Music and History in Italian Film Melodrama, 1940-2010
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Between Soundtrack and Performance: Music and History in Italian Film Melodrama, 1940-2010 By Marina Romani A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Italian Studies and the Designated Emphasis in Film Studies in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Barbara Spackman, Chair Professor Mary Ann Smart Professor Linda Williams Professor Mia Fuller Summer 2015 Abstract Between Soundtrack and Performance: Music and History in Italian Film Melodrama, 1940-2010 by Marina Romani Doctor of Philosophy in Italian Studies and the Designated Emphasis in Film Studies University of California, Berkeley Professor Barbara Spackman, Chair Melodrama manifests itself in a variety of forms – as a film and theatre practice, as a discursive category, as a mode of imagination. This dissertation discusses film melodrama in its visual, gestural, and aural manifestations. My focus is on the persistence of melodrama and the traces it leaves on post-World War II Italian cinema: from the Neorealist canon of the 1940s to works that engage with the psychological and physical, private, and collective traumas after the experience of a totalitarian regime (Cavani’s Il portiere di notte, 1974), to postmodern Viscontian experiments set in a 21st-century capitalist society (Guadagnino’s Io sono l’amore, 2009). The aural dimension is fundamental as an opening to the epistemology of each film. I pay particular attention to the presence of operatic music – as evoked directly or through semiotic displacement involving the film’s aesthetic and expressive figures – and I acknowledge the existence of a long legacy of practical and imaginative influences, infiltrations and borrowings between the screen and the operatic stage in the Italian cinematographic tradition. In doing so, I challenge the theoretical bias that associates melodrama with a reliance on grandiose theatrical settings, clichéd symphonic soundtracks, Manichean narrative tropes, redundancy and excess. My contribution to the understanding of cinematic melodrama encompasses two main dimensions. First, I show how the melos in films is crucial to the epistemological structure of every film, rather than a separate or ancillary entity. Whereas realist cinema and melodrama are usually regarded as opposites or antagonists, realism in fact relies on melodramatic aural and gestural figures to fashion its reality effects. Second, my investigation contributes to an understanding of melodrama, in its visual and aural manifestations, both as a mode and as a discourse – a system of mutually enlightening relationships that are influenced by and, in turn, can influence historical and social changes. 1 A Ilaria, papá, la mamma, e ai nonni di Zaccheo e di Guzzano i TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements iii Introduction v Chapter One: Where Do We Go After “Amami Alfredo?” Theoretical and 1 Historiographical Approaches to Music in Film Melodrama Neither Unheard Nor Neglected 2 A Mode of Excess? 8 Chapter Two: How Does Neorealism Sound? Melodramatic Realism in 24 Post-WWII Italy Melodramatic Neorealism 25 A Space-Shaping Melos: Roma cittá aperta 34 Sounds of addio: Senza pietá 47 The Melodramatic Reality Effect: Umberto D. 57 Conclusion 61 Chapter Three: Bodies Performed by History: The Liveness of Memory in 63 Liliana Cavani’s Il portiere di notte Fascist Historiography and Post-WWII Cinema 65 The Scandalous Reality of Il portiere di notte 71 Holding the Gaze 75 Live Performances of Memory 87 Performances of S/M 94 Conclusion 101 Chapter Four: Guadagnino’s Io sono l’amore and the Power of 103 Melodramatic Minimalism Operatic Genealogies 104 Melodramatic Minimalism 108 The Sounds of Productivity 113 History of the Factory/ History of the Nation 119 Emma’s Senses 124 Emma’s Liberation 132 Ambivalent Historico-Musical Gestures 135 Bibliography 140 Filmography 158 ii Acknowledgements This dissertation is the product of many years of study, inspiring seminars and conversations, and it would not have been possible without the unwavering academic and emotional support of many people. Foremost among them is my dissertation committee, chaired by Prof. Barbara Spackman. Prof. Spackman has been a generous and committed mentor, whose academic work and ethics are an example for my own work. Thanks also go to Prof. Linda Williams, who first encouraged me to write about the intersection of two of my passions, music and film, and whose generosity, humility, and brilliance never cease to inspire me. I would also like to thank to Prof. Mary Ann Smart, for her exciting scholarship, for her wonderful classes on operatic staging, and for the innumerable conversations on performativity and melodrama that inform my thinking. I am also grateful to Prof. Mia Fuller for her constant support and for having taught me the importance of a rigorous historical and historiographical approach to cultural phenomena. While not part of my committee, Prof. Albert R. Ascoli has been an attentive and dedicated mentor through all the joys and challenges of graduate school. The staff members of the Department of Italian Studies also have my sincere gratitude for their tireless advice and infinite patience: Sandy Jones, Elizabeth LaVarge-Baptista, and Kathi Brosnan. A special thank you to Moriah Van Vleet – one of the kindest, most talented people I know, and whom I am lucky to count as a friend. At UC Berkeley, I was able to pursue my interdisciplinary interests and to collaborate with enthusiastic professors and students. In particular, I want to thank Prof. Mark Sandberg, Prof. Alessia Ricciardi, Prof. James Davies, Kate Noson, Chiara Cecchelli, Bianca Facchini, my dearest Julia Nelsen, and Arthur J. Lei – editor extraordinaire. I am also thankful to my best friend and inspiring colleague and artist Annamaria Bellezza, and to all my fellow graduate students from the Department of Film Studies and the Department of Music. I am grateful to the Arts Research Center and the Berkeley Language Center where, thanks to generous fellowships and grants, I could develop my ideas on the phenomenology and politics of live performance. Special thanks to BLC Directors Mark Kaiser and Prof. Rick Kern. Before my years at UC Berkeley, I was fortunate to meet some incredible people that became fundamental in my choice to pursue graduate studies. First among them is Prof. Roger Parker – a most brilliant and generous scholar and tireless editor of my work. During my MA studies at King’s College London, Prof. Parker was the first one to tell me that Berkeley and I were made for each other – he was right. I am also grateful to my undergraduate advisor at Universitá di Roma Tre, Prof. Paola Splendore. Special thanks also go to my high school English teacher at the Liceo Scientifico di Teramo, Nando Cozzi – a most passionate educator and the first influential intellectual figure in my life. Over the course of my graduate studies, I was surrounded and supported, emotionally and intellectually, by a wonderful group of friends in academic institutions around the world. I want to thank especially Gavin Williams, Flora Willson, Claudio Vellutini, Carlo Cenciarelli, Marco Purpura, Laura Protano Biggs, and my carissima Delia ‘Deliuch’ Casadei. With them, I have shared the most inspiring conferences panels as well as long-distance skype calls at bizarre hours of day and night, in defiance of deadlines and time zones. iii My dissertation, and my work as a graduate student, would not have been possible without the support and the warmth of my families of choice and the communities in which I am proud to belong. My writing on soundtrack and performance is inseparable from my music activities. I am especially grateful to the Afro-Puertorican community and to my bomba family in the Bay Area: Shefali Shah, Hector Lugo, Sandra Garcia Rivera, Sirena Montalvo, Forooza Baradar, Sarita Shah, and all the friends and artists I had the privilege to learn from and perform with. Their commitment to cultural work has been a constant reminder of the subversive power of live performance, and of the legacy of resistance and activism that are mobilized every time a performance takes place. I am also grateful to have found my Californian home in the “Purple House,” and I want to thank my housemates Pierluigi Nuzzo, Antonio Rosato and, in particular, Margherita Ghetti – for our long walks back home from our meditation sittings, for our culinary extravaganzas, and for our night talks on life in-and-outside academia on the backyard stairs. During my years in the Purple House, my landlady Monika Clark also offered support and warmth: her marvellous family welcomed me as part of their own every time I was feeling too faraway from mine. I am grateful to my family of best friends around the world: Jacopo Ferruzzi, my high school best friend who also ended up in the US for his PhD (but on the wrong coast!); Tommaso Tocci, whom I thank for our beautifully infinite email exchanges and for our conversations along the Thames, where I first questioned him: “but what is theory?”; Caterina Sinibaldi, my companion in the joys and sorrows of grad school, and one of the people who knows me and understands me the most; and Silvia Dobrovich, my best friend, my sister, my housemate of many cities and fellow urban adventurer. I am most thankful for the support of Rossella ‘Biri’ Carbotti – my soul sister and my family: we faced qualifying exams together, prepared Italian food in her house in the Mission while singing Verdi and Paolo Conte; and, most of all, we were always there for each other. I am thankful to the place where I was raised, Villa Zaccheo, a tiny village between the sea and the mountains in Abruzzo, and to my relatives in Italy. It took me almost thirty years to learn how to feel at ease about my origins and my history.