Continuities and Ruptures in Italy's Postwar Filmic Foodscape
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Breaking Bread: Continuities and Ruptures in Italy’s Postwar Filmic Foodscape Nicole Ann Kiviat Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy under the Executive Committee of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2020 © 2020 Nicole Ann Kiviat All Rights Reserved ABSTRACT Breaking Bread: Continuities and Ruptures in Italy’s Postwar Filmic Foodscape Nicole Ann Kiviat This dissertation examines food tropes in Italian films of the Economic Miracle, investigating moments of continuity with prewar gastronomic traditions, as well as denoting drastic breaks with the familiar. The kitchen is a place of traditional culinary practices and ingredients, and from which sensations of hominess and conviviality are continually generated; yet, the kitchen is where the changes to the postwar foodscape are most visible. In my analysis of films released from 1954 to 1973, the kitchen is treated as a site of both recognizability and unrecognizability: the feeling that someone does not belong among the people, objects, and rituals part of that changing arena; alternatively, they might not be recognized themselves. In the readings that follow, these directors, actors, and writers grapple with such unrecognizability by way of the stomach: the organ with which to digest food and, moreover, to process the changes that that gastronomy represents. This dissertation is divided into four chapters, or, rather, two halves: first, continuity and desire, and later, rupture and violent rejection. These halves represent continuities and breaks, respectively, as this project follows the transformation of Italy’s “rosy” cinema into dark, nihilist auteurism. At the center of the first half are two stars: Totò (Chapter Two) and Sophia Loren (Chapter Three). In the work of Totò, the visceral hunger that he experiences matches that of the very recent past, and in particular, that of the South. When food became readily available, however, a new hunger emerged: a hunger for what was, as Totò upheld the dietary routines to which he was long accustomed. Meanwhile, Sophia Loren embodies the multivalence of hunger. As Cesira in La ciociara (1960), Loren portrayed a mother struggling against la carestia of occupied Italy; hunger is once again a physical sensation. But through later roles, as well as the authorship of her own cookbook, not only is the stomach satisfied, but there is now a sexual dimension to hunger. Loren softened both the hunger pangs and the blows of the changing sociopolitical arena, leaving her viewers to desire simultaneously her body and the food she prepares, ultimately inviting us to eat with her. Chapter Four, meanwhile, uses the cinema and narrative theories of Pier Paolo Pasolini to explore the connections between continuity, rupture, and “revolution.” Revolution is, in the Marxist sense, the proletariat contending with exploitative forces, as seen through Stracci in La ricotta (1963). It is also the turning of a wheel, emblematic of a progression in a cycle back to naturality and austerity. Despite violent eating and existential crises, the characters of Luna (Uccellacci e uccellini, 1966) and Emilia (Teorema, 1968) reveal a continued relationship with the earth, within which seeds – signs of new life – are planted. This project also suggests a turn towards the tenets of 1940s neorealism, particularly the notions of survival and rebirth. In Marco Ferreri’s La grande abbuffata (1973), the subject of Chapter Five, four wealthy protagonists gather for the ultimate “gastronomic seminar”: a weekend during which they are suicided by overconsumption, choosing to abandon a world so deeply unrecognizable from the traditions and virtues of decades past. Yet, in bequeathing the world to Andréa, there is a reawakening. Andréa is left to perpetuate not only the rich traditions and rituals of previous generations, but also a world of anxieties, unsure of what the future holds. Table of Contents Acknowledgements ii Dedication vi 1. Introducing the Filmic Foodscape of the Boom 1 2. Totò and the Continuity of Hunger 18 3. From Pizzaiola to Phenom: Sophia Loren, the Nexus of Networks 67 4. Crises and Revolutions in the Work of Pasolini 108 5. La grande abbuffata, or the Reawakening at the End of the World 170 6. Conclusion 214 Bibliography 224 i Acknowledgements I first arrived at Columbia in September 2012, fresh out of college, and more or less obsessed with the following: the legacies of Fascism; food; and films by Vittorio De Sica. Little did I know that these three factors would come to form the cornerstones of, firstly, a Master’s thesis, and now, this dissertation; these interests would ultimately shape me as an academic and person. For these life-changing developments, I am indebted to Professors Elizabeth Leake and Barbara Faedda for not curtailing these passions, but for cultivating them further. Through rigorous coursework, attentive advising, and the most productive conversations, they have inspired and overseen a project which is so labyrinthine, yet so uniquely “me.” Thank you for everything. I also would like to thank Professors Jo Ann Cavallo, Daniele De Feo, and Ara Merjian for serving on my dissertation committee, and, in so doing, offering most valuable feedback over the years. I wish to extend a special thanks to Professor De Feo, as well as to his co-editors, Claudia Bernardi and Francesca Calamita, for their insightful comments on my work on Sophia Loren, part of which will be published in their forthcoming volume. I also am grateful for Professor Nelson Moe’s constructive suggestions as I prepared this project, and, most importantly, for introducing me to the work of Totò, whose presence and development is so palpable across this dissertation. Having completed this dissertation at a premier research institution, I am fortunate to have had access to such powerful resources, both on and beyond Columbia’s campus. This dissertation would not have been written so swiftly or efficiently without my weekly visits to the Writing Studio of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, directed by Kate Daloz. Thank you for all the post-its and coffee, as well as for organizing numerous writing sprints. In addition, I ii am incredibly grateful to have participated in one of the Studio’s writing groups, facilitated by Valerie Bondura. Focused on exchanging pages and providing feedback on a weekly basis, this interdisciplinary group was one of the most productive aspects of my dissertation process. Many thanks to the participants: Danielle Drees, Velia Ivanova, and Ira Soboleva; my chapter on La grande abbuffata (1973) would certainly not be what it is without their incredibly insightful notes. In terms of logistics and financial support, I am thankful for the Italian Department at Columbia, especially the administrative staff: Lani Muller and Aurelia Rabot-Hernández. They have been so helpful in, among innumerable other things, organizing writing boot camps, publishing and teaching workshops for the department, and the department’s film series, all of which have honed my professional development. To this end, I am also grateful to my second writing group, that of Italian modernists: Carlo Arrigoni, Irene Bulla, Massimiliano Delfino, Jenny Rhodes, and Julia Sirmons. I especially thank this group for their patience and highly constructive criticism in reviewing early drafts of my work. In addition, I would like to thank all those responsible for awarding me the department’s Austin Oldrini Travel Fellowship in 2018, with which I was able to conduct research at the Mario Gromo Bibliomediateca in Turin, Italy. Thank you to Fabio Pezzetti for guiding my library research, and special thanks to Carla Ceresa for assisting me in the archives. These findings are most clearly shown in my chapter on Totò. I give special thanks to my Intermediate Italian I and II classes, for their boundless flexibility and patience as I worked to incorporate my research into classroom activities. It’s certainly not easy to interpret, let alone watch, La ricotta (1963) for the very first time – in iii another language, no less! But nevertheless, their fresh eyes and the novel ideas they voiced informed my own analyses. I am so thankful for those outside my department, and even outside Columbia, who dedicated a tremendous amount of time to read first drafts of my work, as well as write and conference with me over the years. Many thanks to Eleonora Sartoni for her friendship and insightful comments across this entire project; I think she, besides my committee, is the only one who has read the project in its entirety. Thank you to Erica Drennan for our writing sessions in our great borough of Brooklyn! I thank her additionally for her extremely constructive feedback that put my chapter on Pier Paolo Pasolini on a much stronger, more viable track. And certainly, thank you to Almu Marín-Cobos, for making our Thursday mornings co- working together some of my most productive, and certainly fun, time writing. I thank Kate Kent, Stephanie Berland, Serena Rivera, Christina Lopez, Keli Young, Carter Rogers, Amanda Yepez, Reed Coots, Christine Holl, Heather Dow, and Chase Gregory for their endless support and the joys of friendship, both on and off the page. The reformulation of this project would not have been possible without Chase Gregory’s wisdom. I also want to especially thank Heather Dow and Carter Rogers for taking the time to proofread my work very diligently and astutely, and Christina Lopez and Serena Rivera for reviewing later drafts of Chapters Two and Three. I also thank Serena for helping me to cultivate my interest in food studies through our repeated conference and publishing collaborations. Many of the ideas in the iv final chapter come from editing our own volume on food and the abject: (In)digestion in Literature and Film: A Transcultural Approach (Routledge, 2020). I also need to thank Paula Fleischer and Tabitha Satterfield for our friendship formed over a love of reading; thank you both for taking on the role of “outside reader” and helping me make the introduction as strong and compelling as it can be.