Learning on ScreenDirectory of World Cinema: Italy
Following the Introduction is a couplet of essays on two ‘Films of the Year:’ Luca Guadagino’s 2009 film Io Sono l’amore/ I Am Love and Michelangelo Frammartino’s 2010 Le Quattro Volte/ The Four Times. This leaves the reader wondering ‘films of the year’ according to whom? and on what grounds where these films selected as ‘films of the year?’ The first film was made in 2009, the second in 2010, so which ‘year’ are we in fact talking about? After this couplet of essays and before we get to the main body of the book, there is an interview with Valerio Jalongo, a founding member of the ‘Centoautori’ film movement and the director of Di me cosa ne sai/What Do You Know About Me? before another essay from the editor about the cultural crossover between opera and cinema and finally two case studies of the directors Federico Fellini and Nanni Moretti. These short pieces would perhaps be better as appendices towards the end of the book, as we don’t actually get to the Directory itself until page 33.
The Directory itself is divided into sections which deal with the various genres of Italian Cinema, featuring roughly twelve essays per section preceded by a framing essay, beginning with Silent Cinema which opens with the assertion that 1905 is a ‘foundational date in the history of Italian cinema,’ before proceeding with sections on the more well-known aspects of Italian cinema, such as Neorealism, Giallo and Political Cinema and the often over-looked genres such as Peplum (the ‘sword and sandal’ film), Spaghetti Western and Comedy.
As a guide for students seeking to broaden their knowledge of Italian cinema, this Directory seems like a good place to start
Unfortunately the Directory lacks a concluding essay, which brings all the separate sections together, instead choosing to include a list of relevant books and websites and a rather redundant ‘Test Your knowledge’ quiz which it is hard to imagine students actually taking. In its aims to provide a comprehensive Directory of Italian cinema which seeks to broaden one’s conception of this national cinema beyond auteurism and the well-known genres of horror, melodrama and neo-realism, this book succeeds in its aim. As a guide for students seeking to broaden their knowledge of Italian cinema, this Directory seems like a good place to start.
Sarah Forgacs
