Marcia Landy,
Italian Film,
Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000.
ISBN: 0 5216 497 7
434pp
US$24.00 (pb)
(Review copy supplied by Cambridge University Press)

Uploaded 25 July 2002

Marcia Landy’s massive study of Italian cinema has all the advantages and disadvantages of a “national cinema” study. It provides readers with a number of stimulating essays concerning various aspects of Italian cinema, some of which will be discussed in more detail below, but, necessarily, much of the story is left out. All books must make choices, and books carrying a title such as Italian Film are no exception. Which films should be included, and which left out, which directors, which critics, which debates, which stars, which award ceremonies, which hits, which flops, which genres. All this makes studies of this kind particularly open to criticism, because the wider the subject, the more that has to be left out, and the less that can be included. One of Landy’s choices is to see film as having “played a prominent role until recently in producing a collective narrative of the Italian people” and as a way of “understanding fictions of the Italian nation” (xiii). This is not a straightforward comparison between History and Italian film, but as “modes of staging history” as “an index to the folklore of the culture” (xiv). In terms of content, this approach takes in studies of femininity, masculinity, the city, the school and other areas. This wide and yet focused way of looking at Italian film gives the book its coherency, it concentrates this volume about Italian film within discussions of national identity and narratives of the nation. What is marginalised, clearly, is the idea of cinema as a system. Audiences are placed, already, in the background. The cultural status of cinema and films within the wider cultural milieu of Italy is not central here (except for an analysis of the relationship between cinema and television in chapter 12). What is central are Italian films, and this is a film-based study, not one which focuses in any great detail on individual directors, stars, although different genres are discussed at some length.

The content of these chapters is variable, and eclectic. One constant feature is the frequent attention given to the relationship between the city, the landscape and cinema, not just in films themselves but through cinemas and other urban effects of cinema production. Landy is always aware of the importance of looking at wider film production beyond that of narratives and features – documentaries, newsreels and so on. This importance is analysed impressively in the chapter on early Italian cinema. The whole of this chapter is a model of individual film analysis, cinema history and historical discussion. Chapter 2 is less convincing. Landy is not at her happiest with historical material, which sometimes verges on the banal, and is not error-free (the “arditi” cannot really be seen as the “followers” of D’Annunzio, for example (9). There are some other mistakes in the book of a less ‘historical’ nature. On page 153, Rocco is in fact described as a film set in Sicily (it is set in Milan)! A similar error can be found on Page 159, where I Compagni is moved from Turin to Milan). The discussion of fascism appears aimed at those with no knowledge at all (48-9 and passim). When the analysis returns to films themselves, we are immediately on more solid ground, although more might have been said about the actual effects of fascist film, and about the importance of colonialism in the 1930s. Landy’s chapter on comedy does not stand out within the book. The great directors of Italian comedy are missing – Dino Risi and, apart from I Compagni (1963), Mario Monicelli. A complete, highly-popular and original genre – the episode film, as with Risi’s influential I Mostri (1960), is ignored. The bitter-sweet comedy, as with Monicelli’s masterpiece La Grande guerra (1959) or Comencini’s Tutti a casa (1960), is also strangely excluded in favour of more well-known films such as Amarcord (1974) or La vita e bella (1997).

Neo-realism, unsurprisingly, forms the basis for much of this volume. There is a detailed analysis of Paisà, and of certain Visconti films (although strangely, nothing is said about Rocco and his Brothers (1960), which touches on many of the themes dealt with in this book, and there is too little on Antonioni’s La notte (1960)). Landy’s detailed work on Gramsci and cinema is generally useful although the attempt to depict The Tree of the Wooden Clogs (1978) as a Gramscian film is somewhat unconvincing. At times, “Gramsci” is confused somewhat with a general analysis of the relationship between cinema and the south in Italian film. Further chapters deal with the Italian western, the family as a theme in Italian cinema production (again, Rocco would have proved an interesting film to look at here). This chapter moves refreshingly between iconic and much-discussed films dealing with the family, such as La terra trema (1948), to more “popular” productions, such as Matarazzo’s Tormento (1951). Finally, the book moves onto a study of childhood, a section which covers many of the classic neo-realist films as well as briefly discussing Gianni Amelio’s Il ladro di bambini (1992). [1] Two excellent and rich chapters follow on femininity and stardom and masculinity, which range widely across periods and genres, showing the author’s impressive range of research and knowledge of certain cinematic themes and discussions. A final, concluding chapter, looks at the often difficult relationship between cinema and television in Italy and the representation of television within certain Italian films.

This is a very useful addition to the available work on Italian film in English. It should be required reading for Italian cinema film studies courses and certain chapters can be used for more general history or cultural studies courses. The thematic and not chronological approach opens up the book to more detailed discussions of films, stars and genres. Finally, the volume is elegantly produced, with eighty black and white photos (interspersed throughout the book), a bibliography, a filmography, an index and a series of useful footnotes.

John Foot

Endnotes:

[1] The work of certain directors, in general, is underrepresented in this volume – especially from the more quality end of the market and relating to some key films of the 1980s and 1990s – for example, Amelio, Soldini, Arciburgi and Piccioni.