Università Roma Tre

ITALIAN CINEMA. FROM THE ARRIVAL OF SOUND TO NEOREALISM
Program: The first part is dedicated to Italian sound cinema during Fascism, from 1930 to 1943. The industrial apparatus, the legislative framework, genres, authors, films, figures and forms of the imagination are examined. The second part, wider, concerns post-war cinema. The process of origin and development of neorealism is outlined in the political, moral, cultural and artistic climate of the second half of the 1940s-early 1950s. We analyze the ways of production and reception, the plurality of ideologies, poetics, and styles, the contamination of genres, the neorealist iconography, the forms of aesthetic renewal. We retrace the contemporary debate and the historiographic reinterpretations, the critical and theoretical rereadings elaborated from the Sixties to today.

TEXTS: Gian Piero Brunetta, Guida alla storia del cinema italiano 1905-2003, Einaudi, Torino 2003 (pp. 73-204); David Bruni, Commedia degli anni anni trenta, Il Castoro, Milano 2013; Stefania Parigi, Neorealismo. Il nuovo cinema del dopoguerra, Marsilio, Venezia 2014 and 2016; a selection of texts edited by the teacher (available at the beginning of the course at the copisteria in Via G. Rocco, n. 11). Non-attending students must also read David Bruni, Roberto Rossellini. Roma città aperta, Lindau, Torino 2006.
FILMOGRAPHY: Gli uomini, che mascalzoni… (1932) by M. Camerini; 1860 (1934) by A. Blasetti; Vecchia guardia (1935) by A. Blasetti; Dora Nelson (1939) by M. Soldati; I Grandi Magazzini (1939) by Mario Camerini; Ossessione (1943) by L.Visconti; Paisà (1946) di R. Rossellini; Germania anno zero (1948) by R. Rossellini; Ladri di biciclette (1948) by V. De Sica; La terra trema (1948) by L.Visconti; Riso amaro (1949) by G. De Santis; Miracolo a Milano (1950) by V. De Sica; Il cammino della speranza (1950) by P. Germi; Bellissima (1951) by L. Visconti; Due soldi di speranza (1951) by R. Castellani; Lo sceicco bianco (1952) by F. Fellini; Pane amore e fantasia (1953) by L. Comencini; Il grido (1957) by M. Antonioni.
Films will be shown in full or in part during lessons. Dvd copies will be available at the Biblioteca "Lino Miccichè", via Ostiense 139.

The course examines the period from the post-war to the present, focusing in the first part on the main stages that have marked the history of Italian cinema in terms of films, authors and genres. In the second part, we will focus instead on a particular topos, that of the beach, which has always been central to the national imagination and of course also in our cinematographic tradition. We will therefore examine the aesthetic, narrative, productive and cultural peculiarities of some cinematographic works in which the "bathing condition" has become a privileged occasion to investigate the main historical, social and anthropological changes experienced by our country in more than half a century.

For Erasmus students:

G.P. Brunetta, Guida alla storia del cinema italiano 1905-2003, Einaudi, Torino 2003 (from cap. III to the end);
E. Giacovelli, C’era una volta la commedia all’italiana, Gremese, Roma 2015.

FILMOGRAPHY
Ladri di biciclette (1948) di V. De Sica; Domenica d’agosto (1950) di L. Emmer; La spiaggia (1954) di A. Lattuada; La dolce vita (1960) di F. Fellini; L’avventura (1960) di M. Antonioni; Accattone (1961) di P. P. Pasolini; Il sorpasso (1962) di D. Risi; La voglia matta (1962) di L. Salce; Prima della rivoluzione (1964) di B. Bertolucci; Per un pugno di dollari (1964) di Sergio Leone; L’ombrellone (1965) di D. Risi; Indagine su un cittadino al di sopra di ogni sospetto (1970) di E. Petri; Ferie d’agosto (1996) di P. Virzì; Gmorra (2008) di M. Garrone.

The films will be shown fully or partially during the lessons.