Nemla Italian Studies Journal of Italian Studies Italian Section Northeast Modern Language Association Special Issue: Contemporary Italian Cinema Editors: Simona Wright The College of New Jersey Fulvio Orsitto California State University, Chico Volume xxxiv, 2012 ii Nemla Italian Studies (ISSN 1087-6715) Is a refereed journal published by the Italian section of the Northeast Modern Language Association under the sponsorship of NeMLA and The College of New Jersey Department of World Languages and Cultures 2000 Pennington Road Ewing, NJ 08628-0718 It contains a section of articles submitted by NeMLA members and Italian scholars, exceprts from published and unpublished authors, and a section of book reviews. Participation is open to those who qualify under the general NeMLA regulations and comply with the guidelines established by the editors of NeMLA Italian Studies. Essays appearing in this journal are listed in the PMLA and Italica. Each issue of the journal is listed in PMLA Directory of Periodicals, Ulrich International Periodicals Directory, Interdok Directory of Public Proceedings, I.S.I. Index to Social Sciences and Humanities Proceedings. Institutional subscription is obtained by placing a standing order with the editor at the above The College of New Jersey address. Individual subscription is optained by subscribing online through the NeMLA Italian Studies webpage: www.nemla.org. Each new or back issue is billed $10 at mailing. ********************* iii iv Editorial Board for This Volume Founder Joseph Germano, Buffalo State College Editors Fulvio Orsitto, California State University, Chico Simona Wright, The College of New Jersey Assistant to the Editors as Referees Philip Balma, University of Connecticut, Storrs Simone Castaldi, Hofstra University Chiara Ferrari, California State University, Chico Rosetta Giuliani Caponetto, Auburn University Vetri Nathan, University of Massachusetts, Boston Gloria Pastorino, Fairleigh Dickinson University Renato Ventura, University of Dayton Editorial Assistant Anna Strowe, University of Massachusetts Amherst v vi Volume xxxiv 2012 CONTENTS Introduction FULVIO ORSITTO AND SIMONA WRIGHT..................................xi Antonioni’s Photographer: Doubting Thomas or Peeping Tom? Blow-Up as Post-Neorealist Parody. MARY WATT......................................................................................1 2001-2011. L’ultimo cinema di Nanni Moretti fra autobiografia e ricerca del padre FABIO BENINCASA........................................................................26 The Nascent State of Future: Relevance of the Maternal Symbolic and Metonymic in Francesca Comencini’s Cinema ANDREA RIGHI...............................................................................49 Archeology of the Future or the Splendor of Moral Realism: The Cinema of Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi LUCA BARATTONI.........................................................................69 Politica cinema e società nel Caimano di Moretti SILVIA CARLOROSI.......................................................................87 Chi ha paura del buio? La favola sonora di Rosso come il cielo TANIA CONVERTINI....................................................................109 Voyeurism and Desire Keeping The Right Distance GLORIA PASTORINO...................................................................128 vii viii BOOK REVIEWS Francesco Ciabattoni. Dante’s Journey to Polyphony. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010. RAFFAELE DE BENEDICTIS......................................................140 Pietro Frassica, ed. Shades of Futurism. Futurismo in ombra. Atti del convegno Internazionale. Princeton 9-10 ottobre 2009. Novara: Interlinea, 2011. ROBERTO NICOSIA......................................................................143 Rosa Giulio. Gli infiniti disordini delle cose. Sullo Zibaldone di Leopardi. Salerno: Edisud, 2012. MARK EPSTEIN............................................................................146 William Hope. Giuseppe Tornatore. Emotion, Cognition, Cinema. Newcastle upon Tyne (UK): Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008. FULVIO ORSITTO.........................................................................148 Roberta Ricci. Scrittura, riscrittura, autoesegesi: voci autoriali intorno all’epica in volgare. Boccaccio, Tasso. Pisa: Edizioni ETS, 2010. MARTINA DI FLORIO GULA......................................................151 Frank Rosengarten. Giacomo Leopardi’s Search for a Common Life through Poetry: a Different Nobility, a Different Love. Madison (NJ): Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2012. MARK EPSTEIN............................................................................154 Grace Russo Bullaro. Beyond Life is Beautiful. Comedy and Tragedy in the Cinema of Roberto Benigni. Leicester (UK): Troubador Publishing Press, 2005. FULVIO ORSITTO.........................................................................157 ix Giulia Santi. Sul materialismo leopardiano. Tra pensiero poetante e poetare pensante. Milano: Mimesis, 2011. MARK EPSTEIN............................................................................160 Edoardo Tabasso and Marco Bracci. Da Modugno a X Factor: Musica e società italiana dal dopoguerra a oggi. Roma: Carocci, 2010. SABRINA OVAN............................................................................164 x Introduction This monograph volume of the NeMLA journal of Italian Studies proposes a series of reflections on Contemporary Italian Cinema. In the past couple of decades, Italian directors have been more than ever shooting in the present tense (to use Millicent Marcus’ expression), making films that were recording the complexities of a changing socio-political and cultural context and were marked by an ever-growing activity of investigation, problematization, and negotiation of national identity. Such a process was facilitated by new intersections between different cultures and, in general, by the greater geographical and cultural porosity of the traditionally conceived national borders. Providing audiences with a unique perspective on many social, political, and economic changes, contemporary Italian cinema reflects how Italians began to face their own ‘colonial unconscious’ with respect to their external Other (represented by the so-called ‘extracomunitari’) and the internal one (the South). Moreover, some of the so-called ‘new Italians’ have recently acquired a filmic authorial voice that elaborates a refreshingly multilayered view on and of Italians, challenging their ‘Italianness,’ and offering glimpses of future possible acculturations by proposing complex but fruitful interactions. In addition, in the past couple of decades Italian cinema has also been confronting its own past, struggling on one side to renew film genres and redefine their boundaries, while on the other focusing on the cumbersome inheritance of Italian Neorealism. Clearly, besides the calligraphic penchant of several films of the early 1990’s, which were often labeled as neo-neorealist, one may notice a constant presence of the Neorealist ghost resurfacing in the works of many directors, a manifestation that a more in-depth investigation will unmask as a rather superficial ‘mood,’ a generic social ‘impegno’ that has nothing to do with a thoughtful renegotiation of the old masters’ legacy. In order to better locate, historically and contextually, the development of new authorial perspectives, this volume begins with an essay by Mary Watt on Michelangelo Antonioni. One of the first Italian auteurs trying to exceed the Neorealist boundaries and to reflect upon the nature of reality and the quest for truth, Antonioni creates, in xi INTRODUCTION Watt’s words, “a meta-parody in which his use of hagiographical and popular traditions is itself a parody of the Neorealist tradition” (q.v. 1) Watt explores Antonioni’s intention as articulated in one of his most intriguing oeuvres, Blow Up, where most clearly one detects the “filmmaker’s break with Neorealism’s belief that truth was knowable and reality capable of filmic representation, even if not always at the literal level of the narrative.” (q.v. 1) The following group of essays is devoted to the examination of some of the most noteworthy contemporary Italian auteurs. Fabio Benincasa explores the autobiographical echoes that distinguish the cinematography of Nanni Moretti, arguably the most influential and celebrated of contemporary Italian directors. Benincasa’s analysis of Moretti’s stylemes offers in-depth reflections upon Michele Apicella’s character, but also upon the recurring presence of father figures, metacinematic aspects and the frequent psychoanalytical references. Andrea Righi investigates Francesca Comencini’s cinema, showing its complexity both in terms of theoretical contents and modalities of expression, and highlighting the presence of symbolic and metonymic aspects. Moreover, Righi stresses how in Comencini’s cinema issues of gender and politics are always strictly interconnected, and how the private sphere is often the site for larger political conflicts. Luca Barattoni underlines how the persistent resurfacing of realism in Italian Cinema affects independent directors such as Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi, urging them to find their own way to cinéma vérité, a new “moral realism” that elicits an ethical response on the viewer’s part. The second group of essays proposes the analysis of three very different filmic experiences. Silvia Carlorosi emphasizes the elaboration of a discourse