In the wake of the Second World War, Italy’s film industry is drowning in imported Hollywood productions. Trevor Dean, in Crime and Justice in Late Medieval Italy, writes that a “mad furrier […] killed his wife on the road to Castrocaro in a fit of jealous suspicion, after his brother had called him a cuckold.”² The dishonor, the rage, the term provokes is legendary. JSTOR®, the JSTOR logo, JPASS®, Artstor®, Reveal Digital™ and ITHAKA® are registered trademarks of ITHAKA. Four prostitutes, after the passing of the 1957 Merlin Law that closed Italy’s state- regulated brothels, decide to open up a restaurant that will serve as a front for an independent bordello upstairs that will be run by the women themselves. As a leftist film critic, Pietrangeli’s writing was engaged in a cinematic resistance, a movement to limit foreign, chiefly American, film importation. The book makes a case why we should recuperate these films today since the standards for representing women in film continue to fall behind the reality of women’s lives off-screen. Pietrangeli’s representations of women struggling with questions of identity was a revolutionary act in the 1950s and 1960s. It is the lynchpin on which a man’s honor hangs and has been so for centuries. Try logging in through your institution for access. Cuckoldry, its semantic weight somewhat diminished through the centuries, is also central to the plot in Divorzio all’italiana (dir. These films, coming at the beginning of his career, show Pietrangeli wrestling with conventions; Lo scapolo, for example, is considered by many the film that most comfortably fits into the Comedy Italian Style genre due to its male protagonist and star, Alberto Sordi. It may seem out of step to begin the study of a fifties and sixties Italian filmmaker with a quote from a contemporary American actress, but the point that Streep makes is key to understanding the difficulties in dealing with Antonio Pietrangeli’s films from a historical and critical point of view. ANTONIO PIETRANGELI, THE AUTHOR AND THE ACTRESS, CONCLUSION: ANTONIO PIETRANGELI, FEMINISM AND FILM THEORY. One of the founding fathers of neorealism in the postwar period in Italy, Antonio Pietrangeli went on to focus his lens upon the female subject. Maraldi writes that “in Pietrangeli’s filmography—and even in the Italian productions of the time—Fantasmi a Roma is a very particular moment.”¹ Stepping away from his concern with the female universe, the director himself explains that. on JSTOR. book Log in to your personal account or through your institution. Antonio ha indicato 1 #esperienza lavorativa sul suo profilo. Since 1984, we’ve dedicated ourselves to gathering the greatest films from around the world and publishing them in editions of the highest technical quality. Visualizza il profilo di Antonio Pietrangeli su LinkedIn, la più grande comunità professionale al mondo. ©2000-2020 ITHAKA. He has, for a long time, deserved an autonomous study... JSTOR is part of ITHAKA, a not-for-profit organization helping the academic community use digital technologies to preserve the scholarly record and to advance research and teaching in sustainable ways. This epochal change in the postwar period between domestic servants who do the work and housewives who consume and command has been discussed by scholars such as Linda McDowell and Raffaela Sarti. Although there were exceptions, many critics from both right- and left- wing publications seem to agree on one thing: the film’s vulgar and pornographic nature. Catherine Spaak, an actress known for her willingness to take risks in her selection of roles, including Una ragazza di nome Francesca (Enrico La Stella), La noia (Alberto Moravia) and La calda vita (Quarantotto Gambini), discusses the rigors of shooting the film with... At a certain age, both men and women, but especially women, begin to feel the cultural pressure to settle down, get married and have children. Feminists have long taken issue with Hollywood and the... Pietrangeli’s first film, Il sole negli occhi (1953), was originally entitled Celestina, a name that corresponded to that of the young protagonist, a country girl who comes to Rome to work as a maid. Eight of his ten full-length films feature female protagonists. com, Tinder and other online matchmaking platforms. You do not have access to this These films are briefly discussed in the conclusion, a formal choice based on my intention to focus on Pietrangeli’s difference. 209-228) DOI: 10.2307/j.ctvqmp2g7.15 In consulting Pellizzari’s study of the critical reception of La parmigiana (1963), one is instantly struck by the level of intellectual vitriol provoked by the film and its protagonist, Dora (Catherine Spaak). This study of feminism, gender and film theory in Antonio Pietrangeli’s films has intended to shed light on the importance of considering the director as a unique filmmaker whose woman- and couple-centric films have been misunderstood or marginalized because of their radical difference. Antonio Pietrangeli, The Director of Women, (For EndNote, ProCite, Reference Manager, Zotero, Mendeley...), INTRODUCTION: ANTONIO PIETRANGELI, A BRIEF HISTORY, Chapter 1 PIETRANGELIAN FILM THEORY: FROM NEOREALISM TO FEMINISM, Chapter 2 MAID FROM THE MARGINS: IL SOLE NEGLI OCCHI, Chapter 3 THE COMING OF AGE OF A TEENAGE BRIDE: NATA DI MARZO, Chapter 4 LEGALLY BOUND: POLITICAL REALISM AND PROSTITUTION IN ADUA E LE COMPAGNE, Chapter 5 FANTASMI A ROMA: SUR-REALISM AND THE TIME-IMAGE, Chapter 6 THE DORA PROBLEM: LA PARMIGIANA, PIATTI, PIETRANGELI AND FREUD, Chapter 7 TOO MUCH WOMAN: MARRIAGE POWER, AND EXCESS IN LA VISITA, Chapter 8 BREAKING FAITH: IL MAGNIFICO CORNUTO, ENVY AND THE CRISIS OF VISION, Chapter 9 IO LA CONOSCEVO BENE … OR DID I? Between 1953 and 1958, Pietrangeli directs two full- length feature film, Lo scapolo (1955), starring Alberto Sordi, and Souvenir d’Italie (1957), as well as and one episode in Amori di mezzo secolo entitled Girandola 1910. American movies inundate the Italian market and dominate box offices, leaving the Communist intelligentsia and the film industry petitioning for protectionist measures to ensure the survival of an Italian national cinema. The premise of Pietrangeli’s Adua e le compagne (1960) seems simple enough at first glance, an overtly political departure from the director’s examination of coupledom in his previous films. This study seeks to better understand both his achievements and his failings as a feminist auteur as well as analyse his films by applying new critical and theoretical approaches. His call for a new Italian cinema shares many of the same moral, ethical and political concerns as later feminist theory. All Rights Reserved. This film tells the story of a failed attempt at matchmaking, especially poignant in today’s age of Match. This is as true today in the age of online dating, matchmaking services and in vitro fertilization as it was in the sixties, when Pietrangeli was making his film, La visita (1964). As part of his ongoing investigation into the psychology of his female protagonists, Pietrangeli turns the camera back on itself to show how the male-dominated fields of cinema, television, advertising and modeling are based on the fetishizing and hence the deconstruction of the female subject.