Popular Italian Cinema

With its monsters, vampires, and cowboys, Italian popular culture in the post-war period has generally been dismissed as a form of evasion or escapism. Here, four international scholars re-examine and reinterpret the era to show that popular Italian cinema was not only in tune with contemporary political and social trends, it also presaged the turmoil and rebellion of the 1960s and 1970s. Their analysis of peplum (or “sword and sandal”) films, horror films, spaghetti westerns, and comedy Italian-style shows how genre cinema reflected the changes wrought by modernization, urbanization, consumerist culture, and the sexual revolution. With striking insights into the links between popular culture and politics, this book will be indispensable for specialists in film and media studies, Italian and cultural studies, as well as social history.

About the Author(s)

Flavia Brizio-Skov

Flavia Brizio-Skov is a Professor of Italian at the University of Tennessee, where she teaches modern literature and cinema. She received her PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Washington, Seattle, and has published numerous articles in Italian, American, French, Spanish, and Portuguese journals. She is also the author of a study of Lalla Romano (La scrittura e la memoria: Lalla Romano, 1993), a critical monograph on Antonio Tabucchi (Antonio Tabucchi: navigazioni in un universo narrativo, 2002), and editor of Reconstructing Societies in the Aftermath of War: Memory, Identity, and Reconciliation (2004). 

Table of Contents

List of Photographs * Introduction -- Flavia Brizio-Skov* Popular Genre Cinema * The Italian Sword-and-Sandal Film from Fabiola (1949) to Hercules And The Captive Women (1961): Texts and Contexts -- Frank Burke * Horror Cinema: The Emancipation of Women and Urban Anxiety -- Andrea Bini * Dollars, Bullets And Success: The Spaghetti Western Phenomenon -- Flavia Brizio-Skov * The Birth of Comedy ‘Italian Style’ -- Andrea Bini * Ritual and Cinema * Tarantula Myths and Music: Popular Culture and Ancient Rituals in Italian Cinema -- Flavia Laviosa * Vioence and Cinema * Popular Cinema and Violence: The Western Genre -- Flavia Brizio-Skov * Women’s Drama, Men’s Business: Sexual Violence Against Women in Italian Cinema and Media -- Flavia Laviosa * Bibliography * Index