Italian Cinema: Gender and Genre

by M. Günsberg

Overview

Maggie Günsberg examines popular genre cinema in Italy during the 1950s and 1960s, focussing on melodrama, commedia all'italiana , peplum, horror and the spaghetti western. These genres are explored from a gender standpoint which takes into account the historical and socio-economic context of cinematic production and consumption. An interdisciplinary feminist approach informed by current film theory and other perspectives (psychoanalytic, materialist, deconstructive), leads to the analysis of genre-specific representations of femininity and masculinity as constructed by the formal properties of film.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781349412297
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan UK
Publication date:	01/01/2005
Edition description:	1st ed. 2005
Pages:	243
Product dimensions:	5.51(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

MAGGIE GÜNSBERG is Professor of Italian in the Department of Italian Studies at Manchester University, UK. Her research interests include women's writing, Italian cinema and Italian drama. She has published several books in these areas including Playing with Gender: The Comedies of Goldoni; The Epic Rhetoric of Tasso: Theory and Practice; Gender and the Italian Stage: From the Renaissance to the Present and Patriarchal Representations: Gender and Discourse in Pirandello's Theatre.

Table of Contents

Introduction Domestic Bliss: Desire and the Family in Melodrama Commodifying Passions: Gender and Consumerism in Commedia all'italiana Heroic Bodies: The Cult of Masculinity in the Peplum Looking at Medusa: Investigating Femininity in the Horror Film The Man With No Name: Masculinity as Style in the Spaghetti Western Filmography Bibliography Index

Editorial Reviews

"Maggie Günsberg's book is an excellent and most welcome analysis of genre cinema in Italy, a form that has historically tended to be overlooked by Anglo-American criticism ... As the first book written in English to bring together an extended analysis of gender and genre in Italian cinema, it will be a vital tool for researchers and students alike, providing a new slant, rather than simply an introductory overview, to Italian cinema." - Clodagh Brook, Scope

From the Publisher