the Musicarello: Literature Review ..........................................9 1960s Youth Culture and Representation on Screen ....................................14 Chapter Overview.........................................................................................19 Chapter One: Hybridity, Performance, and Self-Reflexivity: Reexamining Recurring Devices and Themes in the Musical Genre ..................................................24 Discussing the Musical as Hybrid and its Docu-Fictional Quality...............28 Complicating the Hollywood Musical’s Conflict Resolution and Narrative Dichotomies.........................................................................................36 Exposing Myth through Self-Reflexive Narratives ......................................43 Contextualizing the Musicarello as a Postwar Comedy ...............................48 Hybridity and Parody in the Camp Musical .................................................54 Conclusion ....................................................................................................64 Chapter Two: The Myth of Reconciliation: Generational Conflicts and Consumer Culture in the Jukebox Films........................................................................66 Youth Empowerment through Culture and Consumerism ...........................72 Integration VS. Individualism: The Myth of Community in the Dual-Focus Narrative ..............................................................................................81 I ragazzi del juke-box (1959)........................................................................89 Juke-box – Urli D’amore (1959) ..................................................................99 Urlatori alla sbarra (1960) ........................................................................108 Conclusion ..................................................................................................115 Chapter Three: Comedic Devices in the Musicarello: Identity Performance and the Reexamination of Male Crisis in the Postwar Period.................................117 Cinematic Depictions of Male Failure: Reexamining Masculinity in Crisis119 The Male Inetto in Postwar Cinema ...........................................................123 Shifting Gender Dynamics in Subplots with Supporting Characters .........127 viii Celentano’s Self-Parody and Alternative Masculinity in Uno strano tipo (1962) ...........................................................................................................133 Performance and Trial-and-Error in Cuore matto… matto da legare (1967)145 Conclusion ..................................................................................................153 Chapter Four: Hybridity and Queering in Rita Pavone’s Musicarelli: Rethinking Genre and (Young) Women’s Representation............................................155 Pavone’s Star Persona in the ‘60s...............................................................156 What is a “Woman’s Film,” Anyway? .......................................................163 Little Rita nel West (1967): Gender Role Reversal and Parody of a Male- Dominated Genre...............................................................................171 Rita la zanzara (1966) and Non stuzzicate la zanzara (1967): Female Masculinity and the Post-Modern Fairy Tale ....................................180 Conclusion: The Post/Neo-Feminist Girl and Additions to Feminist Film Scholarship ........................................................................................199 Conclusion ...........................................................................................................203 Bibliography ........................................................................................................210 Vita .. ...................................................................................................................222 ix Introduction In one of Mina’s (Mina Mazzini) earliest roles in cinema, she stars as Marcella, a young woman that has recently returned to Rome after studying abroad. Raised in a traditional family, Marcella is an admirer of classical and melodic Italian music, never having experienced contemporary music (of that period) until stumbling upon a run-down nightclub in a residential neighborhood. Marcella becomes instantly enamored with the new americanized youth music when she hears a group of young singers at a bar, also known as the urlatori (shouter), and falls in love with the nightclub’s owner Paolo. On later returning to the bar, Marcella admires the singers’ happy, blissful lives, to which Paolo states, “La musica dà qualcosa a ciascuno di noi in maniera diversa. Con la musica non ci annoiamo mai” (“Music gives something to every one of us in a different way. With music we’ll never be bored”). He explains that he chose an interesting profession rather than following in his father’s footsteps as a notary. Surprised, Marcella tells Paolo that she lacks the courage to pursue a passionate career, to which he responds, “allora tu non sei sincera con te stessa” (“then you aren’t sincere with yourself”). For the remainder of the film Marcella aids the young singers in renovating their bar