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The article shows that the major Italian- and English-language interpretations ofRome, Open Cityshare a set of common assumptions about the meanings of the film for its 1945 viewers: that the film offered a coherent meaning that it still holds out to viewers today, that it owed its original success to its accuracy, that is, to its compatibility with most Italians’ memories of the war, and that its meaning and content were a function of its makers’ intentions. The article demonstrates that political and social conditions in postwar Italy rendered political newspapers’ reviews of the film an unusually good guide to understanding ideologically influenced audience perceptions. These reviews reveal three entirely different and contradictory interpretations of the film, each a product of a different, politically defined interpretive community: Christian Democrats and Liberals, Socialists and Actionists, and Communists. Rightist and extreme leftist reviews described and praised seemingly very different films. Especially significant is the Socialist and Actionist rejection ofRome, Open Cityas dangerously misleading. Overall, the article’s analysis of critical reception discourses highlights their value to the development of a more complex and meaningful understanding of diverse spectatorships of Italian cinema in the immediate postwar period. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article analyses three fantasy sequences in contemporary Italian cinema about political terrorism in the period known as the anni di piombo ('years of lead'). It argues that, faced with divided memories, ideologically-charged narratives of the past, political interference and the so-called Italian anomalies, film-makers have reacted by making the absence of resolution a question in its own right. The article identifies and analyses three specific approaches, each linked to a sequence from each film. The first sequence, imo sfondo di verita', focuses on Marco Tullio Giordana's Ronianzo di una strage, which navigates the absence of resolution, lamenting it but also exploiting it to force a particular version of events. The second sequence, 'vado a dormire', focuses on Marco Bellocchio's Buongiorno, notte, which uses a dream sequence to fabricate a different resolution, but simultaneously underscore reality. The third sequence, inea culpa', analyses the invented confession scene in Paolo Sorrentino's II Divo, arguing that it employs ambiguity to find closure in imagination itself, rather than in an imagined truth. Through the micro-analyses of these texts, this article seeks to highlight a broader question about cinema's relationship with ambiguity and mystery in modern Italian history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a literary criticism of the musical play "Hurlothrumbo" written by Samuel Johnson. Topics discussed include the performances of the play during 18th century, the depiction of Italian opera in the play and its influence on Italian opera, and the mention of "Hurlothrumbo" play in Henry Fielding's novel "Tom Jones." Also mentioned are the written works of author David Erskine Baker on the play.

During the war years, both fiction and non-fiction films relating to the war populated Italian screens. This article examinesMaciste alpino (1916), one of the best known and best received of the popular Maciste series of Italian silent cinema, in light of several factors: the growing nationalist movement that saw intervention in World War I as the means of creating political consensus; the sophistication and development of narrative, character, and attractions in the Maciste series; and its relation to popular film genres such as comic serials and the emerging strongman genre. Maciste functioned as a modern weaponpar excellence, a Futurist mechanized man whose muscled body constituted its own fighting machine. At the same time, through his humor, goodwill, and muscled physique he became a national symbol of Italian wartime might. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the collaboration in film-making between Italians and British (the films of which are referred to as Britalian films) from 1946 through 1954, with a particular focus on examining their methods of film production. The British film industry's establishing of film studios in Italy, including in Rome, Italy, is discussed. An overview of Britalian films' use of locations within Italy, including the canals of Venice, Italy in the movie "The Stranger’s Hand (La mano dello straniero)," directed by Mario Soldati and starring Trevor Howard and Alida Valli, is provided.

The first film to be industrially produced in Italy, La presa di Roma (Alberini & Santoni, 1905), marks the beginning of a relationship between Italian cinema and the Risorgimento that will have an enduring and fruitful future. Between 1905 and 1927, more than sixty films would be based on the Risorgimento, each one realized in its own particular style and with its own historical interpretation. This diversity of cinematic approaches to representing the Risorgimento was already visible in two films made just four years apart; La presa di Roma (1905) and Il piccolo garibaldino (1909). Through a reconstruction of the historical studies conducted during the restoration of the two films, this essay analyzes and compares the essential characteristics of each film, relating their choices of imagery and style to the historical and political context in which they were made. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The only collection of commedia dell'arte scenarios to have been published in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is that of the actor-manager Flaminio Scala, in 1611. This can serve, among other things, as a primary source of information about the style of acting in commedia dell'arte performance in its golden age, from 1570 to 1630. While English drama of the same period provides us, in the main, with only the words the actors were to have spoken, the Scala collection rarely provides us with these, but rather, with a wealth of descriptions of actions and emotions. These descriptions enable us to make inferences about the style in which they were acted – that is, about the particular way in which the stories the actors presented were said, performed, or expressed. Natalie Crohn Schmitt is Professor of Theatre, Emerita, University of Illinois at Chicago. She has published on commedia dell'arte in Viator, Renaissance Drama, and Text and Performance Quarterly, and previously in New Theatre Quarterly on Stanislavsky (NTQ 8), on theatre in its historic moment (NTQ 23), and on John Cage (NTQ 41). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The inter-war years saw the emergence of the giallo as a new literary genre in Italy. Despite opposition from the Fascist regime, which considered detective novels 'dangerous', they were immensely popular. In the face of their rapid proliferation, some critics voiced disapproval of what they regarded as a low subliterary form. This article examines the critical reception of crime novels, assessing the claims and counter-claims made by contemporary commentators; it argues for a more nuanced reading of a complex cultural phenomenon which, contrary to convention, elicited reactions that were far from homogeneous and can usefully be interpreted as responses to modernity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses body and meaning in early commedia dell'arte, a form of physical acting which originated in Italy in the middle of the 16th century, and the genealogy of contemporary theater. The author explains that commedia's polyvalent was closely linked to its variable system of physical acting. Commedia's relation to other theatrical and social practices is examined. Subjects of the article also include commedia's improvisational methods and the vision of the world commedia's physical aesthetic implied.

Jean Dorat (1508-88), the guide and mentor of several poets of the Pléiade, gave a series of lectures on books 10-12 of the Odyssey which were partially preserved in lecture notes taken by a student. These notes, now housed in the Ambrosian Library in Milan, provide a useful insight into his teaching methods. His discussion of the text is largely aimed at providing an allegorical interpretation of Homer, strongly grounded on principles of etymology which owe much to Cratylism. A very wide range of classical and medieval authors are adduced by Dorat in support of his interpretation of the Homeric text, and he includes all the traditional types of allegoresis: moral, physical, historical, metaphysical, and religious. A number of passages of the manuscript are discussed in some detail in the article, including sections on the rivers of the Underworld, Elpenor, Circe and Calypso, Scylla and Charybdis, and Odysseus' shipwrecks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]