Introductory description

Film offers a powerful medium for expressing the interior life of individuals and sometimes communities, creating images and sounds which together articulate a sense of how an individual experiences her or his environment, relationships, values, and sense of self in the world. The world of the individual or group is often seen to be in conflict or at odds with a wider view of what society is, and cinema has the capacity to allow the viewer to participate in the individual perspectives of its human subjects.

Italian cinema of the postwar period has a strong and varied tradition of exploring interior experience and idiosyncratic or marginalized perspectives, and of exploiting the opportunities offered by film form and technique to construct alternative realities. In this module you will explore a range of examples of such films, from the sentimental depictions of dispossession associated with neorealism, to auteurist explorations of selfhood and creativity, to psychoanalytic studies of individuals in crisis, to the expression of counter-cultures and anti-normative subjectivities in recent cinema.

Tracing themes such as social exclusion, creativity, anxiety and neurosis, gender and sexuality through a selection of films from the 1940s to the 2000s, you will encounter significant figures and movements in Italian cinema history and form a sense of the interactions between them, whilst developing a complex understanding of factors which have influenced and shaped Italian cinema, from both film-makers’ and spectators’ points of view.

Module web page

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

Module structure (in term 1 or 2, according to that year's module list).
Introduction (week 1):
Bellissima (Luchino Visconti, 1951)
the establishment of further national film vocabularies

• the presence of landscape (and cityscape) as a key element of these vocabularies
• femininities and masculinities in Italian cinema
• questions of vision and viewing
• neorealism and its legacies.
  Section 1. Cinema and self (weeks 2-5)
  8M (Federico Fellini, 1963)
  ll deserto rosso (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1964)
  Caro diario (Nanni Moretti, 1993)
  Respiro (Emanuele Crialese, 2002)
  Section 2. Cinema and childhood (weeks 7-10)
  Sciuscia (De Sica, 1946)
  Germania anno zero (Roberto Rossellini, 1948)
  La vita e' bella (Roberto Benigni, 1997)
  lo non ho paura (Gabriele Salvatores, 2003)

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• Demonstrate a broad and informed knowledge of the development of Italian cinema since 1943, and specifically of key themes, formal questions, and practitioners within this period [subject knowledge];
• demonstrate an understanding of core aspects of film criticism and theory, and the capacity to analyse film in terms of formal and technical, as well as narrative, factors [subject knowledge and cognitive skills];
• identify a history of Italian post-war cinema, in terms of movements, issues, and individual directors/practitioners, and to place this within the context of a broader social and cultural history of Italy [subject knowledge];
• present analyses of individual films or of specific questions related to Italian cinema in both written and oral form, and to discuss film in an accurate and well-informed way [cognitive and key skills];
• employ skills in Italian language - particularly aural skills - to a high level, and demonstrate a passive knowledge of accents/dialects specific to regional and/or social groups [subject knowledge and subject-specific skills];
• develop IT skills [key skills].

Indicative reading list

Filmography as above. Additional suggested viewing per section of the module will be
provided.
Bibliography:
Bertellini, Giorgio (ed.), The Cinema of Italy ((London & New York: Wallflower, 2004)
Bondanella, Peter, Italian Cinema: From Neorealism to the Present (New York: Continuum,
1990)
Bordwell, David & Kristin Thompson, Film Art: An Introduction, 8th edn (New York, London:
McGraw Hill, 2006)
Landy, Marcia, Italian Film (Cambridge: CUP, 2000)
Marcus, Millicent, Italian Film in the Light of Neorealism (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1986)
Marcus, Millicent, After Fellini. National Cinema in the Postmodern Age (Baltimore & London:
Johns Hopkins UP, 2002)
Mulvey, Laura, Visual and Other Pleasures, 2nd edn (New York and London: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2008)
Sorlin, Pierre, Italian National Cinema (London: Routledge, 1996)
Wood, Mary, Italian Cinema (Oxford & New York: Berg, 2005)

Research element

Independent research for essay.

Interdisciplinary

Combines film studies, cultural history, critical theory.

International

All modules delivered in SMLC are necessarily international. Students engage with themes and ideas from a culture other than that of the UK and employ their linguistic skills in the analysis of primary materials from a non-Anglophone context. Students will also be encouraged to draw on the experiences of visiting exchange students in the classroom and will frequently engage with theoretical and critical frameworks from across the world.

Subject specific skills

This module will develop students’ linguistic skills through engaging with primary materials in the target language. It will build students’ capacity to engage with aspects of Italian culture through analysis of this primary material and through seminar discussion aimed at deeper critical thinking. In particular, students’ awareness of Italian cinema will be enhanced through lectures and seminars which engage in scholarship in the field.

Transferable skills

Critical analysis, research, written and oral presentation, time management.