G155 Angell Hall · 435 S. State St. · Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1003 734-764-4311 · [email protected] · ______
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
G155 Angell Hall · 435 S. State St. · Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1003 734-764-4311 · [email protected] · http://www.lsa.umich.edu/cgis _____________________________ ITALIAN STUDIES IN ROME, ITALY COURSE DESCRIPTIONS SUMMER 2014 Professor Giorgio Bertellini (U-M Department of Screen Arts and Cultures/Romance Languages and Literatures) When in Rome: Italian Cinema and Its Capital Movie Set, 3 credits The history of Italian cinema has consistently drawn from the representation of Rome as Italy’s center of political power, artistic culture, and public morality—or lack thereof. The very first Italian fiction film, La presa di Roma (The Capture of Rome, 1905), told the story of the 1871 military occupation of the Papal State’s capital by the army of the newly-formed Italian state. The film’s narrative projected onto the “eternal city” two main power strands, one affiliated with the new State, the other with the timeless Vatican. In various ways, the apparent conflict and much more frequent intersections of these civic cultures (and their contrasting claims over public morality) have continued to affect Italian film culture. Films about the Vatican and the Pope abounded in the silent period, but paled in comparison with the notable historical epics (i.e., Spartacus, 1911; Quo Vadis?, 1913) that helped launching Italian cinema onto the world’s film stage before WWI and gave visual support to an incipient nationalism. After the 1922 “March on Rome,” Mussolini sought to impose the image of Rome as a state and imperial capital and downplay its previous fame as the center of the Church. He thus instructed the newly-instituted newsreel agency Istituto Luce (1925-1943) to film hundreds of non-fiction films about the city’s archeological ruins and about his government’s ambitious public works. Fashioning plans after Haussmann’s celebrated Parisian boulevards, the Duce’s aim was to destroy downtown medieval quarters and turn their narrow alleys of into wide avenues fitting for military parades and large crowds. The construction of Cinecittà Studios in 1937, inaugurated by the filming of the Roman epic Scipio the African, participated in the same plan of imperial grandeur. During the course, we shall visit both the Istituto Luce and Cinecittà. Neorealism reacted to these ambitions by setting in the capital stories of war resistance, widespread poverty and feigned solidarity. Such masterpieces as Open City (Roma città aperta, 1945), Bicycle Thieves (1948), and Umberto D. (1953) featured humble citizens and not heroes, regularly failed and disappointed by the Church (and, admittedly, the Communist party too). During the postwar economic boom, writer-director Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Accattone (1961) and La ricotta (1963) focused on a group of Roman small-time criminals and nothing doers as the “social leftovers” of the nation’s grand modernizing and industrializing processes. Then came Fellini who only worked almost exclusively inside Cinecittà. By exaggerating the city’s nightlife around a newly invented Via Veneto, filled with nuns and Hollywood stars engaged to work in Cinecittà, Fellini crystalized in La Dolce Vita (1960) and 8 e mezzo (8 1/2, 1963) an idea of a decadent, Godless, and immoral Rome that contributed to his international fame as master observer of contemporary malaise. In the same period Antonioni translated the trauma of Italy’s sudden economic boom in terms of troubled romantic narratives, particularly in La Notte (1961) and The Eclipse (1962), all set in Roman aristocratic apartments—roomy, yet asphyctic. With the advent of the street violence and political confrontations of the 1970s and the emergence of 1980s television dramas, Italian cinema refrained from telling stories set in famous piazze and around familiar landmarks, preferring instead to focus on family narratives obsessively set inside small and dark apartments. The cinema of the 1990s reacted against that agoraphobia with such Roman travelogues as Nanni Moretti’s Dear Diary (1993), where the author-director meanders through the capital on his scooter imagining stories made only by filming houses. In the 2000s, Italian cinema looked back at the 1970s, with a special attention to the stories of terrorism and violence set in the capital. The bestselling historical novel, Romanzo Criminale (Criminal Novel, 2002), became an eponymous blockbuster film (2005) and a successful tv series (2008-2010), centered on political corruption and Vatican intrigue. It followed the same penchant for urban views, particularly about Rome and Turin (Italy’s first capital), pioneered by the US-distributed political travelogue La meglio gioventù (The Best of Youth, 2003). The transformation of dramatic political narratives into pleasurable aesthetic entertainments, set in the corridors of power of the Parliament and featuring decadent congressmen and elegant lovers, have also been prominently featured in the recent Il Divo (2008) and The Great Beauty (La grande bellezza, 2013). By visiting key sites related to Italian filmmaking (Cinecittà, Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, Istituto Luce) and Italy’s visual culture (Galleria Borghese, Palazzo delle Esposizioni) and by urging students to recognize key locations that were either real (i.e., Trevi Fontana, Spanish Steps, Pantheon) or, more often, wholly reconstructed at Cinecittà, as it happened to Fellini’s Via Veneto, the course invites students to take ownership of the city where they happen to live for a few weeks through the powerful lens of Italian film history. Professor Federico Niglia (local professor) The American Presence in Italy from WWII up to the Present Day, 3 credits The course analyzes the evolution in the American presence in Italy from the intervention on the Italian territory in 1943 up to the establishment of a political, military and cultural cooperation after the war. A critical discussion on the images and stereotypes concerning the US will be included. .