Italian

Examines the place of book-to-film adaptations by one of Italy's most famous postwar film directors.
Since the beginning, much of Italian cinema has been sustained by transforming literature into moving images. This tradition of literary adaptation continues today, challenging artistic form and practice by pressuring the boundaries that traditionally separate film from its sister arts. In the twentieth century, director Luchino Visconti is a keystone figure in Italy’s evolving art of adaptation. From the tumultuous years of Fascism and postwar Neorealism, through the blockbuster decade of the 1960s, into the arthouse masterpieces of the 1970s, Visconti’s adaptations marked a distinct pathway of the Italian cinematic imagination. Luchino Visconti and the Alchemy of Adaptation examines these films together with their literary antecedents. Moving past strict book-to-film comparisons, it ponders how literary texts encounter and interact with a history of cultural and cinematic forms, genres, and traditions. Matching the major critical concerns of the postwar period (realism, political filmmaking, cinematic modernism) with more recent notions of adaptation and intermediality, this book reviews how one of Italy’s greatest directors mined literary ore for cinematic inspiration.

The majority of scholarly treatments for film adaptation are put forth by experts on film and film analysis, thus with the focus being on film. Analyzing Literature-to-Film Adaptations looks at film adaptation from a fresh perspective, that of writer or creator of literary fiction. In her book, Snyder explores both literature and film as separate entities, detailing the analytical process of interpreting novels and short stories, as well as films. She then introduces a means to analyzing literature-to-film adaptations, drawing from the concept of intertextual comparison. Snyder writes not only from the perspective of a fiction writer but also as an instructor of writing, literature, and film adaptation. She employs the use of specific film adaptations (Frankenstein, Children of Men, Away from Her) to show the analytical process put into practice. Her approach to film adaptation is designed for students just beginning their academic journey but also for those students well on their way. The book also is written for high school and college instructors who teach film adaptations in the classroom.

Written by leading figures in the field, A Companion to Italian Cinema re-maps Italian cinema studies, employing new perspectives on traditional issues, and fresh theoretical approaches to the exciting history and field of Italian cinema. Offers new approaches to Italian cinema, whose importance in the post-war period was unrivalled Presents a theory based approach to historical and archival material Includes work by both established and more recent scholars, with new takes on traditional critical issues, and new theoretical approaches to the exciting history and field of Italian cinema Covers recent issues such as feminism, stardom, queer cinema, immigration and postcolonialism, self-reflexivity and postmodernism, popular genre cinema, and digitalization A comprehensive collection of essays addressing the prominent films, directors and cinematic forms of Italian cinema, which will become a standard resource for academic and non-academic purposes alike

A companion to the study of the gangster film's international appeal spanning the Americas, Europe, and Asia A Companion to the Gangster Film presents a comprehensive overview of the newest scholarship on the contemporary gangster film genre as a global phenomenon. While gangster films are one of America's most popular genres, gangster movies appear in every film industry across the world. With contributions from an international panel of experts, A Companion to the Gangster Film explores the popularity of gangster films across three major continents, the Americas, Europe, and Asia. The authors acknowledge the gangster genre's popularity and examine the reasons supporting its appeal to twenty-first century audiences across the globe.  The book examines common themes across all three continents such as production histories and reception, gender race and sexuality, mafia mythologies, and politics. In addition, the companion clearly shows that no national cinema develops in isolation and that cinema is a truly global popular art form.  This important guide to the gangster film genre: Reveals how the gangster film engages in complex and contradictory themes Examines the changing face of the gangster film in America Explores the ideas of gangsterism and migration in the Hispanic USA, Latin America and the Caribbean Discusses the wide variety of gangster types to appear in European cinema Contains a review of a wide-range of gangster films from the Americans, Europe, and Asia Written for academics and students of film, A Companion to the Gangster Film offers a scholarly and authoritative guide exploring the various aspects and international appeal of the gangster film genre.

Futurism and early cinema shared a fascination with dynamic movement and speed, presenting both as harbingers of an emerging new way of life and new aesthetic criteria. And the Futurists quickly latched on to cinema as a device with great potential to manipulate our perceptions in order to create a new world. In the edited collection Futurist Cinema, Rossella Catanese explores that conjunction, bringing in avant-garde artists and their manifestos to show how painters and other artists turned to cinema as a model for overcoming the inherently static nature of painting in order to rethink it for a new era.

Italian cinema is now regarded as one of the great cinemas of the world. Historically, however, its fortunes have varied. Following a brief moment of glory in the early silent era, Italian cinema appeared to descend almost into irrelevance in the early1920s. A strong revival of the industry which gathered pace during the 1930s was abruptly truncated by the advent of World War II. The end of the war, however, initiated a renewal as films such as Roma citta aperta (Rome Open City), Sciuscia (Shoeshine, 1946), and Ladri di biciclette (Bicycle Thieves, 1948), flagbearers of what soon came to be known as Neorealism, attracted unprecedented international acclaim and a reputation that only continued to grow in the following years as Italian films were feted worldwide. Ironically, they were celebrated nowhere more than in the United States, where Italian films consistently garnered the lion's share of the Oscars, with Lina Wertmuller becoming the first woman to ever be nominated for the Best Director award. This second edition of Historical Dictionary of Italian Cinema contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 400 cross-referenced entries on major movements, directors, actors, actresses, film genres, producers, industry organizations and key films. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Italian Cinema.

In this comprehensive guide, some of the world's leading scholars consider the issues, films, and filmmakers that have given Italian cinema its enduring appeal. Readers will explore the work of such directors as Federico Fellini, Michelangelo Antonioni, and Roberto Rossellini as well as a host of subjects including the Italian silent screen, the political influence of Fascism on the movies, lesser known genres such as the giallo (horror film) and Spaghetti Western, and the role of women in the Italian film industry. Italian Cinema from the Silent Screen to the Digital Image explores recent developments in cinema studies such as digital performance, the role of media and the Internet, neuroscience in film criticism, and the increased role that immigrants are playing in the nation's cinema.

Interpretazioni is an intermediate- to advanced-level Italian textbook that aims to teach language through film, focusing on Italian movies from 2010 to 2017. Teaching language through cinema is a widespread and proven practice that engages all four main language skills (speaking, listening, reading, writing), and Interpretazioni utilizes the proven format and pedagogy of Pausini and Antonello Borra's previous book, Italian Through Film (Yale UP, 2003), which is regarded highly among teachers. Films featured in Interpretazioni span genres, address a wide range of themes, and are set in various parts of Italy, encouraging students and teachers to more fully engage with the complexity of Italian cinema. As in Italian through Film, the activities based on the films are divided into three main categories (before, during, and after viewing the film) with a natural progression from warm-up questions to closed and controlled exercises to open-ended and creative tasks-both oral and written-including grammar practice, all within the context of each single film. An instructor's manual with answer keys and suggestions on using apps for teaching is available on the www.press.georgetown.edu website.

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Since World War II, aesthetic impulses generated in Italy have swept through every film industry in the world, and in her book Mira Liehm analyses the roots in literature, philosophy, and contemporary Italian life which have contributed to this extraordinary vigor. An introductory chapter offers a unique overview of the Italian cinema before 1942. It is followed by a full and profound discussion of neorealism in its heyday, its difficult aftermath in the fifties, the glorious sixties, and finally by an analysis of the contemporary cinematic crisis. Mira Liehm has known personally many of the leading figures in Italian cinema, and her work is rich in insights into their lives and working methods. This impressive scholarly work immediately outclasses all other available Italian film histories. It will be essential reading for anyone seriously interested in the cinema.

This book describes the dubbing process of English-language animated films produced by US companies in the 21st century, exploring how linguistic variation and multilingualism are used to create characters and identities and examining how Italian dubbing professionals deal with this linguistic characterisation. The analysis carried out relies on a diverse range of research tools: text analysis, corpus study and personal communications with dubbing practitioners. The book describes the dubbing workflow and dubbing strategies in Italy and seeks to identify recurrent patterns and therefore norms, as well as stereotypes or creativity in the way multilingualism and linguistic variation are tackled. It will be of interest to students and scholars of translation, linguistic variation, film and media.