Schedule of Classes

August 24 Introduction

First Part: The Art of Seeing

August 26

• Carmine Gallone, Scipio Africanus (1937). Available here.

August 31

• Saunders, Thomas J. “A “New Man”: Fascism, Cinema and Image Creation.” International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society 12.2 (1998): 227-46. Read here.
• Benjamin, Walter.”The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility” (1935). Read here.

September 2

• Vittorio de Sica, The Children are Watching Us (1943). Available here.
• Cardullo, Bert. “Neorealism, History, and the Children’s Film: Vittorio De Sica’s the Children Are Watching Us Reconsidered.” Pennsylvania Literary Journal 7.1 (2015): 99-106. Read here.
  

  September 7. Labor Day

Second Part: Neorealism

September 9.

• Roberto Rossellini, Rome, Open City (1945). Available here.
  Peter Bondanella, “The Making of Roma città aperta: The Legacy of Fascism and the Birth of Neorealism.” In Roberto Rossellini’s Rome open city, ed. Sidney Gottlieb. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Available here.

September 14

• Vittorio de Sica, Bicycle Thief (1948). Available here.

September 16

• Bazin, André. “An Aesthetic of Reality: Neorealism.” What is cinema? Vol. 2. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967. 16-40. Available here.

Third Part: Comedy, Italian Style

September 21

• Pietro Germi, Divorce Italian Style (1961). Available here.

September 23

• Carlo Celli and Marga Cottino-Jones, “The Early 1960s.” In A New Guide to Italian Cinema. New York: Palgrave, 2007. Available here.

Fourth Part: Auteur Cinema

September 28

• Michelangelo Antonioni, L’avventura (1960). Available here.

September 30

• Andrew Sarris, “Notes on the Auteur Theory in 1962.” Available here.
• Ford, Hamish. “Antonioni’s L’Avventura and Deleuze’s Time-Image.” Senses of Cinema 28.7 (2003): np. Read here.

October 5

• Federico Fellini, 8 1/2 (1963). Available here.
• Cameron, Ed. “From Symptom to Sublimation: Fellini’s 8½ and the Circuit of Art Cinema.” Italica (2015): 102-20. Available here.

October 7

• Pier Paolo Pasolini, Teorema (1968). Available here.

October 12. Fall Break

October 14

• Resmini, Mauro. “The Saint: An Ethics of Autonomy.” Italian Political Cinema : Figures of the Long ’68. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2022. Available here.

October 19

• Gillo Pontecorvo, The Battle of Algiers (1966). Available here.

October 21

• Nancy Virtue, “Poaching Within the System: Gillo Pontecorvo’s Tactical Aesthetics in the Battle of Algiers.” Screen 55.3 (2014): 317-37. Available here.

October 26

• Elio Petri, Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (1970). Available here.
• The film will be discussed with Professor Mauro Resmini, Associate Professor of Cinema and Media Studies and Italian at the University of Maryland, College Park, and author of Italian Political Cinema : Figures of the Long ’68.

October 28

• Discussion and organization of Class Presentations

Fifth Part: At the Periphery of Cinema

November 2

• Sergio Leone, A Fistful of Dollars (1964). Available here.

November 4

• Fernando Di Leo, Milano calibro 9 (1972). Available here.
• Austin Fisher, “Il braccio violento della legge: Revelation, conspiracy and the politics of violence in the poliziottesco,” Journal of Italian Cinema and Media Studies (2014): 167-181. Available here.

November 9

• Dario Argento, Suspiria (1977).
• Schulze, Joshua, “The ornamental and the monstrous: Exploring feminine architecture in Dario Argento’s Suspiria (1977).” Horror studies, 2019-04, Vol.10 (1). Available here.

For extra credit: Projection of the documentary Elvira Notari: Beyond Silence, at the Rubenstein Arts Center, at 7:00pm, followed by a conversation with filmmaker Valerio Ciriaci.

November 11

• Lina Wertmüller, The seduction of Mimi (1972). Available here.
• Rodica Diaconescu-Blumenfeld, “Regista Di Clausura: Lina Wertmüller and Her Feminism of Despair.” Italica 76.3 (1999): 389-403. Available here.

Sixth Part: The End of “Italian” Cinema

November 16

• Paolo Sorrentino, The Great Beauty (2013). Available here.
• Cangiano, Mimmo. “Against postmodernism: Paolo Sorrentino and the search for authenticity.” The journal of Italian cinema and media studies, 2019-06, Vol.7 (3). Available here.

November 18

• Class Presentations

November 23

• Class Presentations

November 24. Thanksgiving Recess

November 30. Thanksgiving Recess

• Class Presentations

December 2

• Class Presentations