The Representation of the Italian Male in Post-War Cinema

The course will investigate the various ways in which the most recurrent male protagonist of Post-war Italian films presents itself as a wandering and visionary character who radically and openly renounces to action; far from producing the heroic narrations that stand at heart of American cinema, he is a true ‘humorist’ and generates narratives that find their strength in imperfection. Indeed, discharged from any urgency for form and perfection, in the postwar years Italian cinema became one of the most convincing expressions of Modern filmmaking, a kind of cinema in which even the characters are imperfect and deprived of the pressure to construct strong and perfect narrations. This is partly why such national cinema becomes populated with inept male characters, true blunderers incapable of functioning, often unappreciated by others and incomprehensible even to themselves, in a continuous and difficult encounter/collision with ‘l’altra parte del cielo’, that is with the female universe.

During the course students will be viewing and discussing films made from 1945 to 1985: from Neorealism and the works of De Sica and Rossellini, to the Comedy Italian Style of directors like Monicelli and Risi, and then to New Italian cinema of directors Nanni Moretti and Gabriele Salvatores.