Popular Italian Cinema

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xiii

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2. The Fair and the Museum: Framing the Popular

   • Louis Bayman, Sergio Rigoletto

   Pages 1-28

3. Italian Cinema, Popular?

   • Christopher Wagstaff

   Pages 29-51

4. The Prettiness of Italian Cinema

   • Rosalind Galt

   Pages 52-68

5. The Pervasiveness of Song in Italian Cinema

   • Richard Dyer

   Pages 69-81

6. Melodrama as Seriousness

   • Louis Bayman

   Pages 82-97

7. Moving Masculinity: Incest Narratives in Italian Sex Comedies

   • Tamao Nakahara

   Pages 98-116

8. Laughter and the Popular in Lina Wertmüller’s The Seduction of Mimì

   • Sergio Rigoletto

   Pages 117-132

9. Strategies of Tension: Towards a Reinterpretation of Enzo G. Castellari’s The Big Racket and The Italian Crime Film

   • Alex Marlow-Mann

   Pages 133-146

10. ‘Il delirio del lungo metraggio’: Cinema as Mass Phenomenon in Early Twentieth-Century Italian Culture

    • Irene Lottini

    Pages 147-162

11. Dressing the Part: ‘Made in Italy’ Goes to the Movies with Lucia Bosé in Chronicle of a Love Affair

    • Réka Buckley

    Pages 163-182

12. Hercules versus Hercules: Variation and Continuation in Two Generations of Heroic Masculinity

    • Daniel O’Brien

    Pages 183-199

13. On the Complexity of the Cinepanettone

    • Alan O’Leary

    Pages 200-213

14. Cinema and Popular Preaching: the Italian Missionary Film and Fiamme

    • Maria Francesca Piredda

    Pages 214-225

15. Dolce e Selvaggio: The Italian Mondo Documentary Film

    • Mark Goodall

    Pages 226-239

16. Back Matter

    Pages 240-249

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Exciting new critical perspectives on popular Italian cinema including melodrama, poliziesco, the mondo film, the sex comedy, missionary cinema and the musical. The book interrogates the very meaning of popular cinema in Italy to give a sense of its complexity and specificity in Italian cinema, from early to contemporary cinema.

• cinema
• comedy
• documentary film
• drama
• film
• interpret
• Italy
• knowledge
• love
• music
• specificity

'This volume really does represent a shift in thinking on Italian cinema, and the many fine, young scholars who contribute to this book show the direction that future criticism of Italian film will take. It is a valuable contribution to cinema studies on many levels, and I was delighted to have read it.' - Peter Bondanella, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature, Film Studies and Italian, Indiana University, USA

• King’s College London, UK

  Louis Bayman

• University of Oregon, USA

  Sergio Rigoletto

RÉKA BUCKLEY Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Portsmouth, UK RICHARD DYER teaches Film Studies at King's College London and St. Andrews University, UK ROSALIND GALT Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Sussex, UK MARK GOODALL Senior Lecturer at the University of Bradford, UK IRENE LOTTINI teaches Italian language and Italian cinema at the University of Iowa, USA TAMAO NAKAHARA ALEX MARLOW-MANN Research Co-ordinator at the Centre for Film Studies at the University of St Andrews, UK DANIEL O'BRIEN Freelance writer and teacher, UK ALAN O'LEARY University of Leeds, UK MARIA FRANCESCA PIREDDA Lecturer in Cinema History, Catholic University of Milan and University of Bologna, Italy CHRISTOPHER WAGSTAFF Senior Lecturer in Italian Studies at the University of Reading, UK

Policies and ethics