Università Roma Tre

COMEDY, ITALIAN STYLE
Program: The course intends to deal with Italian comedy through a multiplicity of points of view and methodologies. We will analyze genres dynamics, narrative models, types of characters, different icons, styles, ways of production and reception. The interpretation of the films will be accompanied by the problematization of some essential issues of the debate of the period and the subsequent reflections in the historical-critical and theoretical field: the relationship between cinematographic imagery and social reality, the question of national identity, the intermediate fabric of mass culture.

TEXTS: Maurizio Grande, La commedia all’italiana, a cura di Orio Caldiron, Bulzoni, Roma 2003; Mariapia Comand, Commedia all’italiana, Il Castoro, Milano 2010.
FILMOGRAPHY: I soliti ignoti (1958) by Mario Monicelli; La grande guerra (1959) by Mario Monicelli; Tutti a casa (1960) by Luigi Comencini; Una vita difficile (1961) by Dino Risi; Mafioso (1962) by Alberto Lattuada; Il sorpasso (1962) by Dino Risi; Il professore (ep. Controsesso, 1963) by Marco Ferreri; I mostri (1963) by Dino Risi; Il boom (1963) by Vittorio De Sica; Sedotta e abbandonata (1964) by Pietro Germi; Io la conoscevo bene (1965) by Antonio Pietrangeli; C’eravamo tanto amati (1974) by Ettore Scola.
Films will be shown in full or in part during lessons. Dvd copies will be available at the Biblioteca "Lino Miccichè", via Ostiense 139.