Italian Women Filmmakers and The Gendered Screen [PDF]

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Italian and Italian American Studies Stanislao G. Pugliese Hofstra University Series Editor This publishing initiative seeks to bring the latest scholarship in Italian and Italian American history, literature, cinema, and cultural studies to a large audience of specialists, general readers, and students. I&IAS will feature works on modern Italy (Renaissance to the present) and Italian American culture and society by established scholars as well as new voices in the academy. This endeavor will help to shape the evolving fields of Italian and Italian American Studies by re-emphasizing the connection between the two. The following editorial board consists of esteemed senior scholars who act as advisors to the series editor. REBECCA WEST University of Chicago

JOSEPHINE GATTUSO HENDIN New York University

FRED GARDAPHÉ Queens College, CUNY

PHILIP V. CANNISTRARO† Queens College and the Graduate School, CUNY

ALESSANDRO PORTELLI Università di Roma “La Sapienza” Queer Italia: Same-Sex Desire in Italian Literature and Film edited by Gary P. Cestaro July 2004 Frank Sinatra: History, Identity, and Italian American Culture edited by Stanislao G. Pugliese October 2004 The Legacy of Primo Levi edited by Stanislao G. Pugliese December 2004 Italian Colonialism edited by Ruth Ben-Ghiat and Mia Fuller July 2005 Mussolini’s Rome: Rebuilding the Eternal City Borden W. Painter Jr. July 2005 Representing Sacco and Vanzetti edited by Jerome H. Delamater and Mary Anne Trasciatti September 2005 Carlo Tresca: Portrait of a Rebel Nunzio Pernicone October 2005

Italy in the Age of Pinocchio: Children and Danger in the Liberal Era Carl Ipsen April 2006 The Empire of Stereotypes: Germaine de Staël and the Idea of Italy Robert Casillo May 2006 Race and the Nation in Liberal Italy, 1861–1911: Meridionalism, Empire, and Diaspora Aliza S. Wong October 2006 Women in Italy, 1945–1960: An Interdisciplinary Study edited by Penelope Morris October 2006 Debating Divorce in Italy: Marriage and the Making of Modern Italians, 1860–1974 Mark Seymour December 2006 A New Guide to Italian Cinema Carlo Celli and Marga Cottino-Jones January 2007 Human Nature in Rural Tuscany: An Early Modern History Gregory Hanlon March 2007 The Missing Italian Nuremberg: Cultural Amnesia and Postwar Politics Michele Battini September 2007 Assassinations and Murder in Modern Italy: Transformations in Society and Culture edited by Stephen Gundle and Lucia Rinaldi October 2007 Piero Gobetti and the Politics of Liberal Revolution James Martin December 2008 Primo Levi and Humanism after Auschwitz: Posthumanist Reflections Jonathan Druker June 2009 Oral History, Oral Culture, and Italian Americans edited by Luisa Del Giudice November 2009 Italy’s Divided Memory John Foot January 2010 Women, Desire, and Power in Italian Cinema Marga Cottino-Jones March 2010

The Failure of Italian Nationhood: The Geopolitics of a Troubled Identity Manlio Graziano September 2010 Women and the Great War: Femininity under Fire in Italy Allison Scardino Belzer October 2010 Italian Jews from Emancipation to the Racial Laws Cristina M. Bettin November 2010 Anti-Italianism: Essays on a Prejudice edited by William J. Connell and Fred Gardaphé January 2011 Murder and Media in the New Rome: The Fadda Affair Thomas Simpson January 2011 Mohamed Fekini and the Fight to Free Libya Angelo Del Boca; translated by Antony Shugaar January 2011 City and Nation in the Italian Unification: The National Festivals of Dante Alighieri Mahnaz Yousefzadeh April 2011 The Legacy of the Italian Resistance Philip Cooke May 2011 New Reflections on Primo Levi: Before and After Auschwitz edited by Risa Sodi and Millicent Marcus July 2011 Italy on the Pacific: San Francisco’s Italian Americans Sebastian Fichera December 2011 Memory and Massacre: Revisiting Sant’Anna di Stazzema Paolo Pezzino, translated by Noor Giovanni Mazhar February 2012 In the Society of Fascists: Acclamation, Acquiescence, and Agency in Mussolini’s Italy edited by Giulia Albanese and Roberta Pergher September 2012 Carlo Levi’s Visual Poetics: The Painter as Writer Giovanna Faleschini Lerner October 2012 Postcolonial Italy: The Colonial Past in Contemporary Culture Edited by Cristina Lombardi-Diop and Caterina Romeo January 2012

Women, Terrorism and Trauma in Italian Culture: The Double Wound Ruth Glynn February 2013 The Italian Army in Slovenia: Strategies of Antipartisan Repression, 1941–1943 Amedeo Osti Guerrazzi, translated by Elizabeth Burke and Anthony Majanlahti Italy and the Mediterranean: Words, Sounds, and Images of the Post-Cold War Era Norma Bouchard and Valerio Ferme September 2013

Italian Women Filmmakers and the Gendered Screen Edited by Maristella Cantini

ITALIAN WOMEN FILMMAKERS AND THE GENDERED SCREEN

Copyright © Maristella Cantini, 2013. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2013 978-1-137-33650-7 All rights reserved. First published in 2013 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.

ISBN 978-1-349-46352-7 ISBN 978-1-137-33651-4 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9781137336514 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress. A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Knowledge Works (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: December 2013 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

A Massimo e Alessandro per la loro illimitata fiducia To Massimo and Alessandro for their unlimited trust

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Contents

List of Figures

xi

Foreword Patrizia Carrano

xiii

Preface Dacia Maraini

xvii

Acknowledgments

xxiii

Introduction Maristella Cantini

1

Part I 1

Napoli Terra d’Amore: The Eye on the Screen of Elvira Notari Chiara Ricci

2

Grotesque Bodies, Fragmented Selves: Lina Wertmüller’s Women in Love and Anarchy (1973) Claudia Consolati

3

Don’t Bring a Gun to a Fistfight: Deconstructing Hegemonic Masculinity through the Gun in Lina Wertmüller’s Pasqualino Settebellezze Lidia Hwa Soon Anchisi Hopkins and Luke Cuculis

4

Adventurous Identities: Cavani’s Thematic Imaginary Gaetana Marrone

5

Healing the Daughter’s Body in Francesca Archibugi’s Il Grande Cocomero Daniela De Pau

6

Motherhood Revisited in Francesca Comencini’s Lo Spazio Bianco Claudia Karagoz

15

33

53 73

89

103

x

CONTENTS

7

8

9

10

11

Women in the Deserted City: Urban Space in Marina Spada’s Cinema Laura Di Bianco

121

Envisioning Our Mother’s Face: Reading Alina Marazzi’s Un’ora sola ti vorrei and Vogliamo anche le rose Cristina Gamberi

149

Alina Marazzi’s Women: A Director in Search of Herself through a Female Genealogy Fabiana Cecchini

173

Angela/o and the Gender Disruption of Masculine Society in Purple Sea Anita Virga

195

Ilaria Borrelli: Cinema and Postfeminism Maristella Cantini

209

Part II 12

Skype Interview with Alina Marazzi (June 2012) Cristina Gamberi

231

13

Interview with Marina Spada (Milan, June 2012) Laura Di Bianco

237

14

Interview with Alice Rohrwacher (Rome, June 2012) Laura Di Bianco

247

15

Interview with Paola Randi (Rome, June 2012) Laura Di Bianco

253

16

Interview with Costanza Quatriglio (July 2012) Giovanna Summerfield

263

Notes on Contributors

273

Index

279

Figures

7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 7.6 7.7 7.8

Poesia che mi guardi, Marina Spada’s set journal, 2009 Poesia che mi guardi, Marina Spada’s set journal, 2009 Poesia che mi guardi, Marina Spada’s set journal, 2009 Come l’ombra, Marina Spada’s set journal, 2006 Come l’ombra, Marina Spada’s set journal, 2006 Come l’ombra, Marina Spada’s set journal, 2006 Il mio domani, Marina Spada’s set journal, 2011 Il mio domani, Marina Spada’s set journal, 2011

128 129 130 132 133 134 139 140

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Foreword Patrizia Carrano

I

’ve been convinced for quite a while now that Italian cinema doesn’t exist anymore. Cinema understood as an industrial machine able to consistently nourish the people’s imaginary, to tell stories about its vices and virtues, to explore its wounds, to become dialectically engaged with the dreams, illusions, and disillusions of a nation. That kind of cinema able to turn out over two hundred titles a year, to present auteur films and genre films, to go from peplum films to comedy Italian style, from movie serials to mysteries, and, as in the case of Goffredo Lombardo’s production company Titanus, able to finance works by great directors with the box office receipts generated by musical comedies, low-budget films with guaranteed profits, and the public’s most beloved singers playing the roles. All of this belongs to the past. Today we produce fifty–sixty films a year that line up a series of ready-mades tailored to some more or less talented comic actors (from Benigni to Checco Zalone); some light Christmas season films (farces based on two fixed themes, “sex” and “money,” the real S$ of commercial cinema)1; some auteur films; and numerous low-budget, debut movies, which often, by choice, don’t even make their way into movie theaters. This isn’t the right place to go into the causes of this defeat, or to look a bit enviously at our French cousins, who were able to defend their cinematography, their screenplay writers, and their movie theaters. Along with cinema, a large part of film criticism is also dead. Our newspapers allot less and less space to it, preferring to interview actors, and perhaps directors, thus becoming a sort of extension of the press offices. In this rather dismal panorama, it’s hard to imagine the concrete possibility of working on how the presence of women filmmakers has developed or become involved. And yet there are some. Think of Cristina Comencini, Francesca Comencini, Wilma Labate, Roberta Torre, Francesca Archibugi, just to mention a few names from the “second generation” of cineastes

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who embraced the testimony passed on by Wertmuller or Liliana Cavani. And we also can’t forget the recent debuts of Laura Morante as director of Ciliegine and Stefania Sandrelli, who directed her daughter Amanda in 2009, in the film Christine-Cristina, which tells the story of a woman poet who actually lived during the Middle Ages. But right away, a question comes to mind. Do these women filmmakers agree with being grouped together by definition of gender? Or don’t they? Is it possible to identify a female specificity in their cinema, or not? Many years ago, I posed a similar question to Vittorio Spinazzola, an important, recognized literary critic. I was interviewing him about an Italian woman writer, Liala, whose seventy-three novels sold on average a million copies per year (in a nation of nonreaders like Italy, Liala represented a real editorial epiphenomenon). And the answer I got was: “The higher the quality of the work, the less possible it is to discern the author’s gender.” According to Spinazzola, if by virtue of her romance novels Liala bore the mark of women’s fiction, you just had to think of Marguerite Yourcenar and her Memorie di Adriano to forget that the woman author might be precisely a woman author. And what happens in the case of women directors? To what degree is Wilma Labate a “woman filmmaker” in her beautiful debut film titled La mia generazione, where the protagonists, Claudio Amendola and Silvio Orlando, play the respective parts of an imprisoned ex-member of the red brigades and a military police officer charged with taking him to Milan in a prison van? The question, which might appear uninfluential today, inflamed minds during the years of the most vivacious, radical feminism. The theoretical journal DWF DonnaWomanFemme devoted an entire issue to the topic “Donna dello schermo” (July–September 1978). Among other articles, it published a short essay by Maricla Tagliaferri, which stated, “With a camera in her hands a woman has to reproduce a woman’s world and vision, she has to leave a particular mark, in short, she has to use a different film language for the very fact of being a woman” (italics hers). Since then, thirty-five years have gone by. Kathryn Bigelow is the first woman director to win an Oscar, for a film with intelligent, hard-hitting action, The Hurt Locker, which she also produced. And, returning to Italian shores, there’s Piera De Tassis, who, together with Giovanna Grignaffini and Gabriella Monfredin, presented a review titled Il cinema delle donne in Modena, in 1977. Today she’s the director of the only Italian film magazine, Ciak, and organized the Rome film festival for several years. This is to say that despite the so-called

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glass ceiling, which prevents Italian women from walking in step with other European women toward a still distant—extremely distant for us—equality, the cards have been reshuffled and the panorama has changed. To be sure, in the woman character, who is separated, marked by loneliness and failure, played masterfully by an intelligent, extraordinarily talented actress like Angela Finocchiaro, one feels the strong female hand of Cristina Comencini, the screenwriter and director of La bestia nel cuore, which is based on her own novel. Similarly, Francesca Comencini’s Lo spazio bianco, a film drawn from the eponymous novel by Valeria Parrella, starring Margherita Buy, penetrates the depths of the female condition in the specific case of an unwanted pregnancy, which transforms into passionately chosen motherhood. It does so with a density that would be difficult to attribute to a man. (Perhaps an Italian man. Because Bergman was able to offer us sensational examples in this respect.) But it is incontrovertible that some affinities can be found even among women filmmakers who are as different from each other as the ones I’ve cited. In women’s cinema, it’s difficult, if not impossible, to find female characters that hark back to the usual stereotypes so prevalent in films for undiscerning palates that are still made today. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to come across a merely consumer idea of sexuality. Liliana Cavani narrated the morbidity of a sadomasochistic bond, a mirror of very different acts of abuse and cruelty in Il portiere di notte. But it’s quite clear that her discourse, high and quite powerfully expressive, considers the bond between the two main characters, turning on its head, if you will, the perspective we find in La morte e la fanciulla. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to find the commonplace ideas about motherhood and childhood that characterized so much Italian cinema for so many years. (But not the cinema of a truly great director like Vittorio de Sica, who in Sciuscià was able to narrate like no one else the separateness of the world of children from that of adults.) The examples could go on and on. But to arrive at an evident conclusion, all of our women directors seem driven by a strong necessity to speak. By the need to make films in order to say something, and not simply because filmmaking can be a job. Therefore, they all have an evident filmmaking vocation. But perhaps what appears to be a quality is actually the concrete sign of undeniable discrimination; when will we have a woman director who practices the craft of film directing the way Mario Monicelli (a great filmmaker, after all) or Sergio Corbucci, who directed a hundred and fifty films with ease? Considering the conditions

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of Italian cinema, it’s conceivable that a similar possibility may not exist anymore. For women, or for men either. But please, let’s not call that equality. Translated by Robin Pickering-Iazzi

Note 1. Translator’s note: In Italian, the words “sex” and “money” both begin with the letter “s” (“sesso e soldi”), thus forming Carrano’s play on words and meaning, an element lost in English translation.

Preface Dacia Maraini

H

ow can we explain that although cinema was first devised by a woman as story and filmed storytelling, it continues to be considered a men’s invention? Few remember that it was Alice Guy Blaché, a young woman born in Paris in 1873, the unknown secretary to a French producer, who was the first author to develop narrative filmmaking. The invention of moving images was without a doubt made possible by the Lumière Brothers: audiences would flock to admire sequences of unusual landscapes, stormy skies, racing horses, jugglers, and shooting stars that shot out of that bewitching machine. But no one had as yet thought of telling a story, fashioned and visualized as a movable short story. Alice had trained as a typist and had found a position as secretary to Gaumont, the producer who was attempting to commercialize the picture-making machine. Thanks to her extraordinary ability, Alice quickly grasped the secrets of the trade and, following women’s traditional basic need for storytelling, she made a film that shocked everyone. “The Cabbage Fairy” (La Fée aux Choux) dates from 1896, years ahead, as film history has it, of the screening of “Voyage to the Moon” by the Frenchman Georges Meliès (1902), and years in advance of “The Great Robbery” (1903) by the American Edwin Porter. All cinema histories abundantly document the contributions of the Lumière Brothers, and give detailed accounts of Georges Meliès and Edwin Porter, but little or nothing is said about Alice Guy Blaché. Why? If there is an answer, and I believe there is one, we will have to look for it in the systematic undermining of the creative work of women. This same process occurred with literary production: in the history of the origins of our national literature, no one has ever introduced writings by our women mystics, which to this day remain in the various convents, practically unknown. Convention establishes that Italian literature was born from a few verses written by a Sicilian notary, Jacopo da Lentini, inventor of the sonnet. Little or nothing is known about the writings displaying

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great linguistic intensity, originality, and sensuality whose authors lived segregated in convents in those same early centuries. The more one searches, the more one can see the very ancient roots of this process of devaluation, which is in fact intertwined with the administration of power. The fundamental concern of each rank of politicians is the control of the female body, that is, of the future of its homeland. In every epoch, power over the woman’s womb has brought about the creation of a value system that punished women’s demands for freedom. And where does freedom begin, if not in our thinking, in our imagination? Hence the need to keep women’s cognitive capacities under lock and key. This systematic devaluation and undermining has been ongoing for centuries and centuries in the realms of painting, architecture, sculpture, and music, to name a few. I remember Anna Banti’s very beautiful story “Lavinia fuggita” (Runaway Lavinia) in which an orphan girl—a student at one of those boarding schools with the suspicious name “Girls in Danger”—studied music with her young friends. The instructor was no less than the master Antonio Vivaldi. Lavinia had a great talent, but girls were forbidden to compose music. Yet, with her extraordinary courage, one day Lavinia dared to leave one of her compositions on the teacher’s music stand. Vivaldi, endowed with a keen eye, well understood the value of that piece of music and had it played by his own pupils, an orchestra of excellent young women musicians. However, the institution did not make exceptions and Lavinia was punished for her transgression. Disappointed, mortified, and humiliated, she let her body be submerged by the flowing water currents. I do not know whether Anna Banti was inspired by a true story. Of course it is something that could have happened to any talented young woman living in a society that wanted her to be only wife and mother. Too many Fathers of the Church, too many men of science, philosophers, and thinkers have put forth theories on the lesser value of women’s thought. So much so that women have internalized this very notion and often, feeling inadequate and unable, they themselves withdraw when they should instead dare to forge ahead. Paradoxically, we owe thanks to a few of the enlightened fathers, who were fond of their daughters’ talents, for the rare instances in past centuries when women’s talents were given proper recognition. This implies that discrimination is not only a matter of gender, but also of culture. I recall the example of Gaetana Agnesi (1718–1799), an extraordinary mathematical intellect, whose studies were encouraged by her father. She was eventually invited to teach at the University of Bologna, which was then attended only by male students and instructors. Gaetana endured

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for only a few months, resigning shortly thereafter saying that she felt like a freak, being the only woman, stared at by the avid curiosity of hundreds of men. She later dedicated herself to teaching destitute children. One can see, then, that in order for it to work, emancipation cannot be simply the result of some isolated and exclusive instances, but must necessarily involve the overall population of women. I also recall Artemisia Gentileschi, whose father made space for her in his studio and taught her to draw and paint. However, the impact of public opinion has often unfortunately proved to be painful and ruthless. Here too, Anna Banti recounts, in her homonymous novel, how Artemisia was raped by a painter friend of her father’s, how she suffered through the shame of a trial where she was stripped in public in order to verify her loss of virginity, how she was subsequently denigrated, ostracized, isolated, and humiliated for having wanted to be considered for her talent as a painter. Her works, of great scenic power, display with unmistakable energy the resentment that triggers the gestures and actions of her heroines. All this seems to be part of a remote past, say the more recent voices: today women excel in every field, and bookstores are full of their books, art galleries of their paintings, and cinema abounds with their films. Some people are even amazed and claim that today women rule the world! What about Hillary Clinton, Angela Merkel, and others . . . as if two swallows make a spring! For each woman who manages to make it and fit into the machinery of power, there are thousands who are marginalized and isolated. And besides, one must not confuse popular success with prestige. Many women write, publish, and sell, just to take literature as an example, but few enjoy the kind of recognition from which their male colleagues of equal talent derive benefit. Few women are welcomed in artistic institutions as protagonists. Few women are chosen as models to be followed by future generations. Few women achieve the degree of critical reputation that renders an author an example for the young to imitate. It is true that today we have some excellent film directors who are women; but I have never come across their names whenever rankings are announced, for example, of “The best films of the twentieth century,” or “The most popular films of all time,” and so on. Women directors appear, are applauded, and then quickly disappear. And this is the problem: talented women have enormous difficulty in becoming part of film history; they have enormous difficulty in becoming part of the symbolic system. Even the most respected, the most highly acclaimed, disappear from the collective unconscious once their creative cycle is over, almost

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as if they were an exceptional memory, confirming the rule of women’s artistic silence. So, let us come to Italian cinema. Who remembers, speaking of the history of cinema, the popular director Elvira Notari (1875–1946), who in the twenties invented popular cinema with great success both at home and in “Little Italies” abroad? Who bothers to record that her type of cinema, so detailed in depicting the poorest neighborhoods of Naples and the everyday stories in the back alleys, that her technique, minutely focusing on homeless, barefoot children, would eventually influence great directors like Charlie Chaplin and Roberto Rossellini? Who takes the time to tell us that Notari was censured by the fascists for her antinationalist ideas, for her popular vision of an Italy that they did not want to see on the screen, and that, consequently, she would quickly be pushed aside in favor of the popular cinema that placed white telephones on a pedestal. The pages that follow, collected with feeling and care by Stella Cantini, address these questions in detail and speak of women’s easier access to a new kind of cinema relying upon more versatile and user-friendly technology. Together with the printing of film and heavy video cameras, a certain masculine way of regarding cinema with/through “passion and sweat,” reminiscent of Atlas with the entire world on his shoulders, seems to be vanishing. These pages tell us that the proliferation of International Film Festivals gives women, and therefore the poorer segment of the cinematic universe, the possibility of creating without exorbitant costs. Certainly this is true. But to what extent are the critics and those who assess films for distribution persuaded of this? Distribution is still the weak link in the propagation and the popularization process of a film. And certainly distribution houses do not go out looking for films directed by women, except in very rare instances. As a result, women directors reach the public through an underground network of channels that extends from one organization to another, from library to library, from school to school—a tightly woven connective web that examines local everyday realities from up close and often brings the director into close contact with the people themselves, who are happy to meet, appreciate, and ask her questions. The dilemma in question is essentially the following: should women enter, even if stealthily and as intruders, into the world of institutionalized cinema, clashing continually as they do with the biases and discriminations of cinema’s great industrialists? Or, should they work with alternative networks whose roots can reach the most critical nerve centers of society, thus creating groups of consensus, which, however, will

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never equal those attained by massively distributed films or reap such huge profits? Many women directors rightly handle the world of global distribution with dexterity and assurance, confident of the fact that a top-quality product will provide them with automatic access to the general public. But that is not the case. Just a brief conversation with any one of them will quickly illustrate how much resistance women directors still have to deal with. I remember touching on this subject with Lina Wertmuller years ago. She was one of those who did not care for gender solidarity, since she believed that the only things that really counted were talent and technical expertise. All the rest, she thought, were stories, children’s fables! She was sure that the worlds of production and distribution were there, ready to purchase and reward talent and quality regardless of gender. But I believe that today she is no longer of the same opinion. Producers, after having carried her on the palm of their hands, are inclined to let her go, and no one reveres her any longer as they do the old and important directors who belong to the history of Italian cinema. It seems to me that today young women directors are more aware of the misogyny that underpins our long traditional counter-reformist culture. Roberta Torre, Antonietta De Lillo, Alina Marazzi, Donatella Maiorca, Fiorella Infascelli, Marina Spada, Liliana Ginanneschi, Costanza Quatriglio, Ilaria Borrelli, Alice Rohrwacher, Emanuela Piovano, Giovanna Gagliardo, Anna Di Francisca, Francesca Archibugi, and Cristina e Francesca Comencini, to name but a few, seem to me to be much more aware of and sensitive to gender discriminations, much better informed about the subtle dynamics of prejudice that does not consider the immediate relationship with the public, but rather pays attention to the institutionalization of women’s creativity and its historical assessment. It is an awareness that helps to demystify some unfounded myths and a certain naive confidence in the force of the marketplace—which increasingly proves to be not a free market at all, one not even tied to logistics of supply and demand, but rather one that reveals itself as being subservient to dominant cultures incapable of freely evaluating the enduring talents of its best sons and daughters. Translated by Vera Golini

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Acknowledgments

M

y list of thanks is considerably longer than this. My first sincere thank you goes to Silvia Giovanardi Byer: for her support of my idea, her enthusiasm in helping me to realize it, and for introducing me to Virginia Brackett. My thanks to Virginia are boundless. She has been a patient, discreet, and knowledgeable mentor, a role model, intellectually speaking, and a great academic figure, from whom I would like to keep learning as much as possible in addition to what I have already learnt. I would like to thank Tommasina Gabriele for her friendship, her passion for literature, her academic commitment, and for her invaluable advice. I have followed it all and I am eager for more. My gratitude also goes to Flavia Laviosa, whose generosity and long telephone conversations helped me avoid many time-consuming mistakes. I am grateful to Flavia for sharing her expertise and for offering support and direction whenever I needed it. I thank all the scholars of the anonymous reading committee, who gave their time and knowledge to review the material for this book. Special thanks go to Robin Pickering-Iazzi and Vera Golini. Their work, patience, and talent gave me the opportunity to place Patrizia Carrano’s and Dacia Maraini’s contributions in good hands for the translations of their pieces. I also thank Stefania Lucamante for her enthusiastic “yes!” and for her availability. I am grateful to Anita Trivelli and Giuseppina Novati for their work and their trust. I hope we will be able to work together again in the future. Another special thank you goes to Professor Emeritus Christopher Kleinhenz, whose passion for teaching, familiarity with publishing processes, and love of the academic temple are contagious. I would like to thank Kristin Phillips-Court and Kelley Conway for their time and suggestions. I thank all the contributors for their patience and their constant work over these intense past two years. I would like to express my gratitude to and my admiration for Alina Marazzi, Ilaria Borrelli, Paola Randi, Alice Rohrwacher, Costanza Quatriglio, Pietro and Guido Freddi. Their availability even in the midst of traveling, filming, and intense work was crucial to many of us. I thank

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Robyn Curtis, Erica Buchman, and the board at Palgrave Macmillan. They made such a complex process easy. Finally, above all, I thank Dacia Maraini and Patrizia Carrano. They strongly believe in women’s work and keep dedicating their fantastic careers to defending it from oblivion. This book follows their ideological path.

Introduction Maristella Cantini

Ma la ritorna poi fiacca e smarrita oscura tema, che con lei si mesce, che la sua luce tosto fia sparita. —Gaspara Stampa

T

he idea for this book began to develop a long time ago. After much consideration, I discussed the project with cinema scholars and several colleagues who work primarily on Italian film studies. The response produced by our conversations was unmistakably similar: “Are you sure you have enough material for a book? Besides Wertmüller and Cavani, who else is there to fill up a book of essays about women filmmakers?” These questions left me with the urge to respond. Despite the fact that those I consulted were knowledgeable and possessed considerable expertise, they were unaware of the wealth of material available to explore. Clearly, a widespread lack of visibility of women filmmakers exists, even to experts in the field. Thus, development of such a volume of essays became all the more necessary in order to promote the criticism I hope it will encourage. As a matter of fact, a profusion of material about Italian cinema does exist. Specifically, topics such as Neorealism, women’s representation, postwar cinema, fascism, new millennium cinema, and new contemporary trends are all profusely explored and discussed by Italian film scholars both in English and in Italian. In contrast, there seems to be an absence of any serious, committed critique focusing on women filmmakers. Feminist film criticism in Italy lacks energy and visibility, and the topic of women directors’ authorship is, indeed, still marginalized. This dearth of critical examination exists despite the proliferation of associations and groups that intend to promote women’s art, literature, and cinema, such as Associazione Ipazia, Laboratorio Immagine, Associazione Maude, and

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MARISTELLA CANTINI

Associazione Ada, and the many festivals that promote women’s cultural production in various fields. A persistent halo of isolation and silence affects especially Italian cinema authored by women when it comes to academic debate, histories of Italian cinema, and film criticism collections. No collections of essays, very few monographic works, and up until a few years ago, very few online articles and critical contributions exist. In terms of academic critique then, a deep void engulfs women filmmakers and affects their work and professional distinctness. As the editor of this project, my intention is to bring visibility to Italian women directors, not as a niche topic, but as a central theme of Italian cinema. Cinema authored by women has been ignored, if not “surgically removed,” by traditional mainstream criticism. I would like, therefore, to redress the established practice of critical analysis and invite a fresh, transparent debate about the work of Italian women directors. This book aims to reposition the idea of Italian cinema, which, today, remains a synonym for male-authored cinema, and intentionally challenges the existing body of work written by well-known critics that unmistakably favors the work of male directors over that of their female counterparts. I will mention one seminal academic work—Italian Cinema from Neorealism to the Present by Peter Bondanella—that has served as an important guide for me in recent years. As well as being adopted as a textbook in several courses of Italian cinema, including those that I had the pleasure to attend, it has been a guide in terms of critical discourse. A vast amount of feminist criticism by scholars ranging from Laura Mulvey, Annette Kuhn, Ann Kaplan, and Jeanine Basinger, to Angela McRobbie and Janet McCabe, and pro-postfeminist theorists such as Stephanie Genz, Hilary Radner, and Yvonne Tasker, to name but a few, inspired me to examine Italian film studies critical texts from a different angle. In the introduction to Feminism and Film (2000), Kaplan explains that “film is an important object—as literature was before it—that with feminist perspective may help to change entrenched male stances towards women, and feminist film study may even change attitudes towards women” (2). While Bondanella’s book is indeed an accurate work of refined criticism, it focuses exclusively on male directors’ work, and most importantly, it is written from a male point of view. The more-than-five-hundred-page book concisely presents Liliana Cavani and Lina Wertmüller among an interminable list of male filmmakers, who are deeply explored. There is no mention of any other female director. The first part of the book, moreover, offers an initial overview of silent cinema, and yet includes no trace of Elvira Notari’s work.1 The Italian filmmaker directed a surprising number of movies and documentaries, and enjoyed a full life dedicated to filmmaking, which has only recently been critically reevaluated by women scholars and writers such as Giuliana Bruno and Chiara Ricci.

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3

Furthermore, many comprehensive histories of Italian cinema, published in Italian and English, portray Italian male-authored cinema in a noble light, completely removing a whole category of films, namely salacious comedies—by directors such as Nando Cicero—that flooded Italian cinemas in the 1970s and proved popular with male audiences. The “cinepanettone,” so called because the movies were often released at Christmas time, is another “niche” category of popular comedy films, quite successfully mastered by director Carlo Vanzina. The derogatory treatment of women by these filmmakers and in these productions has not, to my knowledge, been analyzed or debated, despite the considerable number of publications authored by male critics. Women filmmakers in Italy in the 1970s approached the camera more confidently and used it for political activism, to promote crucial innovations in terms of social and ethical revolution, debating on abortion, divorce, and the fair regulation of work outside the family. Yet, all the while, male directors inundated Italian cinema with erotic, commercial comedies featuring young, naked female protagonists, insistently ignoring the women’s movement, thereby nullifying its demands. Moreover, this kind of cinema gained its popularity through featuring idealized female characters both, sexually available and inviting, ready to please men and tickle their erotic fantasies, clearly reinstating women’s roles in the sphere of the male-controlled realm.2 The Anglo-American debate in film criticism has dominated the international scene since the early 1970s. Coinciding with the rise of the feminist voice, a number of significant works were published and these triggered a crucial debate on women’s representation, a debate that continues to this day with postfeminist, postmodern, and, to keep up with the terminology jam, poststructuralist inquiry. I refer to Claire Johnston, who in 1975 published research on Dorothy Arzner, an important step particularly, as E. Ann Kaplan notes, “to list the basic situations of the female protagonists in Arzner’ s films, showing the women’s efforts to transgress the male order and assert themselves as subjects.”3 Laura Mulvey wrote an essay titled “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” which became a groundbreaking intervention for feminist film criticism. Kaplan in 1978 edited a volume on Women in Film Noir. I also refer to the blossoming of magazines on film studies such as Screen in England, Cahiers du Cinema in France, and Frauen und Film in Germany, which was first published in 1974.4 In Italy, Cinzia Bellumori published Le donne del cinema contro questo cinema in 1972, a hundred-page report detailing women’s conditions in the Italian film industry. Bellumori’s report reveals a dysfunctional environment where the majority of women employed in the sector were chronically unable to move forward, penalized by male chauvinism and by the impossible task of juggling motherhood and pressing job demands (70–84). She

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details their stories in interviews with actresses, screenwriters, secretaries, costume designers, and assistants included in the book. Patrizia Carrano’s book Malafemmina, published in 1977, served as an explosive denunciation of Italian cinema both in terms of commercial industry and as a cultural production system. Carrano’s book was followed, in subsequent years, only by isolated articles and debates, without any united front of academics or critics active in this field. Despite the great number of prominent female intellectuals, activists, and politically engaged figures in Italy, the legacy of feminist criticism has made a considerably less-durable (and incisive) contribution to the debate. Since the 1970s that legacy has suffered an increasing degree of isolation and fragmentation in terms of feminist film criticism. Even if the production of feminist filmmakers in those years of activism and radical change was surprisingly fruitful, the resistance didn’t last long enough to create sufficient visibility for women directors. As Aine O’Healy writes, “In the more conservative atmosphere that prevails in Italy in the mid1990s, feminist activism no longer has the momentum it once had, and many gains have been threatened or retracted over time.”5 In the 1970s and 1980s, numerous women directors were activists who decided to step into the forbidden area and occupy the cinematic arena. Nevertheless, there was no established, proactive debate on feminism and films to maintain and even force a long-lasting visibility on women’s authored cinema. Subsequently, none of those names, apart from Lina Wertmüller and, later, Liliana Cavani, entered in cinema’s manuals or studies. Giuliana Bruno and Maria Nadotti’s writings on the modality of feminist dynamics in Italy strike me as particularly incisive. To use their words, the path pursued by American feminism, that of acquiring the status of a formal discipline, a field of “scholarship” or a path that has generated “feminist film theory” has no parallel in Italy, in part due to the long-term lack of academic institutionalization of the subject (Bruno and Nadotti 1988: 9). This is an important facet of the theoretical approach to feminist film studies. The absence of an established culture of debate does not mean that there are no feminist intellectuals and competent critics; it means that they operate in a very fragmented ideological and cultural setting. I do not go so far as to imagine that this book will accomplish the ambitious task of filling the void that exists in Italian film criticism. The intent is to stimulate criticism of and attention toward Italian women filmmakers and their position both in Italy and on a wider international platform. I would like to continue the debate that Dacia Maraini, author of the preface in this volume, and Patrizia Carrano, author of the foreword, started years ago, ignored by mainstream cinema, which is now, more than ever, controlled by a strong androcentric pseudoculture. I believe that Italian

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cinema, as a medium reflecting the culture of our country, is relatively unchanged, in terms of patriarchal conformation, from forty years ago. In Ilaria Borrelli’s novels, in particular Domani si Gira (Tomorrow We Shoot), which is strictly autobiographical, many details seem to actually coincide with Carrano’s invective. My questions are: Why has it not changed even slightly? Why are women still struggling to find their own space in this profession, free from male precepts and guidance? How can such a sexist stronghold be overthrown? I asked Ilaria Borrelli the latter question, and her immediate reply was: “We should have more women in charge and in key positions.”6 No shortage of talented Italian female directors exists to uphold as mentors, and alleged histories of Italian cinema continue to proliferate through the systematic neglect of women’s documentaries and movies. Women filmmakers’ “transparence-absence,” to use Patrizia Carrano’s expression,7 is not a matter of cinematic ability or artistic maturity; rather, it is the result of a deliberate act of marginalization from male-authored cinema. It is the same kind of marginalization that Italian intellectuals such as Dacia Maraini, Anna Bravo, Lilli Gruber, Daniela Danna, Chiara Valentini, and many others have radically denounced in literature, journalism, art, politics, science, academic research, and a long list of primary areas of knowledge. Cinema, one of those areas, is greatly affected by this practice, and the contribution of women is greatly overshadowed by male predominance in the field. In her book Mujeres de Cine. 360º alrededor de la Cámara (2011), Maria Caballero Wangüemert states that exclusion of women from filmmaking is a phenomenon resembling the treatment of a minority group, if we consider that out of twenty thousand directors, only 3 percent are women, with Spain reaching 13 percent (21).8 No current data are available for Italy: no statistics and no official records regarding the work of women filmmakers. This lack of information provokes many questions, including: How many women filmmakers are working in the industry? How many movies are produced every year by female filmmakers? How are those films produced and distributed? How do they receive funding? Who is eligible for funding? Why are many of the female directors recognized and awarded by the most ambitious festivals, only then to disappear in a cloud of oblivion? Who does evaluate the artistic content of movies authored by women and how many of those “experts” are women? In other words, who is dictating and imposing a canonical, traditional criticism that establishes who can enter a History of Italian Cinema and who can be grouped in a general footnote (and be lucky to be there)? Italian female directors are artists in a broader sense.9 Some are writers, musicians, painters, photographers, poets, or documentary-makers. Many are scriptwriters, actresses, playwrights, and producers. The primary

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intention of this collection is to show how rich, intriguing, and “global” their films are and how engaging the critical discussion they generate can be. Their movies focus on women—although not exclusively—from different angles and quite distinctively from the way in which they are featured in male-authored cinema. Italian women filmmakers do not focus on the divas, sex-symbols, or physically perfect icons that male fantasy has produced in postwar cinema. In contrast, the directors included in this book portray female characters that develop a stronger sense of self within the cinematic narrative of each individual film by engaging in more complex relations with other women, exploring a vast array of situations and viewpoints. These threads weave together to form the fabric of women’s interactions that empower the characters and reposit the female discourse at the center of the movie. Italian female directors observe their environment, the space they inhabit, their family ties, their most important relationships, and their many roles. Social issues are always present in these artists’ work, and the personal is still political, even in the case of light-hearted comedies. The intent to show the persistent engagement of female directors with social topics as well as more personal ones determined the selection of essays collected in this volume. In addition, universal themes such as immigration, spatial or emotional displacement, and marginalization, force the boundaries of national circuits, moving toward more global issues that are specific to women. Those issues include motherhood, prostitution, domestic and cultural violence, lesbianism, work-related abuse, and gender discrimination. I brought together voices that have been both constitutive and representative of Italian cinema since its inception, in order to give a sample of their powerful and subversive efficacy. Italian Women Filmmakers and the Gendered Screen is divided into two parts: the first section contains essays on women filmmakers, starting from Elvira Notari (1875–1946), who was the first Italian woman filmmaker and scriptwriter and who produced a great number of exceptional films and documentaries. Next come two essays on Lina Wertmüller. Claudia Consolati discusses Love and Anarchy (1973), which still generates polemics due to its antifeminist perception of female characters. Lidia Hwa Soon Anchisi Hopkins and Luke Cuculis, with “Don’t Bring a Gun to a Fist Fight: Deconstructing Hegemonic Masculinity through Gun in Lina Wertmüller’s Pasqualino Settebellezze,” engage a reflection on masculinity impersonated by the male protagonist Pasqualino Settebellezze. A concentration camp survivor, Settebellezze entraps the spectator between the comical and grotesque urge to live over the brutal sacrifice of his friend. Gaetana Marrone, a renowned scholar of Liliana Cavani and author of her more recent biography, presents an

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article on Liliana Cavani’s Thematic Imaginary. Here the contributor discusses the ability of the director to depict both spirituality and carnality on screen, through the figures of San Francesco (St. Francis), Milarepa, and in Cavani’s last movie Le Clarisse, nuns of the Santa Clara’s order. “Healing the Daughter’s Body in Francesca Archibugi’s Il Grande Cocomero” opens a discussion on a mother-daughter relationship at different levels. It follows Claudia Karagoz’s analysis of the movie Lo Spazio Bianco by director Francesca Comencini. Karagoz’s inquiry concentrates on nontraditional maternity as chosen by the protagonist Maria and her newborn daughter Irene. In her analysis, Karagoz also brings to the surface the sense of physical displacement of Maria’s character, both in terms of space and emotional perception. Laura Di Bianco’s chapter “Women in the Deserted City: Urban Space in Marina Spada’s Cinema” develops the theme of urban environment as an element that cinematically contributes to frame the female protagonist from a more intimate perspective. The role of the mother-daughter returns in terms of regaining possession of a female deeper self. The theme prevails in Alina Marazzi’s film documentary Un’ora Sola ti Vorrei and Vogliamo anche le Rose as presented by Cristina Gamberi in her essay “Envisioning Our Mother’s Face. Reading Alina Marazzi’s Un’ora sola ti vorrei and Vogliamo anche le rose.” Gamberi deeply explores Marazzi’s attempt to “quilt” the memory of her mother through a recuperation of images, sounds, and family videos, in order to rehabilitate not only the mother as a component of her own identity, but as the woman in particular. The second part of the book consists of recent and previously unpublished interviews. Some are with filmmakers discussed in the essays to offer the critical interpretation and direct voice of the filmmakers themselves. Other interviews have been included to give voice to as many women filmmakers as possible, in order to display their antinomies and mirroring similarities. Marina Spada and Alina Marazzi answer the authors who discuss their cinema, offering the possibility of other interpretations, while Costanza Quatriglio, Paola Randi, and Alice Rohrwacher complement the studies of their work with their own opinions. It was a very difficult choice to decide what material and author to select and how to orchestrate a multilayered idea of their work and their personalities. All proved engaging and incredibly inspiring. Because, as noted earlier, I was unable to find similar material on Italian cinema that reflected women’s work from a different perspective, I have taken inspiration from collections edited by women scholars in or about other cultural contexts such as: Women Filmmakers Refocusing, edited by Jaqueline Levitin, Judith Plessis, and Valerie Raul; Reclaiming the Archive, edited by Vicky Callahan; and collections on single women

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directors such as The Cinema of Kathryn Bigelow. Hollywood Transgressor, edited by Deborah Jermyn and Sean Redmond; Jane Campion. Cinema, Nation, Identity, edited by Hilary Radner, Alistair Fox, and Irène Bessière; Canadian Women Filmmakers: Re-imaging Authorships, Nationality, and Gender; and Canadian Women Filmakers. The Gendered Screen,10 both edited by Brenda Austin-Smith and George Melnyk. These works, among many other groundbreaking studies, gave me ideas on how much freedom I had in editing this book. Many collections simply reject the path of traditional analysis, even from a graphical point of view. They may articulate their discourse through puzzling visual forms and stylistic creativity. However, my main purpose is to highlight the polyhedral content of the filmmakers’ movies addressed in this collection, and the polemical criticism all of them can engender. The attempt to bring together critics from several areas of academia seemed to pose uniformity as a central issue for some of our valued reviewers. Uniformity is not my priority here. On the contrary, I aimed to produce a collaborative and pioneering work (nothing at this time exists for us to measure with) that offers unlimited possibilities for criticism, changing the perception of Italian cinema from a monolithic, solid subject to a more fluid, prismatic, and global one. I privilege an idea of continuity instead of new cinema, because I believe in the much that has been done and written and in the huge that is still undone. Notes 1. While I have only mentioned this book, which I consider a great but partial analysis, I can also add another classic by Gian Piero Brunetta, The History of Italian Cinema. A Guide to Italian Film from its Origins to the TwentyFirst Century, translated by Jeremy Parzen (Princeton; Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2003). The publications of the last ten years also follow the same patterns, redefining and reinforcing the exclusion of women. Some of these works, to mitigate the bias, may include a sporadic chapter on one woman director but the essential core of such studies unavoidably focuses on male cinema. Occasionally, some texts cite or acknowledge women directors’ names without undertaking any real analysis of their works. See, for instance, Il Cinema Italiano del Terzo Millennio edited by Franco Montini and published in 2002. In this book only Nina Di Majo is included of seven directors interviewed. It is crucial to note that there are no comprehensive histories of Italian cinema written by women as of yet. Scholars such as Marcia Landy, Marga Cottino-Jones, Flavia Brizio-Skov, and many other female film scholars, did not attempt to write absolute histories of Italian cinema, but instead focused their attention on quite distinctive parts or aspects of it, and women’s issues are steadily at the center of the debate in the works of these

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3. 4. 5.

6.

9

authors. There are no histories of Italian cinema written by women scholars, which is another big void in our body of criticism. I refer here to movies such as L’insegnante (The Teacher) directed by Nando Cicero, and La portiera nuda (The Naked Woman Porter, 1976) directed by Luigi Cozzi. The list of titles for these comedies is endless and spans through the 1980s with a rich, and quite pathetic, repertoire. Many of these movies also present scenes where women touch or undress other women, in a vast range of male voyeuristic curiosity for women same-sex relationships, with the morbid intent to visually control women’s bodies and sexuality. Accurate feminist research about this aspect of Italian cinema is needed. In Malafemmina, Patrizia Carrano speaks out against the perverted dynamics “behind the scenes” in Italian cinema: the treatment experienced by women of all ages, the objectification of their bodies, and the absence of a whole generation of artists with the ability to interpret roles beyond the “young and sexy” in a career-limiting sentence inflicted upon many of Italy’s best actresses and women professionals (129–190). See the articles of Monica Repetto, “Ciao Mamma. Ovvero Porno Soffice ed Erotismo da Ridere,” and Angela Prudenzi, “Il Vizio di Famiglia. Ovvero Gruppo di Famiglia dal Buco della Serratura,” in Lino Miccicchè, ed., Il Cinema del Riflusso. Film, Cineasti Italiani degli anni ’70 (Venezia: Marsilio, 1997), 317–333 and 334– 340, respectively. These articles present the trash comedy trend of the 1970s and 1980s with a condescending tone toward the male authors, but without inquiring too deeply into how these movies trivialize women. Please note that the book does not discuss women documentary makers or women filmmakers of those years. http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/jc12–13folder/britfemtheory. html (accessed March 15, 2013). For an extensive reflection, see Ann Kaplan, Feminism and Film (Oxford, UK; New York: Oxford University Press, 2000). Aine O’Healy, “Italian Feminism and Women’s Filmmaking: Intersections 1975–1995,” http://tell.fll.purdue.edu/RLA-Archive/1995/Italianhtml/O’Healy,Aine.htm (accessed October 25, 2012). The author traces a vivid situation on the activity of cinema in Italy in the period 1975–1995. Nevertheless, of these important filmmakers such as Lina Mangiacapre, Wilma Labate, Emanuela Piovano, and many others, there is no trace in conventional academic studies. The interview with the director via Skype on June 5, 2012, was recorded on tape and Audacity. Amusingly, I read an article in Glamour magazine (June 2010, p. 64) where the title screams: “Hey Hollywood: DO Put More Women in Charge.” Journalist Laurie Sandell speaks to Jane Fleming, the president of WIF (Women in Film), a not-for-profit organization that aims to improve women’s leadership in Hollywood and lobbies about the situation of women in mainstream cinema. According to the journalist, there are a few “glass ceilings left in the USA: the oval office, NFL, and cinema.” The American numbers, according to Sandell, are quite clear: in 2009, out of 250 box-office hits, only 7 percent were “helmed by women.”

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7. Patrizia Carrano used this term in an exchange of emails with the editor. 8. In her book Mujeres detrás de la Cámara. Entrevistas con Cineastas Españolas 1990–2004 (Madrid: Ocho y Medio, 2005), María Camí-Vela writes that in Spain, during the last decade, the number of women filmmakers reached 20 percent of the total directors. She also lists a number of components for this professional inferiority: a lack of self-confidence due to a long-term condition of exclusion from an active role in this field, as well as a time frame: men start much earlier than women to direct movies. Women, moreover, manifest the need to tell their own stories instead of interpreting others’, as Iciar Bollain confirms in her interview (51–65). Please note that statistics can be approximate and confusing, even for Spain. Both Caballero-Wangüemert and Camí-Vela are not really clear about actual numbers. 9. This is a common feature in women filmmakers worldwide, and I believe it is linked to their personal and professional paths. 10. Please note that the title of this book has been a fortuitous rework of several possible titles, between the editor and the editorial board of Palgrave. I liked the outcome: it is very close to the book of George Melnyk and Brenda Austin Smith, The Gendered Screen:Canadian Women Filmmakers (Waterloo, ON: Wilfried University Press, 2010). This is one of the first books that inspired my work.

Bibliography Basinger, Janine. How Hollywood Spoke to Women. New York: Alfred A. Knoff, 1993. Bellumori, Cinzia, a cura di. “Le Donne del Cinema Contro Questo Cinema.” In Bianco e Nero, 1–2 (1972): 2–112. Roma: Società Gestioni Editoriali. Blaetz, Robin, ed. Women’s Experimental Cinema. Critical Frameworks. Durham; London: Duke University Press, 2007. Bondanella, Peter. Italian Cinema. From Neorealism to the Present. New York; London: Continuum, 2001. Brunetta, Gian Piero. The History of Italian Cinema. A Guide to Italian Film from its Origins to the Twenty-First Century. Princeton; Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2003. Bruno, Giuliana, and Maria Nadotti. Off Screen: Women and Film in Italy. London; New York: 1988. Caballero-Wangüemert, Maria. Mujeres de Cine. 360º Alrededor de la Cámara. Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva, 2011. Camí-Vela, Maria. Mujeres detras de la Cámara: Entrevistas con Cineastas Españolas 1990–2004. Madrid: Ocho y Medio, 2005. Callahan, Vicky, ed. Reclaiming the Archive: Feminism and Film History. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2010. Carrano, Patrizia. Malafemmina. Rimini; Firenze: Guaraldi Editore, 1977.

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Cottino-Jones, Marga. Women, Desire, and Power in Italian Cinema. New York; Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Foster, Audrey, Gwndolyn Katrien Jacobs, and Amy L. Unterburger. Women Filmmakers & Their Films. Detroit: St. James Press, 1998. Hurd, Mary G. Women Directors and Their Films. Westport, CT; London: Praeger, 2007. Isola, Simone, ed. Cinegomorra. Luci e Ombre sul Nuovo Cinema Italiano. Roma: Sovera Edizioni, 2010. Jermy, Deborah, and Sean Redmond. The Cinema of Kathryn Bigelow. Hollywood Transgressor. London; New York: Wallflower Press, 2003. Kaplan, E. Ann. http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/jc12–13folder/ britfemtheory.html. ———. Feminism and Film. Oxford, UK; New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Koenig Quart, Barbara. Women Directors. The Emergence of a New Cinema. New York; Westport, CT; London: Praeger, 1988. Landy, Marcia. Stardom Italian Style: Screen Performance and Personality in Italian Cinema. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008. Levitin, Jacqueline, Judith Plessis, and Valerie Raoul. Women Filmmakers. Refocusing. New York; London: Routledge, 2003. McRobbie, Angela. The Aftermath of Feminism. Gender, Culture and Social Change. London, UK: Sage Publications, 2009. Melnyk, George, and Brenda Austin-Smith. The Gendered Screen: Canadian Women Filmmakers. Waterloo, ON: Wilfried University Press, 2010. Montini, Franco, ed. Il Cinema Italiano del Terzo Millennio. I Protagonosti della Rinascita. Torino: Lindau, 2011. Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” In Visual and Other Pleasures, edited by Laura Mulvey, 14–27. Basingstoke, UK; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. O’ Healy, Aine. “Italian Feminism and Women’s Filmmaking: Intersections 1975–1995,” http://tell.fll.purdue.edu/RLA-Archive/1995/Italianhtml/O’Healy,Aine.htm (accessed October 25, 2012). Tasker, Yvonne. “Women Filmmakers, Contemporary Authorship, and Feminist Film Studies.” In Reclaiming the Archive: Feminism and Film History, edited by Vicky Callahan, 213–229. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2010. Zagarrio, Vito. La Meglio Gioventù. Nuovo Cinema Italiano. Venezia: Marsilio, 2006. ———. Il Cinema della Transizione: Scenari Italiani degli anni Novanta. Venezia: Marsilio, 2000. Valentini, Chiara. O I figli o il Lavoro. Milano: Feltrinelli, 2012. Zajczyk, Francesca. La Resistibile Ascesa delle Donne in Italia. Milano: Il Saggiatore, 2007. Wang, Lingzhen. Chinese Women Cinema: Transnational Contexts. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011.

Part I

1

Napoli Terra d’Amore The Eye on the Screen of Elvira Notari Chiara Ricci

I won’t say another word about the beauties of the city and its situation, which have been described and praised often. As they say here, “Vedi Napoli e poi muori!—See Naples and die!” One can’t blame the Neapolitan for never wanting to leave his city, nor its poets singing its praises in loft hyperboles: it would be wonderful even if a few more Vesuviuses were to rise in the neighbourhood. —Johann Wolfgang von Goethe1 Naples is a paradise; everyone lives in a state of intoxicated self-forgetfulness, myself included. I seem to be a completely different person whom I hardly recognise. Yesterday I thought to myself: Either you were mad before, or you are mad now. —Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Introduction When talking about women in the history of cinema, it is a must to remember the first Italian woman filmmaker—Elvira Notari.2 In order to understand how groundbreaking her work is, we have to take a look at the historical time frame and the social context in which this artist lived and created her peculiar filming and directing style.3 Naples experienced winds of change, cultural revolutions, and transformations in everyday life in the period between the end of the nineteenth

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century and the beginning of the twentieth. In fact, this period—thanks to industrial and technological innovations, to the discovery of the world with its “new” places, cultures, and colors, to people’s interest in fashion, and styles available in shops—was characterized by a new people’s consciousness (Bruno 1995: 69–70). Each individual began to think of himself (or herself) as a member of a crowd and, above all, as a human being with his (or her) own ideas and points of view. But in such an atmosphere, the lines between crowd and individual, between freedom and loneliness became blurred (Simmel 2009: 414). As Georg Simmel4 wrote: “Indeed, if I do not receive myself, the inner aspect of this outer reserve is not only indifference but, more often than we are aware, it is a slight aversion, a mutual strangeness and repulsion, which will closer contact, however caused.” But he goes on to say that the metropolis “grants to the individual a kind of and an amount of personal freedom which has no analogy whatsoever under other conditions. The metropolis goes back to one of the large developmental tendencies for which an approximately universal formula can be discovered.” The Cinema Becomes in the Galleria This new cultural atmosphere and way of thinking gained momentum in 1897 when the first cinema (and it is the first of a very long list) was run at the Galleria Umberto I (opened on November 10, 1892): the Sala Recanati managed by Mario Recanati, a prestigious businessman of this period (Bruno 1995: 57). This made the Galleria the beating heart of the town: here we could find rich and poor people, workers, those whose curiosity was aroused, the strascinafacende5 (61), a sort of vitelloni.6 The regulars in the Galleria were sure to know everybody else. Here people could meet others and share—involuntarily—pieces of their life and their free time. So the Galleria became a sort of theater where one could play the role assigned to him (or her) by life and society. But here people talked about the cinema, too. Films were projected, and the public—everyday more numerous thanks to the unusual, dark atmosphere of the movie theater—began to create its own opinions, ideas, and thoughts about what was showed and what it wanted to watch on screen. The public accepts a movie with enthusiasm. And importantly, it reacts strongly to a film. For example, when ‘A Legge was screened (projected continually from early morning to late night; Trivelli 1998: 47), the police were called in to help maintain order as people resorted to fighting and arguing (Bruno 1995: 184). But the most important thing is that women and men share a common interest. In fact, they love cinema even if they are separated by their own

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viewpoints: men are interested in the women they see on screen (they really desire them) while women seem to be more interested in the story, the plot, and in the deeper emotional aspect of the film. Obviously, this new “habit” was both criticized and appreciated. There were the moralists who could not tolerate the cinema: most of them were fervent Catholics and exponents of the higher middle class. They were of the (mistaken) opinion that a woman goes to the cinema with the intention of arousing desire in the male audience and to receive pleasure, both physical and visual, by being excited by the dark of the movie theater. So the woman who frequented the movies was considered a sinful object of desire and declared an adulterer. But there were people who noticed in this habit a positive implication: most of them were democratic intellectuals and neither sexist nor demure. They believed that being able to go to the cinema was a victory for feminism, and that it could become a precious source of learning and discovery, above all, for those women who had not had the benefit of an education; sadly, such women formed the majority during this period. The woman who went to the cinema played—more or less consciously—two roles: she was desired by the male look, which crossed the border going into voyeurism; but she was a subject who wanted to please (in the wider meaning of the word), to learn, to understand, and—easily—to be free from the questioning aspect of the same look (Alovisio 2008: 275–276). But the success of this innovation and of its ability to make both mind and fantasy travel, thereby moving them away from thoughts of daily difficulties and problems, without any physical or material movement, immediately became a subject for study. The record for even this belongs to a woman: in 1898, Anna Gentile Vertua wrote and published a text titled Cinematografo7 (Mazzei 2008: 260). Cinema and Naples The myth of the cinema had to reach a town like Naples, which derived its name from a mythological tale. Naples was named after a mermaid called Partenope who killed herself because Ulysses refused her love. Then the mermaid’s body was moved to the Tyrrhenian Coast and was picked up by the inhabitants of the place who, in a tribute to her, called their town Partenope. And it is on the trail of this magical and mythical atmosphere that the cinema came to Naples on April 4, 18968: this is when the first cinematographic projection was conducted (Bruno 1995: 49). Soon afterward, several movie theaters came up. At the beginning they were considered the same as café-chantant shows in which play actors,

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singers, conjurers (just like Leopoldo Fregoli, Lina Cavalieri, Eduardo Scarpetta, and Raffaele Viviani), and enchantress sciantose9 participate. The cinema became the trend of the moment. It became a means to communicate, a way of life, and with each passing day it grew in importance in the everyday life of the public. All of this was possible thanks to the birth and to the diffusion of a new phenomenon called “stardom” with the rise of stars like Francesca Bertini, Leda Gys, Rodolfo Valentino, Lyda Borelli, and many others. The public was fascinated by these stars and people began to imitate their tastes, styles, dresses, and make-up. The stars became idols for the public. Hence, the movie theaters were always crowded and sometimes there were problems caused by the public who were desperate to enter the theater and watch the film. This period also saw the birth of the first film companies who made Naples—with Rome and Turin—the diamond-point of the national production. Also, most of them celebrate their own city by their names: “Napoli Film,” “Partenope Film,” “Vesuvio Film,” and many others (Masi and Mario 1988: 30–33). Elvira Notari In this fervent context lies the development of the individual, intellectual, cinematographic, and entrepreneurial personality of Elvira Notari. In spite of this she cannot be labeled a “feminist” because she remains faithful to her roots and to the ideal of the family so important, above all, in the south of Italy. Surely she can be considered as one of the most modern and most cultured women of her time. She is one of the first working girls of the twentieth century and manages to structure her family with a matriarchal hierarchy without upsetting the traditional family with its rules and values. Notari was very sensitive to life and to the intellectual environment of her era. She was friends with most of the important writers of her time, and they helped her find and write stories and screenplays: Carolina Invernizio,10 Salvatore Di Giacomo,11 Sibilla Aleramo,12 Francesco Mastriani,13 and Libero Bovio.14 Instead, another speech deserves Notari’s relationship with Matilde Serao15 who always refuses to make over the royalties of her works. Serao did not want to see her words become images by Elvira Notari as she did not think Notari was a good filmmaker (Annunziata 2008: 250–251). But what is important is the fact that Elvira Notari, first and foremost, before being a director, an editor, a screenwriter, and a businesswoman, is a woman. This is the point from which we have to start if we want to understand her art, her rigors, and her opera.

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The Dora Film The family comprised Nicola Notari, Elvira Coda, who became a Notari on marriage, and their children Eduardo, Dora, and Maria. The family company began its activity in 1909 but it did not have its own studio. So the Notaris began to shoot their scenes on the sets of “Vesuvio Film,” whose owner was Gennaro Righelli16 (Bruno 1995: 348). Until the film company closed in 1930, all the family members (with the exception of Maria who did not take part in this cinematographic project) collaborated actively to make their business competitive on the national and international markets. Nicola was the cameraman, set photographer, art director, and editor; Elvira was the director, screenwriter, and editor; Eduardo, alias Gennariello, was one of the protagonists in most of Elvira’s films; Dora, even if her name never appeared on the screen, helped her parents during the painting of the frames and while editing and the company name, which was Film Dora in 1909, then Films Dora, and, since 1915, Dora Film, was definitely a tribute to her (Bruno 1995: 95). This adventure began when Nicola came back from the war and had to find a well-paid job. He was a good painter and so he began painting. He hoped to sell at least one of his works, but fate had other plans for him. He decided to start painting photographs in many laboratories in his town. He had so much work that he needed the help of his sister Olga, and then Elvira after their wedding on August 25, 1902 (94). It is but a short step from photography to cinema. Soon the Troncone brothers17 and Menotti Cattaneo18 decided to give Nicola the chance to paint for their films. Elvira and Nicola thus became familiar with the world of cinema and decided to found their own film company in Naples, in Via Roma 9119 (Bruno 1995: 348). Here the patriarchal mold was totally replaced by a matriarchal one under the supervision of Elvira Notari without creating any problems at home. Their relationship remained clean, honest, and true. The Production Films Dora began producing shorts between 1906 and 1911 and called them Augurali and Arrivederci (Troianelli 1989: 83; Bruno 1995: 99–100). These shorts opened and closed the shows but, unfortunately, all of them are lost. In the first case we are talking about a sort of a wish that the cinemaowner gave to his public in order to make them happy and satisfied by the

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show and to emphasize that they were an important instrument, for Films Dora, to publicize its work. In the second case, instead, we have shorts showed at the end of the film and they had to say goodbye to the public before they left the movie theater and also invite them to the next show. Dora Films, between 1902 and 1912, produced and realized documentaries too but they are lost. Elvira used shorts from real life and Nicola worked as cameraman: what was most important was portraying reality and truth the way it appeared to the naked eye and this was the trademark of the entire Notari range of work. Eduardo (son of Elvira and Nicola) had this to say about the way the Notaris worked: I suoi nemici la chiamavano il carabiniere, ma mia madre era capace di dolcezze e generosità squisite. Si sa come si dice a Napoli: che la donna è il capo della casa e che lei fa la fortuna o la disgrazia del suo uomo . . . Mia madre fu una donna eccezionale e fece la fortuna e la felicità di mio padre e di noi tutti. I nostri film erano fatti in famiglia. Mia madre li scriveva e li metteva in scena, mio padre faceva le scenografie e filmava gli attori, che erano anche loro una sola famiglia poiché avevamo anche una scuola di recitazione e quindi con gli interpreti c’era un’intesa completa ed un’amicizia che durava dopo la fine del film. Io li ho interpretati tutti quanti e non ricordo mai un litigio sul set. Gli attori facevano tutto ciò che voleva mia madre, che era una regista esigente, non ammetteva ammiccamenti teatrali e voleva una naturalezza assoluta. (Masi and Mario 1998: 136–137) (Her enemies called her carabiniere but my mother was capable of delicious sweetness and generosity. You know how we say in Naples: the woman is the family’s head and she creates the luck or the disgrace of his man . . . My mother was an exceptional woman and she made the fortune and happiness of my father and all of us. Our films were made within the family. My mother wrote them and she realized them, my father created the scenes and shot the actors, who were another family, too. We had a teaching school so with the actors there was total understanding and friendship that continued even after the end of the shooting. I acted in all of them and I do not remember even one a quarrel on the set. The actors did all my mother wanted. She was an exciting director, who did not admit theatrical winking and wanted absolute spontaneity.)

Elvira Notari created a new style of cinema—a sort of Neorealism.20 Interest in the cine-documentary was a constant in the Notaris’ production and, in 1912, enjoyed great public and critical success thanks to a film titled Cattura di un pazzo a Bagnoli shot in real time. In this case cinema was like a newspaper that became a source of cultural

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popularization and was a useful medium for the circulation of news. So it could tell a story that became well-known to everyone. And this was very important in a society in which most of the population was illiterate. The year 1912 saw the rise of the Notaris’ film company. Every film produced was a guaranteed success at the box office, although the press did not always agree with the tastes and the choices of the public. Besides, in the same year the film company produced only two films in which Elvira Notari appeared as an actress: Povera Tisa, Povera madre and Ritorna all’onda. Until 1915, Films Dora created patriotic films to support Italy and its soldiers and families so near to the drama of World War I. So there were films like L’eroismo di un aviatore a Tripoli (1912), Tricolore (1913), Addio mia bella addio l’armata se ne va (1915), and Sempre avanti, Savoia! (1915) that showed a deep sensibility for this historical period. In 1915, Films Dora, which had become Dora Film, organized its production in five series: Grandi romanzi popolari, Grandi canzoni popolari, Drammi di vita vissuta, Serie Gennariello, and Pittoresco. But the real success arrived in 1919–1920 when Dora Film had some lucky films such as ‘A legge,21 ‘A Mala nova, and Gennariello poliziotto, produced by Gennariello Film.22 Gennariello and Gennariello Film Gennariello is a very important figure in the Notaris’ filmography. In fact, Elvira reserved for his son the roles of the good boy, thanks to his physique and to his expressions that made him the perfect prototype of the scugnizzo23 and the portrait of kindness, goodness, and safety even if he was helpless and frightened, lonely, and always immersed in deep melancholy. Gennariello was the paladin of justice and truth and for him nothing was more important than honesty and family; he was ready to sacrifice himself for these values by going to prison or to the war voluntarily. He had so much success that he refused very important and advantageous offers by various Italian film companies. In 1920, after the opening of ‘A legge, Gennariello Film was born, a film company associated with Dora Film, which finally wound up its activities in 1925. Enza Troianelli (1989: 85) writes that Eduardo founded Gennariello Film to avoid the call-up. Maybe he founded this company only to try and find a way for himself without the close contact and control of his family. The films inspired and created by this society—Gennariello poliziotto (1921),

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Luciella, known as Luciella, la figlia della strada or Pulcinella (1921), Gennariello il figlio del galeotto (1921), ‘O munaciello (1921), Core ‘e frate (1923)—had as protagonist Eduardo-Gennariello. But the success was not as he had hoped for and so the company closed down. To the films just mentioned we have to add ‘E Piccerella (1922) and ‘A Santanotte (1922), which are—together with Fantasia ‘e surdato (1927)— the only source of study of the entire Notari opera. They are the only remaining films—made by a film company that created more than one hundred films—that we can watch today.

The End of the Dora Film In 1923–1924 the success the company enjoyed was not the same as that in the beginning. This was due to the fact that the public’s tastes change as they follow the social-cultural transformations of their time. Studies— starting at the beginning of the twentieth century—about sound were ongoing and and was soon to replace the silent movie. As if it was not enough, Dora Film’s decline was linked to an historical event: the rise of fascism and its censorship’s activities used as arms for the propaganda to obtain the community’s consent. Censorship interferes heavily in Fantasia ‘e surdato because “it is not good that”—as the original text says—the public takes part in a fratricide. In fact, it is not a good idea to show a similar crime because it is not useful to the myth of family so dear to Mussolini. There is another case of censorship in ‘A Santanotte, which has at least two scenes that are cut: watching the film we can note that the plot’s continuity fails. And both instances are scenes of violence. And it is in cases like these that we can admire the mastery of Elvira Notari who, despite the impositions coming from above, is able to create and to give to her public a product absolutely perfect in its form. Fascism marks the beginning of a crusade against regionalism and, above all, the dialects. Mussolini is in favor of an Italy united by the Italian language, which is understandable by everyone. But in this way he aims to suppress the individuality, the peculiarity, the beauty, and the oneness of folklore and popular traditions, reducing the land to a regimentation. Then, in 1928, an amendment forbidding cinema to show and talk about themes such as madness, rape, homicide, suicide, the underworld, and betrayal was passed, as it was assumed that this gave a bad image of Italy to the world (Turconi 1987: 370). In the same year the veto to the distribution of Neapolitan films became official. This was the first step toward the transformation of the cinema to the “stronger arm”24 just like

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Mussolini said in one of his speeches.25 He wanted to use this medium for himself and for his political and private image. The last film produced by Dora Film was Trionfo cristiano (1930). It was inspired and dedicated to the life and memory of San Pellegrino but, unfortunately, it was a failure. So Elvira decided to retire to Cava de’ Tirreni (near Salerno) where she died in 1946. Dora Film of America We have to talk about another very important aspect: the collateral and international activity of Dora Film called the Dora Film of America, which had its head office in Seventh Avenue, New York. In fact, Elvira has another great and genial intuition: to create a market for the Italian communities that had moved to America and polarized between Little Italy and Brooklyn. Between the end of the nineteenth century and the 1920s many people from South Italy were compelled to emigrate, above all to America, in search of luck, money, and work. Men left their families and their land and their families joined them only when they had a safe job and a real home. They left their countries dreaming about the “American dream” and believing in a better way of life. But these separations were painful: just boys, teenagers were forced to become men, heads of their families. So there were men who were far away from their wives, girls, mothers, and sons. They had to grow roots in another, unknown land whose history, language, and fertility they knew nothing about. The Dora Film of America wanted to be near these people who were so lonely and so far from their Italy. So the company began to screen in the United States the films already distributed in Italy after changing their titles and subtitles: from Neapolitan Italian to English, just like ‘E Piccerella—The Little Girl’s Wrong, Maria ‘a pazza ovvero il Miracolo della Madonna di Pompei—Mary the Crazy Woman, ‘N galera ovvero Sotto ‘o carcere ‘e San Francesco—Beneath the Prison, Pupatella—Waltzer’s Dream, Sangue è dovere—Blood and Duty, Core ‘e frate—Brother’s Heart, ‘A legge—The Feast and the Law (Bruno 1995: 379–380). Then the company wanted to produce films exclusively for the Italian American public: Italy in America, The Adventures of the Famous Italian Detective Joe Petrosino, Scugnizza (The Orphan of Naples), In the Days of the Covered Wagons, New York Underworld after the Dark or When Lights Are Low, Saved from the Harem, The Life of St. Patrick, Passion Plays or The life of Christ, The Yellow Hand, Devil Rum, The Converted Jewess, The Persecuted Race (Progrom), From Piave to Trieste, Le geste del brigante Musolino, Wolves of New York (Troianelli 1989: 107).

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The film was realized in Italy and then reached New York by sea along with the singers who accompanied the shows. Elvira kept in touch with America exclusively by letters; she never visited the United States. She lived the “new world” through the reactions caused by her films, by her collaborators, reading newspapers, reviews, letters, telegrams sent by colleagues, friends, critics, and journalists. But she enjoyed great success among her people. They admired and appreciated her because she offered them the possibility of remembering the sound, the streets, the alleys, and the sea. Besides there was the music, the songs, and the dialect that revived their memories of Naples and Italy. Themes, Music, Women in Elvira Notari’s Cinema These are the most important themes in the Notari movies: Naples, jealousy, love, maternity, brotherhood, suicide, madness, honor, homicide, homeland, dishonor, work, family, marriage, vanity, femininity, war, justice, revenge, betray, pride, friendship, and music. Elvira Notari, in fact, wanted to start from the truth to create in the public and spectators a sort of sympathy, faithfulness, and identification with the protagonists on the screen. These themes, thanks to their naturalness and spontaneity, make extremely easy and almost involuntary this act of (self)acknowledgment and projection toward the screen (Bruno 1995: 173–174). But Notari did not want to create political, social, or intellectual reactions among the public, nor did she want to be a model of feminism (117– 119). And it is important to underline that the majority of the population during this time could neither read nor write. The immediacy of the images had a fascinating and enchanting power that penetrated and fractured the oral tradition, made up of folk songs, poems, and plays, alimented up to that time by epidemic illiteracy. Notari wanted to create emotions, passions, and sentiments because she started from them. Notari—even if pushing the emotions until the excess and the improbable—wanted and researched a reaction, an instinct, a sort of shout for the characters on the screen. Obviously, it is an innocent position assumed by the public who see their reflection on the screen. But it is just an ideal. The films became a sort of documentary showing the Neapolitan world and it was perceived as fierce criticism by the locals. Above all, she talked about the family that was tightly linked to motherhood and brotherhood. The absence of only one of these themes is sufficient to create a sort of imbalance in the family on the screen. There

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will be the family member’s right and duty—sometimes helped by someone who is a stranger to this family—to reestablish this order leading the story to a happy end, even if this process can be bitter or veiled by tears of sorrow. But we have to note that—at least in the three films we can watch today—the family is never complete: mother and father are never together (they can be a widow or widower) and the presence of at least one son (or daughter) is recurrent. Maybe this was a conscious decision of the Notaris to make the story much more melodramatic and to not create confusion among the characters. What is very important is the figure of the mother (Grano 2008: 43). She is usually represented as an old woman, by now sterile and so she is not able to procreate and, maybe, this is the reason she places her hopes on her son(s). Her only desire is to see and to be sure about—before her death—the happiness, the honesty, and the tranquility of her beloved boy(s) and girl(s). The mother embodies truth, goodness, and kindness. She has to try to keep her offspring safe and, often, in vain, but she has to try. And always her son(s) come(s) back home crying as he had not listened to her advice. For the mother this gives little satisfaction because she is sure that there will not be other dangers in her house. It is curious that in these films Eduardo/Gennariello never plays the role of the antagonist, the bad one, and he never smiles (Troianelli 1989: 98). Perhaps it is a free choice of Notari who does not want to create a picture of her son as a bad boy and she does not want to feel what a mother can feel with these sorts of familiar problems. She wants to preserve the innocence of her Eduardo, being a real mother-filmmaker. And in the family, often there are two brothers who are the opposite of each other. They embody perfect dualism: good/bad, honest/dishonest, rational/impulsive, heart/mind. Another motor of the action is the woman who seduces, bewitches, betrays, conquests, gets angry, regrets, gets her revenge and yet is victim of violence, injustice, and misfortunes (Grano 2008: 97–102). The Notaris’ woman is rarely a winner or rich and so she is not educated or refined. She comes to term with herself and her consciousness, even if it is crystal clear that her “sins” and dishonorable mistakes are all caused by men. She learns to suffer and sometimes she dies or goes mad. This woman is unscrupulous, ready to do everything only to have what she wants but, in the end, she comes back to the starting point. Enza Troianelli (1989) writes: Il suo interesse principale verte sulle donne che cercano di sfuggire alla loro condizione di origine. Anche per lei, pertanto, il cinema rappresenta

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un fuga in piena regola dai ruoli tradizionali. Nonostante le sue eroine siano tutte condannate ad una fine ignobile, le tratta con tale ambiguità da lasciar intravvedere accenti di sorellanza. Ad esempio, non condanna mai moralisticamente le convivenze, ma il mascalzone che se la squaglia. (34) (Her main interest focuses on the women who try to flee from their original conditions. Therefore, even for her the cinema represents a perfect escape from traditional roles. Although her heroines are all sentenced to a dishonorable end she treats them with such an ambiguity so we can catch a glimpse of hints of sisterhood. For example, she does not ever morally condemn the cohabitations but the rascal who slips away.)

The women always lead the action and the story and they are able to motivate the men. The women are the real active element of the narration, they bewitch much more than the “normal” women who dedicate themselves to the men they love without hesitations. Elvira places in the foreground the femininity and the ability to be a female and she underlines this aspect in every woman she portrays on the screen. Only the old women and the mothers who fight for the safety of their children, who have lost their beauty and their youth are so innocent and so pure. But Elvira does not judge her women. She seems to understand them but she leaves the public free to create its own idea without influencing them. The women can make errors but in the end they have the chance to redeem themselves. They can change their lives and choose what is better to do for themselves without destabilizing the credibility, the narration, and the balance of the film. Another main theme is divine justice on earth. In fact, in Notari’s films we can watch policemen, jails, jailers. The innocents can go to prison, the guilty ones can pass as victims but soon this order is reestablished, too. This way Elvira Notari wants to get a look on the surrounding reality, the same she lives and she knows. But her justice is never used as a political medium and she does her best to stay away from this sort of trap. Elvira did not want any problems with the censorship. But there is the madness, too. It can be caused by a suffering love or by a loss experienced by the beloved woman. Every woman has her madness, which leads and pushes their feelings to excess and self-destruction thereby making them lose their contact with reality. They are led by instinct, irrationality, impulse for the birth of violence: crimes, homicides, suicides, zumpate, 26 rapes, wars, blows leading to the death and to the end of the drama. Death, often, is the only way a woman (or a man) has to atone for her sins, to save herself from the people’s judgment and from the difficulties that are so hard to

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bear. Men are often frailer than women because they are so violent. They go around the streets with a knife in the pocket and they are often part of a gang that gives them courage. They have no nuances. They act like babies and they want to have just what they desire. It does not matter what they have to do or who they have to hurt. Men do not know the true meaning of the term “redemption,” and for this reason they prefer to pay for their faults and sins by going to the prison, killing themselves, or going mad. But there is a curious fact to underline—among these themes there is a great absence: the superstition so important to the Neapolitans who have created a sort of philosophy about it. In Notari films there are no warding off ill-luck objects, people do not play lottery or bingo. Maybe it is because people do not have the money to play or maybe because this aspect of Naples does not interest Elvira. Besides Notari shows feasts, traditions, classic Neapolitan songs that are accompanied with live music in the films and they are the same films’ plot, too. And this is an important aspect in for Notari cinema (Troianelli 1989: 91–94). The music is very important and in Naples there is a festival that is the source of inspiration for Elvira Notari.27 In fact, often films take life from a song keeping the same title, too. Eduardo Notari has this to say: Un’altra caratteristica era la musica che accompagnava il film. Noi fummo i primi a mettere un cantante sotto lo schermo che si sincronizzava con le immagini. [. . .] Io mi ricordo di mia madre che partecipava alle prove dell’orchestrina con cantante e che insieme a mio padre, che per anni aveva fatto anche il proiezionista, faceva ancora qualche modifica. Noi non abbiamo mai fatto ricorso all’espediente di sovrapporre i versi della canzone alle scene, come altri facevano, per dare l’attacco al cantante, i nostri film erano letteralmente misurati sul tempo della canzone. (Masi and Mario 1988: 137) (Another characteristic was the music which accompanied the film. We were the first to put a singer under the screen who followed the images. [. . .] I remember that my mother took part in the orchestra’s rehearsals with the singer and my father who, for years was the projectionist too, so they made changes. We never used the expedient to superimpose the song’s lyrics to the scenes to give the beat to the singer, just like others used to do. Our films were literally created on the song’s rhythm.)

So Notari gives space, voice, and body to her population, which she loves very much. It is part of her culture and it is her own source of inspiration. There is a complete identity between Naples, Notari, and her way of shooting: there is a total osmosis. Maybe all of this is due to the fact that the same Notari feels herself as part of the people; she goes

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on the streets with them and she has a deep respect and consideration for them. They know every movement, every mood, every change, and may seem strange for others who are not from Naples. Elvira Notari portrays her town exactly as it appears with its values and faults. What Elvira Notari wants as a filmmaker is to only do her best and she wants the same from her actors and actresses. But she is very cooperative. On the set there is always calm. Everyone seems to be among friends, everybody knows everybody, and working together is a great experience. Elvira likes to laugh and enjoy herself. So remembers her son Eduardo: Lei non ha mai litigato con mio padre per una scena o per un taglio di un’inquadratura. Si capivano e si accordavano solo guardandosi negli occhi. Alla fine del film, l’ultimo giorno delle riprese, mia madre faceva da mangiare per tutta la troupe. Dal falegname al primo attore si sedevano tutti a tavola e si brindava al successo del film. Mia madre era una grande regista, ma era anche un’ottima cuoca e diceva sempre che pure cucinare era un’arte. Arte effimera per eccellenza, però di grande soddisfazione, poiché a tavola non si può bluffare e se i commensali sono come gli spettatori e il piatto che hai preparato è lo spettacolo, il successo lo leggi sulla faccia di chi mangia e sai subito se l’hai ottenuto o no. (Masi and Mario 1988) (She has never quarreled with my father for a scene or for the cut of a framing. They understood each other and they agreed just with a glance. At the end of the shooting, the last working day, my mother cooked for the entire troupe. From the carpenter to the leading man they sat at the table together and toasted to the success of the film. My mother was a great filmmaker but she was a very good cook too and always said that cooking was an art. The ephemeral art for excellence but it gives great satisfaction because to the table is hard to bluff. And if the fellow diners are just like the spectators and the dish you cooked is the show you can read the success on the face of who is eating and you know immediately if you have it or not.)

It is with these words that I want to close my essay dedicated to the figure of Elvira Notari—one of the most important Italian women of the twentieth century, yet one of the most forgotten. She was a woman who was able to contain in herself so many rules: woman, filmmaker, wife, mother, businesswoman, and she has never betrayed her ideas and her convictions as a woman and an intellectual. Notari was a pioneering woman born in the nineteenth century but today, in 2013, she is a modern and revolutionary woman. She is part of Italian cinema’s history. She is a very strong figure and an important example to follow today. I am proud to give her words,

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another life, light, and memory today: at the beginning of the twentyfirst century. Director’s Biography Elvira Notari (1875–1946) was the first Italian female filmmaker. She wrote and directed over sixty feature films and about a hundred documentaries. She married Nicola Notari and together they founded Dora Film. She directed the films, while he worked as a cameraman. Their son “Gennariello” worked as an actor in many of the films. The feature films were often based on Neapolitan forms of drama, such as the “sceneggiata,” and shot on the streets of Naples with nonprofessional actors. She was friends with Salvatore Di Giacomo, Carolina Invernizio, Libero Bovio, E. A. Mario, and she admired Matilde Serao, but the writer did not like Elvira Notari or her opera. Notes 1. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) was a German writer. From 1786 to 1788 he visited Italy and then wrote Italian Journey, which was edited in 1816. 2. Elvira Coda (who later became Elvira Notari on marriage), the first Italian woman filmmaker, was born in Salerno on February 10, 1875, and died in Cava de’ Tirreni (near Salerno) on December 17, 1946. Before deciding to dedicate herself to cinema, she attended what was the equivalent of today’s teachers’ training college and, probably, for a while, did some teaching. The iron discipline that she displayed on the sets possibly comes from this experience. 3. Elvira Notari’s films show reality and the common people. These form the main focus of her study. 4. Georg Simmel (1858–1918) was a philosopher and is considered the father of modern sociology. 5. A term used for men who had nothing to do but go around the Galleria talking and watching movies. 6. In 1953 Federico Fellini directed I vitelloni. This term was used for men who did not want to work or handle responsibilities (e.g., having a family or nurturing others). 7. It was edited on January 24, 1898. 8. Some Lumière brothers’ films were shown on that day. 9. Italian singers from the beginning of the twentieth century famous for their beauty, unperturbed looks, and exotic names, e.g., Lucy Charmante and Cleo de Merode. 10. She was an Italian writer admired by Italian women (1851–1916).

30 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

18. 19.

20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27.

CHIARA RICCI

He was a Neapolitan writer, poet, and playwright (1860–1934). Pseudonym of Rina Faccio (1876–1960), an Italian writer and poet. He was a writer, playwright, and journalist (1819–1891). He was an Italian poet, writer, playwright, journalist, and author of classic Neapolitan songs (1883–1942). She was an Italian writer and journalist and she founded and directed the newspaper called Il Mattino (1856–1927). He was an Italian filmmaker, screenwriter, and actor (1886–1949). They are Guglielmo, Roberto, and Vincenzo Troncone. They founded in 1906 the society Fratelli Troncone & C., which became Partenope Film in 1909. He was an ex-conjurer who understood the hypnotic ability of the cinema. Then the family company moved, in 1911, to Via Parma 33 and used the studio of Gennaro Righelli. The next year, in 1912, it definitely moved to Via Leonardi di Capua 15. It is a cultural movement (cinema, literature) born at the beginning of 1940s until 1950s. The art is inspired by the reality. Inspired by the namesake song, by ‘O festino, and by a tale written by Pacifico Vento. This was Dora Film’s satellite film company directed by Eduardo Notari. A little Neapolitan boy. This is how Mussolini termed the power of cinema, and he delivered this slogan during the opening of Cinecittà (April 21, 1937). Then Mussolini founded the Istituto Luce (1925) and the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia (1935). The fights by knife. The feast of Piedigrotta, which opened on September 7, 1876.

Bibliography Alovisio, Silvio. Voci del silenzio. La sceneggiatura nel cinema muto italiano. Milano: Il Castoro, 2005. ———. “La spettatrice muta. Il pubblico cinematografico femminile nell’Italia del primo Novecento.” In Dall’Asta, Non solo dive, 269–287. Annunziata, Gina. “Matilde Serao e il cinematografo.” In Dall’Asta, Non solo dive, 249–255. Aprà, Adriano, and A. Gili Jean. Naples et le cinéma. Milano: Fabbri Editori, 1994. Balboni, A. L. La donna fatale nel cinema muto italiano nella cultura tra l’Ottocento e il Novecento. Castrocaro: Vespignani Castrocaro T, 2006. Bernardini, Aldo. Cinema muto italiano. I. Ambiente, spettacoli e spettatori— 1896/1904. Bari: Editori Laterza, 1980. ———. Cinema muto italiano. II. Industria e organizzazione dello spettacolo 1905–1909. Bari: Editori Laterza, 1981.

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———. Archivio del cinema italiano. Il cinema muto 1905–1931. vol 1. Roma: Edizioni Anica, 1991a. ———. Il cinema muto. Roma: Anica, 1991b. Bernardini, Aldo, and Vittorio Martinelli. Il cinema muto italiano. I film dei primi anni, 1905–1909. Torino, Roma: Nuova ERI CSC, 1996. Bondanella, Peter. Italian Cinema: From the Silent Era to the Present. New York: Continuum, 2009. Brunetta, Gian Piero. Il cinema muto italiano. Bari: Editori Laterza, 2008. Bruno, Giuliana. Streetwalking on a Ruined Map Cultural Theory and the City Films of Elvira Notari. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993. ———. Rovine con vista. Alla ricerca del cinema perduto di Elvira Notari. Milano: La Tartaruga Edizioni, 1995. Camerini, Claudio, and Riccardo Redi. Tra un film e l’altra—Materiali sul cinema muto italiano 1907–1920. Venezia: Marsilio Editori, 1980. Carro, Enzo. L’eredità di Partenope. Napoli: Edizioni Simeoli, 2002. Castello, Giulio Cesare. Storia del cinema. Il cinema muto, I vol. Roma: Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, 1958. Dall’Asta, Monica. Non solo dive—Pioniere del cinema italiano. Bologna: Edizioni Cineteca di Bologna, 2008. De Luca, Giulio. Napoli: una vicenda. Napoli: Guida, 1974. De Simone, Roberto. Disordinata storia della canzone napoletana. Ischia: Valentino Editore, 1996. Foglia, Paolo, Ernesto Mazzetti, and Nicola Tranfaglia. Napoli ciak. Le origini del cinema a Napoli. Bologna: Colonnese Editore, 1995. Franco, Mario. Cinema popolare napoletano. Napoli: Cineteca Altro, 1976. Galasso, Giuseppe. Storie delle città italiane: Napoli. Bari: Laterza, 1987. Grano, Antonio. Malafemmena! Donne perfide nella canzone classica napoletana. Napoli: Intra Moenia, 2008. Jandelli, Cristina. Le dive italiane del cinema muto. Palermo: L’Epos, 2005. Kuhn, Annette, and Susannah Radstone. Women in Film. New York: Ballantine Books, 1990. Masi, Stefano, and Franco Mario. Il mare, la luna, i coltelli. Per una storia del cinema muto napoletano. Napoli: Tullio Pironte Editore, 1988. Mazzei, Luca. “Al cinematografo da sole. Il cinema descritto dalle donne fra il 1898 e 1916.” In Dall’Asta, Non solo dive, 257–268. Miscuglio, Annabella, and Daopoulo Rony. Kinomata. La donna nel cinema. Bari: Dedalo Libri, 1979. Modini, Laura. L’occhio delle donne. Le registe e i loro film, 1896–1996. Milano: Ass. L. Martinelli, 1996. Modugno, Ottorino. Le donne mute. Firenze: Cecconi, 1920. Paliotti, Vittorio, and Enzo Grano. Napoli nel cinema. Pionieri e dive del muto tra fine ‘800 e primo ‘900. Napoli: Marotta & Cafiero Editori, 2006. Palomba, Salvatore. La canzone napoletana. Napoli: L’ancora del Mediterraneo, 2001. Paolella, Roberto. Storia del cinema muto. Napoli: Giannini, 1956.

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Pasolini, Pier Paolo. Lettere luterane. Milano: Garzanti, 2009. Pittari, Carmelo. La storia della canzone napoletana. Milano: Baldini & Castoldi Editore, 2004. Scialò, Pasquale. Sceneggiata. Rappresentazioni di un genere popolare. Napoli: Alfredo Guida Editore, 2002. ———. La sceneggiata. Napoli: Alfredo Guida Editore, 2003. Simmel, Georg. La metropoli e la vita dello spirito. Roma: Armando Editore, 2009. Trivelli, Anita. L’altra metà dello sguardo. Roma: Bulzoni, 1998. Troianelli, Enza. Elvira Notari, pioniera del cinema napoletano (1875–1946). Roma: Euroma—Editrice Universitaria di Roma—La Goliardica, 1989.

2

Grotesque Bodies, Fragmented Selves Lina Wertmüller’s Women in Love and Anarchy (1973) Claudia Consolati

L

ina Wertmüller’s now classic 1970s films might seem the quintessential incarnation of feminist Claire Johnston’s call for a women’s political countercinema operating within the codes of the traditionally patriarchal entertainment film.1 The Italian filmmaker has in fact repeatedly proclaimed her lifelong love affair with popular cinema. “My greatest desire is to make popular cinema,” Wertmüller states in a 1976 interview with Paul McIsaac and Gina Blumenfeld,2 while a year later, in a conversation with Gideon Bachmann, she specifies, “I have made a decision for popular work because I have chosen a form that should reach as far as possible.”3 Simultaneously, her films of the time—Love and Anarchy, Swept Away, and Seven Beauties in particular—deal with issues dear to feminism, such as women’s social roles, and rights and gender power relations. Set in a Roman brothel during the fascist dictatorship, Love and Anarchy (1973) seems to be committed to denouncing the oppressed condition of women under patriarchy. The house of pleasure is a metaphor for women’s sexual, social, and political subjugation and marginalization while fascism functions as an allegory of patriarchy’s coercive power.4 Still, one is left to wonder whether representing women’s oppression is sufficient to denounce its tyrannies. Johnston would say that true revolutionary attempts cannot limit themselves to representation. They must

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challenge, rather, the very strategies behind representation to unveil the repressive mechanism of bourgeois ideology.5 Keeping Johnston’s positions in mind, it becomes clear that Love and Anarchy ultimately frustrates the possibility of a feminist reading in terms of both content and cinematic techniques.6 While committed to portraying female oppression, the story line simultaneously shows what misfortunes happen when a woman is given the final decision-making power. A young, inexperienced, idealistic Northern anarchist, Tonino (Giancarlo Giannini), arrives at the Via dei Fiori whorehouse on a mission to kill fascist leader Benito Mussolini. In the house of pleasure, he interacts with the outspoken prostitute Salomé (Mariangela Melato), who became involved in the anarchist, antifascist movement after fascist soldiers killed her boyfriend Anteo, and with the apolitical and pure Tripolina (Lina Polito), with whom Tonino eventually falls in love. On the day designated for Mussolini’s assassination, Tripolina refuses to awaken Tonino hoping to save his life. Upon realizing that he has missed the opportunity to affirm his human dignity, the man loses his mind, shoots the carabinieri who have come to inspect the bordello, and ultimately dies an anonymous and unheroic death at the hands of the fascist militia. Despite being motivated by just, antimilitaristic reasons, Tripolina’s interference lies behind Tonino’s failed revolutionary, antiauthoritarian act. Her decision favors political passivity and acceptance in the name of love, and denies Tonino the possibility to take action against an oppressive political and social system. Similarly to the plot’s condemnation of Tripolina’s agency, Love and Anarchy’s filmic strategies often relegate women to the position of passive objects failing to revolutionize the scopophilic formal strategies and the phallocentric ideology of classical cinema. The contributions of prominent feminist scholars and theorists, such as Johnston, Laura Mulvey, Luce Irigaray, Ann Kaplan, Mary Ann Doane, Julia Kristeva, and Teresa de Lauretis, help underscore four instances in which Wertmüller’s film negates the possibility of a women’s countercinema: the prominence assigned to the male gaze; the fetishization and fragmentation of the female body; the employment of the grotesque to legitimize the established order instead of subverting it; and the use of mirrors to deny female identity.7 While the purpose of the ensuing discussion is to highlight four contentious aspects of Love and Anarchy’s visual representation of women, one must keep in mind that Wertmüller’s treatment of femininity in the film is ultimately highly ambivalent and paradoxical. This ambivalence stems from Wertmüller’s personal and cinematic background. The filmmaker’s notorious flamboyant style and her love for distortion and

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excess develop out of her professional apprenticeship with, among others, avant-garde puppeteer Maria Signorelli and director Federico Fellini, with whom Wertmüller collaborated on the production of 8 ½ (1963). Indeed, Wertmüller’s representation of femininity in her 1970s films owes a great deal to the Riminese filmmaker and to his own ambiguous relationship with women. Along with Fellini, another cinematic influence is to be found in the genre of the commedia all’italiana and in its nonfilmic antecedents, such as the commedia dell’arte, the opera buffa, and puppet theater, whose legacy will be particularly relevant when discussing Love and Anarchy’s female grotesque and the film’s carnivalesque elements.8 Through a compelling extreme close-up of Tonino’s face and piercing blue eyes, a recurrent image throughout the film, the opening sequences establish the centrality of the male gaze, with which the voyeuristic eye of the camera identifies. After lingering on the lifeless body of Tonino’s anarchist friend and political mentor, Michele Sgaravento, who has presumably been killed by fascist soldiers and now hangs from a tree in the Pianura Padana marshes, the camera pans over the crowd of people beholding the cadaver. The subsequent frame shifts abruptly from the anonymous assembly of police officers and local peasants to a dramatic close-up of Tonino’s face and eyes, which open in horror. The connection between his gaze and desire becomes explicit shortly after, when Tonino walks for the first time into the Via dei Fiori brothel. A subjective shot of the housekeeper Zoraide (Isa Bellini) sweeping the floor on her knees introduces the space from Tonino’s point of view, while the editing alternates between depictions of Tonino standing by the door and frames of the woman cleaning the hallway in front of him. Along with the cinematography, Salomé’s and Tripolina’s words confirm the enticing power of Tonino’s gaze as well as its ability to control and direct desire within the space of the brothel. During a countryside escapade with Salomé and the bombastic head of the fascist police, Giacinto Spatoletti (Eros Pagni), whom the woman wants to seduce in order to gather details to facilitate their murder plan, Tripolina is struck by the endemic melancholy of Tonino’s eyes. As the two dance at a local restaurant, the prostitute shuns the man’s gaze stating, “Ma che guardi? Eh, su! Nun me guarda’ cussì, me fai venì ‘a malincunia!” (What are you looking at? Come on! Don’t look at me like that! You make me sad!).9 While Tripolina’s words refer to Tonino’s emotional sway over her but do not take into account sexual desire, Salomé explicitly addresses the correlation between the man’s gaze and libidinal pleasure. When the woman and Tonino talk for the first time in the prostitute’s room, Salomé catches the man looking timidly at her thigh and utters, “Hai due occhi che sembri un affamato davanti a una rosticceria!” (You have two eyes that make

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you look like a hungry man in front of a restaurant!). She will reinforce the point a little later by confirming that Tonino has “due occhi da gattino affamato” (two eyes like those of a hungry kitten). Foreshadowing Tonino’s night encounter with a lonely kitten upon returning from the countryside, the affectionate, endearing appellation “gattino” comments on the type of masculinity that Giannini’s character embodies and that Love and Anarchy endorses, a masculinity that is essentially antiheroic and “feminine.” Throughout most of the film, in fact, Tonino is presented as sensitive, humane, emotional, altruistic, reserved, and genuinely unsophisticated. As such, he stands in sharp opposition to the hypermasculine, macho type incarnated by Spatoletti, a figure that Wertmüller represents in a highly satirical manner. The fact that Wertmüller’s sympathies go for the kind-hearted, timid, impromptu anarchist Tonino as opposed to the self-absorbed, arrogant, pompous fascist Spatoletti speaks not only of the filmmaker’s political preferences but also of her views on masculinity. Besides Love and Anarchy’s unforgiving depiction of Spatoletti, Wertmüller’s criticism of machismo is made manifest through such characters as Mimì and Pasqualino (both played by Giannini) in The Seduction of Mimì and Seven Beauties, whose overconfidence in their sex appeal turns them into pathetic rather than attractive figures. Compared to the triad SpatolettiMimì-Pasqualino, the humble and reserved Tonino is ultimately a more seductive and virile type of man, as attested by the fact that Love and Anarchy’s female characters are more attracted to him than to his male counterpart.10 Yet, even though Tonino embodies a soft, emotional, endearing, “feminine” kind of masculinity, one must not forget that he is still the one in charge of the pleasure dynamics inside the brothel. Such pleasure dynamics are prompted, as noted earlier, by the enticing power of his gaze, which directs and controls desire within the Via dei Fiori establishment. Similar to Tonino, the maison’s male customers also regulate the voyeuristic mechanism of desire turning women into erotic objects of contemplation. A crucial sequence that stresses the importance of desire in connection to male visual pleasure is the one depicting the Via dei Fiori prostitutes showcasing themselves for their clients at the beginning of the workday. The sequence is Wertmüller’s own reinterpretation of two similar moments in Fellini’s Roma (1972), and it is particularly relevant from a feminist viewpoint. As Rodica Diaconescu-Blumenfeld (1999) has pointed out, the scene represents an accurate mise-en-abyme of the phallogocentric dynamics of cinema, which constitute men as subjects of desire and bearers of the look and women as their objects.11 The critic’s claim relies on Mulvey’s view of traditional narrative film as a patriarchal apparatus

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based on scopophilia, which, borrowing from Freud, Mulvey defines as “pleasure in looking at another person as an object.”12 In her feminist analysis of the gender power dynamics inscribed in the cinema experience, Mulvey describes men as the active bearers of the gaze while women are the passive, objectified receivers of their look. In this system, women figure only as empty signifiers, screens that exist for erotic contemplation and for the projection of male fantasies and desires from both within and without the film itself. The correspondence between the showcase sequence and cinema’s scopophilic, patriarchal mechanisms as described by Mulvey is made explicit by one of the prostitutes, who defines her entire inventory of sexual tricks as “un cinematografo” (picture house). The camera eye identifies with the voyeuristic male customers who, along with Tonino, set the paradigms of desire since they occupy the subject position carrying and directing the gaze. In this respect, it is significant that, much like when Tonino first enters the brothel, the editing alternates between subjective images of the prostitutes’ bodies and close-ups and medium shots of the male clients enjoying the show. By bestowing upon men the power to control the dynamics of scopophilic pleasure within the Via dei Fiori whorehouse, the sequence validates Teresa de Lauretis’s assertion that “desire . . . is a property of men, property in both senses of the word: something men own, possess, and something that inheres in men, like a quality.”13 This claim is all the more valid and compelling considering that, in the house of pleasure, the women’s bodies—the desired objects—are commodities exchanged by men under the supervision of the tyrannical and grotesque Mme. Aida (Pina Cei) and her assistant Carmela (Elena Fiore). These power relations, which relegate women to the role of sexual commodities subject to the visual and material control of men, also bring to mind Luce Irigaray’s assertions on prostitution, which the feminist theoretician takes as a metaphor for the general oppressed condition of women under patriarchy. According to Irigaray, Woman . . . is only a more or less ambiguous prop for the enactment of man’s fantasies. That she might find pleasure there in that role, by proxy, is possible, even certain. But such pleasure is above all a masochistic prostitution of her body to a desire that is not her own, and it leaves her in a familiar state of dependency upon man.14

Quite literally, the showcase sequence displays women prostituting their bodies to a desire that does not belong to them but that is, rather, an expression of the dominant, masculine ideology. By representing

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these power dynamics, the scene also confirms the main aporia inscribed in classical film: while women are apparently portrayed as active and men as passive, the mechanism of desire keeps women in a passive position bestowing agency exclusively to men. Borrowing from structuralism and Roland Barthes in particular, Johnston affirms that cinema’s ideological structure establishes a detachment between signifier and signified with respect to women’s roles, a rupture that Lina Wertmüller’s Love and Anarchy reproduces.15 The film, in fact, limits women to the position of myths in a Barthesian sense. In Mythologies, Barthes describes myth as a sign that the dominant ideology has deprived of its denotative signification bestowing upon it a different connotative one.16 In the traditional narrative film and in Love and Anarchy, at least during the showcase sequence, the signifier “woman” comes to signify “passive performer” and “object of desire,” a connotative meaning that is presented as a natural given and that, as such, corroborates the “ideology of sexism” at the heart of classical cinema.17 While voyeurism is only initially present during the prostitutes’ showcase, since immediate material gratification follows the initial visual stimulation, the other key aspect of cinematic pleasure as described by Mulvey, namely fetishism, is maintained throughout. According to Freud, fetishism is man’s answer to the threat of castration posed by women because of their lack of the penis. It resolves into the attribution of phallic qualities to parts of the female body to make up for the absence of the male sexual organ and appease man’s anxieties.18 The fact that, in the sequence in question, the female body appears in bits and pieces—legs running down a staircase, sequences of breasts enveloped in decadent pearl necklaces, fleshy buttocks multiplied by mirror reflections—confirms that masculine fetishistic desires and fears lie behind Love and Anarchy’s cinematic form.19 Feminist analyses of fetishism in art, such as Nancy Vickers’s study of Petrarch’s treatment of Laura in the Canzoniere, have shown how the male author’s scattering of the female body in the text is a response to the presumed threat of castration posed by the latter.20 It comes as no surprise that Wertmüller resorts to a similar strategy as she has always refused to be identified as a woman filmmaker.21 Indeed, her use of voyeurism and fetishism is symptomatic of her unwillingness to question male-oriented and ideologically charged filmic techniques. The fetishization and fragmentation of the woman’s body in Love and Anarchy is all the more unsettling considering that the issue of physical wholeness is connected to the overarching, key question of moral integrity, an integrity that is ultimately available to the male but not to the female characters. With the sole exception of Salomé, who orchestrates Mussolini’s murder plan, takes advantage of Spatoletti’s obtuseness,

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and is extremely conscious of her mission but only has indirect political agency, the film’s women do not demonstrate any awareness of the contemporary political situation and do not display the need to affirm their human dignity against an oppressive system. Their noninterventionist attitude is exemplified by Tripolina’s reaction upon hearing of Tonino’s most likely fatal murder plan. Unable to grasp the political and moral reasons behind his decision, an utterly distressed Tripolina asks, “E perché? Per la politica? Ma che ce ne fotte a noi? Perché?” (Why? For politics? But what does it matter to us? Why?), her words a manifesto of noninterference between the private and the public spheres.22 Tripolina will again stand up for her apolitical ideas during her final altercation with Salomé over whether to awaken Tonino on the day of Mussolini’s assassination. A strenuous defender of the anarchist cause throughout the entire film, Salomé ultimately gives in and, because of the love that she also feels toward Tonino, decides to embrace Tripolina’s pacifist pleas. On the one hand, Salomé’s final capitulation, as well as the animated, tragic, and fierce nature of her confrontation with Tripolina, prove that Love and Anarchy’s female protagonists are indeed, in Wertmüller’s own words, “very strong women . . . [who] instinctively rebel against militarism and the patriarchal order” trying to find in human affection an alternative to violence and political struggles.23 Yet, on the other hand, one must remember that their interference has dire consequences for Tonino, who is not given the possibility to prove his dignity as an individual and passes on to history only as an unidentified madman. Contrary to Love and Anarchy’s female characters, Tonino becomes progressively aware of his political, ethical, and human responsibilities; he becomes aware that killing Mussolini is a political but also, most importantly, a moral imperative. In this respect, it is significant that, at a physical level, and contrarily to what happens for the female body, fragmentation is never inflicted upon the film’s male protagonist. Even when horribly disfigured and beaten up, Tonino remains unquestionably whole, the only exception being the frequent extreme close-ups of his eyes, which, however, contribute to reinforcing his own sense of self rather than displacing or negating it. The numerous reproductions of female classical statues that occupy the interior of the brothel further comment on the issue of women’s fragmentation. Apparently mere decorative props, these figures carry instead a deep ideological significance. Several of them are mutilated and have missing limbs. Therefore, they function as objective correlatives of the disintegration and fragmentation of women operated by men, a fragmentation that the mise-en-scène represents, and possibly denounces, but that Wertmüller endorses through framing, editing, and camera movements.

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Several of these mutilated statues appear, along with the isolated and fragmented breasts, legs, and buttocks, in the showcase sequence, in particular behind Carmela, the woman responsible for orchestrating the proceedings of the workday.24 Furthermore, it is relevant that some of the sculptures that populate the brothel are acephalous, such as the little bronze in Salomé’s boudoir, a detail referencing women’s lack of identity in the patriarchal order. The recurrent presence of maimed and acephalous reproductions of classical female statues is significant in yet another respect since it relates to Love and Anarchy’s employment of the grotesque to deny agency to the film’s female characters. During the prostitutes’ showcase, the camera lingers on a medium shot of one of the whores who, making herself available to the male clients, is positioned next to the lower part of a statue’s body, whose genitals appear, surprisingly, chastely covered by what looks like a fig leaf or drapes. A similar ironic juxtaposition is introduced when Salomé first enters the scene. The camera zooms in to focus on her face and upper body leaning over a faux classical sculpture of a woman whose head is modestly bent downward and whose knee covers her intimate parts. By contrast, Salomé’s posture indicates sexual availability and transgression. She wears little besides her lingerie and her upwardly thrust leg overtly alludes to the erotic pleasures to come. The statues’ timid postures and the prostitutes’ oversexualized performances correspond to two radically opposed models of beauty and womanhood—the virgin and the whore. The clash between these two stereotypical representations of femininity is an expression of Wertmüller’s love for strident, expressionistic, and grotesque contrasts, an aesthetic trademark of her 1970s production. The filmmaker’s flamboyant, exaggerated style is influenced by Fellini, and by the commedia all’italiana, the commedia dell’arte, and puppet theater. As her stylistic signature, it is essential to delineate its implications with respect to Love and Anarchy’s treatment of womanhood. Grotesque women abound in Wertmüller’s films and their significance is ultimately ambivalent. On the one hand, considering Fellini’s influence on the filmmaker, the female grotesque can be seen as the expression of typically male anxieties toward the female body, where disfiguration becomes an antidote to women’s threat of castration.25 On the other, however, these deformed female characters could be regarded as subversive of the mainstream, patriarchal order and of its limiting and objectifying ideas of femininity. An advocate of the second faction, DiaconescuBlumenfeld sees Wertmüller’s grotesque women as bearers of alternative paradigms that subvert phallogocentric standards of feminine beauty. In

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her reading, these grotesque females are “undesirable,”26 and, as such, they free themselves from the control of the male gaze and are able to assume an “autonomous subjectivity.”27 While the critic makes a compelling point, her automatic assimilation of the grotesque to the ugly limits a thorough understanding of women’s representation in Love and Anarchy. While Mme. Aida, her aide Carmela, and the housekeeper Zoraide are indeed physically unpleasant and repulsive, they are far from being the only examples of female grotesque in Wertmüller’s film. Indeed, in Love and Anarchy, the grotesque reaches beyond physical deformity to encompass the bordello’s entire female population, so much so that the whole brothel could be considered a locus of “grotesqueries.”28 The cavernous, womb-like spatial configuration of the Via dei Fiori whorehouse—its narrow, shadowy corridors and windowless rooms— can be ascribed to the domain of the grotesque or “grotto-esque,” a term that recalls the meanders of a cave, the inside of the earth, the dark areas hidden in the recesses of the mind and body. As a corporeal metaphor, in fact, the grotesque is reminiscent of the hollow female anatomy.29 In this respect, it is significant that the establishment is a maison of sexual pleasure where women sell their bodies as commodities, a detail corroborating the parallel between the brothel and the womb or the uterus. Such a correlation reinforces the opposition between the brothel’s voluptuous and labyrinthine design—a configuration that evokes what Irigaray has called the incompleteness and amorphism of the female genitalia30—and the phallic fascist architecture that dominates the external world. The camera movements substantiate the contrast between the two realms: the interior, intimate, labyrinthine, feminine sphere versus the stiff, rigid, male external one. While high- and low-angle shots prevail when the characters are outside, to signify the oppression of the individual perpetrated by fascism, inside the house of tolerance the camera privileges medium shots and close-ups to convey a sense of claustrophobic, “uterine” intimacy. Even though the brothel’s design is reminiscent of a woman’s womb, it is, however, a sterile one since the whorehouse is a place of erotic pleasure that shuns reproduction. As such, it figures as an antibourgeois alternative to the institution of the family, which Wertmüller deems as the “high-rise prison” on which Western society is founded.31 Within this framework, Love and Anarchy also deeply questions the role of woman as mother. It fails, however, to introduce a positive alternative to maternity. Rather, by choosing to represent the Via dei Fiori’s prostitutes as grotesque, nonreproductive, and segregated, Love and Anarchy thematizes the abjection inscribed in womanhood and motherhood. In Julia

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Kristeva’s Powers of Horror, the abject is defined as the dimension that threatens the unity of the ego by questioning the boundaries between the I and the Other.32 Women can be a source of abjection when their generative powers are perceived as a threat to the male sense of self, a dynamic that Love and Anarchy reenacts by displacing typically male phobias visà-vis women’s procreative nature into grotesque, deformed, and sterile female characters. Wertmüller’s view of family and maternity as bourgeois institutions to be dismantled echoes the allegations that second-wave feminists were making around the time of Love and Anarchy’s release. Only with the third-wave feminism of the 1980s did women start to reclaim their rights on motherhood, which began to be seen as the quintessential female experience setting women apart from men. Representative of this change is feminist scholar Ann Kaplan, who has identified in motherhood and in the mother-daughter relationship one of the loci of subversion of patriarchal practices. According to Kaplan, “the male gaze . . . manages to repress the relations of woman in her place as Mother—leaving a gap not ‘colonized’ by man, through which, hopefully, a woman can begin to create a discourse, a voice, a place for herself as subject.”33 Perhaps because the times were not yet ripe, Love and Anarchy fails to represent such an autonomous female resistance “gap” to phallocentrism, negating the possibility of its existence by devising female sexuality as abject, grotesque, and nongenerative. Thus, Wertmüller’s rejection of the institution of the family and of motherhood signifies both the desire to move away from bourgeois, heterosexual norms and a refusal to find possible fissures of resistance within the established order. Disconnected from reproduction, the brothel becomes essentially a place of death. The tragic fate of Tonino’s friend, Michele Sgaravento, and of the commendatore who pays a visit to the brothel, has a heart attack, and is abandoned by Tonino and Salomé in the Fori Imperiali, tragically foreshadow Tonino’s own destiny. Wertmüller establishes a direct correlation between the brothel’s unreproductive female sexuality—its powers of horror—and death by having Giannini’s character shoot the carabinieri at the end of the film precisely in the room where the prostitutes had put themselves on display. Similarly, the entire “grotto-esque” spatial configuration of the brothel menacingly anticipates the underground prison where Tonino dies. On the one hand, such a correspondence between the Via dei Fiori establishment and Tonino’s prison functions as yet another commentary on women’s status as captives of the dominant patriarchal ideology.34 On the other, however, it casts female sexuality in a negative light by equating it with death and by deeming it responsible for Tonino’s failed revolutionary act.

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Along with motherhood, Kaplan identifies in silence another strategy of women’s resistance to male domination. Initially seen only as one of women’s attributes in the patriarchal system, silence has been reevaluated by third-wave feminism in a positive light as a means for women to communicate beyond the realm of the symbolic, which only expresses male concerns.35 Yet, silence is almost completely absent from Love and Anarchy’s brothel. The Via dei Fiori prostitutes are loud, boisterous, irreverent; they yell at each other, curse, emit meaningless shrieking sounds while a constant chattering inhabits the corridors of their maison. Silence is extraneous to the whores’ nature. When one of her fellow prostitutes complains about her yelling, Salomé apologizes by saying, “Ma scusami sai . . . che c’ho ‘sta vociazza che non m’accorgo neanche” (Forgive me . . . for having this rough and loud voice that I don’t even realize I have), thus acknowledging that quietude is foreign to her being. The general tumult climaxes during the carnivalesque meal that takes place after Tonino’s arrival at Via dei Fiori. At first sight, the banquet seems disruptive of societal norms given that Wertmüller relies on some of the clichés and codes of the subversive practice of the carnival as delineated by Bakhtin’s theories and as promoted by the theatrical and filmic traditions of the commedia dell’arte and the commedia all’italiana.36 For instance, the prostitutes employ a wide range of obscene language and eat in an uncouth, bestial way, their behavior challenging the supposed good manners of the outside, bourgeois, fascist, patriarchal world. Still, an analysis taking into account gender shows that their demeanor remains inscribed within patriarchal power dynamics, as the characters’ positioning within the scene proves. One feature of Bakhtin’s definition of the carnival is the collapse of boundaries and hierarchies.37 In the banquet sequence, however, it is clear that the rulers are Mme. Aida and her two assistants, who sit at one end of the table, and Tonino, who sits at the other end. The supposedly naïve male protagonist and the three hags facing him are the only characters who manage to occupy a subject position, their physical placement in the scene establishing an axis around which the subjugation of the other prostitutes takes place. If it is true that only Mme. Aida and her three assistants, Love and Anarchy’s most grotesque and repulsive female characters, have access to an “autonomous subjectivity,” as Diaconescu-Blumenfeld suggests, this is possible exclusively because they come to incarnate a male paradigm and are assimilated with it. Several other elements confirm the alignment of Mme. Aida, Carmela, and Zoraide with the patriarchal order. When Salomé hurries down the stairwell to welcome Tonino for the first time, she calls Carmela a “brigadiere” (lieutenant). Such an appellation establishes an explicit link between the repressive forces of the Law of the

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Father—in particular the carabinieri who behold Michele Sgaravento’s lifeless body and whom Tonino murders at the end—and the brothel’s higher powers. Mme. Aida is also directly associated with the bombastic head of the fascist police, Spatoletti, since they both speak with a markedly Tuscan accent.38 Along with the fact that all the prostitutes participate in the verbose chaos of the carnivalesque banquet, their very bodily features also make them part of the brothel’s “grotesqueries.” The whores’ heavy make-up signifies that they are forced to wear expressionistic and decadent masks that transfigure their facial traits into caricatures and grotesque images of themselves. Fellinesque in nature, their masquerade indicates that they are acting out a role that was imposed upon them by the outside, male world while concurrently thematizing their position of spectacle for the enjoyment of the male gaze. The prostitutes’ grotesque physical features are highlighted from the very beginning. When Salomé and Tonino lock themselves up in the woman’s room after his arrival, frequent claustrophobic close-ups of Salomé’s deadly pale face, covered in white powder and encircled by oversized steel hairpins, underscore her status of grotesque puppet. As she tells the story of her boyfriend, Anteo, her ghostly white face and dark eyes stand out, the contrast between the rosy complexion of the rest of her body and her unnatural facial features pointing to the camouflage logic of her role. In “Film and the Masquerade,” Mary Ann Doane draws an explicit parallel between the masquerade and the position of women in patriarchy. In this respect, she speaks of a “hyperbolization” of the mask that takes place when women are forced to personify roles that male society has imposed upon them. The hyperbolized masquerade mechanisms implied in patriarchy and imposed upon the feminine come to represent an “excess of femininity” and demonstrate the representational nature of a woman’s body.39 Doane’s theories hold true for the women in the Via dei Fiori establishment, even though she refers mostly to the figure of the femme fatale, a category that hardly fits Wertmüller’s protagonists. While the femme fatale figure usually represents a threat for the heterosexual, male-dominated status quo, the prostitutes in Love and Anarchy are far from fulfilling this role. Salomé’s professional nom de guerre is a case in point, as it ironically comments on the woman’s social and political impotence, a condition that even the other prostitutes share. While the Biblical Salomé was, indeed, a femme fatale ante litteram who used her womanly charm to her advantage and was not hindered by her emotions, Wertmüller’s Salomé is aware that her feelings will eventually get in the way. Ultimately, she knows that she will always remain only a “brutta troia sentimentale” (damned sentimental whore).

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Love and Anarchy denies women access to the subject position also through the use of mirrors. The mise-en-scène frequently includes reflecting surfaces, which figure as one of the brothel’s main ornamental features. Tonino gains awareness of his mission by repeatedly looking at himself in the mirror. After the night out with Spatoletti following their countryside escapade, Tonino retreats into his hotel room, grabs the gun that he thinks he will use to assassinate Mussolini, and points it at his own specular reflection. The camera’s dramatic zooming in on his reflected face signifies that the mirror is the locus where Tonino discovers his own identity and enters the symbolic order of political action. Similarly, when he talks to Salomé in her room after depositing the dying commendatore in the Fori Imperiali, Tonino sits in front of her boudoir’s mirror and, as he becomes aware of his political mission, looks at his specular image and painfully admits, “Però farla questa roba qua io la devo fare, anche se nun son proprio un anarchico . . . Ma me lo son giurato, che quella vita lì come un servo, giorno dopo giorno, e poi crepare come un cane, non la posso fare più” (But I have to do this thing, even though I am not a real anarchist . . . I swore it to myself that I could not carry on anymore with that slave life, day after day, to then die like a dog). Contrary to Tonino, however, and despite being surrounded by reflecting surfaces, the Via dei Fiori prostitutes are not allowed to look at their own reflections. In the showcase sequence, reflecting surfaces surround the whores, who are often positioned where several mirrors connect. While the spectators—as well as the male customers—get a multifaceted perspective of their breasts and generous behinds, the women cannot see their own specular images to unveil the masquerade mechanisms that patriarchy has imposed upon them. Despite being constantly surrounded by mirrors, Love and Anarchy’s female characters barely notice them, their prohibition being what Doane has called a “taboo in seeing.”40 The mirror is the locus where one’s identity takes shape, but identity is precisely what the prostitutes cannot possess. This ban carries deep ideological and gender implications, as the woman who looks at herself in the mirror represents a threat to the established order because she might realize the inauthenticity of the images and masks that patriarchy forces her to assume. Since they cannot reflect in the mirrors that decorate the brothel’s walls, the women in Wertmüller’s film are far from fulfilling what de Lauretis auspicates, that is, the journey through the mirror to demystify the constructions of patriarchal ideology.41 Exploring de Lauretis’s ideas further, Federica Giovannelli addresses the same necessity for women to go beyond their specular images to access a subject position:

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L’immagine dello specchio . . . è il luogo da oltrepassare per riappropriarsi di un’origine, di un destino, di un riflesso, di una sembianza in cui ri-conoscersi, per riunificare un sé frammentato, è il terreno privilegiato che ogni donna deve attraversare per ottenere la distanza necessaria dall’immagine declinata al maschile che lo specchio le rinvia e ridiventare padrona di un’immagine che le corrisponda. (The image in the mirror . . . is the place to go beyond to repossess an origin, a destiny, a reflection, an appearance in which one can re-cognize and re-get to know oneself to re-unite a fragmented self, it is the ground that every woman must cross to obtain the necessary distance from the man-inflected image that the mirror sends back to her and to put her back in charge of an image that corresponds to her.42)

Wertmüller’s prostitutes, however, can access neither their own reflections nor their destiny; they cannot travel through the mirrors of their maison to subvert the established patriarchal and fascist order. In conclusion, the analysis of the prominence assigned to the male gaze, of the fetishization and fragmentation of the female body, and of the use of the grotesque and of mirrors to deny female agency show that Love and Anarchy’s representation of women relies on ideologically charged, patriarchal filmic practices that marginalize women negating them access to true identity and authentic subjectivity. One concluding example confirms that the film was intended for the satisfaction of the male gaze. During their final animated fight over whether they should awaken Tonino, Salomé and Tripolina, wearing little beyond their nightgowns, start to wrestle and end up fighting on the bathroom’s floor. Even though the scene possesses a deeply tragic meaning—what is at stake is Tonino’s life—it is also there to satisfy men’s scopophilic pleasure. After all, the representation of two quasi-nude women wrestling constitutes one of the ultimate male sexual fantasies. It is one of the final images of both Salomé and Tripolina and it is the film’s signature in terms of its treatment of women: a wisely crafted spectacle for the enjoyment of the male customer. Notes 1. Claire Johnston, “Women’s Cinema as Counter-Cinema,” in Claire Johnston, ed., Notes on Women’s Cinema (London: Society for Education in Film and Television), 31. Wertmüller’s 1970s films include, among others, The Seduction of Mimì (1972), Love and Anarchy (1973), Swept Away (1974), and Seven Beauties (1976). For an overview of Wertmüller’s 1970s production, see Grace Russo Bullaro, Man in Disorder: The Cinema of Lina Wertmüller in the

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2. 3.

4.

5. 6.

7.

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1970s (Leicester: Troubadour, c2006); Peter Bondanella, “Lina Wertmüller’s Feminist Comedies,” in A History of Italian Cinema (New York: Continuum, 2009), 193–200; Ernest Ferlita and John R. May, The Parables of Lina Wertmüller (New York: Paulist Press, c1977). On Wertmüller in general, see also Maria Pia Cerulo et al., eds., Lina Wertmüller: il grottesco e il barocco in cinema (Assisi: ANCCI, 1993). An insightful interview is Peter Biskind, “Lina Wertmüller: The Politics of Private Life,” Film Quarterly 28.2 (Winter 1974–1975): 10–16. The English translation of the screenplays of Wertmüller’s most important films of the 1970s, including Love and Anarchy, can be found in Lina Wertmüller, The Screenplays of Lina Wertmüller (New York: Quadrangle, 1977), with an introduction by John Simon. Paul McIsaac and Gina Blumenfeld, “You Cannot Make the Revolution on Film: Interview with Lina Wertmüller,” Cineaste 7.2 (Spring 1976): 7. Gideon Bachmann and Lina Wertmüller, “‘Look, Gideon—:’ Gideon Bachmann Talks with Lina Wertmüller,” Film Quarterly 30.3 (Spring 1977): 5. Gabrielle Lucantonio, “L’altra metà dello schermo: Lina Wertmüller,” in Flavio De Bernardini, ed., Storia del cinema italiano, vol. 12 (Venezia: Marsilio, 2008), 137. Johnston, “Women’s Cinema as Counter-Cinema,” 29. Wertmüller’s professed (anti)feminism has been a highly debated topic also in light of the director’s contradictory assertions. The filmmaker has never disavowed having “genuine feminist sentiments” (McIsaac and Blumenfeld, “Cannot Make the Revolution,” 8), although she concurrently confesses to have “a reserved relationship to feminism” (Bachman and Wertmüller, “Look, Gideon,” 6). Scholarly contributions that address the issue with respect to Love and Anarchy are Bondanella, Italian Cinema, 193–200; and Rodica Diaconescu-Blumenfeld, “Regista di Clausura: Lina Wertmüller and Her Feminism of Despair,” Italica 76.3 (Autumn 1999): 389–403. An analysis grounded in classical feminist film theory finds its justification in the fact that Love and Anarchy’s release and the publication of some of the most groundbreaking feminist contributions to film theory occurred roughly around the same time. To mention just two cases in point, the first edition of Johnston’s essay on women’s countercinema appeared the same year of the film’s release while Mulvey’s influential “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” was published two years later, in 1975. Historically, thus, it is legitimate to investigate whether the societal trends that stirred the feminist debate and that lie behind the feminist publications of the 1970s are endorsed or rejected by Wertmüller’s contemporary production. While Johnston’s and Mulvey’s insights constitute the theoretical starting point, Love and Anarchy will also be interrogated from the perspective of later feminist contributions, mostly from the 1980s. The goal is to see how Wertmüller’s film situates itself vis-à-vis the feminist theory of the decade following its release. In the 1980s, the so-called third-wave feminism developed, which dismissed essentialism, wanted to be constructive

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8.

9.

10.

11. 12. 13. 14.

15. 16. 17.

18.

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rather than destructive, and aimed at moving beyond the critique and rejection of patriarchal stereotypes of women typical of the second-wave feminists of the 1960s and 1970s. For a chronology of the feminist movement, see Shohini Chaudhuri, Feminist Film Theorists: Laura Mulvey, Kaja Silverman, Teresa de Lauretis, Barbara Creed (New York: Routledge, 2006). Teresa de Lauretis in particular is a key figure of third-wave feminist film theory. Beyond de Lauretis, third-wave theorists such as Kaplan will be particularly important when discussing motherhood and silence in Love and Anarchy. A thorough analysis of Wertmüller’s debt to the commedia dell’arte, the opera buffa, and the Italian puppet theater can be found in William R. Magretta and Joan Magretta, “Lina Wertmüller and the Tradition of Italian Carnivalesque Comedy,” Genre 12.1 (1979): 25–43. Bondanella considers Wertmüller’s 1970s production as representative of the same genre (Italian Cinema, 193–200). See also Grace Russo Bullaro, “‘What’s an Anarchist?’: Exploring the Boundaries of the Personal and Political in Wertmüller’s Love and Anarchy,” Forum Italicum 35.2 (Fall 2001): 457–472, and her introduction to Man in Disorder, xi–xxiv. All translations from Love and Anarchy’s dialogue are mine since both the English screenplay and the subtitles are not always faithful to the Italian of the film. Millicent Marcus, “Wertmüller’s Love and Anarchy: The High Price of Commitment,” in Italian Film in the Light of Neorealism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press), 329. Diaconescu-Blumenfeld, “Regista di Clausura,” 400. Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Screen 16.3 (1975): 9. Teresa de Lauretis, Alice Doesn’t: Feminism, Semiotics, Cinema (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), 20. Luce Irigaray, “This Sex Which Is Not One,” in Katie Conboy, Nadia Medina, and Sarah Stanbury eds., Writing on the Body: Female Embodiment and Feminist Theory (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 250; emphasis mine. Johnston, “Women’s Cinema as Counter-Cinema,” 25. Roland Barthes, Mythologies (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1957). Johnston, “Women’s Cinema as Counter-Cinema,” 25. It is significant that, in her studies, Mulvey explicitly addresses the issue of female performance. In classical Hollywood cinema, women—from Marlene Dietrich to Greta Garbo to Rita Heyworth—are often cast as performers. Such a role has symbolic relevance as it metacinematically represents the gender power dynamics implied in cinema, according to which the spectators identify with the male characters beholding the female performer on stage. Similar mechanisms are present also in Love and Anarchy: the prostitutes are ultimately performers who wear masks and act out a role for the enjoyment of the male onlookers. Sigmund Freud, “Fetishism,” International Journal of Psychoanalysis 9 (1928): 161–166.

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19. On the contrary, Diaconescu-Blumenfeld claims that Wertmüller intended to assign a positive, “feminist” valence to these fragmented pieces and to their interchangeability: “It is precisely the panning shot’s revealing repeated bodies that makes a subtle critique of women’s inter-changeability. The left to the right pan of almost identical breasts . . . makes the case that for men women are interchangeable and their identities merely an illusion” (“Regista di Clausura,” 391). 20. Nancy Vickers, “Diana Described: Scattered Body and Scattered Rhyme,” Critical Inquiry 8.2 (1981): 265–279. 21. Lucantonio, “L’altra metà,” 133. 22. A feminist reading of Tripolina’s positions can be found in DiaconescuBlumenfeld, “Regista di Clausura,” 390. 23. McIsaac and Blumenfeld, “Cannot Make the Revolution,” 8. 24. The fact that Carmela stands in front of the fragmented statues is extremely relevant given that, as it will be argued later on, in the film she is associated with the patriarchal order and, as such, she becomes one of the perpetrators of women’s disintegration. 25. See Àine O’Healy, “Unspeakable Bodies: Fellini’s Female Grotesque,” RLA: Romance Languages Annual 4 (1992): 325–329. On the grotesque in Wertmüller, see Josette Déléas, “Lina Wertmüller: The Grotesque in Seven Beauties,” in Jaqueline Levitin, Judith Plessis, and Valerie Raoul, eds., Women Filmmakers: Refocusing (Vancouver: UBC Press), 152–164. 26. Diaconescu-Blumenfeld, “Regista di Clausura,” 394. 27. Ibid., 397. 28. Mary Russo, Female Grotesque: Risk, Excess, Modernity (New York: Routledge, 1995), 5. 29. Ibid., 1. 30. Irigaray, “This Sex,” 251. 31. Bachmann and Wertmüller, “Look, Gideon,” 6. 32. Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982). 33. Ann E. Kaplan, Women and Film: Both Sides of the Camera (New York: Methuen, 1983), 2. 34. de Lauretis, Alice Doesn’t, 14. 35. Kaplan, Women and Film, 9. 36. See Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, translated by Helene Iswolsky (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984). Diaconescu-Blumenfeld addresses the issue of the carnivalesque in Lina Wertmüller (“Regista di Clausura,” 392–399). On Wertmüller’s debt to the commedia all’italiana and its nonfilmic antecedents, see note 8. 37. In Magretta and Magretta’s words, “The characteristic logic of the carnival is the world turned upside down” as well as “the debasement of the sacred and the serious and the comic elevation of the lowly and the vulgar” (“Lina Wertmüller,” 26). 38. The association of grotesque women with the Law of the Father is at best exemplified by the Nazi camp officer, Heidi (Shirley Stoler), in Seven Beauties.

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39. Mary Ann Doane, “Film and the Masquerade: Theorizing the Female Spectator,” in Conboy et al., Writing on the Body, 185. 40. Ibid., 187. 41. In Alice Doesn’t (see introduction, 2–11), de Lauretis takes the journey of Alice in Wonderland’s protagonist as a metaphor for women’s entrance into a representational world defying the naturalizing and coercive practices of patriarchal ideology: “The Looking-Glass world which the brave and sensible Alice enters, refusing to be caught up in her own reflection . . ., is not a place of symmetrical reversal, of anti-matter, or a mirror-image inversion of the one she comes from. It is the world of discourse and of asymmetry, whose arbitrary rules work to displace the subject, Alice, from any possibility of naturalistic identification” (2). See also de Lauretis’s “Fellini’s 9 ½,” in Technologies of Gender: Essays on Theory, Film, and Fiction (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), 95–106. 42. Federica Giovannelli, “. . . Imparando a demolire la casa paterna, gli strumenti di sempre dismessi,” in Giulia Fanara and Federica Giovannelli, eds., Eretiche ed erotiche: le donne, le idee, il cinema (Napoli: Liguori, 2004), 17. The translation from the Italian is mine.

Bibliography Bachmann, Gideon, and Lina Wertmüller. “‘Look, Gideon—:’ Gideon Bachmann Talks with Lina Wertmüller.” Film Quarterly 30.3 (Spring 1977): 2–11. Bakhtin, Mikhail. Rabelais and His World. Translated by Helene Iswolsky. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984. Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1957. Biskind, Peter. “Lina Wertmüller: The Politics of Private Life.” Film Quarterly 28.2 (Winter 1974–1975): 10–16. Bondanella, Peter. A History of Italian Cinema. New York: Continuum, 2009. Bullaro, Grace Russo. Man in Disorder: The Cinema of Lina Wertmüller in the 1970s. Leicester: Troubadour, c2006. ———. “‘What’s an Anarchist?’: Exploring the Boundaries of the Personal and Political in Wertmüller’s Love and Anarchy.” Forum Italicum 35.2 (Fall 2001): 457–472. Cerulo, Maria Pia, Luigi Cipriani, Mauro Conciatori, Massimo Giraldi, and Lilia Ricci, eds. Lina Wertmüller: il grottesco e il barocco in cinema. Assisi: ANCCI, 1993. Chaudhuri, Shohini. Feminist Film Theorists: Laura Mulvey, Kaja Silverman, Teresa de Lauretis, Barbara Creed. New York: Routledge, 2006. Conboy, Katie, Nadia Medina, and Sarah Stanbury, eds. Writing on the Body: Female Embodiment and Feminist Theory. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997. de Lauretis, Teresa. Alice Doesn’t: Feminism, Semiotics, Cinema. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984.

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———. Technologies of Gender: Essays on Theory, Film, and Fiction. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987. Déléas, Josette. “Lina Wertmüller: The Grotesque in Seven Beauties.” In Women Filmmakers: Refocusing, edited by Jaqueline Levitin, Judith Plessis, and Valerie Raoul, 152–164. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2003. Diaconescu-Blumenfeld, Rodica. “Regista di Clausura: Lina Wertmüller and Her Feminism of Despair.” Italica 76.3 (Autumn 1999): 389–403. Doane, Mary Ann. “Film and the Masquerade: Theorizing the Female Spectator.” In Conboy et al., Writing on the Body, 176–194. Fanara, Giulia, and Federica Giovannelli, eds. Eretiche ed erotiche: le donne, le idee, il cinema. Napoli: Liguori, 2004. Ferlita, Ernest, and John R. May. The Parables of Lina Wertmüller. New York: Paulist Press, c1977. Freud, Sigmund. “Fetishism.” International Journal of Psychoanalysis 9 (1928): 161–166. Giovannelli, Federica. “. . . Imparando a demolire la casa paterna, gli strumenti di sempre dismessi.” In Fanara and Giovannelli, Eretiche ed erotiche, 15–75. Irigaray, Luce. “This Sex Which Is Not One.” In Conboy et al., Writing on the Body, 248–256. Johnston, Claire. “Women’s Cinema as Counter-Cinema.” In Notes on Women’s Cinema, edited by Claire Johnston, 24–31. London: Society for Education in Film and Television, 1973. Kaplan, Ann E. Women and Film: Both Sides of the Camera. New York: Methuen, 1983. Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982. Lucantonio, Gabrielle. “L’altra metà dello schermo: Lina Wertmüller.” In vol. 12 of Storia del cinema italiano, edited by Flavio De Bernardini, 133–140. Venezia: Marsilio, 2008. Magretta, William R., and Joan Magretta. “Lina Wertmüller and the Tradition of Italian Carnivalesque Comedy.” Genre 12.1 (1979): 25–43. Marcus, Millicent. “Wertmüller’s Love and Anarchy: The High Price of Commitment.” In Italian Film in the Light of Neorealism, 313–338. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986. McIsaac, Paul, and Gina Blumenfeld. “You Cannot Make the Revolution on Film: Interview with Lina Wertmüller.” Cineaste 7.2 (Spring 1976): 6–9. Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Screen 16.3 (1975): 6–18. O’Healy, Àine. “Unspeakable Bodies: Fellini’s Female Grotesque.” RLA: Romance Languages Annual 4 (1992): 325–329. Russo, Mary. The Female Grotesque: Risk, Excess, Modernity. New York: Routledge, 1995. Simon, John. Introduction to The Screenplays of Lina Wertmüller, by Lina Wertmüller, vii–xvii. New York: Quadrangle, c1977.

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Vickers, Nancy. “Diana Described: Scattered Body and Scattered Rhyme.” Critical Inquiry 8.2 (1981): 265–279. Wertmüller, Lina. The Screenplays of Lina Wertmüller. Translated by Steven Wagner. New York: Quadrangle, c1977.

Filmography I basilischi (1963) Il giornalino di Gian Burrasca (1965) (TV) Questa volta parliamo di uomini (1965) Rita la zanzara (1966) Non stuzzicate la zanzara (1967) Il mio corpo per un poker (1968) Mimì metallurgico ferito nell’onore (1972) Film d’amore e d’anarchia, ovvero stamattina alle 10 in via dei Fiori nella nota casa di tolleranza . . . (1973) Tutto a posto e niente in ordine (1974) Travolti da un insolito destino nell’azzurro mare d’agosto (1974) Pasqualino Settebellezze (1976) La fine del mondo nel nostro solito letto in una notte piena di pioggia (1978) Fatto di sangue tra due uomini politici per causa di una vedova—si sospettano moventi politici (1978) Una domenica sera di novembre (1981) (TV) Scherzo del destino in agguato dietro l’angolo come un brigante di strada (1983) Sotto . . . sotto . . . strapazzato da anomala passione (1984) Un complicato intrigo di donne, vicoli e delitti (1985) Notte d’estate con profile greco, occhi a mandorla e odore di basilico (1986) Imago urbis (1987) 12 registi per 12 città (1989) Il decimo clandestino (1989) (TV) In una notte di chiaro di luna (1989) Sabato, domenica e lunedì (1990) Io speriamo che me la cavo (1992) Vivaldi (1992) L’anima russa (1993) Ninfa plebea (1996) Metalmeccanico e parrucchiera in un turbine di sesso e politica (1996) Ferdinando e Carolina (1999) Francesca e Nunziata (2001) (TV) Peperoni ripieni e pesci in faccia (2004) Mannaggia alla miseria (2010) (TV)

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Don’t Bring a Gun to a Fistfight Deconstructing Hegemonic Masculinity through the Gun in Lina Wertmüller’s Pasqualino Settebellezze Lidia Hwa Soon Anchisi Hopkins and Luke Cuculis

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hen Lina Wertmüller’s satirical comedies made their appearances in American movie theaters in the 1970s, critics and audiences alike were strongly divided (Bullaro 2006; Wertmüller 2006; Masucci 2009).1 The reception of Pasqualino Settebellezze was particularly controversial: on the one hand, it won the hearts of many and even earned the director four Academy Award nominations, one of which was for best director—an impressive recognition making Wertmüller the first woman to ever be nominated for such a prestigious category.2 Yet the film generated a profound disdain among those who were intolerant of the idea that the atrocities of concentration camps should be so seamlessly woven into the fabric of a filmic genre that accommodated elements of slapstick comedy. 3 The concern was that in pairing humor with horror, the film deemphasized the tragedy of the Holocaust and diminished the historical significance of the individual’s plight and the all-too-often unsuccessful quest for survival. The extreme response American critics had to Pasqualino Settebellezze can be attributed to a cultural misunderstanding of Italy’s comedic genre. Scholars such as William and Joan Magretta recognized in this controversial coupling a carnivalesque tradition firmly rooted in the Commedia dell’arte (Magretta and Magretta 1979).4 Wertmüller herself specified on several occasions that her films were not comedies, but rather grotteschi, a filmic style that intentionally

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brings together the jarring elements of comedy and horrific tragedy in order to displace the audience and incite a disconcerting, even grating level of discomfort.5 At the heart of the controversy lies Pasqualino Settebellezze, the main protagonist. For some, he is a sympathetic survivor, matured by the contemptible reality of his surroundings; for others, he is pathetically incompetent and a despicable human being willing to negotiate for his survival at the tremendous cost of having to execute his friend.6 Spanning the period between the time directly preceding Italy’s entry into World War II, and ending with the country’s liberation from Nazi occupation, the film follows the (mis)adventures of Pasqualino. A cowardly buffoon unable to save the honor of his prostituting sister, Pasqualino’s masculinity is repeatedly ridiculed with every farcical altercation from which he only haphazardly and comically emerges. Humor, employed as a means for magnifying the protagonist’s questionable masculinity, serves not just to mock the main protagonist, but the fascist male as well, as Pasqualino’s comic display of pitiable behavior can be read as a parody of fascist virility. Such an assessment of Pasqualino’s character is certainly not new to scholarship on Pasqualino Settebellezze. Indeed, scholars found that the comical portrayal of Pasqualino was intended as a critique of the institutionalization of the fascist male under Mussolini.7 This essay takes as its point of departure the comedic representation of Pasqualino’s failed masculinity; however, instead of framing the inquiry solely within a fascist discourse of virility, the essay addresses this particular conception of gender in order to destabilize hegemonic masculinity of which fascist virility is the ultimate expression. Hegemonic masculinity offers an important framework for understanding the discursive practices that shaped the fascist man and influenced the “postwar male Italian imaginary” (Ravetto 1998: 271) well after the war was over. By identifying with an image of masculinity modeled after the self-presentation of the Duce, men were able to construct their masculine selves and reproduce hegemonic masculinity. In order to identify Pasqualino as a subversive figure that disrupts normative gender, we draw from Judith Butler’s concept of gender performativity. When Butler articulates her theory on performativity, and uses performance in drag as an enactment of such discursive practices, she cautions us against the also potentially unsubversive effects of other types of performances in drag8—movies such as Tootsie and Mrs Doubtfire—rather than demonstrate that gender is performative, emphasize the ridiculousness of men “being” women, and thereby reinforce the essentialist argument that gender is prediscursive, ontologically determined (men cannot be women because there is an essential difference between the two genders). But what happens when man tries to inhabit

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hegemonic masculinity and falls short of it, makes a mockery out of it in the same way Dustin Hoffman and Robin Williams make a mockery out of their transvestite and transgender state. What could be considered unsubversive becomes subversive when the masculinity that is being performed is precisely in disjunction with the masculinity that is said to preexist discourse. As a parody of gender representation, it becomes possible to read Pasqualino’s caricatural behavior as a subversive performance, one that attempts to inhabit a model of fascist virility, but falls short of achieving such a goal. In recent years, scholars in gender studies such as R. W. Connell in the United States and Sandro Bellassai in Italy have rejected the notion of a single, hegemonic conceptualization of masculinity in favor of the more pluralistic dimension of masculinities.9 Pasqualino Settebellezze, then, offers us the possibility of critiquing not just the fascist man, but the fascist man as the ultimate embodiment of hegemonic masculinity. Pasqualino isn’t necessarily a failed man; rather he is the magnifying glass that reveals hegemonic masculinity as a cultural construct.10 The gun in particular plays a meaningful role in exposing the lack of any substantive masculinity in Pasqualino. The gun is traditionally perceived as a glorified symbol of patriarchal authority and order in contemporary Western culture. It is an object of sizable power that allows its possessor to dominate those around him, if not in reality at least in fantasy. It boosts men’s self-confidence and enables them to adopt an image of strength and aggression, thereby creating a distinction between themselves and weak, cowardly, effeminate men. Through its presence, men are able to identify with and perform hegemonic masculinity. However, in Pasqualino Settebellezze, an often comedic yet dark caricature reveals that the masculinizing effects of the gun, in Pasqualino’s hands, are muted. Throughout the film, the male protagonist deliberately clings to the gun as his source of masculinity—in early flashbacks, we are introduced to a womanizing, dandy-like Pasqualino who, for lack of physical strength, relies on the symbolic power of his gun to cultivate respect from the others. Yet, in every situation the gun comically (and tragically at the end) fails to function in its masculinizing role—in a comic reenactment of a Western-like confrontation, for example, the gun-toting Pasqualino is knocked out with the bare hands of his unarmed opponent. No longer a source of masculine power, the gun exposes masculinity for being a social construct rather than an essential characteristic of men and, in the process, derides it. Beginning with a concise description of the fascist male in order to illustrate what Pasqualino’s masculinity inadequately measures up against, the body of the essay focuses on the function of the gun, first as it is perceived in

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traditional, patriarchal terms and then as it fails Pasqualino by improperly transferring its symbolic value. Judith Butler’s theory of performativity provides the theoretical framework within which to effect a subversive reading of Pasqualino and through which it becomes possible to destabilize hegemonic masculinity. More than a political party or a nation-ruling militaristic force, the fascist regime sought to reshape the way Italians thought about themselves and the rest of the world, setting out to create a country filled with “supermen” who would bring respect and honor to Italy (Gori 1999). Propaganda was rampant, filled with messages—subliminal and more forthcoming—that espoused the virtues of a return to the moral values of the past and celebrated the rugged, athletic manliness of Mussolini. Mussolini’s self-representation was heralded as the masculine ideal of fascist virility; specific qualities that were considered the “natural” property of masculinity, namely, a relentless work ethic, youthful athletic ability, sacrifice and obedience, sexuality, and aggressive dynamism in all actions, were sensationalized by fascist rhetoric.11 These qualities were projected to the Italian masses as the foundation of the new man. Eventually, simple propaganda was supplemented with an increase in organized athletics, such as state-of-the-art training facilities and heavily attended athletic events. The urgency to birth this new “superman” led to the formation of youth education programs that, unsurprisingly, instilled the value of athletic prowess and physical power in their pupils (Gori 1999). On the opposite end of the spectrum were the pampered, city-dwelling bourgeois and progressive, socially conscious intellectuals who threatened to push Italy further into a state of “feminism”—a term used to describe how modernity was causing a regression on the human evolutionary scale (Bellassai 2005: 315). As a result, the city-dweller was a second-rate citizen to the rural man, this latter being the “quintessence of ‘natural’ or untamed masculinity” (318). Ruralism was thus presented as an exalted opposite to urban modernity and therefore became a theme that further attacked the tides of liberal social change and weak-spirited bourgeois. Women, on the other hand, were simply a complement to men. Their position was to be one of domestic compliance, situated in the background with faithful and unwavering allegiance to their Mussolini-like husbands, charged with the role of birthing children, preferably boys. Women were not to seek out better lives for themselves, a threat heightened by urban environments that allowed for greater freedom for women. Mussolini himself declared that an “exodus of women from the workforce,” while negatively affecting the economic status of the family, was necessary, for those very jobs would “create a strong physical and moral virility” in the Italian man (Mussolini quoted in Bellassai 2005: 329). Employment

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of women and the concept of a strong-willed working woman were cast aside and vilified; the independent, American woman was a deleterious threat to the re-creation of a male-dominated world steeped in patriarchal rule (Bellassai 2005). Within this specific articulation of sexual politics, Pasqualino fails to embody a fascist ideal of virility.12 In an early flashback, Pasqualino is seen spending an inordinate amount of time primping and preening himself in front of an ornate mirror.13 Apparently unconcerned with the disheveled women furiously working around him, the man gazes longingly at himself in a way that casts him as a narcissist. It is to his physical features that Pasqualino devotes his undivided attention, meticulously combing his heavily greased hair and ensuring his mustache is presented most perfectly. Enveloped in a heavy cloud of cologne, Pasqualino demands his carnation be brought to him and upon receiving this fashion accessory, he delicately places it on his lapel, completing his swank ensemble. In this scene, normative gender codes and representations are precariously balanced. Such an attention to his physical appearance represents a move away from an image of manly virility and a move toward the kind of effeminacy that fascist rhetoric precisely abhorred. The gender disequilibrium is made even more apparent by the presence of the hard-working, disheveled women appearing in the background. In a time when gender representations are expected to be firmly entrenched in normative roles, the fact that the women are working and are unconcerned with their appearance while the single male character of the scene is idly wasting his time perfecting his looks is threatening to the constitution and perpetuation of an icon of fascist virility. Pasqualino’s neglect to embrace a dominant ideology of masculinity anchored in images of rugged and physical prowess is further emphasized by his preference for the urban environment over the treachery of the countryside. In another early flashback scene viewers are transported to the city of Naples in prewar Italy where there is a noticeable glamorization of the city and city life. Filled with bustling Neapolitans, these scenes exude a sense of prosperity and nostalgic reverence. As Pasqualino struts around town, encountering many women, each of whom look at him amorously, a menagerie of blue collar working men and women, jubilant children, and proud shopkeepers populate the screen. Camera positioning emphasizes the rays of natural lighting streaming down, illuminating the cobblestone streets, a brightness that is reflected in the smiles of the city residents. Pasqualino is clearly at home in this urban environment as he saunters down the streets with a look of pleasant complacency. These images that color the screen are in direct contrast with the dismal German countryside where Pasqualino is trapped in real time. The

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dark, vast wilderness creates a sense of confusion in Pasqualino, evident by his frantic movements and jerky scanning of his surroundings when the camera assumes a first-person perspective. In this rural setting—the “natural” environment of the fascist man—Pasqualino flounders; he is unable to connect with the natural world and embrace an existence of adventure. He no longer walks with a confident swagger and bravado; instead he darts about in fear and stumbles in desperate confusion. Rather than a patriotic soldier proudly exhibiting an image of strength and power, we quickly discover that Pasqualino is a cowardly deserter, fleeing from the war and his nationalistic duty. His perpetual drive to survive at all cost and his cowardice know no limits; he will even go so far as to wrap his head with the bloody bandages removed from a corpse in order to feign a wounded condition. Pasqualino is nothing more than a pathetic and derisible shadow of the eagerly rural ideal fascist man promoted by Mussolini (Bellassai 2005). Another indication of Pasqualino’s failed masculinity can be identified in his relationships with women. Pasqualino is depicted as a desirable and incredibly successful womanizer, a trait that should affirm his sexual virility; yet such reputation does little to repair his image, for Pasqualino lacks any veritable and meaningful dominance over women. In fact, his constant interactions with and pursuit of women, combined with his total dependence on them, make Pasqualino, in every sense, a woman’s man. We discover throughout the film that women are both at the root of his problems and his saving grace: it is the attempt to salvage his sister’s dignity that eventually leads to his arrest, and yet this very sister, through the “dishonorable” act of prostitution, secures legal counsel for him; when Pasqualino rapes an indefensible woman in the psychiatric institution to which he is confined, his punishment is traumatic shock therapy, solitary confinement, and restraints, and yet, the benevolence of a female doctor allows him to leave the confines of the ward and enroll in the army as the country prepares to engage in the war; his awkward plan to “seduce” the female commandant of the concentration camp results in his role as executioner of his best friend, and yet, the sadistic compassion of Hilde permits Pasqualino to emerge from the concentration camp alive. In these situations, there is no evidence that Pasqualino successfully asserts his dominance and power over women. These life-altering events brought about by his bond to women are flanked by a more peripheral focus on women as well. Far from a homosocial environment carved out by a rigid gender coding of space, the locations in which he finds himself are typically populated by women such as his home in Naples, where he lives with his mother and seven sisters, and the women’s ward in the psychiatric institution where he serves as an orderly. Thus, for better and for

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worse, Pasqualino is tethered to the women around him; they infiltrate every facet of his life. In many cases he seems self-assured that the blanket of femininity in which he is cloaked is a boon to his ego; after all he is the ultimate ladies’ man and his family—for the most part—defer to him as the respectable patriarch of the household. Yet, despite the women’s adulation for the Neapolitan playboy, Pasqualino is troublesomely “feminized”: his locations are predominantly marked by femininity, his relations are governed by women, he lacks courage and integrity, and his actions are driven by the sole impulse of survival. Pasqualino’s failure to meet the standards of masculinity promulgated by fascist rhetoric is not always intentional. In fact, there are specific scenes where Pasqualino attempts to empower his self-image; however it is the very failure to uphold this image that renders him a derisive and comical figure. In both cases (the attempt to empower his self-image and the failure to uphold it), the gun plays a pivotal role: on the one hand, Pasqualino relies on the gun to make up for his lack of physical strength and to elicit respect from others, so that fantasy and reality may find common ground; yet it is in the very use of the gun that his machismo comically and parodically escapes him. The idea that Pasqualino can seek in the gun the means for garnering respect comes from what Angela Stroud (2012) understands as the operations of hegemonic masculinity. Stroud explains that the motivation for legally possessing a concealed firearm among white middle-class men is so that they may enact a fantasy of masculinity constructed by mainstream culture. Because the gun is a lethal and violent weapon, cultural practices have created a narrative in which the gun’s symbolic currencies of violence and power are passed on to its possessor, it is a narrative that establishes and perpetuates an image of masculinity characterized by dominance: armed with a gun, men from this particular demographic category have the potential to express aggression, even though aggression is not the end in and of itself; the gun serves as an equalizer that reduces the difference between the possessor and his opponent, making him less vulnerable; it is a marker of sexual difference because it enables a fantasy in which men can envision themselves to be endowed with characteristics generally associated with prevailing conceptions of masculinity and therefore dominate women; and, of no lesser importance, the gun gives the illusion that through its presence men can shield themselves from being perceived as weak, wimpy, and thus subject to derision. To understand the symbolic value of the gun and its power of transference is to understand the discursive practices that systematize hegemonic masculinity. The idea that dominant culture incites a performance of masculinity is precisely what inspires Pasqualino to carry a gun. But as we shall

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see, the gun fails to transfer its symbolic power to Pasqualino, leaving him comically emasculated. Prior to its failure, the protagonist’s dependence on the gun is illustrated in the first flashback scene in which Pasqualino’s eldest sister Concettina is performing in a cabaret show.14 While Concettina is being heckled and humiliated by a slanderous male audience, Pasqualino strolls into the club, bathed in a red light that implicitly marks him as threatening and violent and is intended to foreshadow his actions to come. As soon as Pasqualino accosts his sister backstage, he violently chastises her for disgracing the family’s honor. During this explosive tirade Pasqualino makes a provocative admission: he declares that he is “not the biggest nor the strongest man” but that “they respect me because I carry this [gun].” Pasqualino reveals the weapon, carried snugly by his waist. While narcissistically watching himself in the mirror and admiring his ability to evoke fear in his sister, Pasqualino thrusts his hips forward to properly expose the gun, dramatically enunciating its presence. His overly expressive body language combined with his explanation for carrying a gun effectively establish a link between Pasqualino’s interpretation of masculinity and the symbolic power attributed by the gun. This link is further confirmed in the flashback scene discussed earlier in which Pasqualino is seen preparing himself for his day on the town. In the midst of his grooming routine, Pasqualino inspects his pistol, showing it off for those watching, before positioning it in his waistband, a physical location that draws an associative connection between the phallus and the gun. At its sight, Pasqualino’s mother voices her disdain for the gun and the trouble it can cause; yet Pasqualino simply replies that the gun is his source of respect.15 Once again, Pasqualino expects the gun to evoke fear and reverence. In these two scenes, the gun apparently functions in its symbolic role, allowing its possessor to become intimidating and aggressive, controlling and dominant. However, the respect that he expects to command when he confronts a man, as we shall now see, is humorously absent. The symbolic value of the gun is first brought into question when Pasqualino attempts to sanitize his family’s sullied honor. Arriving at the brothel in which Concettina now works, with the cocky air of a man who means business, Pasqualino physically assaults her in order to display and assert his dominance over her. He then demands to be told the whereabouts of the pimp “18 karat Totonno” who is responsible for her new occupation. Upon locating the man, Pasqualino immediately locks eyes with his portly adversary in what is clearly a parody of the classic Western duel scene, complete with Spanish guitars and camera shots that oscillate between the two men. The Western, of course, is a filmic

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genre traditionally associated with a display of hypermasculinity and always includes at least one pistol dueling scene in which the machismo of the protagonists is brought to the test.16 Placing Pasqualino within such a heavily suggestive context sets forth high expectations of a specific paradigm of masculinity. One, however, that is immediately contested when Totonno addresses him as “miserable worm,” an insult that foreshadows the failure soon to befall Pasqualino. At the sound of this indignity, Pasqualino brushes aside his jacket to reveal the gun, a gesture intended to instill fear in Totonno. As Totonno advances toward Pasqualino, we discover that not only is the man unarmed, but that he is entirely undaunted by the sight of Pasqualino’s pistol and the implications of dominance and aggression it carries with it. Totonno’s obvious confidence troubles Pasqualino; realizing that the gun is unsuccessful at provoking apprehension in Totonno, Pasqualino begins sweating and his eyes dart nervously around the room. Despite the allusion to a specific filmic genre, the scene does not resolve according to the standards of a classic Western duel: the only man who has a gun is incapable of using it while the man without one knocks his opponent out cold in one swift, effectual blow. Totonno adds insult to injury when he picks up a broom and dusts over the unconscious Pasqualino, further signifying his victory and illustrating the power of his fist over the uselessness of Pasqualino’s gun. This parody of the classic Western duel scene renders evident the disempowering effects of the gun: its traditional power is denied and derided by a dramatic and unexpected turn of events. Eager to avenge this humiliation, Pasqualino cowardly sneaks into Totonno’s home in the dead of night, while the man is fast asleep, and brandishes his pistol, eventually aiming the loaded gun at his victim. Pasqualino, whose intention is merely to humiliate the man and restore his own honor, misfires and kills Totonno.17 The realization of his error sweeps over Pasqualino as he nearly collapses from despair and horror; despite his attempts to rescue his precarious masculinity he has managed only to sink himself deeper into dishonor. Even his Camorrista boss, Don Raffaele, is displeased with how ineptly and dishonorably the plan was executed. The gun has done nothing to assert his image of masculinity; in fact, it exposes him for the lesser man that he is: he has no control over the gun or over the situation, the death of the man at his own hands invites horror and despair rather than violence and aggression, pride and satisfaction. His macho image, then, is a sham, a farce. Such an impression is further confirmed in the scenes that immediately follow in which he struggles to dispose of the body. The next scene in which Pasqualino handles a gun takes place after he is captured by German Nazi soldiers and brought to a concentration

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camp ruled by the female commandant Hilde. Leading up to the moment that tragically positions Pasqualino as the executioner of his close friend Francesco is a “seduction” scene where an emaciated and fearful Pasqualino resorts to an artificial declaration of love and sexual intercourse with Hilde in order to bargain for his life. Such a resolve potentially identifies the man as the ultimate “Latin Lover,” and the fact that he is able to succeed in his endeavor is impressive. However, the scene is so heavily steeped in an uncomfortable mélange of tragic mockery that the effects of his seduction immediately displace the man from irresistible womanizer to a disempowered man who is (temporarily) impotent and subordinate to Hilde’s overarching dominance. Throughout the much analyzed seduction scene, gender roles are reversed, placing Hilde, both literally in the frame and figuratively as a symbol of absolute authority, in a position of unwavering dominance.18 Pasqualino, on the other hand, despite his role as seducer, is relegated to a role of humiliating submission, incapable of producing an erection during his initial attempt at sexual intercourse. Only after feebly lying on the floor over a large image of a swastika and eating food from a bowl in a manner that depicts him as little more than an animal can he find the strength to perform. Impressed not by his love-making, but by his determination to survive at all cost, Hilde designates him barracks leader and forces him to select six inmates for death by firing squad, a charge he unwillingly accepts in order to avoid Hilde’s threat of a total elimination of the barracks. Pasqualino is further burdened with the task of executing one of his close friends for having made suicidal protests in the face of the Nazi officers. Hilde instructs a Nazi commander to provide Pasqualino with the firearm necessary to carry out the task and, once more, Pasqualino is in possession of a gun. Contrary to his previous use of the gun, Pasqualino does not fail to exercise the full power of the gun—yet this is only possible as a result of his submission to the authority of the female commandant. Pasqualino is merely a puppet in Hilde’s hands, too cowardly to resist the order of the sadistic commandant, even at the cost of having to murder his own friend. He is a far cry from the heroic, dominant, proud image of fascist virility. Even in the negotiation of gender relations, the gun is more aptly a reflection of Pasqualino’s obedience to a female figure of absolute power and an expression of his profound cowardice rather than a symbol of masculine virility. Pasqualino has succumbed to the narrative of dominant masculinity and has bought into the promise of power, dominance, and aggression the gun offers. Yet, it is precisely through the gun that Pasqualino’s masculinity is undermined. In the scenes in which Pasqualino is handling a gun, the weapon only deceptively boosts Pasqualino’s confidence. It fails

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to empower Pasqualino leaving him too incompetent to manage the gun appropriately. He has no control over the situation and no control over the gun. And not only does the gun not help him enact his fantasy of a masculine ideal, it actually magnifies the lack of traditional masculine qualities: he lacks power, control, aggression, and, in the process, is ridiculed and his cowardice is exposed. Even in the scene where he executes his friend, Pasqualino is still lacking any evidence of masculine virility: he is positioned in a role of subservience to a female figure of power and dominance and he opts for the unheroic choice of murdering his own friend. In each instance, then, the gun is void of its symbolic value, leaving nothing to transfer to its possessor. If the gun typically enables a narrative in which men can align the perception of themselves with dominant conceptions of masculinity, the fact that it is precisely through the use of the gun that masculinity fails in Pasqualino Settebellezze parodies the discursive practices that construct hegemonic masculinity. Rather than a symbol of power and aggression, an equalizer between perpetrator and perpetrated, and a marker of sexual difference, the gun has the opposite effect: it creates a comical image of masculinity. Such a parody produces a performance from which it becomes clear that there is an uncomfortable disjunction between the body that is impersonating masculinity and hegemonic masculinity itself. This performance is reminiscent of a performance in drag, but the kind that magnifies the disjunction between a conceived “original” (hegemonic masculinity) and a copy of that original (Pasqualino’s failed masculinity). According to Judith Butler, performance in drag, as an enactment of gender performativity, can be seen as potentially subversive if the performance illustrates and reinforces the imitative and iterative characteristic of gender (gender is a copy of a copy for which there is no actual original; femininity, for example, can be re-cited by anybody). But if the performance is the kind of parody that only intends to confirm a socalled original and that any copy of that “original” is only an approximate and fallible imitation of an “original” (an essentialist argument would suggest that men’s re-citation of femininity is awkward because masculinity and femininity are marked by essential differences and therefore transgender cannot genuinely happen), then the performance fails to be subversive. However, it is possible to effect a subversive reading through a realignment of the terms. Rather than looking at gender through the lens of transgender, it is feasible to address the question of gender performance while staying within the frame of masculinity, this time looking at masculinity’s performance of hegemonic masculinity. Butler’s influential theory on performativity proposes to look at gender not as preexisting the body’s inscription with social meaning—in other

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words gender has no essential characteristic, it is not “natural,” we are not born male or female—but instead, through discourse we are constituted as male or female: “There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender; that identity is performatively constituted by the very ‘expressions’ that are said to be its results” (Butler quoted in Salih 2002: 63). Rather than there being a gender identity that precedes language and that expresses itself through language (“its result”), Butler reverses the order by claiming that it is in language that gender identity is constituted. In order to understand Butler’s theory of gender performativity, it is necessary to return to the roots of her theoretical genealogy. Sara Salih explains that Butler’s notion of gender performativity relies on the linguistic theories of J. L. Austin and on Jacques Derrida’s notion of “citational grafting,” for Butler sees in gender performativity a connection with linguistic performativity (Salih 2002: 62–71, 88–92). In How to Do Things with Words, Austin elaborates on the distinction between constative language, or perlocutionary acts—language that describes (“it’s a sunny day”)— and performative language, or illocutionary acts—language that makes something happen (“I pronounce you man and wife”). Performative language is thus a speech act, performative utterances do that which is being said is being performed. Sarah Chinn (1997: 299) emphasizes that for Butler gender too “was an act in the same way that performative language is a speech act”: the Althusserian interpellative claim “It’s a girl” pronounced by the doctor upon looking at the newborn, while apparently descriptive, in fact performatively constitutes the gendered body by triggering the “process of ‘girling’” (Salih 2002: 89). Butler writes: “The term, or rather its symbolic power governs the formation of a corporeally enacted femininity that never fully approximates the norm. This is a ‘girl’ however who is compelled to cite the norm in order to qualify and remain a viable subject. Femininity is thus not the product of a choice but the forcible citation of a norm” (quoted in Salih 2002: 89). By being called “girl,” she must behave according to the norm of what being girl means, she is forced to “cite” (mimic, act out, perform) “girliness.” To say “it’s a girl,” then, no longer qualifies as a constative claim, for its very utterance starts the process that compels “the forcible citation of the norm.” Under these terms, it is more accurately a performative claim, because the very act of uttering does, it makes things happen. To illustrate the process behind performative utterances, reminds Salih (2002: 89), Butler uses the example of a cartoon strip in which the doctor is quoted saying, “It’s a lesbian,” thus locating the newborn within the sex-gender system. Such an interpellative claim refutes the possibility of being merely descriptive: it is not a constative utterance for in looking at a newborn it makes little sense to describe her as lesbian. To say “It’s a lesbian,” then, mimics and

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parodies the formulation “It’s a girl” and in so doing exposes “girl” not as essentialist, prelinguistic, but as an identity that is the effect of discursive practices. Parody denaturalizes gender, it reveals that gender is not an original but in fact a copy, but more importantly that that which is being copied is also not an original, but instead is a copy itself: “The notion of gender parody defended here does not assume that there is an original which such parodic identities imitate. Indeed, the parody is of the very notion of an original [. . .] gender parody reveals that the original identity after which gender fashions itself is an imitation without an origin” (Butler 1990: 138). The fact that one can utter the statement “It’s a lesbian” in such a context is because “lesbian,” as a linguistic sign, can be taken out of an “obvious” context and repositioned into a new one; in other words, it is expropriable. This notion of expropriability of the linguistic sign comes from Derrida’s reading of Austin’s concept of infelicities (Salih 2002: 90–92). For Austin, performative language requires appropriate context and authorial intention, otherwise the action cannot have any effect— someone who is not an ordained minister cannot officiate a marriage, for example. When linguistic signs are misappropriated, Austin calls these misappropriations “infelicities.” Derrida picks up on Austin’s notion of “infelicities” to expose the permanent condition of expropriability of all linguistic signs—what he calls “the essential iterability of a sign” (Derrida quoted in Salih 2002: 91). Linguistic signs are not ontologically determined, they are not inherently bound to a referent, and therefore they are unstable, mutable. Thus, clarifies Salih, for Derrida linguistic signs are permanently susceptible to being misappropriated, taken out of their intended context and relocated to a new one, cited in unexpected ways. This is what Derrida calls “citational grafting” (Salih 2002: 91). The instability of the linguistic sign is meaningful as a subversive approach for deconstructing oppressive normativity, for re-citation offers the possibility of citing in unforeseen ways. Drag is an example of an enactment of the re-citation of a sign, where the gender that is performed is not inherently tied to the body that is performing. The citationality of a sign is thus both promising (it offers the possibility of subversive practices that undermine normative constructs by exposing that which is understood as natural to be in fact a citation of a norm that is discursively produced) and problematic (if all linguistic signs are citational then it’s not subversive; and there is the risk that some signs impose and perpetuate oppressive norms). In certain circumstances, therefore, denaturalizations of the norm can actually reinforce hegemony. Cinematic and theatrical performances of drag such as the ones in Victor Victoria and Some Like It Hot exaggerate the comical effects of transgender to the point of strengthening the

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distinction between the “original” and copy: a man in drag looks silly precisely because it is so “unnatural” and relief is attained only when the performance in drag is abandoned in favor of a happy return to normative gender roles and heterosexuality, thereby affirming the understanding that gender is natural. In these instances, the performance in drag does not make a contextual leap, there is not a re-citation that exposes the failure of the sign, but rather one that masks it. Butler, thus, emphasizes the importance of distinguishing subversive citations from those that support an essentialist conceptualization of gender. While it is necessary to be cautious about the unsubversive effects of performances in drag, it is possible to reframe the kinds of citations that maintain oppressive norms so that even those that are not disruptive may be considered disruptive. If Dustin Hoffman’s performance in Tootsie is so excessively ridiculous as to reinforce the disjunction between his masculine identity and his performance in drag (he cannot comfortably imitate, cite femininity), then could the same not be said if we consider the incongruence between masculinity as an act and its relationship to the supposedly “natural” hegemonic masculinity? In other words, it is possible to draw a parallel between the citation of the “norm” and the ridiculousness of the performance in drag by the likes of Hoffman and Williams on the one hand, and the citation of hegemonic masculinity with the ridiculousness of the performance of masculinity by Pasqualino on the other. In addition to the fact that Pasqualino’s frame of gender reference is forcefully inscribed by a fascist rhetoric of virility that requires him “to adhere to an aggressively male-oriented ‘compulsory system,’” (Ravetto 1998: 274), the gun plays a central role in determining both his intention to adhere to a standard of masculinity as well as his failure to meet this very standard. Pasqualino constantly refers to the respect that his gun will bring him, which suggests that, armed with a gun, Pasqualino is under the illusion that he can effectively cite, mimic masculinity, as he too understands the firearm to be symbolically charged. However, it is precisely the gun that denies him any respect and therefore denies him the possibility to live out his macho fantasy. If Pasqualino’s masculinity cannot comfortably inhabit hegemonic masculinity (it is such a buffoonish comedy), then the fallacy of hegemonic masculinity as the original becomes exposed. What Wertmüller’s film does by ridiculing Pasqualino’s awkward attempts at machismo is to position him outside or beyond a rhetoric of virility. It is no coincidence that Wertmüller has Pasqualino mimic the Duce himself in order to argue for an insanity plea, a parodic gesture that implicitly caricatures Mussolini; this gesture is also particularly meaningful, for his act can be identified as a performance in the sense previously discussed: Pasqualino’s performance is a parodic

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re-citation, reiteration of Mussolini, one that recontextualizes fascist rhetoric as the speech of a madman in addition to being a performance of one who is excluded from a rhetoric of virility.19 The comedic elements of Lina Wertmüller’s Pasqualino Settebellezze have drawn harsh criticisms. The parodic, “grotesque” mixture of humor and horror has been accused of diluting the emotional weight that is typical in filmic representations of the Holocaust. However, an interpretation of Wertmuller’s utilization of such contradictory genres does not necessarily have to be limited to its polarizing illustrations of the horrors of concentration camps. The comedic element of the film is necessary as it serves to magnify Pasqualino’s failure to appropriately embody an image of masculine virility. The linchpin of Pasqualino’s failed masculinity, the gun, is particularly significant as it traditionally carries a symbolic value that enables men to support and reproduce hegemonic masculinity. Indeed, Pasqualino relies on the gun in order to construct his own fantasy of idealized masculinity, one that should garner respect and fear in others. Yet, in each instance that he reaches for the gun, his actions are belittled by an emasculating and comical failure as the gun falls short of providing him with any tangible evidence of dominance. Given the historical context of the film, Pasqualino’s failed masculinity must be framed within the discursive practices of fascist rhetoric obsessed with a rhetoric of virility (Spackman 1996). By contextualizing his representation, the male character provides the canvas upon which the deconstruction of hegemonic masculinity can be effected, as his performance locates him at the margin of normative gender representations: his failed attempts to assert his power and his drive to ensure his survival progressively lead him astray from dominant conceptions of masculinity. Through the lens of gender studies, and more specifically, Judith Butler’s concepts of gender performativity, the film proposes a subversive reading: Pasqualino’s inability to appropriately embody an image of fascist virility marks him as a disruptive presence that exposes hegemonic masculinity as a cultural construction, a copy of a copy rather than an original. Notes 1. Scholars such as Rodica Diaconescu-Blumenfeld, Antonio Vitti, and Umberto Mariani were also concerned with the development of gender relations and the depiction of women in her early work. 2. The other nominations were for best actor in a leading role, best foreign language film, and best screenplay written directly for the screen. This nomination was particularly meaningful to Wertmüller who admitted that “it is

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every Italian director’s dream to be loved in America” (Lillian Gerard, “The Ascendance of Lina Wertmüller,” American Film [1976]: 21). In particular, Bruno Bettelheim, a concentration camp survivor, found Wertmüller’s film profoundly problematic, as he noted in his essay “Surviving,” which appeared in the August 2, 1976, edition of the New Yorker. For more on Wertmüller’s use of the carnivalesque, see also Rodica Diaconescu-Blumenfeld, “Regista di Clausura: Lina Wertmüller and Her Feminism of Despair,” Italica 76.3 (1999): 389–403; and Josetta Déléas, “Lina Wertmüller: The Grotesque in Seven Beauties,” in Jacqueline Levitin, Judith Plessis, and Valerie Raoul, eds., Women Filmmakers: Refocusing (Vancouver, BC: University of British Columbia Press, 2002), 151–163, among others. In her interview with Gero Miccichè for Telecras on the occasion of her receipt of the Premio Efebo d’Oro in 2006, Wertmüller states that “Ho fatto sempre dei grotteschi. Che differenza c’è fra la commedia e il grottesco—è una grande differenza. Il grottesco c’ha un fondo amaro e più duro mentre invece la commedia spesso, diciamo che può concludersi a tarallucci e vino, non la nostra commedia perché nel nostro cinema la commedia l’ha spesso fatta su cose legate alla nostra società e tempi, ma io credo più nel grottesco che è un segno più forte, più definitivo” (4’54”–5’27”). Déléas, quoting Friedrich Schlegel, also remarks that the grotesque “is composed of the ‘clashing contrast between form and content, the unstable mixture of heterogenous elements, the explosive force of the paradoxical,’ and which [Schlegel] find both ‘ridiculous and terrifying’” (“Lina Wertmüller,” 153). Additionally, Grace Russo Bullaro, in her article “The Fictitious Genius of Lina Wertmüller’s 1970s Films? A Look at the American and the Italian Views,” Forum Italicum 40.2 (2006): 491, cites Peter Bondanella on the commedia dell’arte: “[la commedia dell’arte] might be more accurately described as tragicomedy bordering on the grotesque.” See also John R. Clark’s book The Modern Satiric Grotesque and Its Traditions (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1991) for further discussion on the genre of the grotesque. See, e.g., Ralph Tutt’s article “Seven Beauties and the Beast: Bettelheim, Wertmüller, and the Uses of Enchantment,” Literature Film Quarterly 17.3 (1989): 193–201; Giacomo Striuli’s article “Mise-en-scène and Narrative Strategies in the Tavianis and Wertmüller,” Italica 84.2–3 (2003): 495–508; Eli Pfefferkorn’s article “Bettelheim, Wertmüller, and the Morality of Survival,” Post Script 1.2 (1982): 15–26; as well as A. J. Prats’s chapter on Pasqualino Settebellezze: “The Narrative Dilemma: Seven Beauties,” in The Autonomous Image: Cinematic Narration and Humanism (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1981). In addition to Kriss Ravetto’s article, “Cinema, Spectacle, and the Unmaking of Sadomasochistic Aesthetics,” Annali d’Italianistica 16 (1998): 261–281, in which the author discusses the systematic derision of masculine virility in Pasqualino Settebellezze, Déléas identifies in the Carnivalesque the elements that “expose the social mechanisms that shape and control the individual through concepts like masculinity or institutions like the family” (“Lina Wertmüller,” 152). Later on, Déléas states that “all [Pasqualino’s] actions are those of a coward whose machismo the director mocks” (154).

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8. By stating that performance in drag is an enactment of performativity, I am making a conscious distinction between performance and performativity. Readers of Butler’s theory on performativity have been criticized for conflating the two. Here I am suggesting that performance is not performativity but rather an enactment, an allegorization of the theory. 9. See Mascolinità all’italiana: Costruzioni, narrazioni, mutamenti, edited by Elena Agnese and Elisabetta Ruspini (Milano: UTET Libreria, 2007), as well as Sandro Bellassai’s book on Italian masculinity La mascolinità contemporanea (Rome: Carocci editore, 2004) for scholarship on Italian masculinity in Italy. 10. See also Robert Hanke’s article “The ‘Mock-Macho’ Situation Comedy: Hegemonic Masculinity and Its Reiteration,” Western Journal of Communication 62 (1998): 74–93, for a discussion of comedy and discursive strategies as a reiteration of Hegemonic masculinity. 11. In her book Fascist Virilities: Rhetoric, Ideology, and Social Fantasy in Italy (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), Barbara Spackman recalls Philip Cannistraro’s description of how the press was ordered to shape the image of Mussolini: “No news of the Duce’s illnesses or birthdays, nor of the fact that he had become a grandfather, was to be published. Mussolini himself shaved his head so that no grey hair might mar the appearance of a man in his prime. He was simply not to grow old. The lights left burning late into the night in his Piazza Venezia office similarly signaled not only devotion to his ‘duties’ but vigor and stamina. He was not to be shown participating in ‘nonvirile’ activities . . . like dancing but was instead to be shown participating in vigorous sports such as riding, flying, motorcycling, and so on. No references were to be made of to his family life, to his role as husband and father. The image of the family man would presumably soften his virility. Interestingly, none of the directives cited by Cannistraro excludes information about the lovers and amorous exploits Mussolini was ‘known’ to have” (3). It is worth noting that according to Spackman, more than just one of a series of subcategories that collectively characterize the fascist man, virility is a master term of which all other subcategories are just inflections (xii). 12. Kris Ravetto, e.g., discusses at length how Wertmüller parodies gender representation in Pasqualino Settebellezze, in particular in the context of fascist virility. 13. For more on this scene, see, e.g., the chapter “Images of Man” in The Parables of Lina Wertmüller. 14. In a number of critical essays focusing on this scene, the presence of the gun is not mentioned. See, e.g., Ernest Ferlita, and John R. May, The Parables of Lina Wertmüller (New York: Paulist Press, 1977); Striuli, “Miseen-scene and Narrative Strategies”; in addition to Déléas’s article “Lina Wertmüller.” 15. See the chapter “Images of Man” in Ferlita and May, The Parables of Lina Wertmüller for more discussion on this scene. 16. As Déléas also notes, this scene is a direct reference to a Western (“Lina Wertmüller,”155). I would even go so far as to suggest that it is an explicit reference, and parody, of the Italian filmic genre the Spaghetti Western.

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17. This scene has also been discussed by other critics. See, e.g., Giacomo Striuli’s article “Mise-en-scene and Narrative Strategies.” 18. The seduction scene has been much analyzed by scholars who have published on Pasqualino Settebellezze. See, e.g., the works by Ralph Berets, Rodica Diaconescu-Blumenfeld, Peter Bondanella, Josetta Déléas, Ernest Ferlita, and John R. May, E. Ann Kaplan, Eli Pfefferkorn, A. J. Prats, Kriss Ravetto, and Giacomo Striuli. 19. See also Kriss Ravetto’s article “Cinema, Spectacle, and the Unmaking of Sadomasochistic Aesthetics,” for a discussion on this scene.

Bibliography Agnese, Elena, and Elisabetta Ruspini, eds. Mascolinità all’italiana: Costruzioni, narrazioni, mutamenti. Milano: UTET Libreria, 2007. Bellassai, Sandro. La mascolinità contemporanea. Rome: Carocci editore, 2004. ———. “The Masculine Mystique: Antimodernism and Virility in Fascist Italy.” Journal of Modern Italian Studies 10.3 (2005): 314–335. Ben-Ghiat, Ruth. “Unmaking the Fascist Man: Masculinity, Film and the Transition from Dictatorship.” Journal of Modern Italian Studies 10.3 (2005): 336–365. Bettelheim, Bruno. “Surviving.” New Yorker, August 2, 1976. Bondanella, Peter. Italian Cinema: From Neorealism to the Present. New York: Continuum Press, 2002. Bullaro, Grace Russo. “The Fictitious Genius of Lina Wertmüller’s 1970s Films? A Look at the American and the Italian Views.” Forum Italicum 40.2 (2006): 487–499. ———. Man in Disorder: The Cinema of Lina Wertmüller in the 1970s. Leicester: Troubador, 2006. Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1990. ———. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex.” New York: Routledge, 1993. Chinn, Sarah E. “Gender Performativity.” In Lesbian and Gay Studies: A Critical Introduction, edited by Andy Medhurst and Sally R. Munt, 294–308. Washington: Cassell, 1997. Connell, R. W. Masculinities. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. Délèas, Josetta. “Lina Wertmüller: The Grotesque in Seven Beauties.” In Women Filmmakers: Refocusing, edited by Jacqueline Levitin, Judith Plessis, and Valerie Raoul, 151–163. Vancouver, BC: University of British Columbia Press, 2002. Diaconescu-Blumenfeld, Rodica. “Regista di Clausura: Lina Wertmüller and Her Feminism of Despair.” Italica 76.3 (1999): 389–403. Ferlita, Ernest, and John R. May. The Parables of Lina Wertmüller. New York: Paulist Press, 1977. Gerard, Lillian. “The Ascendance of Lina Wertmüller.” American Film (1976): 21.

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Gori, Gigliola. “Model of Masculinity: Mussolini, the ‘New Italian’ of the Fascist Era.” The International Journal of the History of Sport 16.4 (1999): 27–61. Kaplan, E. Ann. “Lina Wertmüller’s Sexual Politics.” The Marxist Perspectives (1978): 94–104. Magretta, William R., and Joan Magretta. “Lina Wertmüller and the Tradition of Italian Carnivalesque Comedy: Caricatural Characters, Parodic Situations, the Absence of Mimesis, and the Use of Lazzi.” Genre 12 (1979): 25–43. Marcus, Millicent. Italian Film in the Shadow of Auschwitz. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007. Mariani, Umberto. “The ‘Anti-Feminism’ of Lina Wertmüller.” Annual of Foreign Films and Literature 2 (1996): 103–114. Masucci, Tiziana. I chiari di Lina. Cantalupo in Sabina: Edizioni Sabinae, 2009. Pfefferkorn, Eli. “Betterlheim, Wertmüller, and the Morality of Survival.” Post Script 1.2 (1982): 15–26. Prats, A. J. The Autonomous Image: Cinematic Narration and Humanism. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1981. Ravetto, Kriss. The Unmaking of Fascist Aesthetics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001. ———. “Cinema, Spectacle, and the Unmaking of Sadomasochistic Aesthetics.” Annali d’Italianistica 16p. (1998): 261–281. Salih, Sara. Judith Butler. New York : Routledge, 2002. Spackman, Barbara. Fascist Virilities: Rhetoric, Ideology, and Social Fantasy in Italy. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996. Striuli, Giacomo. “Mise-en-scène and Narrative Strategies in the Tavianis and Wertmüller.” Italica 84.2–3 (2003): 495–508. Stroud, Angela. “Good Guys With Guns: Hegemonic Masculinity and Concealed Handguns.” Gender & Society 26.2 (2012): 216–238. Tutt, Ralph. “Seven Beauties and the Beast: Bettelheim, Wertmüller, and the Uses of Enchantment.” Literature Film Quarterly 17.3 (1989): 193–201. Vitti, Antonio. “The Critics ‘Swept Away’ by Wertmüller’s Sexual Politics.” Nemla Italian Studies 13–14 (1989): 121–131. Wertmüller, Lina. The Screenplays of Lina Wertmüller. Translated by Steven Wagner. New York : Quadrangle/New York Times Book Co., 1977. ———. Arcangela Felice Assunta Job Wertmüller von Elgg Español von Brauchich, cioè Lina Wertmüller. Milano: Frassinelli, 2006. ———. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjfC6mx4CYk&feature=relmf u (2006).

4

Adventurous Identities Cavani’s Thematic Imaginary Gaetana Marrone

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ilm is a medium that invites the spectator to imagine altered states: we sit in the dark and see shadows move across a screen, flesh and blood actors altered into phantoms. Sometimes this is thematized, as in Hitchcock’s Vertigo, where Kim Novak first alters herself, then is altered to look like and then become Judy. Cross-dressing comedies like Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot and Sydney Pollack’s Tootsie keep play with altered states of gender. Or we can think more directly of Ken Russell’s Altered States (1980), in which a Harvard scientist researching different states of consciousness conducts experiments on himself with a hallucinatory drug that causes him to regress genetically. Altered states of consciousness can be associated with artistic creativity, with the ingestion of psychoactive drugs, or it can be achieved by means of sensory deprivation, meditation, fasting, or prayer (Mantra meditation, Yoga, etc.), all of which can put the individual in contact with a transcendental reality or divine presence. But, the most profound secular experience of altered states occurs in consciousness and it is in this realm that the cinema of Liliana Cavani excels. Cavani began working as a freelance director for RAI (Italian state television network) during the early 1960s after graduating from the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome. Her first major assignment was a series of historical documentaries.1 Her work impressed Angelo Guglielmi, head of special programming at RAI-2, who proposed the idea of a film on Francis of Assisi. After initial reservations because of her secular background, she accepted the challenge. Francesco di

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Assisi was aired in two parts in May 1966 and was acclaimed as the most controversial program of the year. Cavani divests the figure of Francesco of all legendary attributes, and portrays him as a normal individual who has performed a revolutionary social role. An archetypal story of class, family, and generational conflict, this film gives striking evidence of Cavani’s stylistic techniques and also serves as an ideal transition from the documentary films to Galileo (1968), I cannibali (The Cannibals, 1969), L’ospite (The Guest, 1971), and Milarepa (1973). These early films feature as their protagonist an idealist who transgresses the boundaries of conventional society in a quest for self-realization. In representing a classical subject that has inspired such different artists as Giulio Antamoro, Roberto Rossellini, Michael Curtis, and Franco Zeffirelli, Cavani chose to portray Francesco not as the joyful, saintly, somewhat mad character of legends. Instead, she cast actor Lou Castel in the leading role. As she explained, Castel is: un francescano in potenza. Mi bastò guardare la sua timidezza, sentire quando parlava che era un giovane inquieto e intento a cercare rapporti genuini tra sé e il mondo. Nessuno può inventare il personaggio di Francesco in maniera credibile, deve esserci una somiglianza dentro. (Cavani 1967: 3) (a potential Franciscan. I just needed to look at his shyness, to feel his restlessness when he was talking, and knew that he was searching for genuine relationships between himself and the world. The character of Francesco cannot be improvised; there must be an inner resemblance.2)

In Cavani’s hands, Francesco becomes a symbol of the interpenetration of the secular and the religious. The film’s narrative centers on events dating from 1205 (Francesco’s youth and war games) up to his death on October 4, 1226.3 Francesco is introduced through his privileged social status and idle fantasies. His accidental encounter with the Christ of San Damiano sets history in motion. In Cavani’s cinema, such a radical encounter always inaugurates the existential adventure of the protagonists: Galileo and Giordano Bruno, Antigone and Tiresias, Milarepa and Marpa. The personal encounter is indispensable for actualization and for the realization of the character’s innate potential. Francesco’s encounter with the Christ of San Damiano, signifying the turn from the contemplative to the active life, constitutes the film’s central scene, Cavani’s authentic model of spiritual conversion. Francesco, the idle knight, is slowly transformed into a zealous soldier of Christ: the kissing of the leper, the poor man’s rags, the barefoot beggars all dramatize Francesco’s altered perception and relation to the world. His transformation concludes with

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the spectacular formality of the civil action brought against him by his father, Pietro Bernardone. The trial throws the human system of justice into confusion. Francesco’s laughter in the face of the formal juridical ritual attests to the collapse of social hierarchy. The rebel-son forces upon the established structures a radical redefinition of power. The whole episode is shot in exaggerated theatrical style. Francesco’s nakedness, which makes him into a public spectacle, also signifies his second birth. The trial sequence locates Francesco’s symbolic and real divestiture within a complex historical tradition; it identifies his nakedness as a revolutionary act, and as a primary, visual image of emancipation from structural and economic bondage. The transfiguration of Francesco leads to a new mode of practicing faith. Naked again, except for a crude smock, he follows an itinerary that leads him to the revival of abandoned churches, most prominently San Damiano and La Portiuncola—each destined to play a critical role in his life. Stylistically, there is an essential purity in the composition of the rustic imagery, which acts as an equivalent to Francesco’s search for an existentially concrete, radically simplified life. A pictorial flatness qualifies the geometry of Cavani’s shot-compositions, while the power of the image is displaced onto the emotive contours of the face. The scene depicting Francesco holding a torch in front of the Christ of San Damiano is an example. This scene, constructed through flashbacks, emphasizes the initiatory meaning of the protagonist’s journey. Francesco brings the light toward the painting as if to restore life to the crumbled church, providing a very poetic image of reillumination and renewal.4 Francesco operates within a fundamentally concrete model of life; he engages in action with solid, physical consistency. In him there is no fracture between deed and word. His is a character, says Cavani, posed midway between those of Gandhi and the young people who feel “un desiderio istintivo di amore, di fiducia, di valori ideali” (an instinctive desire for love, trust, ideal values) (Cavani 1967: 3). Yet Francesco is both alike and unlike such idealists; his simple stripped humanity, while exemplary, is experienced at the limits of nature and ordinary experience. Francesco’s main acts are the denial of power and subsequent banishment from the community, and the search for a new identity at the extreme margins of conventional reality. His transgressive action is set against a structure of order in which the paternal figure stands as his societal and cultural antithesis. Indeed, Francesco’s quest unfolds as a polemical antithesis between the temporal power in which his father and the doctors of the Church are invested and his subjective experience. Cavani concentrates on the symbolic and spatial area of cultural transitions, liminal states that induce an ambiguous and indeterminate state of consciousness,

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frequently likened to death, to darkness, and in later films, to bisexuality. As Victor Turner (1967: 102) reminds us, the gnosis acquired at the liminal stage implies a change in being. Cavani emphasizes the ontological status of the avventura ancora attuale (an adventure still valid today) of the protagonist. Francesco is presented as alienated from the society and values of the rising mercantile class to which he belongs. To realize this religious imperative, Francesco divests himself of all material goods and becomes a social outcast, before climbing to the sacred mountain where his apotheosis might occur. One of the key scenes that support Francesco’s progressive altered state of consciousness is the accidental encounter with the young leper, who is legally expelled from the city walls by means of a strange religious ceremony. The words chanted by the priest sound like alien language to Francesco, distant voices in a nightmare. The handheld camera jolts back and forth, side to side, as if to perform the dismay felt by Francesco’s eye and ear when confronted with such a terrifying and incomprehensible spectacle. The mobile camera highlights the act of seeing and its disturbing emotional impact. Francesco reveals his heightened power of sight and sound, which become more active as his new social status is defined. During the trial scene, cold and unrelieved stone buildings entrap the body of Francesco, who is placed at the center of the piazza as the scandalous monster of his time. Cavani works with the juxtaposition of echoing voices (whispers, shouts, laughter) in order to sustain the effect created by the camera eye: the mad voyeurism of the crowd cheering at the scandalous exposure of the rebel’s body.5 The protagonist’s quest exemplifies human desire that is heightened into a state of drunken madness: “fool,” “madman” are the epithets shouted by the crowd to Francesco. What Foucault considers “le grand thème de la folie de la Croix” (the great theme of the madness of the Cross) receives its most powerful treatment in two iconographic images of the martyred Christ6: the crucifix in San Damiano, a painted Christ who has the fixed stare of the Italian illustrations of the late twelfth century and emphasizes divine qualities (open eyes, erect body posture). In front of this triumphant Christ, Francesco enters a trance-like state in which he is released from the bonds of his social reality, preparing him for the unfamiliar adventures outside the city walls. The other representation is the Byzantine cross in the Duomo of Assisi: it portrays the suffering of Christ, whose bent head, closed eyes, and wounded chest all work to stylize death and sacrifice. Both images incorporate the spirituality and physicality so crucial to the Franciscan quest: with an imploring gaze fixed upon the hallowed countenance of Jesus, Francesco strives to articulate an imitatio

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Christi. In Cavani’s Francesco, only the Byzantine icon is retained, this time to suggest confusion and loss of identity. Guided by the example of the Cross, Francesco’s journey concerns not a process of sanctification (miracles and legends are eliminated), but the search for the essence of Being. As a liminal persona, he must divest himself of status, property, secular clothing: his spiritual consciousness and his concrete mode of thinking have no direct analogy in the medieval verbal conventions, abstract and rational. He eventually comes to question his new station in life: the path out of the dilemma is voluntary isolation on Mount La Verna. As Joseph Campbell (1968: 29) writes, the passage of the hero is fundamentally inward, “into depths where obscure resistances are overcome, and long lost, forgotten powers are revived, to be made available for the transfiguration of the world.” Pier Paolo Pasolini expressed ideological reservations about Cavani’s liberal, secular stance. The film showed little awareness of the “sublime aristocrazia della religione” (the sublime aristocracy of religion) (Bolzoni 1966: 30). The character portrayed by Cavani stages a performance of absolute freedom in revolt, an existential example enacted in the image of the perilous adventure. “Il beatnik numero due dopo Cristo,” as she calls Francesco, “era uno che anche oggi darebbe fastidio alla borghesia conservatrice e a certi ecclesiastici. Come ha fatto al suo tempo” (The beatnik number two after Christ was someone who even today would annoy the conventional middle class and certain clergymen. As he did during his times).7 Few filmmakers would take such a stand in a pre-1968 climate. Cavani also sees striking parallels to the cultural situation of the 1960s in Galileo, her second film, which depicts the tragedy of a revolutionary intellect who finds himself at the center of the most scandalous scientific case of the Counter-Reformation. Galileo’s research, and his pursuit of truth, is what interests Cavani. If Francesco attacks the core of medieval feudalism, Galileo’s discoveries divest the Church of the illusory permanence of its authority in matters concerning scientific knowledge. In Cavani’s view, Galileo is a forerunner of modernity, but he is also a man operating within the dominant systems of his era: he embodies the bourgeois values of that society as well as its revolutionary energies. The first man who could glance beyond the established limits of the sky is ultimately blind to the consequences of his belief that his proofs could reverse the established modes of power: “Non aveva considerato che la Chiesa, come un potere assoluto, si era sempre protetta dalle controversie, non con dibattiti e auto critica, ma solo con la forza della sua autorità, potere e connivenza” (He had not considered that the Church, as an absolute power, had always protected itself against controversies, not with open

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debates and questioning itself, but only with the force of its authority, power, and connivance).8 The film structures the tragic adventure of this character around each dramatic step in which he confronts authority: the anatomical amphitheater in Padua (1592), the proceedings of the Holy Office and the Inquisition’s official admonition (1616), the burning of the heretic’s body, carnival and judicial rites, and the spectacular staging of the abjuration (1633). Galileo’s search for truth and knowledge (the eye, the light, the circle, which symbolize his findings) is counteracted by the darkness and blind dogmatism of obscurantist structures. Cavani’s style validates the instrument of Galileo’s cultural revisionism: Galileo at the telescope (with its small disks of various diameters) is the key image for her. She manipulates the lens and the camera angle to magnify or reduce objects, and, in so doing, visualizes the dialogic nature of the telescopic lenses. The film’s final zoom into the skeleton head of the pope exposes the emptiness and decay of the papacy’s repressive mechanisms. The importance of Galileo’s experience, according to Cavani, rests on his dispute with a (sociomoral) cultural system “che è cristallizzato nel passato e che, favorendo l’immobilismo scientifico, non solo previene la libertà della scienza, ma è anche la causa diretta del ristagno sociale” (that is crystallized in the past and by favoring scientific immobility, not only prevented science from being free, but was also the direct cause of social stagnation).9 The Galileo affair mediated issues concerning physics, astronomy, and cosmology, but their immense scope also addressed broader epistemological inquiries. This scandalous case helped to determine the separation of science and philosophy and the departure from authority as a criterion of scientific knowledge. When the new science of Galileo began to make its impact, the illusion of a geocentric universe (as God had originally designed it) became a historical relic. Screenwriter Italo Moscati describes Cavani’s film as a rare occasion “per meditare sui giorni che corrono” (to ponder on contemporary issues) (Moscati 1968: 594). In I cannibali (freely adapted from Sophocles’s Antigone), Cavani perceives the collapse of traditional assumptions about the stability of political authority at a time when the militant groups of the 1968 generation were still organizing themselves. Cavani targets living history and the way in which the formula of revolution is applied to young rebels. The film’s narrative takes shape in a series of social transgressions and physical divestitures. The film opens with a horrendous sight of decomposing corpses amassed upon the wet streets of a modern city (downtown Milan). The bodies of the rebels who conspired against a totalitarian regime are left on display to serve as a deterrent to future conspiracies. Careless citizens step by and around the bodies. The daring Antigone will defy the order

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as she searches for her dead brother’s body. Only a mysterious stranger, a modern Tiresias, will assist her. They are both denounced by the citizens, and eventually arrested and interrogated. Antigone is subjected to torture and public execution; the stranger is assassinated. But their defiance will ignite new rebels to reenact their exemplary gesture. I cannibali portrays human life in terms of unrelieved bondage: a nightmare of social tyranny, which translates the ironic ambiguities of unidealized existence. It denounces the stasis of the human mind and the collective surrendering to the order of the Father. At times, it evokes the hallucinatory atmosphere of the Anni di Piombo (Years of Lead), a catastrophe brought about by the collapse of the student movement and of the revolutionary ideals of May 1968. Antigone’s rebellion is not a thing of the past but threateningly foretells the future. Cavani begins to search for a language of universal symbols in order to avoid the revolutionary speeches that had become a cliché by 1969: È noto che appena due mesi dopo gli avvenimenti di maggio, gli slogan, i manifesti e il vocabolario rivoluzionario si erano consumati, esauriti [. . .] I cannibali non è la cronaca di una rivoluzione (il linguaggio sarebbe stato altro), ma l’analisi spettrale di una realtà che trascende i singoli episodi che caratterizzano la contestazione. (Clouzot 1974: 37) (As everyone knows, two months following the events of May 1968, all slogans, posters, and catch phrases were sold out and overused by the establishment. [. . .] I cannibali is not the chronicle of a revolution (I would have used an entirely different language), but the spectral analysis of reality beyond the various episodes that characterize the demonstrations.)

Francesco, Galileo, and Antigone personify the unrest of their times; they are not men and women of the past. They represent the altered consciousness that ideally will lead us to and define our future. Cavani’s cinema proves politically intractable in L’ospite as well. The director’s allegiance to social discourse reclaiming transgression is epitomized in the story of a woman in search of her individuality at a time when gendered power relations were nonexistent. The film, which originates from an actual visit Cavani made to female patients in a psychiatric hospital ward, is a case study of Anna’s illness. Never relaxing her critique of the existing hierarchical order, Cavani makes a woman rather than men the vehicle of that critique. Francesco and Galileo are all discursively at odds with the culture in which they find themselves and ultimately function as messengers of change. Figures such as Anna, on the other hand, seem absorbed in much more private forms of resistance.10 She lives within a state of rupture, acted out to the music of Gioachino Rossini. In L’ospite, Cavani’s cinematic style, which is oneiric, haunting, and melodramatic,

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gives an imaginative rendition of Anna’s schizophrenia as a fantasmatic ground for cultural debates. Cavani addresses the correlation between incarcerating structures and personal autonomy before mental institutions became a politicized issue. Anna is an exemplary case of female malady, a motif Cavani investigates by entering the interior, containing space of a mental institution filled with madwomen and supervising male doctors. She defines Anna’s growing self-consciousness by liberating her from the enormous burden of the spoken word.11 Confined framing and controlled blocking signify Anna’s discontent and tension: we witness a disordered mind seeking to explore its own darkness, its own confusion, its own fantasy. Cavani assures us that Anna will endure change, and will survive catastrophe: such a future is unthinkable without a corresponding change in consciousness. Cavani’s emphasis on the physical as well as spiritual and intellectual changes brought about by altered states of consciousness is nowhere more self-evident than in Milarepa. The ability to change and the epistemological emphasis on the body as a site of consciousness are central to a film that the director has defined as concerned with “i processi della conoscenza” (the processes of knowledge) (Mori 1985: 17). Milarepa was a poet, a sorcerer, and a hermit who lived in Tibet during the eleventh century. For Cavani, Milarepa becomes the story of a young man of today who identifies himself with the character of the medieval yogi. Set in an industrial city, the film begins with a university student, Lumley, and his professor, who are on their way to catch a plane for Nepal. They are then involved in a car accident and while the professor lies in a transitional state between life and death, Lumley is confronted with the task of performing a liminal rite. He recalls Milarepa’s journey and his struggles for self-awareness. The film visualizes the stages of Milarepa’s inner transformations, ranging from the depth of black magic to the wisdom of Marpa, the white lama, who teaches him obedience, discipline, and knowledge. Lumley travels in his own mind; he enters an adventure that intimately involves him. Once again, what interests Cavani most is the search for an experience that is hidden behind contemporary life. This young man ha un rapporto con Francesco e con i personaggi dei Cannibali ma è una figura del tutto particolare. È uno studente che viene “dopo” la contestazione [. . .] Cerca itinerari di liberazione. Guarda ad est, alla tradizione dell’est, non a Mao; a una lingua antica che non capisce; a una religione che è un modo di vita, una filosofia. (Moscati 1974: 42) (is related to Francesco and to the characters of I cannibali. However, he is a unique figure. He is a student who comes “after” the revolution. [. . .] He is searching for inner freedom. He looks toward the East, to the

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Eastern tradition, not to Mao Tse-tung: to the ancient language he does not understand; to a religion that is a way of life, a philosophy.)

The film is an analysis of various forms of consciousness. Consciousness is a boundary situation, its formal visualization embodied in an archaic geometrical style. In reviewing the film for Cinema nuovo, Pasolini speaks of the mad rationality of religious geometry: L’andirivieni di Milarepa che cerca il sapere o un modello inaugurale di sapere attraverso cui interpretare la vita, si cristallizza nel film della Cavani in una serie di linee quasi rigidamente ritmiche: una successione di inquadrature ferme, di panoramiche per lo più irregolari (in cui si giustifica anche quanche movimento di zoom) su un mondo “profilmico” stranamente geometrico anch’esso: un Abruzzo brullo e azzurro, spesso con nuvole o nebbie vaganti su discese di rocce perdute in una solitudine particolarmente profonda. (Pasolini 1974: 184) (In Cavani’s film, the itineraries of Milarepa, who is searching for knowledge or for an initiatory form of knowledge through which to interpret life, are crystallized in a series of lines rhythmically arranged: a sequence of static shots and rather irregular compositions (with pans and zooms) on a “profilmic” world that is also strangely geometrical: an Abruzzo, barren and blue, oftentimes with clouds and moving fog over the rocky planes, lost in a profound solitude.)

Cavani’s film epitomizes the dynamics of consciousness, the questioning of humanity’s obscure boundaries: the biological, the irrational, and the unconscious. The historical Milarepa was considered abnormal, like every saint and mystic. Cavani, who has centered most of her films on the experience of male characters who retreat from power, stresses how the Tibetan poet anticipates the social concerns of the mid-1970s. She makes him the son of a working-class mother (no longer the heir to a small landowner) because she believed that this was the only class capable of regenerating itself, of avoiding the conditioning power of bourgeois culture. The life of Milarepa becomes an account of a spiritual journey into the (un)conscious depths of the human being. The capacity to change, to lead a life of constant search and selfawareness, is also a distinct trait of Cavani’s second film about the saint of Assisi. Milarepa is an homage to the processes of knowledge, enriched by the cosmogonical myths of the initiation of a young man. Wind, rain, water, fire, snow, fog are all elements of the material setting in which the action of the film unfolds. These same elements create Francesco’s real world in Cavani’s Francesco (1989). Again, the selection of an actor, Mickey Rourke, whose charisma relied on the physicality of his

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performance, signals Cavani’s intention to give prominence to the body in her reconception of Francesco. The protagonist’s search for identity is now epitomized in the word “contact.” The first gesture that Francesco makes, in order to approach his new world outside the walls of Assisi, is sharing the elemental life of those who do not possess anything. He experiences deprivation by using “fratello corpo” (brother body), as he calls it. The body becomes the locus of all existential questions, the point of intersection between substance and spirit. Through the use of the body, one knows, and one actualizes the contact of the consciousness with mystery. Francesco is structured as a series of encounters, from the protagonist’s first glance at Chiara in his father’s shop to his last journey to San Damiano. In the opening scene, Chiara is kneeling on the ground as Francesco’s body, wrapped in a shroud, is being carried in to San Damiano and placed in front of the crucifix. As the camera booms down, Chiara moves over, kisses his hand, and lies next to him, with her head facing down. Narrated in flashbacks, a few years later, by Chiara and five of Francesco’s first followers in a white tent set on a mountain, the film establishes a temporal sacrality that is reminiscent of Milarepa, departing from the chronicle format of the earlier version. It is Chiara’s arrival to the tent (announced by the wind) that paves the way for a new consciousness to take form. She is shot from the inside through a triangular opening, to convey the feeling of a mystical apparition. The door is suggestive of a threshold leading to the innermost inwardness. It is her face that signals the beginning of the story, a flashback to the first time she saw Francesco. The paths of Francesco’s journey can be reduced to a system of mental and physical states: from the initial splendor of the images highlighting Francesco’s sumptuous clothing and food (heightened by warm colors), to his progressive physical decay, reflected in the smock, untidy beard, fasting, gray tonality, cold lighting, and a landscape that is wet, dark, spectrally medieval. Francesco’s body is confined within rigorous backgrounds. This is a claustrophobic film; it is a film without a sky. The elimination of the pictorial quality of the sky creates a psychological space that relates to the inner loneliness of Francesco’s experience. When Francesco is alone, he is placed to one side of the frame, a technique that emphasizes his concentration and spirituality. Only in the epiphanic moments is his body centered, as in the scene of the stigmata. In Francesco, as in Milarepa, we witness the transformation of the protagonist from confusion and tragic chaos to order, from blindness to vision. Francesco is the summa of corporeality in the cinema of Liliana Cavani: the body is the locus of the violence of history, of transgression, of cosmic wisdom.

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In these films, the question of power and knowledge, which is central to Cavani’s cinematic discourse, is posited within the spectacular settings of sociopolitical revolutions. Cavani places individuals against all that represents conservatism and conformity; their freedom of bodily gesture is set against the rhetoric and the rituals of power. This tendency to entertain new experiences, to represent a mode of imaginative behavior that explores altered states of consciousness and the limits of cultural conventions is fully displayed in the films of the German trilogy (Il portiere di notte, Al di là del bene e del male, and Interno berlinese), or in her last feature film, Il gioco di Ripley (Ripley’s Game, 2002), a psychological drama adapted from Patricia Highsmith’s celebrated Ripley series. The passion that led earlier protagonists to confront the social, political, and religious hierarchies of their times now fuels an inward journey centered in a scandalous love affair. Cavani introduces a state of mind more dangerous, in which the human subject is placed outside traditional morality. Her characters venture beyond the ordinary courses of their lives and seek to defy the emotional boundaries they routinely observe. Their obsession with a love of darkness and a taste for lawless sexual rites becomes a metaphor of violation and power. The altered states of consciousness her protagonists seek and achieve put them at the very limits of the human moral and spiritual order. Their position can prove precarious, a dramatic as well as existential possibility Cavani was set to explore in The Seventh Circle, but the script was shelved and never produced. The Seventh Circle is an intense psychological drama based on Leonard Simon’s Dissociated States (1994), a book Cavani had optioned for Lotar, her own production company. It tells the story of two psychiatrists, a man and his wife (Jake and Claire), who happen to accidentally find out that they have been treating the same patient (Alice), a woman who suffers from multiple personality disorder. Jake sets out to investigate Alice’s past. He discovers a pattern of violent behavior. He also visits Alice’s hometown and unveils a childhood tainted by sexual abuse. On the other hand, Claire guides Alice to reveal a number of enticing and disturbing personalities. The film climaxes in a kind of psychological siege where Claire and Alice, trapped in Alice’s own apartment, must confront each other. In such confrontations, Cavani sees all the hope and all the danger of leaving behind a more familiar mode of consciousness for an altered state of being in the world. Cavani’s latest film signals a return to the Franciscan world and its ideals. The idea of Le clarisse (2012), a documentary short, came to Cavani when she visited the convent of the Saint Clare nuns positioned upon a hill above the road to Urbino. When some months later she was asked by the

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Italian Bishops Conference (CEI) to participate in their annual gathering dedicated to “Gesù Cristo, nostro contemporaneo” (Jesus Christ, Our Contemporary), she thought it was a good idea not to speak but to show something visual. She went location scouting with a small crew and the documentary began to form in her mind.12 In Francesco, Cavani had already expanded the character of Chiara of Assisi (who founded her Order in 1212) to fuse social reality with the essence of the Franciscan message. The documentary opens with a close-up of nuns’ feet walking in the snow toward their convent set against a beautiful mountain. It is a cold winter day typical of Urbino’s barren and foggy landscape; grey clouds hovering over the broad planes of the Marche region, lost in profound solitude. A group of nuns, young and old, are positioned in a room as if they are about to have their picture taken, lit by available light. Cavani’s voice, offscreen, is heard asking questions. The interviews are conducted in a casual and calm style. Portrait-like shots of the nuns illustrate the surprisingly “normal” life of those who have chosen convent life. The subjects are composed frontally, a motif that repeats itself throughout the film. Cavani’s strategy is that of great simplicity and spiritual beauty. As the interviews go on, images of the convent’s daily routines are intercut. Such rawness reminds us of Cavani’s first film on Francis of Assisi. Cavani says “ho fatto domande di curiosità ed ho trovato le clarisse moderne, profonde, e naturalmente oneste” (I asked questions mainly out of curiosity and I found the clarisse (St. Clare nuns) to be modern, profound, and honest thinkers).13 The images and the interview are well chosen, and there is depth in every situation and sentiment. She shows a commitment to the subject matter that ranges from an intimate form of reporting to a heightened form of poetic transfiguration. The clarisse are not shown as solitary figures, but seem connected to the real world, with sparse moments of dialogue and gestures. At the film’s close, these serene figures, in their extraordinary existence, appear as embodiments of a rare, beautiful inner experience. Cavani’s documentary evokes the spirit of Francis of Assisi, forever present in her work: it is a spirit transposed into the modern figures of these nuns, who symbolize a spiritual and dynamic vision of the world. At the time she was filming Francesco, she declared that “per la sua immensa coscienza Francesco è attuale. La sua idea vissuta della fraternità è straordinaria e modernissima, è anzi l’ultima sponda” (Francesco is still valid today for his immense sense of consciousness. His concrete way of living brotherhood is extraordinary and very modern. It is our last frontier) (Riches 1989: 133–134). In Le Clarisse, Cavani creates a genuinely new mode of portraying the Francescan experience while presenting his

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notion of “concrete brotherhood” as not only still relevant for the modern world, but important for its future. As the filmmaker of life’s adventurous journeys, Cavani searches out new spiritual and social experiences, even when she captures the world of everyday life. Her work, she has said, “è come un viaggio aperto con cui cerco di rispondere, secondo la mia esperienza, a delle domande antiche; ma poi chiedo altre domande, e il viaggio continua” (is like an open journey with which I try to answer, from experience, some ancient questions; but then I ask more questions and the search continues).14 Currently, Cavani is continuing her journey with another Francesco script. It is an idea that moves beyond the contemporary moment into the future. Notes 1. For monographic studies on Cavani to date, see in particular Ciriaco Tiso, Liliana Cavani, Il Castoro cinema 21 (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1975); Paola Tallarigo and Luca Gasparini, eds., Il cinema di Liliana Cavani: Lo sguardo libero (Florence: La Casa Usher, 1990); Primo Goldoni, ed., Il cinema di Liliana Cavani (Casalecchio di Reno, Bologna: Grafis Edizioni, 1993); Francesco Buscemi, Invito al cinema di Liliana Cavani (Milan: Mursia, 1996); Giacomo Martini, Piera Raimondi Cominesi, and Davide Zanza, eds., Liliana Cavani (Alessandria: Falsopiano, 2008); Francesca Brignoli, Liliana Cavani: Ogni possibile viaggio (Recco, Genova: Le Mani, 2011); and my The Gaze and the Labyrinth: The Cinema of Liliana Cavani (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000) as well as the enlarged Italian edition, Lo sguardo e il labirinto: Il cinema di Liliana Cavani (Venice: Marsilio, 2003). 2. Unless otherwise cited, all translations are mine. 3. The main scenes are identified by intertitles and follow a chronological order: the trial, the rebuilding of old churches, the sanctioning of the Order of Friar Minors by Innocent III, the mission to the Orient and his new disciples, Francesco’s illness. Cavani’s intention was to reconstruct historical events from the perspective of a contemporary chronicler. See Aldo Tassone, Parla il cinema italiano (Milan: Il Formichiere, 1980), 2: 124–125. 4. Cavani’s ideal of transcendence accounts for her use of the tableau as a theatrical metaphor, which translates the temporal sequence of the story into a spatial continuum, which in her 1989 Francesco highlights the figures’ density and independence within the actual historical milieu. 5. Beginning with Francesco di Assisi, Cavani shows a preoccupation with the tension between the body and its background. Buildings and sets affirm such an opposition in later films as well. For example, the baroque theatrical settings of Galileo’s trial by the Inquisition visualize the labyrinthine paths of power; so does Antigone’s torture machine in I cannibali. A centripetal public gaze always encircles such Cavanian characters, whose body movement is choreographed to expose their demise in the historical present.

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6. On Franciscan madness and the scandal of the Cross, see Michel Foucault, Histoire de la folie à l’âge classique (Paris: Gallimard, 1972), 170–173. 7. I am quoting from the director’s film treatment of Galileo (Archival Collection). 8. Cited from the film treatment (Archival Collection). 9. Ibid. 10. See Kaja Silverman, The Acoustic Mirror: The Female Voice in Psychoanalysis and Cinema (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1988), 219–220. For Silverman, Antigone is the only one of Cavani’s female characters who could be said to be “politically engaged.” 11. As she will later address in Dove siete? Io sono qui (Where are you? I’m Here, 1993), a film that recounts the love story of two young deaf people, a homage to silence. 12. Le clarisse was produced by Lotar and Ciao Ragazzi. It was shown at the sixty-ninth Venice Film Festival, where it was awarded the Francesco Pasinetti special prize. 13. Personal interview, February 18, 2013. 14. Cited from an interview with an unindentified journalist, “Quattro domande a Liliana Cavani regista,” Se Vuoi 5 (1967): 13.

Bibliography Bolzoni, Francesco. “Lo scandalo di Francesco.” Orizzonti, June 5, 1966: 27–33. Brignoli, Francesca. Liliana Cavani: Ogni possibile viaggio. Recco, Genova: Le Mani, 2011. Buscemi, Francesco. Invito al cinema di Liliana Cavani. Milan: Mursia, 1996. Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. 2nd ed. Bollingen Series XVII. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968. Cavani, Liliana. “Il ribelle in perfetta letizia.” Cinecircoli 5 (January–February 1967): 3. Clouzot, Claire. “Liliana Cavani: Le Mythe, le sexe et la révolte.” Écran 26 (June 1974): 36–46. Foucault, Michel. Histoire de la folie à l’âge classique. Paris: Gallimard, 1972. Goldoni, Primo, ed. Il cinema di Liliana Cavani. Casalecchio di Reno, Bologna: Grafis Edizioni, 1993. Marrone, Gaetana. The Gaze and the Labyrinth: The Cinema of Liliana Cavani. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000. Italian enlarged ed. Lo sguardo e il labirinto: Il cinema di Liliana Cavani. Venice: Marsilio, 2003. Martini, Giacomo, Piera Raimondi Cominesi, and Davide Zanza, eds. Liliana Cavani. Alessandria: Falsopiano, 2008. Mori, Anna Maria. “Passione a quattro con idolo in kimono.” La repubblica, April 18, 1985: 17. Moscati, Italo. “Il Galileo di Liliana Cavani.” Cineforum 8 (October 1968): 594–597.

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_____. “Per seminare inquietitudine.” In Milarepa di Liliana Cavani, edited by I. Moscati, 31–45. Bologna: Cappelli, 1974. Pasolini, Pier Paolo. “La pazzesca razionalità della geometria religiosa.” Cinema nuovo 23:229 (May–June 1974): 184–187. “Quattro domande a Liliana Cavani regista.” Se Vuoi 5 (1967): 13. Riches, Pierre. “Il vangelo alla lettera.” In Francesco, L. Cavani and Roberta Mazzoni, 125–143. Milan: Leonardo, 1989. Silverman, Kaja. The Acoustic Mirror: The Female Voice in Psychoanalysis and Cinema. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1988. Tallarigo, Paola, and Luca Gasparini, eds. Il cinema di Liliana Cavani: Lo sguardo libero. Florence: La Casa Usher, 1990. Tassone, Aldo. Parla il cinema italiano. Vol. 2. Milan: Il Formichiere, 1980. Tiso, Ciriaco. Liliana Cavani, Il Castoro cinema 21. Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1975. Turner, Victor W. The Forest of Symbols. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1967.

Filmography Shorts Incontro di Notte (Night Encounter; 1961) La Battaglia (The Battle; 1962) Documentaries La vita militare (The Military Life; 1961) Gente di teatro (Theater People; 1961) Storia del terzo Reaich (History of the Third Reich; 1961–1962) Età di Stalin (The Age of Stalin; 1962) L’uomo della burocrazia (The Bureaucrat; 1963) Assalto al consumatore (Assault on the Consumer; 1963) La casa in Italia (Housing in Italy; 1964) Gesù mio fratello (My Brother Jesus; 1964) Il giorno della pace (Day of Peace; 1965) La donna nella resistenza (Women of the Resistance; 1965) Philippe Pétain: processo a Vichy (Trial at Vichy; 1965) Le clarisse (The St. Clare Nuns; 2012) Feature Films Francesco di Assisi (Francis of Assisi; 1966) Galileo (1968) I cannibali (The Cannibals; 1969) L’ospite (The Guest; 1971) Milarepa (1973) Il portiere di notte (The Night Porter; 1974) Al di là del bene e del male (Beyond Good and Evil; 1977)

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La Pelle (The Skin; 1980) Oltre la porta (Beyond the Door; 1982) Interno berlinese (The Berlin Affair; 1985) Francesco (1989) Dove siete? Io sono qui (Where Are You? I’m Here; 1993) Il gioco di Ripley (Ripley’s Game; 2002) De Gasperi: l’uomo della speranza (De Gasperi: Man of Hope, Made for RAI-TV; 2005) Einstein (Made for RAI-TV; 2008) Troppo amore (Stalking), episode of the RAI-TV Series Un Corpo in Vendita (A Body for Sale; 2011)

Operas Wozzeck, by Alban Berg. Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Florence, 1979 Iphigenie en Tauride, by Christoph W. Gluck. Opéra de Paris, 1984 Medea, by Luigi Cherubini. Opéra de Paris, 1986 Medea, by Luigi Cherubini. Teatro Comunale, Florence, 1986 La Traviata, by Giuseppe Verdi. Teatro alla Scala, Milan, 1990 Cardillac, by Paul Hindemith. Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Florence, 1991 Jenufa, by Leos Janàcek. Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Florence, 1993 La vestale, by Gaspare Spontini. Teatro alla Scala, Milan, 1993 La Cena delle Beffe, by Umberto Giordano. Zürich Opera, 1995 Cavalleria Rusticana, by Pietro Mascagni. Ravenna Festival, 1996 Manon Lescaut, by Giacomo Puccini. Teatro alla Scala, Milan, 1998 Pagliacci, by Ruggero Leoncavallo. Ravenna Festival, 1998 Orfeo e Euridice, by Cristoph W. Gluck. Zürich Opera, 2000 Il Ballo in Maschera, by Giuseppe Verdi. Teatro alla Scala, Milan, 2001 La Traviata, by Giuseppe Verdi. Teatro degli Arcimboldi, Milan, 2002 Werther, by Jules Massenet. Teatro Comunale, Bologna, 2004 Alceste, by Christoph W. Gluck. Teatro Regio, Parma, 2005 Macbeth, by Giuseppe Verdi. Teatro Regio, Parma, 2006

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Healing the Daughter’s Body in Francesca Archibugi’s Il Grande Cocomero Daniela De Pau

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n this essay, I explore the connection between women’s mental health and gender violence within the Italian family through the analysis of a destructive mother-daughter relationship and the resulting transgenerational transmission of psychological problems that allow, from a female perspective, gender discrimination to perpetuate. With this intent, I discuss the story of domestic violence as portrayed by director Francesca Archibugi in her 1993 film Il grande cocomero (The Great Pumpkin), interpreting it as a case of Münchausen Syndrome by proxy (a form of child abuse), whose origins lie in the mother’s conformity to misogynistic sociocultural norms. I therefore perceive the mother’s mental disorder not as the result of a decontextualized individual pathology, but from a feminist perspective, regarding it as a symptom of a collective problem, caused by the unequal way in which relationships between genders are structured in a patriarchal society. Laura Terragni (2000: 40) observed that the issue of violence against women is constantly redefined according to new behavioral norms and that women are finally relevant and authoritative political subjects in the process of the (re)conceptualization of the phenomenon. This process includes a broader collective perception of the concept and subjective redefinitions of violence based on the degree of tolerance that each woman assigns to the thresholds of her body and her intimacy (40). Thanks to the media, the issue is also obtaining considerable public attention, which helps to promote a diffused awareness and multiple investigative

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interests on the matter. Regarding the recent critical reassessments of the issue, two feminist theorists, Diana Russell and Marcela Lagarde y de los Rios, have offered particularly significant contributions. In Femicide: The Politics of Woman Killing (1992), the American criminologist Russell introduced the term “femicide,” intended with political meaning to indicate the misogynistic murders of women by men in all patriarchal cultures. Later, in Femicide in Global Perspective (2001), she expanded the notion of “femicide” to comprise all forms of sexist killings of female subjects (including babies) that were motivated by, among other reasons, male feelings of entitlement, propriety, and superiority over women, leading to various practices of dominance over the female body. Inspired by Russell and Radford’s book, the Mexican anthropologist and activist Lagarde y de los Rios changed the term “femicide” into “feminicide” and further elaborated the concept in order for it to encompass all violent conditions that lead to the annihilation of women.1 By her definition, the term “feminicide” indicates one of the extreme forms of gender violence that manifests itself in various modes of socially constructed discrimination against women—psychological, monetary, educational, physical and moral—which can culminate in their overt or covert murder or suicide. “Feminicide” occurs, she adds, when the state is incapable of guaranteeing respect for women’s lives and when it fails to administer justice to prevent and eradicate the causes of violence (Lagarde 2010: xxiii). She also points out that fighting against “feminicide” ultimately equates to fighting for human rights, and thus in a democratic society women must have access to power to ensure that their rights are recognized and respected (xxiii). As a result of the achievements of the women rights movement, this empowerment is commonly recognized as a necessity to maintain healthy values in society and include the stipulation that women should be guaranteed the possibility to possess resources, skills, capacities, and consequently mentalities in favor of their lives. Nevertheless, violence against women still persists and contemporary campaigns to oppose this phenomenon entail a new set of struggles. Patrizia Romito (2008a: 22–23) observes that stopping male violence “is not just a question of changing the law and behavior, but of bringing into question a structured and deep seated system of control and privilege.” Barbara Spinelli (2008: 24) points out that in our globalized postcapitalistic and neoconservativist times, interpersonal relationships have become more uncertain, creating a social inequality that particularly affects women and that forces them into multiple precarious and unstable roles. In such times, she continues, the more women call for independence and fair treatment

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of their rights, the more some men, in collaboration with androcentric ideas diffused in society, wish them to return to the “natural” role of wife/ mother, thus keeping them controllable subjects. She also remarks that the current gender discrimination is “more blended, less evident” and therefore more acceptable to Western women, bringing about a phase of “subdued and submerged activism” of European feminism, which she wishes would display greater activity (25). Flavia Laviosa (2012: 39) notes that recently transnational migration has been importing into Western cultures family structures and belief systems that are incompatible with the values of gender equality predicated by the West, such as in the case of honor killing, inevitably leading to intercultural and intergenerational clashes. Finally, Laura Terragni (2000: 40) states that questioning the patriarchal system on one hand made women stronger, but on the other hand it made them more vulnerable to violence, because the perception of losing power causes in some men to even more aggressive and violent behaviors. From these critical voices, it is possible to conclude that building a fairer culture still constitutes a complex and extended endeavor, as the challenge involves sociocultural and politicoadministrative as well as human and individual factors. Furthermore, the necessity of culturally destigmatizing the concept of woman with power, in both the private and public spheres, involves great challenges for both men and women, as they need to reconceptualize the relationships between genders and rethink their masculinity and femininity both separately and in relation to each other. This collective effort is particularly relevant to the private sphere where, as criminologist Anna Costanza Baldry (2011: 189) affirms, domestic violence fundamentally constitutes the product of a choice made by both the perpetrator and the victim, with complicated dynamics between them. In this realm, the problem concerns the capability of the male perpetrator to recognize both the negativity of certain behaviors and attitudes on his part and his will to change, as well as the capacity of the victim to understand that her surrendering to violence and consequent possible annihilation derives not from a personal choice, but from a cultural conditioning that persuades her to believe that she is responsible for maintaining the relationship (189). In order to consider this important dual aspect of a close relationship, I examine the case of domestic violence portrayed in Archibugi’s film from both sides: from a female point of view through the analysis of a harmful bond between a mother and her daughter, to offer a critical examination of the causes of their victimhood; and from a male perspective by analyzing a doctor-patient relationship, which reveals the man’s need to overcome his role as victimizer.

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Il grande cocomero, Archibugi’s third production, continues the investigation of Italian family dynamics begun in her earlier films, Mignon è partita (1988) and Verso Sera (1990), in which she dealt with changes in the concept of family at the end of the 1980s. In the later work, she analyzes the reasons for dysfunctionality in two families, exploring the lives of three characters who suffered trauma on account of misunderstood love. More specifically, she illustrates the psychologically difficult process of a woman who tries to free herself from an oppressive mother role, conceived in her case as a cultural imposition; the necessity to save her daughter, upon whom the chain of female oppression was transmitted; and the redemption of a man with a violent past. The plot narrates Pippi’s therapy, a 12-year-old female borderline patient suffering from epilepsy, with her dedicated child psychotherapist Arturo, who discovers that Pippi’s attacks are self-induced due to a difficult family situation. The young girl uses her illness to try to keep her family together. In this work, the director explores the delicate issue of psychological violence exercised against children because, as she explains, “the relationship with a child helps us to uncover and go to the bottom of our inquietudes in the ridge that universally separates a ‘normal’ life from pathology (Grassi 1992: 20).” Narrating the story of the treatment of a case of child abuse, the film unveils the reasons why, by curing Pippi’s body and mind, Arturo will also succeed in healing adults’ wounds. Pippi’s therapy reveals first and foremost the neurosis of the mother, Cinzia, who is affected by Münchausen Syndrome by proxy, a form of child abuse derived from hypercare. This mental condition occurs when the primary caretaker, usually the mother, fabricates and/or induces in her child an illness, either physical or mental, while repeatedly seeking medical attention for the symptoms but denying any knowledge of their causes. As portrayed in the film, the discovery of Cinzia’s illness is problematic, since the nature of her abuse is hidden in her psyche. In these cases, the abuse is difficult to detect for two reasons: the borders between fictitious/ real and spontaneous/induced disorders are blurred, and the caretaker who inflicts the damage often acts in good faith and legitimately deceives herself by believing that her child is sick, without realizing that the illness is the involuntarily fulfillment of her own expectations (Gulotta 2007: xiii, xiv). The film opens with Pippi’s hospitalization following a severe seizure, at which point Cinzia appears to be very nervous and asks Arturo to give her daughter strong sedatives to calm her. She informs him that Pippi displays rebellious behavior at home and that her illness started when she was 3 months old—with high fevers—and has since been diagno-sed as essentially cryptogenetic epilepsy after 20 consultations with medical specialists. In this way, Cinzia presents herself to Arturo as a concerned

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and dedicated mother. In reality, we learn later that her concern is only illusory, not real, because she is emotionally absent when alone with Pippi. For example, when one day Pippi is late arriving home from school, although worried, Cinzia fails to recognize the truth when her daughter tells her she is unwell having smoked drugs. Being unconsciously unable to take care of her child, Cinzia neither investigates further nor pays her attention. She simply tells Pippi she loves her and turns up the volume of the TV again. The little girl, ignored, goes to her room and has an epileptic fit. The causes for Cinzia’s syndrome, a dissatisfied woman who believes that her life consists of “always peeling potatoes,” clearly emerge during a session of family therapy, when she recalls her painful child birth and the lack of physical resemblance the baby had to her, since she was born darkhaired like her father. With these words, the viewer deduces her deep estrangement toward Pippi and her association of motherhood with pain. Pippi is indeed an unwanted child, fruit of an unplanned pregnancy at the beginning of a rebound relationship and represents in Cinzia’s mind, a mistake. Instead, Cinzia loved her highly cultured cousin, who left her for an educated woman who lacked her physical beauty. Heartbroken, she persuaded herself to marry a man who had become rich through illegal activities in order to provide a family for the child. The director here seems to suggest that education is a prerequisite for love, because ignorance permits other feelings to be mistaken for love. Cinzia then became trapped in a mendacious life, since money could not secure her happiness and her child was unable to repair her loveless relationship with her husband. In summary, she became the victim of a “failed abortion,” a psychological state usually reached when a mother forces herself into a subconsciously undesired maternity. When this occurs, a woman develops the feeling that the fetus is a vampire and, after a fierce “uterine war,” establishes with the baby a dynamic of destroy/be destroyed which, in order to overcome, she transforms into an excess of care (Bal Filoramo 2007: 50–51). Subjugating herself to the patriarchal belief that women are selfless nurturers by nature, Cinzia naively gives up the ownership of her life, so her syndrome becomes her unconscious desperate cry for help against the role of women prescribed by society, and with which she identifies, thus obscuring a covert desire of infanticide. Diana Russell (Russell and Harmes 2001: 91) states that introducing women to social life with the belief that it is their duty to spend the majority of their life and energy staying at home raising children, instead of pursuing a remunerated job as men do, constitutes one of the five foundations of “gynocide” that is a “systemic violence aiming to exterminate women as a gender.” Furthermore, Ann Oakley notes that in a patriarchal society maternity is a “colonized place,” and a context in which women can become the worst enemies for other women (Romito 2008b: 17) and, I

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add, for themselves as well, as in the case of Archibugi’s character. Cinzia, however, denies that she was forced to make a personal sacrifice in order to abide by the rules of male authority over her sexuality. The act of denying, emphasizes Romito (2008a: 95), represents a powerful strategy to hide gender violence and takes place when “it becomes difficult to avoid seeing the violence, or consider it legitimate, or systematically distort its meaning with impunity.” By disregarding her right to procreate or not, Cinzia denies the social inequality of her gender and, in so doing, confuses “selfdeception with self-protection” (124). Romito, furthermore, suggests that the link between violence and women’s mental issues should be studied in greater depth because women pay a very high price for their subordinate mindset in terms of suffering and bad health, conditions that cannot be addressed and treated if the causes of their problems remain unknown (123). Cinzia’s behavior naturally corresponds to the psychology of the oppressed, as she shows fear of her freedom by consciously following the prescribed guidelines of the oppressor. Her behavior falls into the first paradigm of male-female relationship in violent situations cited by Bimbi (2000a: 43, 44), which occurs when the body and the mind of women are considered a logical extension of the natural dominion of men over them.2 Within this paradigm, violence is not considered as such, because the intersubjectivity between men and women (or men and children) is not postulated, and therefore the victims share the same cultural values of the perpetrator (44). Regardless of the extent of cultural freedom, abortion in any culture very often represents a difficult choice and rarely occurs without serious motivations. Silvia Vegetti Finzi (1996: 286, 292) affirms that procreation— situated at a border between body and psyche, conscious and unconscious, self and other, subjectivity and society—represents a highly tumultuous event, fruit of an internal process that demands to be accepted not only by the female body but also by her psychic womb. Possibly, the woman can refuse the proposal of her body to embrace the other. Nevertheless, Vegetti Finzi asserts that this uncertain union with the other represents a risk worth taking to guarantee a free, conscious, and responsible choice of maternity, which can serve to prevent a traumatic future for the woman and her child (292). The Italian psychotherapist explains that our knowledge of the maternal process is still so embryonic that the evaluation of negative or positive effects of an undesired maternity can only be very approximate, despite the frequent incidence of this trauma of origin in psychoanalytic therapies (287). It is these same negative effects that Archibugi’s film aims to illustrate. Cinzia’s involuntary self-annihilation (which transforms her from being a victim to being a victimizer) has indeed terrible repercussions for

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Pippi, who unconsciously destroys herself to comply with her mother’s unspoken request to be sick. Following a paradigmatic victim–victimizer relationship, she accepts the role of the sickly, to complement her mother’s needs, who needs to believe that she is sick. This particular dynamic takes place when the child’s illness is attributed by the mother to the faults of the father; the child then in turn validates her mother’s thesis that she conceived a sick baby, with an unconscious pact for which the illness serves as proof, confirming what the mother is afraid her child might be, due to a mechanism of “behavioral confirmation” (Gulotta 2007: xiv). Unable to oppose the parental request due to his/her vulnerable and dependent position, the child “spontaneously” feels sick because he/she has been induced to think this way, and consequently runs the danger of rendering the illness chronic, which in the meantime has become real, as a result of the mother’s counterfeiting the child’s “self” (xiv). At her preadolescent phase, Pippi has essentially become a borderline patient close to psychosis, resisting changes out of fear of losing the relationship with her parents. She has learned to use epilepsy as a tool to combat frustration of her need to be loved. Despite her skepticism of doctors and psychotherapists, Pippi starts therapy thanks to Arturo’s winning her trust with the promise that if she undertakes the therapy with him, she will find a magical encounter, her own “great pumpkin” as in Charles Schulz’s Peanuts: namely herself. Indeed she will be successfully treated by Arturo who, in order to fulfill his promise, will adopt the following strategy: he will shift her self-perception from being a victim to being a healer; he will change her surroundings, and ultimately help her to experience a new relationship with her mother. During therapy, Pippi is removed from her family, becomes able to socialize with other patients in the clinic, and develops a strong bond with Arturo, marked by two crucial moments: she “adopts” him as a father figure, in place of her absent father; and Arturo, accepting his new role, in turn entrusts her with that of “doctor” in order to overcome her understanding of herself as a patient, after he notices that she gives affectionate care to a young brain-damaged patient named Marinella. At the same time, Pippi also takes on the role of mother for Marinella. Thanks to these events, she can finally reconstruct the paradigms of a healthy family (based on the ability to constructively resolve conflicts and solve problems), with rehabilitated roles of mother and father, now conceived in a positive sense. Ultimately, by drawing Pippi into his life, making her feel accepted, encouraging her to accept the outside world and to interact confidently with other people, Arturo succeeds in his treatment. She no longer feels excluded from life and reconciles with her femininity. In trying to help Pippi, however, Arturo removes Marinella from her loving mother, who unlike Cinzia does not conceive

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motherhood as a sacrifice and is thus happy to be with her needy child, and erroneously understands her to be a curable case.3 Archibugi modeled the character of Arturo on the famous Italian psychotherapist Marco Lombardo Radice, whose 1991 book Una concretissima utopia inspired her idea of the film (Corriere della Sera 20). Lombardo Radice conceived a then-innovative therapeutic approach for children and adolescents, based on the belief that they needed to be listened to and not merely given medicines. He argued that the lack of affection they received could be compensated for with time, love, and attention. In “Bambini e violenza: per salvare il futuro,” Radice (2010: 40) demonstrated great foresight in understanding that, apart from the most conspicuous cases of sexual and physical abuse, violence against children cannot be represented with clearly classifiable behaviors, because behaviors are only symptoms of a “possible” preexisting violent situation—such as emotional abuse—and should be considered and treated accordingly. In the film, the therapy does not consist of sedatives, but rather of a genuine involvement with the patient that exceeds the regular 50-minute sessions. When asked in an interview in 2010 for the reasons why the topic of physical illness and recovery from it in a hospital recurs in seven of her ten films, Archibugi stated that after having dealt with the subject for so long, she finally understood that “when the body breaks, the mind starts to heal and the illness becomes a reason for changing” (Laviosa 2010: 216). The process of the healing of the body, also conceived as a plot device, fascinates the director because it allows her the possibility of exploring the underlying factors that generate an illness, since its discovery ultimately leads to the mending of the mind. While disclosing the family dynamics that caused the illness, the director simultaneously proposes an alternative ethics of cure to the medicalization of the female body in young psychiatric patients. Arturo approaches Pippi’s illness within the context of her environment, taking her history into account. His method contrasts with conventional medical procedures used to treat mental patients. According to standardized medical techniques, when an insane person enters an asylum, he/she stops being considered insane and is simply regarded as ill, and therefore treated as rational (Colucci 2005: 2). The body undergoes a medicalization process according to which it becomes the tamed site over which to wield a disciplinary power: it is “normalized, supervised and measured” (2). Arturo’s medical approach, instead, following Lombardo Radice’s convictions, respects patients’ individual dignity, even more so because of their young age, convictions that were precursors of some Italian laws to protect children and adolescents in violent families (law 154, 2001) and guarantee their rights (law 285, 1997).4 The Roman psychotherapist dedicated his attention to young patients because he considered their treatment, although more

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“uncertain, unsafe, and tempestuous,” as promising the highest possibility of achieving results that were not limited to rehabilitation (as in most adult cases), but also led to therapeutic gains, thus making a greater impact on children’s lives (Lombardo Radice 2010: 129). Furthermore, the doctor’s successful ethics of cure is useful in providing guidance for the healing of victims of gender violence, who sometimes are not given proper consideration, nor attention by staff working in shelters, police stations, or other institutions, where violence is often minimized or the victim is blamed or psychologized (Romito 2000–2001: 76). In this regard, Archibugi clearly denounces in the film the existence of violence in the Policlinico Umberto I, the hospital where Pippi was admitted and Lombardo Radice served as a director, stemming from obsolete medical practices and struggles with organizational matters. In addition, Arturo, in the same way as Pippi, is waiting for his own great pumpkin. The director portrays the way in which these characters represent their reciprocal magical encounter, because Arturo also has his own wound to heal: his guilt at forcing his ex-wife to abort against her wishes, due to his disgust at sick children at the beginning of his career in the mental institution.5 On one hand then, Arturo’s medical practice constitutes a paradigmatic model of a doctor who fights the oppression of the most vulnerable people (children and adolescents with physical/ psychological disturbances) with the healing power of language, establishing a communication conducive to understanding and love. On the other hand though, he is also a man with a “homicidal” past, because he “killed” a mother’s hopes for the future by aborting the baby she desired. He is only able to make amends for his deed in the same place where the violence originated, at work, by acting as a caring father substitute for Pippi, and through this relationship being able to return to the world the love he had once denied. Ultimately, Archibugi conceives of a symbolic redemption for the violent crimes committed against the female body by patriarchy, which—as Lea Melandri recounts in Amore e violenza. Il fattore molesto della civiltà—were obscured behind laws, traditions, behavioral norms, and an exercise of power that was considered “natural,” and that were, for the most part, carried out within intimate relationships often relating to the control over women’s sexuality and maternity (Melandri 2011: 96). Excluding the rare cases of serious individual mental pathologies, domestic violence is the result of a structural risk, based on a misinterpreted “gender contract” on which families are built (Bimbi 2000b: 29). In relation to further progress in the study of the subject, Vittoria Tola (2000: 25) ascertains the need to research quantitative data and qualitative forms regarding violence against women and its changing manifestations, in order to understand how, when, and why a man develops a violent personality and to define the factors that cause a woman to

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accept or challenge such a notion. She proposes that, in order to establish a culture of reciprocal respect and individual freedom, society as a whole needs to change the perception of gender violence by promoting positive interactions between the sexes and preventing the stigmatization or punishment of the abused subject (25). In this regard, Archibugi suggests that it is possible to redress the negative consequences on children of men’s secular dominance over women through dialogue and understanding. By healing the violence perpetrated on the body of his “adopted” daughter, Arturo will acquire a reconciled male identity and a positive role within society. At the same time, the two female characters, Pippi and Cinzia, caught in the middle of gender violence, will gain the freedom to rebuild their own lives, provided that they do not forget to learn from the mistakes of their past. Director’s Biography Francesca Archibugi is one of the most important contemporary Italian female directors. She was born in Rome in 1960, where she graduated in Film Direction at Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in 1983. She later attended the Bassano School, led by director Ermanno Olmi, and studied scriptwriting with Furio Scarpelli and Ugo Pirri. In the early 1980s she appeared in several films as an actress and subsequently decided to start her career as a scriptwriter and director. She has won numerous national and international awards for her cinematic productions, which include: Mignon è partita (1988), Verso sera (1990), Il grande cocomero (1993), L’albero delle pere (1998), Lezioni di volo (2006), and Questione di cuore (2009). Archibugi’s favorite themes focus on poignant private stories, such as the difficulties that children and adolescents encounter in their path to maturity, and the tensions that arise among friends and members of the same family, which she links with greater national events and social transformations in order to interpret them starting from their impact on the private sphere. While her style is simple and traditional, her complex stories explore the depth of human feelings and sentiments with a subtle and delicate touch, revealing her profound social engagement though cinema. Notes 1.

Lagarde y de los Rios used the term “feminicidio” in her translation of the Russell and Radford book, titled “Feminicidio. La política del asesinato de las mujeres.” Coedición CEIICH-UNAM/Comisión Especial para Conocer y dar Seguimiento a las Investigaciones Relacio, 2006.

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2. The second paradigm refers to instances when the woman is considered the property of the enemies, as in the cases of ethnic rapes, and the third when the woman is considered belonging to an antagonist social group. 3. In the film Archibugi depicts three models of mothers, Arturo’s exwife, Cinzia, and Marinella’s mother, to indicate the multiplicities of sentiments and subjectivities in relation to different experiences of motherhood. 4. Law 154 refers to the measures against violence in family relations. http:// www.salute.gov.it/imgs/C_17_normativa_1558_allegato.pdf and Law 285 refers to the promotion of rights and opportunities for children and adolescents. http://www.camera.it/parlam/leggi/97285l.htm 5. It is relevant to note that Arturo is forgiven for his deed by his friend-priest and not by his wife, who decides to divorce him. Arturo’s wife, a woman who leaves him and conceives her desired child with another man, is played by Archibugi. Her personal presence reinforces the film’s message regarding the freedom to procreate or not for women, and the specific rejection of men’s impositions on the matter. The director then implies that Arturo’s behavior is to be condemned not because he “committed a sin” against the teachings of the Catholic Church, but because he violated women’s reproductive rights.

Bibliography Bal Filoramo, Liliana. “Analisi psicogiuridica e psicodinamica: la trasmissione transgenerazionale.” In La famiglia distruttiva. MSbP, syndrome di Münchausen per procura, edited by Gabriella Perusia, 41–58. Torino: Centro Scientifico Editore, 2007. Baldry, Anna Costanza. Dai maltrattamenti all’omicidio. La valutazione del rischio di recidiva e dell’uxoricidio. Milan: Franco Angeli, (2006) 2011. Bimbi, Franca. “Tipologie di violenza e relazioni sociali.” In Libertà femminile e violenza sulle donne, edited by Cristina Adami, Alberta Basaglia, Franca Bimbi, and Vittoria Tola, 43–54. Milan: Franco Angeli, 2000a. ———. “Violenza di genere, spazio pubblico, pratiche sociali.” In Dentro la violenza: cultura, pregiudizi, stereotipi, edited by Cristina Adami, Alberta Basaglia, and VittoriaTola, 27–40. Milan: Franco Angeli, 2000b. Colucci, Mario. “Medicalizzazione.” In Lessico di biopolitica, edited by Renata Brandimarte, 1–5. Rome: Manifesto Libri, 2005. http://www.deistituzionalizzazione-trieste.it/letteratura/Letteratura/colucci_2005_medicalizzazione. pdf. Grassi, Giovanna. Corriere della Sera. Archivio Storico NOINDC (August 6, 1992): 20 (accessed on March 23, 2013). http://archiviostorico.corriere.it/1992/ agosto/06/NOINDC_co_0_9208065118.shtml. Gulotta, Guglielmo. “Prefazione.” In La famiglia distruttiva. MSbP, syndrome di Münchausen per procura, edited by Gabriella Perusia, xiii–xv. Turin: Centro Scientifico Editore, 2007.

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Lagarde y de los Rios, Marcela. “Preface: Feminist Keys for Understanding Feminicide.” In Terrorizing women. Feminicide in the Américas, edited by Rosa-Linda Fregoso and Cinzia Bejarano, xi–xxvi. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2010. Laviosa, Flavia. “‘Il lavoro di raccontare il nostro tempo’: il cinema di Francesca Archibugi.” In Zoom “d’oltreoceano”: istantanee sui registi italiani e sull’Italia, edited by Daniela De Pau and Simone Dubrovic, 203–220. Manziana; Rome: Vecchiarelli, 2010. ———. “Screening Honor Killings in Western European Countries.” In Honor Killing. A Study on Italy and Europe, edited by Anna Cafaro, 38–49. I quaderni della libellula. November 2012. http://www.lalibellulaitalianistica.it/blog/ wpcontent/uploads/2012/11/HonorKillingEditAnnaCafaro.pdf. Law number 154, April 5, 2001. “Measures against Violence in Family Relations.” http://www.salute.gov.it/imgs/C_17_normativa_1558_allegato.pdf (accessed on March 23, 2013). Law number 285, August 28, 1997. “Promotion of Rights and Opportunities for Children and Adolescents.” http://www.camera.it/parlam/leggi/97285l.htm (accessed on March 23, 2013). Lombardo Radice, Marco. Una concretissima utopia. Rome: Progetti dell’asino, 2010. Melandri, Lea. Amore e violenza. Il fattore molesto della civiltà. Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 2011. Romito, Patrizia. A Deafening Silence. Hidden Violence against Women and Children. Bristol: Policy Press, 2008. ———. La violenza di genere su donne e minori. Milan: Franco Angeli, 2000; 2001. ———. “Presentazione.” In Femminicidio. Dalla denuncia sociale al riconoscimento giuridico internazionale, Barbara Spinelli, 11–18. Milan: Franco Angeli, 2008b. Russell, Diana D., and Roberta A. Harmes. Feminicidio: una perspectiva global. Mexico: UNAM Centro de Investigaciones Interdisciplinaria en Ciencias y Humanidades, 2006 (translation from Feminicide in Global Perspective, New York: Teachers College Press, 2001). Spinelli, Barbara. Femminicidio. Dalla denuncia sociale al riconoscimento giuridico internazionale. Milan: Franco Angeli, 2008. Terragni, Laura. “Le definizioni di violenza.” In Adami et al., Libertà femminile e violenza sulle donne, , 29–42. Tola, Vittoria. “Pratiche delle donne e violenza maschile.” In Adami et al., Libertà femminile e violenza sulle donne, 15–25. Vegetti Finzi, Silvia. “Per la costruzione di un’autorità femminile.” Iride, filosofia e discussion e pubblica 8.15 (1995): 283–294.

Filmography Mignon è partita (1988) Verso sera (1990) Il grande cocomero (1993)

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Con gli occhi chiusi (1994) La strana storia di banda sonora (1997) L’albero delle pere (1998) Domani (2000) Renzo e Lucia (2004) Lezioni di volo (2006) Questione di cuore (2009)

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Motherhood Revisited in Francesca Comencini’s Lo Spazio Bianco Claudia Karagoz

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n accomplished director from a well-known family of filmmakers, Francesca Comencini is also an outspoken critic of the misrepresentation of women in the Italian media, and of right-wing legislative interventions regulating women’s sexuality and reproductive rights.1 For example, Comencini is one of the founding members of Se non ora quando (SNOQ), an organization created in 2011 by a diverse group of activists to protest against the attack on women’s dignity and self-determination in Italian society.2 The creation of SNOQ and the spreading of similar protests throughout Italy in the past decade are evidence of the growing societal discontent for the degraded state of gender relations, and for the state’s attempt to control women’s reproductive choices.3 According to the founders of SNOQ, the representation of women as “naked objects of sexual exchange that is offered by newspapers, television, and advertising” (nudo oggetto di scambio sessuale, offerta da giornali, televisioni, pubblicità) erases the many past and present contributions of women to Italian society. Furthermore, they explain: “This mentality and the behaviors that originate from it are polluting our social interactions. The gender relations model flaunted by one of our top government officials deeply affects our lifestyle and national culture, legitimating behaviors that harm the dignity of women and of the institutions” (Questa mentalità e i comportamenti che ne derivano stanno inquinando la convivenza sociale [. . .]. Il modello di relazione tra donne e uomini, ostentato da una delle massime cariche dello Stato, incide profondamente negli

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stili di vita e nella cultura nazionale, legittimando comportamenti lesivi della dignità delle donne e delle istituzioni).4 One of the goals of Comencini’s Lo spazio bianco (2009), according to the director, was precisely to counter media and political appropriations of women’s bodies in present-day Italy. Specifically, Comencini intended to oppose the images of women created by television and other media, and protest the conservative rhetoric on motherhood and family by portraying in her film a nontraditional maternal experience, and the everyday struggles and accomplishments of Italian women in general.5 By representing motherhood, the director also aimed to depict a defining aspect of her own life that she had not yet addressed in her cinema.6 With Lo spazio bianco, Comencini thus participates in another set of debates central to Italian feminism. Since the 1970s, Italian second-wave feminists have not only engaged in action aimed at obtaining reproductive rights, but also centered their writing and theorizing on the maternal. Specifically, sexual difference thinkers have analyzed the mother-daughter relationship by either focusing on its psychological aspects or reinterpreting it in the realm of the social.7 Literary representations of the mother-daughter bond also abound in contemporary Italian women’s writing. Unlike Lo spazio bianco, however, these narratives rarely foreground the mother’s story and perspective.8 In Italian cinema by women, films centering on maternal experiences are scarce. Lo spazio bianco thus also partakes in current and past debates on women’s roles and identities by providing a unique cultural representation of the maternal. Set in contemporary Naples and based on Valeria Parrella’s 2008 novel of the same title, Lo spazio bianco chronicles a middle-aged woman’s wait for the fate of her premature daughter Irene to unfold in a neonatal intensive care unit. Single and independent-minded, the protagonist Maria, played by Margherita Buy, makes her living teaching Italian evening classes to immigrants and lower-class Neapolitans. Neither planned nor promptly embraced, Maria’s pregnancy and Irene’s early birth interrupt her intended path and deeply disorient her. Elegantly filmed, Lo spazio bianco also offers a visually captivating portrait of Naples meant to show the city’s enduring beauty.9 Its resilience, Comencini explained in an interview, echoes Irene’s survival against all odds (Interview Feltrinelli). The film enjoyed a favorable response from audiences and attracted critical attention, receiving nominations and awards at various film festivals.10 This chapter analyzes the film’s construction of the protagonist’s experiences—her isolation, and the process through which she chooses to become a mother—in relation to its treatment of space. I first show how certain features of Comencini’s film—its casting of Buy as Maria and its portrait of Naples, for example—lessen its polemical force. I argue that

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Lo spazio bianco undermines its political intentions by not delving into the reality it purports to represent. Drawing upon Adriana Cavarero’s notions of the “inclined self” and “maternal inclination,” I then argue that Maria, in her path to motherhood, only partially forsakes her solipsism. Rejecting models of selfhood that privilege either vertical individualism or horizontal relationality and interdependence, Cavarero theorizes an “inclined” subjectivity that implies nonreciprocal dependency. It is important to note that Cavarero does not postulate that maternity is a natural inclination for women. Rather, in her view maternity is an inclination in the etymological sense that “every inclination turns outwards, it leans out of the self.”11 Leaning over an utterly vulnerable being, mothers face the unique dilemma of giving or refusing care. Cavarero’s perspectives provide a better understanding of Maria’s journey than feminist paradigms centered on women’s relationality.12 Her shift toward others is limited and does not ultimately imply interdependency. In embracing Irene and maternity, however, Maria leans out of her subjectivity to care for another, engaging in a dual relation marked by dependence and lack of reciprocity. Numerous shots showing Maria alone, often gazing at the city and its inhabitants from elevated standpoints, or alone in the city streets, convey her continued separation from others throughout the film’s narrative. The final sequence, which shows Maria, as a modern Mary, holding Irene in her arms, dramatizes her choice of care, which, however, does not rest on a full embrace of relationality and interdependency. Simultaneously, the film dismantles stereotypes according to which care—for a child or another—is a natural and necessary choice for women. To counter these stereotypes, Lo spazio bianco also represents the alternative path open to women and mothers—choosing not to care, in Cavarero’s parlance. Maria’s ambivalence about wanting her daughter to live, as shown, for example, in the sequence in which she momentarily hesitates to call for help when Irene is in danger of dying in the ICU, suggests this alternative. Comencini’s film therefore offers a nuanced cinematic representation of the maternal experience, which highlights its complexity and does not support conservative, prolife agendas. Despite its limitations, Lo spazio bianco is a thematically original film that engages in crucial debates on women’s experiences in Italy. This chapter aims at contributing to current conversations about cultural representation of Italian women. Maria and the City Lo spazio bianco is innovative in that it is centered on a single, middle-aged female character, and it foregrounds a nontraditional maternity, a theme rarely represented on screen.13 Moreover, women have leading roles in its

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technical and acting casts, also a rare occurrence in Italian cinema.14 It is also the first film the independent production house Fandango entrusted to a female director in its twenty years of activity (Interview Feltrinelli). Despite the film’s low budget, Comencini managed to secure Buy for the lead role, in addition to a group of highly accomplished but little-known stage actors.15 Furthermore, a heartfelt polemical agenda subtends the making of Lo spazio bianco. However, the film’s construction of Maria’s experiences, and its representational approach—its poetic but sanitized portrait of Naples, for example—do not assist Comencini’s intent to foreground the strength and vitality of both the film’s protagonist and its setting. Although Maria grows closer to the city and to others by the end of the film, embracing Irene and maternity, throughout most of the story she is portrayed as a distant, lonely observer of Naples and its people. Physically and emotionally isolated in her private journey, she often gazes at the city from rooftops or other high points. Even when she descends at street level and is surrounded by others, she remains alone. In these sequences, the absence, or muting, of direct sound and the reoccurrence of overhead shots signify Maria’s continued isolation. She hovers over Naples, detached and insular. The dissonance between Comencini’s intentions and what the film shows stems in part from her omission of vital elements of Maria’s story as narrated by Parrella, and from some of her additions to it. The additions originate from Comencini’s goal to make the story more suitable for cinematic representation and to strengthen its political message. The director has often described her adaptation of Parrella’s novel as the “opening up” of a text “hard as a stone,” and “more literary than cinematographic.” With Federica Pontremoli, who cowrote the script, Comencini overcame this problem by populating the film with a number of minor characters who function as “mirrors” for the protagonist, and are intended to dilate her very private story to fit the grammar of film.16 Yet, Maria’s lonely journey remains at the core of the film’s narrative. To support the film’s intent to depict the lives of strong and courageous women, Comencini introduced the character of a magistrate, Maria’s neighbor. She is a Northerner who recently relocated to Naples, leaving behind her three children, to investigate the killing of an antimafia prosecutor. The addition of this figure, however, appears forced and her story disconnected from the main narrative. Moreover, an episode witnessed at the hospital by Maria and the other mothers, in which a group of police officers first interrupts an abortion procedure and then brings the fetus to the ICU to be resuscitated, is also introduced to support the film’s political agenda. This episode is meant to denounce the repressive control exerted by the state over women’s bodies.17 Ultimately, however, this sequence and the character of

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the magistrate, both based on real individuals and events, appear didactic and unnecessary to the narrative economy of the film. They thus render the film less convincing and weaken its political agenda. More problematically, Lo spazio bianco erases Maria’s Neapolitan working-class and family background. In Parrella’s novel, the protagonist pointedly reconstructs her childhood: her socioeconomic milieu, her family dynamics, and her relationship with Naples. To these factors she attributes many of her choices as an adult. In the film, Maria is not from Naples, and we know nothing about her social and family origins—except that her parents are dead. Although she is somewhat sympathetic to her students’ difficult circumstances, the struggles of the city and its poor are foreign to her. Furthermore, Maria blames Naples for the present disorder of her life. In the sequence in which she reveals to her friend Fabrizio that she is pregnant, for example, she attributes the disruption caused by her unexpected pregnancy to her move to Naples. The film thus draws from stereotypical perspectives of the city as infected by chaos and decay, yet it leaves Naples and its people largely unrepresented. Comencini’s problematic elision of Maria’s working-class identity and of her efforts to erase it—key components of the protagonist’s journey in the novel—goes also hand in hand with the implications of Buy being cast in the lead role. Lo spazio bianco is original, among other reasons, for the very fact that it has a middle-aged female lead. However, the film simultaneously reproduces a model of femininity often seen in Italian cinema: an educated, heterosexual, middle-class, white woman dealing with an acute romantic or other personal crisis. The casting of Buy as Maria reinforces the film’s echoing of this model. As Roy Menarini (2010) has pointed out, Buy is omnipresent in contemporary bourgeois “middle auteur cinema” (cinema medio autoriale). Following Vincenzo Buccherni, he describes this cinema as follows: “This kind of film can be identified based on: its ‘beautiful style’ (photography, music, actors); its insistence on the middle class; its dealing with problems related to personal aspirations and self-realization; its reliance on forms of transgression that are soon normalized in the name of a reprogramming of the (neo) bourgeoisie in the dismaying landscape of contemporary Italy” (Questo tipo di film si riconosce dal ‘bello stile’ [fotografia, musica, attori], dall’insistenza sul ceto medio, dall’implicazione di problemi che hanno a che fare con le aspirazioni e la realizzazione personale, dal ricorso a forme di trasgressione presto normalizzate, in nome di una riprogrammazione della (neo) borghesia nel desolante panorama dell’Italia contemporanea) (43). If Menarini’s pessimism seems excessive, some of his observations aptly describe Lo spazio bianco, which indeed features high-quality photography, music, and acting, and foregrounds a bourgeois woman’s journey of self-redefinition.

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Menarini also notes how the repeated casting of certain actors in middle auteur cinema contributes to the lack of originality of these films: “the iconographic and psychological uniformation of a group of films [. . .] is also determined by the faces, the bodies, the gestures, the texture of the voices and of the dictions, in addition to the settings, the spaces, or the stories” (l’omologazione iconografica e psicologica di un gruppo di film [. . .] viene definita anche dai volti, dai corpi, dai gesti, dalla grana delle voci e delle dizioni, oltre che dagli ambienti, dagli spazi o dai racconti) (46). According to Menarini, however, the character Buy plays in Lo spazio bianco—which he describes as one of her best performances— departs from the role of the “nevrotic, insecure, and intolerant woman” (donna nevrotica, insicura e insofferente) often reserved for her in Italian cinema. I would argue instead that in Comencini’s film, irrespective of other innovative aspects of it, both Buy’s performance and certain aspects of her character remain stereotypical. Maria in the film is generic both in the sense that, as a character, she fits most parameters of the middle auteur genre, and because we do not know much about her.18 Nothing is said about her geographical, social, and familial background. What we do know identifies her as a nondescript petite-bourgeoise: Maria is a single, heterosexual teacher who, although not originally from Naples, resides there and spends her afternoons watching art movies. Similarly, we know little about the three female minor characters of the film—Mina and Rosa, two of the mothers Maria eventually befriends at the hospital, and Luisa, one of her students—except that they are working-class Neapolitans struggling to make ends meet. Their everyday struggles are only hinted at. When addressed, they remain secondary to Maria’s all-encompassing predicament. The brief sequence in which Maria visits Luisa after she stops attending evening classes is the film’s most extensive reference to the problems faced by underprivileged women in Naples. In this incursion in the foreign territory of the lower classes, however, Maria remains a detached observer, absorbed in her own crisis. This is exemplified in the shot in which, standing on Luisa’s balcony, Maria once again contemplates the cityscape—this time Luisa’s degraded neighborhood, shown against the backdrop of the Vesuvius. Moreover, her encounter with Luisa quickly turns into an occasion to vent her pain and confusion. This sequence is relevant to the film’s narrative mainly because in it Maria voices her doubts about wanting Irene to survive. The film’s protagonist and this barely sketched, small group of women hardly represent the richness and diversity of women’s lives in contemporary Italy. Just like its characters, the film’s portrayal of Naples is devitalized and lacks individuality. According to Comencini, Naples is not the center of the film; rather, it is one of its characters. Comencini also considered

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setting Lo spazio bianco in a different Italian city since she believed that its story could have happened anywhere, and Buy is not Neapolitan.19 Comencini’s reluctance to set the film in Naples might account for her approach to representing the city: she universalizes the story, its protagonist, and its setting by subtracting specificity and vitality to all. But Maria’s story, as originally conceived by Parrella, is deeply rooted in its specific Neapolitan setting. Deprived of its anamnesis, it loses some of its meaning. The portrait of Naples emerging from the film is ingratiating yet monochrome. Comencini’s reconstruction of the city’s topography is diligent, and the film is rife with stunning views of Naples and its gulf. Some of the city’s architectural gems—its elegant Piazza del Plebiscito, for example—are also featured prominently in the film. But only twice do we catch glimpses of Naples’s degraded outskirts, and its ancient innercity “belly” is never displayed.20 Far from being portrayed as “a sort of welcoming and vital maternal uterus, where anything can happen” (una sorta di utero materno accogliente e vitale, dove tutto può succedere),21 Naples is muted, just like its sounds in some of the film’s sequences. Only partially represented, the city is seen from a distance, as if to ward off contamination. Similarly, Maria is often portrayed gazing upon Irene’s helpless body, uncertain whether she truly wishes her daughter to live. Both Naples and Irene are perceived as agents of disruption from which Maria distances herself in order to preserve her solipsistic existence.22 The city is also represented in the film by the predominantly Neapolitan cast of stage actors, who support Buy’s performance with solid acting and touches of improvisation and humor.23 Their performances, however, appear overstated at times—particularly in some of the exchanges between Maria and Fabrizio, and in the scenes with Mina. Hints of staginess and napoletanità pepper their acting. In the sequence in which Mina arrives at the hospital’s garden pushing a baby carriage, for example, her posture and gait are exaggerated, as are her gestures when she extracts the “frittata di maccheroni” from the carriage instead of an infant—itself a comical coup de théâtre. Indeed, Mina is performing a role within a role: she is reproducing the pretty, middle-class mother of the photograph advertising the carriage about which she and Maria had commented when shopping together at a children’s store. The comical skills of this group of actors serve well Comencini’s goal to show how laughter and vitality are integral parts of women’s lives (Interview Feltrinelli). But the occasional artificiality of their performances further suggests the film’s reliance on stereotypical images of Naples and its people. From another perspective, however, the staginess of some of the acting is one of the devices signaling the film’s self-consciousness. Lo spazio bianco includes a number of self-reflective elements: its characters, especially Maria, are often framed

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within windows, doors, or other geometrical structures, and several scenes take place in cinema theaters. Maria first meets Pietro—the man she briefly dates, and Irene’s biological father—in a movie theater. In another scene, we see a close-up of the couple kissing in front of the theater’s screen. Furthermore, the film includes daydream sequences, and the mise-en-scène of the ICU is nonrealistic. These aspects of the film, nevertheless, work against Comencini’s intent “to plunge this film into reality” (calare questo film nella realtà) (Interview Feltrinelli). Lo spazio bianco also fails to show the city’s vitality in that we rarely see Maria interact with Neapolitans. Fabrizio and, to a smaller extent, her students are her only connection to her surroundings. Following Irene’s birth, Maria’s interactions with the city and its people become further confined to the space of the ICU. Although the protagonist eventually befriends some of the other mothers, their exchanges remain mostly contained within the physical and psychological space of the hospital. When Maria steps outside her apartment or the hospital, she is usually unaccompanied. Furthermore, Naples often appears semideserted, its streets and squares eerily empty, stripped of the city’s noise and of Neapolitans.24 The sequence at the end of the film, in which Maria walks across the city to reach the hospital—she has just learned that the doctors have removed Irene’s breathing tubes—illustrates her enduring solipsistic relationship with Naples. The bareness of the cityscape in this sequence is a manifestation of the film’s central trope: the white space, the space-time blank that Maria inhabits since Irene’s birth. As in other sequences of the film, she appears isolated in an empty city. Two flashbacks—which show, respectively, Maria collapsing in the street when she goes prematurely into labor and, later, lying on a hospital stretcher as she is rushed to the delivery room—interrupt the space-time continuity of the sequence, further disconnecting Maria’s journey from her surroundings. These flashbacks, however, also signal continuity between Irene’s two births. In this sequence, past and present are linked through editing and the use of low camera angles. For example, the incline of one of the stone-paved lanes leading Maria toward the hospital is mirrored, in the first flashback, by the ascending line of the alley on which she walks before collapsing to the ground. Similarly, the low camera angle in the flashback showing Maria twisting in pain on the pavement is maintained when the sequence cuts to the present, when we see a close-up of her feet. Continuity is also expressed by the edit between the high-angle shot of Maria walking on the sidewalk of a road divided into three lanes, and the opening shot of the hospital flashback, which shows the parallel tubes of a halogen ceiling lamp. These flashbacks have a number of consequences: they underscore Maria’s isolation

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from her time and place, and both interrupt and support the continuity of the narrative by filling the gaps in Maria’s story. From this perspective, they are also one of the incarnations of the trope of the white space in the film. Two more literal versions of the white space—the blank space Maria suggests her student Gaetano insert into his composition, and, at the end, an actual white space, which, following a dissolve, occupies the entire frame—frame this sequence. The film’s sanitized portrait of Naples, a city plagued by conspicuous social problems, which certainly affect women, produces a devitalized image of it.25 It echoes the nonspecificity of Maria’s characterization, and her detachment from her surroundings. Both portrayals hinder the political goals of the film. In the statement Comencini read before accepting the prize the Movimento per la vita awarded Lo spazio bianco, she stressed her strong commitment to women’s rights. A film with a more forceful political message, however, would not have received an award from an ultraconservative prolife organization. Staging Spaces The white space of the title takes on multiple meanings and forms in the film. In all cases it embodies an apparent rupture in sense and continuity that nevertheless carries meaning and connects past and present. Most directly, it refers to the blank space Gaetano, prompted by Maria, inserts into his composition during his final exam to continue writing his essay. It also signifies the physical space of the ICU, and the limbo Maria experiences in it. Both white spaces, as Gaetano puts it, bring about a new present for the characters. White spaces are also inserted into the film literally: they constitute the background for the opening and closing titles, and occupy the entire frame twice, preceding the sequences of Irene’s two births. These spaces thus frame the film and return, as frames, to mark important temporal transitions. The first white frame inserted into the film functions as an ellipsis, filling the extended temporal gap between the sequence in which Maria announces to Fabrizio that she is pregnant, and the scene in which she first sees Irene in the ICU’s incubator. The second white frame bridges, instead, two contiguous yet diametrically opposed presents—the before and after of Irene’s second birth. The trope of time is thus also central in Lo spazio bianco, and deeply connected to that of the white space: the physical white space of the ICU coincides with the time of Maria’s wait—the interior landscape of uncertainty. Maria’s relationship with both space and time is problematic: she chooses to distance herself from others and is incapable of waiting. After Irene’s premature birth, however, she has no choice but to remain confined, in close contact with others, within the time-space dimension of impotence.

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Reluctantly, Maria accepts to share this space with the other mothers at the hospital. In addition to the various white spaces, other elements of the film signify alienation and rupture: the frequent occurrence of images of distancing and fragmentation, and the use of flashbacks and slow motion. This rendering of time and space primarily translates Maria’s remoteness from those who surround her: her effort to self-determine has distanced her from others. At the very beginning of the film, for example, we see her dancing alone, slightly apart from the other dancers in the room, who appear to move, as a group, in slow motion. Maria’s movements are thus in step with the tempo of the music, but disjoined from those of the other dancers: her place and pace set her apart from others. Lighting also emphasizes Maria’s isolation—she literally occupies the spotlight, while the other dancers remain in semidarkness. Maria thus appears to be on stage, performing her self-sufficiency in front of an indifferent audience. The sequence closes with a brief conversation between Maria and her former partner Francesco, whom she clearly still trusts and respects. When Francesco shows Maria a photograph of his six-month-old daughter, she makes a remark on the furniture in the background, but does not comment on the child, suggesting a lack of interest in children and mothering. This exchange may also imply that Maria’s unwillingness to have a child with Francesco was the cause of their break-up. Motherhood is thus presented early in the film as a source of disruption and conflict in the protagonist’s life. Moreover, when, while observing the photograph, Maria notices the pieces of furniture that she chose at the time they were living together, Francesco remarks that she had chosen everything—even to leave him. This sequence thus also announces the centrality of the themes of choice and autonomy in the film. The trope of the stage is also connected to the film’s representation of space. The theatricality of the opening scene is not an isolated occurrence: other sequences include impromptu, actual, or imagined performances—singing, playing, and dancing—especially by Maria and other women, and film images or shots of television and cinema screens and audiences. As discussed, the acting of the supporting cast is occasionally theatrical and conveys, with other devices, the film’s self-consciousness. A particularly interesting performance is staged in the sequence in which Maria, in a daydream, imagines the other mothers dancing together in the ICU. In the aerial shot that opens the sequence, we see the women, all wearing green hospital gowns, leave their cubicles to join the others at the center of the room. The structures that support the cubicles’ curtains subdivide the cinematic frame into smaller frames—an image of fragmentation signifying the isolation in which each woman experiences her wait.

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This shot also references two earlier images of separation—both overhead shots—which showed, respectively, Maria alone at night in the ICU, next to Irene, and Irene alone in the incubator. Geometric patterns—windows, doors, and architectural features—often occur in the film to signify distancing and solitude. Maria, in particular, is often framed by windows or doors when she observes the city and others from a distance. In the ICU dance sequence that she imagines, the women’s coming together at the center of the room erases separation, representing the mutual support they offer one another. However, as the camera, which coincides with Maria’s point of view, travels downward and reaches eye level, the women appear increasingly deformed. This suggests Maria’s difficulty to visualize and participate in the women’s communal dance once her gaze reaches the horizontal perspective from which she ordinarily observes them. In her daydream, Maria choreographs the dance yet cannot imagine herself joining it. Although sharing her experiences with the other mothers partially aids her journey, her position in the ICU remains that of a powerless, passive spectator. Other relevant aspects of the film’s treatment of space are its emphasis on verticality, and the tension between horizontality and verticality, particularly in relation to Maria’s perspective and experiences. Verticality dominates the film’s representation of space: Lo spazio bianco features numerous tall buildings, and the silhouette of the Vesuvius is often visible in the background. Moreover, often the characters are shown tilting their gazes up or down. For example, we frequently see the magistrate’s bodyguards scan vertically the inimical space around them. Numerous scenes are set on rooftops and the film features several high-angle shots. The sequence of Maria’s and Pietro’s last encounter at Piazza del Plebiscito— Pietro is leaving her after learning she is expecting a child—closes with a high-angle shot of Maria looking at her sonogram. In it, the camera seems to descend upon Maria and weigh her down, suggesting that the choice she faces rests uniquely on her. Most importantly, however, verticality is often associated with the protagonist’s point of view, expressing her solitary nature, isolation, and self-sufficiency. According to Comencini’s discourse about the film, Maria’s process of becoming is made possible by her departure from self-reliance to embrace relations with others, particularly with the other mothers in the ICU. As described by the director, this dynamic is akin to the sociopolitical practices embraced since the 1970s by Italian feminist groups. Known as the “politics of relations,” these practices are founded on the belief that women can be empowered through relations of mutual support. As Luisa Muraro (2002), a leading thinker of Italian difference thought, puts it: “The politics of relations [. . .] operates by valorizing the relationships

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that we already have or by activating new ones, and entrusting to the very dynamism of the relationships the most important problems that we have.”26 Maria, however, only partially embraces this project. As signified by the dream-sequence of the mothers’ dance in the ICU, she looks empathically upon the dance of the other mothers, but does not participate in it. Although Maria relinquishes her vertical perspective, she does not adopt horizontal interactions. In the last sequences of the film— throughout her walk across Naples, and in the scene in which she finally holds Irene in her arms—Maria remains alone, or alone with her child. No longer vertically self-sufficient, nor fully horizontally interdependent, Maria’s position at the end of the film recalls that of the “inclined subject” theorized by Adriana Cavarero. According to Cavarero (2010: 195; emphasis in the original), the inclined self is “neither vertical nor horizontal, yet given over, exposed, offered, inclined to the other.” Relating this concept to care and natality, Cavarero maintains that “the child is totally given to the action, benign or malign, of the one bending over him” (200). Utterly dependent and vulnerable, the newborn embodies all human helplessness. At the core of maternal inclination thus lies the alternative between care and wound. Importantly, Cavarero’s notion does not imply that women are naturally inclined to maternity. Nor does it reaffirm the stereotype of self-sacrificial maternity. “Mother” does not necessarily coincide with the figure of the good mother, embodied by the Virgin Mary in the cultural imaginary of the West. Indeed, stereotypes of maternity also include evil mothers such as Medea, “the icon itself of an evil response to the essential exposure of the helpless” (201). Cavarero thus rejects both constructions of maternity—the Virgin Mary versus Medea, spiritual versus destructive maternity. Her goal is to call attention to the vulnerability of the infant—whom she assumes as the figure of human vulnerability—and to the dilemma mothers face: to give or refuse care. In Lo spazio bianco the trope of inclination is suggested by two sequences, which show Maria riding the Montesanto funicular down to the lower city. In both, she attentively observes the small gestures and acts of the people who live in the buildings next to the funicular. In the second sequence, however, Maria’s gaze grows closer to them, and her expression conveys greater empathy. Both Maria’s increasing inclination toward others in these sequences, and her leaning over Irene at the end of the film, suggest the possibility of an alternative positioning for Maria, beyond the binary of solipsistic verticality and reciprocal horizontality. Although some of Comencini’s choices lessen the subversive potential of the film, by foregrounding a nontraditional maternal experience marked by choice and subject to becoming, Lo spazio bianco resists conservative

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constructions of motherhood and enriches cultural representations of women’s experiences in Italy. Director’s Biography Francesca Comencini was born in Rome in 1961. She studied philosophy at the university, but moved to France at nineteen and did not complete her degree. She lived in France for twenty years, and her three children were born there. She is the daughter of well-known Italian director Luigi Comencini, and sister of Cristina Comencini, also a renowned filmmaker. With her father, she cowrote the screenplay for Un ragazzo di Calabria (1987) and codirected Marcellino pane e vino (1992). Francesca Comencini has directed several feature and documentary films, receiving numerous awards and nominations. Her most recent film, Un giorno speciale (2012), was nominated for the Golden Lion Award at the sixty-ninth Venice Film Festival. Notes 1. In a recent study of Comencini’s film production since 2001, Rada Bieberstein describes the director as “one of the critical voices of Italian cinema and Italian society who sees the urgent need to speak out in the face of the historical, political, social and cultural changes Italy has undergone since the 1980s and is still experiencing.” “Francesca Comencini: Looking at Italy between the Local and the Global,” Rivista di studi italiani XXIX:1 (2011): 398, http:// www.rivistadistudiitaliani.it/rivista.php?annonum=2011e. Bieberstein also discusses Comencini’s marginalized position within Italian cinema, and points to the lack of academic interest in her work. To date, Bieberstein’s essay is the most comprehensive published study of Comencini’s work. 2. Notably, SNOQ organized a national day of protest on February 13, 2011, and remains a vocal advocate for progressive social change for women. To promote the February 2011 event, Comencini created a short video in which actress Angela Finocchiaro urges women to participate in the demonstration. As Finocchiaro speaks, a group of women of all ages gradually surrounds her. To support the SNOQ’s message, Comencini also directed a play titled Libere, which was written by her sister Cristina—a well-known writer and director, and also a founding member of SNOQ. In this one-act play a younger and an older woman discuss and assess the legacies of the feminist movement and the present status of women in Italy. 3. Law 40 (2004) restricted access to reproductive technologies and stressed the rights of the fetus, thus implicitly threatening abortion rights. The referenda feminists and other groups promoted to amend the law in 2005 failed for lack of the required quorum. Simultaneously, public debates on what was

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perceived as the objectification of women’s bodies in television and other media emerged. See Manuela Galetto et al., “Feminist Activism and Practice: Asserting Autonomy and Resisting Precarity,” in Daniele Albertazzi et al. eds., Resisting the Tide. Cultures of Opposition under Berlusconi (2001–2006) (New York and London: Continuum, 2009). “Se non ora quando,” http://www.senonoraquando.eu/?page_id=4 (accessed July 25, 2012). All translations of Italian texts included in this chapter are mine. La Feltrinelli Video, “Francesca Comencini presenta Lo spazio bianco,” Interview Feltrinelli Bookstore, November 2, 2009. http://www.youtube. com/watch?v=IUd4VgEqZzc&feature=related (accessed July 25, 2012). Interview Feltrinelli. Comencini points out, however, that in Mi piace lavorare—Mobbing (2003) she had already represented a mother-daughter relationship. Moreover, in Carlo Giuliani ragazzo (2002), Carlo’s mother has a central role, and in A casa nostra (2006) motherhood is also an important theme. I am referring here to the research conducted by the Centro documentazione delle donne di Firenze, and to the work by feminist groups such as Diotima, which included well-known Italian theorists such as Luisa Muraro and, initially, Adriana Cavarero. While the Florence thinkers analyzed the bond between biological mothers and daughters, mainly from a psychoanalytical perspective, other groups reformulated it as a sociopolitical practice meant to empower women. This practice, whereby an experienced woman, referred to as the “symbolic mother,” acted as a guide or mentor for a less-experienced woman, was known as affidamento (entrustment). For a discussion of the problematic aspects of affidamento, see Lucia Re, “Diotima’s Dilemmas: Authorship, Authority, Authoritarianism,” in Graziella Parati and Rebecca West, eds., Italian Feminist Theory and Practice. Equality and Sexual Difference (Madison, Teaneck: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 2002). Italian women’s novels privileging the daughter’s perspective range from Elsa Morante’s Menzogna e sortilegio (1948) to Elena Ferrante’s L’amore molesto (1992). Recent works such as Elena Ferrante’s La figlia oscura (2006) and Valeria Parrella’s Lo spazio bianco (2008) foreground instead the mother’s experiences and point of view. Well-known Italian cinematographer Luca Bigazzi was part of Comencini’s team in Lo spazio bianco. Margherita Buy, e.g., was nominated for the Coppa Volpi and the Pasinetti Award for best actress at the 2009 Venice Film Festival, winning the latter. Lo spazio bianco also received the Gianni Astrei pro-Life award from the Movimento per la vita. Adriana Cavarero, “Inclining the Subject. Ethics, Alterity and Natality,” in Jane Elliott and Derek Attridge, eds., Theory after “Theory” (London and New York: Routledge, 2010), 198. I am referring here to the notion of entrustment and the politics of relations, theorized and widely embraced by Italian sexual difference feminists in the last decades of the twentieth century. See Re, “Diotima’s Dilemmas,” 65.

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13. Lo spazio bianco also helps to diversify representations of the maternal in mainstream US cinema. As Heather Addison et al., the editors of a volume entitled Motherhood Misconceived. Representing the Maternal in U.S. Films (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2009), point out, “Hollywood has, with relatively few exceptions, foregrounded a youthful, white, middleclass, heterosexual paradigm of motherhood, to the exclusion of other possibilities. For almost a century, it has mobilized particular constructions of maternity in the service of the status quo” (“Introduction,” 4). 14. An exception is Donatella Maiorca’s Viola di mare (2009), whose predominantly female technical cast included Roberta Allegrini, one of the few women directors of photography in Italy. 15. Roy Menarini refers to Buy as one of the “heavy weight” (pesi massimi) actors of contemporary Italian middle auteur cinema. Il cinema dopo il cinema 2. Dieci idee sul cinema italiano 2001–2010 (Genova: Le Mani, 2010), 45–46. 16. Interview with Francesca Comencini, Casa Cinema Villa Borghese, DVD Extras. 17. Interview Feltrinelli. Comencini stressed, however, that this episode also had an important function in the plot: witnessing this scene enabled Maria to overcome her ambivalence about wanting Irene to survive. 18. Rada Bieberstein has argued that Comencini cannot be classified as a middle auteur (“Francesca Comencini,” 400), as Menarini maintains, because of her marginality with respect to film distribution circles in Italy, and for the continued political commitment of her cinema. Like Bieberstein, I believe that labeling Comencini’s entire film production middle auteur cinema is reductive. Yet, I see Lo spazio bianco reiterating some features of that cinema. 19. Interview with Francesca Comencini, DVD Extras. Comencini, however, adds that she eventually changed her mind and set the film in Naples because the city “drew the film to itsef” (ha tirato il film a sé). 20. For an analysis of a different rendering of Naples’s cityscape in contemporary Italian cinema, see Áine O’Healy, “Revisiting the Belly of Naples: The Body and the City in the Films of Mario Martone,” Screen 40.3 (Autumn 1999). O’Healy points out that representing Naples, a city suffering “from a problem of overrepresentation” (241), poses many challenges to directors, writers, and artists. Martone’s aim, according to O’Healy, was precisely to distance himself “from ready-made perspectives of Naples, that is, from the tendency to mystify or sentimentalize the Neapolitans, as well as from the discourse of abjection in which mainstream allusions to the city are frequently couched” (242). 21. Paola Casella, Cinema: femminile, plurale. Mogli, madri, amanti protagoniste del terzo millennio (Genova: Le Mani, 2010), 93. This sentence is included in quotations marks in Casella’s text, but its source is not indicated. 22. Whereas in Mario Martone’s L’amore molesto, as O’Healy, following Julia Kristeva’s notion of the abject, shows, the mother’s body is identified with Naples and expelled as the abject, in Lo spazio bianco a mother rejects both daughter—initially—and city. See O’Healy, “Revisiting the Belly of Naples,” 249–251.

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23. Interview with Margherita Buy, Maria Laura Bidorini, Biennale di Venezia. http://biennaleart.tv/event.php?id=26. 24. When direct sound is present, it is barely audible. This occurs, e.g., in the sequence at the open-air market in which Maria, who is venting her latest frustration to Fabrizio, ignores all that surrounds her. 25. Notably, e.g., in recent years uncollected garbage has accumulated in the streets of some districts of Naples for weeks. 26. Luisa Muraro, “The Passion of Feminine Difference Beyond Equality,” in Graziella Parati and Rebecca West, eds., Italian Feminist Theory and Practice. Equality and Sexual Difference (Madison, Teaneck: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 2002), 80.

Bibliography Addison, Heather, Mary Kate Goodwin-Kelly, and Elaine Roth, eds. Motherhood Misconceived. Representing the Maternal in U.S. Films. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2009. Bieberstein, Rada. “Francesca Comencini: Looking at Italy between the Local and the Global.” Rivista di studi italiani XXIX.1 (2011): 394–415. http://www. rivistadistudiitaliani.it/rivista.php?annonum=2011e1. Casella, Paola. Cinema: femminile, plurale. Mogli, madri, amanti protagoniste del terzo millennio. Genova: Le Mani, 2010. Cavarero, Adriana. “Inclining the Subject. Ethics, Alterity and Natality.” In Theory after “Theory,” edited by Jane Elliott and Derek Attridge, 194–204. London and New York: Routledge, 2010. Galetto, Manuela, et al. “Feminist Activism and Practice: Asserting Autonomy and Resisting Precarity.” In Resisting the Tide. Cultures of Opposition under Berlusconi (2001–2006), edited by Daniele Albertazzi, Clodagh Brook, Charlotte Ross, and Nina Rothenberg, 190–203. New York and London: Continuum, 2009. Menarini, Roy. Il cinema dopo il cinema 2. Dieci idee sul cinema italiano 2001– 2010. Genova: Le Mani, 2010. Muraro, Luisa. “The Passion of Feminine Difference beyond Equality.” In Italian Feminist Theory and Practice. Equality and Sexual Difference, edited by Graziella Parati and Rebecca West, 77–87. Madison, Teaneck: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 2002. O’Healy, Áine. “Revisiting the Belly of Naples: the Body and the City in the Films of Mario Martone.” Screen 40:3 (Autumn 1999): 239–256. Parrella, Valeria. Lo spazio bianco. Torino: Einaudi, 2008. Re, Lucia. “Diotima’s Dilemmas: Authorship, Authority, Authoritarianism.” In Parati and West, Italian Feminist Theory and Practice, 50–74.

Filmography Pianoforte (1984) La lumière du lac (1988)

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Annabelle Partagée (1991) Marcellino pane e vino (codirector, 1992) Elsa Morante (1995) Shakespeare a Palermo (1997) Le parole di mio padre/The Words of My Father (2001) Un altro mondo è possibile/Another World Is Possible (codirector, 2001) Carlo Giuliano, ragazzo/Carlo Giuliano, Boy (2002) Firenze, il nostro domani (codirector, 2003) Mi piace lavorare—Mobbing (2003) Visions of Europe (segment: Anna abita a Marghera/Anna lives in Marghera; 2004) A casa nostra/Our Country (2006) In fabbrica (2007) L’Aquila 2009—Cinque registi tra le macerie (segment: Le donne di San Gregorio; 2009) Lo spazio bianco/The White Space (2009) Un giorno speciale (2012)

7

Women in the Deserted City Urban Space in Marina Spada’s Cinema Laura Di Bianco

Ho sempre voluto fare il cinema, affermare la vita dentro la finzione. Giro i film per darmi un senso nel mondo, per capire il presente. Li giro a Milano perchè da qui non me ne voglio andare per continuare a raccontare “la cittá che sale.”1 —Marina Spada

D

uring the last two decades in Italy, a new generation of women filmmakers has established its own space in the traditionally maledominated film industry. This burgeoning group represents and positions female subjectivity in new and complex ways, specifically in urban contexts, which act not merely as background for filmed events but also as “objects of exploration, investigation and interpretation, settings for voyages of discovery.”2 Filmmakers such as Marina Spada, Francesca Comencini, Antonietta De Lillo, Roberta Torre, Nina Di Majo, Wilma Labate, Paola Randi, and Alice Rohrwacher have taken Italian cities like Milan, Rome, Naples, and Reggio Calabria, which are already part of the global cinematic imagination, and transformed them into subjects that serve to generate the narration of their films. This chapter is part of a larger research project on female filmmakers in contemporary Italian cinema and will focus on the work of Marina Spada; her four films, Forza cani (Come on Dogs! 2001), Come l’ombra (As the Shadow, 2006), Poesia che mi guardi (Poetry, You See Me, 2009), and Il mio domani (My Tomorrow, 2011), are about Milan, which, far from being merely a film location, has a specific narrative

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function, with the city itself also shaping that very narrative. I argue that in all of Spada’s films female characters are shown perpetually crossing and observing the city from above. The act of female streetwalking, typically associated with prostitution, is reconfigured as an act of appropriation of a public space, which contests confinement to a domestic space imposed by a patriarchal society, thus signifying an act of female self-liberation, as well as an act of self-introspection and search for identity. Like Lidia from Antonioni’s La notte, these modern flanêuses are certainly not women “of or in the crowd,”3 like the Parisian flâneur described by Baudelaire, but solitary strollers of deserted cities, which epitomize the inner void and immobility of the contemporary female subject. Reflecting on Spada’s mise-en-scène and her shooting journals, which reveal her numerous cultural references, I will analyze the different declinations of female flânerie as a critical trope and visual strategy for constructing cinematic space. Spada’s treatment of place is reminiscent of Antonioni’s, a cinematic model she quotes extensively in her films. Analyzing the function of locations in L’Avventura (1960), L’eclisse (1962), and Deserto rosso (1964), David Forgacs writes: “Antonioni’s way of dealing with physical locations was essentially to expand their importance relative to the role they had in conventional narrative films and even in some cases to reverse the priority operating in those films whereby people were assumed to be more important than places” (2000: 103). Similarly, in Spada’s cinema, buildings, empty streets, and piazzas do not need to contain characters to be framed by the camera. Early in her autobiographical essay “La mia città” (My city), Spada introduces herself by saying: “Sono nata a Milano, vivo da sempre nello stesso quartiere di periferia e anch’io come Alda Merini, lascerei Milano solo per il paradiso.”4 Hence, before defining herself as a filmmaker, Spada states her sense of belonging, not just to the city, but to the outskirts of it, and reveals the main recurrent themes of her films: Milan, women, and poetry. Forza cani and Poesia che mi guardi: Poems on the City’s Walls I poeti lavorano di notte I poeti lavorano di notte quando il tempo non urge su di loro, quando tace il rumore della folla e termina il linciaggio delle ore. I poeti lavorano nel buio come falchi notturni od usignoli dal dolcissimo canto

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e temono di offendere Iddio. Ma i poeti, nel loro silenzio fanno ben più rumore di una dorata cupola di stelle. —Alda Merini, “Destinati a morire”5

After directing many documentary and short films, Spada struggled to produce what Italian critics call the “opera prima,” that is, her first feature film. Spada’s “debut,” Forza cani, came after over fifteen years of filmmaking experience and numerous other works. Denied funding from the Italian government, which is the primary financial source of film production in Italy, Spada raised 60 million lire on her own through the Internet. Thanks to fifty people (not all from the film industry) who offered financial support to the project and participated in the different stages of the production, Forza cani was the first independent digital film in the country. As a collective work, it distances itself from the mainstream Italian production and distribution system, mainly located in Rome, and represents, in Spada’s words, “Un passo importante verso la democratizzazione del cinema in Italia.”6 Poetry is a fundamental source for Spada’s work and figures in it in different ways. Forza cani takes its title from a poem by Nanni Balestrini. Spada’s other film titles are also taken from poems: from Anna Akhmatova’s poem “To the Many” she took “Come l’ombra” while “Il mio domani” hails from Antonia Pozzi’s poem “Domani.” In Spada’s first feature film, Balestrini’s verse functions not only as a source of inspiration but also as part of the very set design, a graffito in this case: in the final shot of the film, “Forza cani” is written on a wall by the character Nico. By opening and closing the narration with the act of writing and reading poems, Spada creates a circular structure in the film. This strategy serves to herald the central theme of the film and restate it in the finale: filmmaking makes poetry visible. In the opening scenes, in fact, verses are written on a wall by the central character, the urban poet Nebbia: “Il giorno ringhia nero/ E vuoto soltanto vuoto/ Niente si fa suono nella notte soltanto buio.” 7 The words “nero—ringhia—vuoto” herald a sense of rage, oppression, and desolation that the film conveys while the story slowly unfolds. In this, the form and content of the film are inextricably fused. Nebbia lives in an abandoned factory at the margins of the city, to which he has just arrived. While working for a cleaning company with immigrants from North Africa, he posts verses, his own and those of other poets, throughout the city. In the hangar, Nebbia meets Nico and

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Tetra, who are looking for a place to host a rave party, and Franco, who is involved in some illegal business with Albanian immigrants, has been injured in a fight. At work, Nebbia meets Monica, a troubled, single mother, who cannot manage to keep a stable job to support her son. The encounters Nebbia has in the new town interrupt his solitude and trigger a series of reactions from this group of outsiders. Tetra falls in love with Nebbia and Nico abandons his rave project and attempts to reconnect with his family. Franco recovers from his injury and tries to establish a friendship with the rest of the group, while continuing his illicit trafficking. When Monica’s son is about to be sent into foster care, Nebbia decides to help her. He steals a large amount of money from Franco to allow Monica to escape Milan and go to Germany where she can start a new life with her child. When Franco finds out about the theft, he confronts Nebbia and they both accidentally get involved in a car chase with the police, during which the poet is shot dead. As in all of Spada’s scripts, the death of one character becomes a necessary sacrifice that opens a series of possibilities for those immobilized in an existential condition of waiting. In Come l’ombra, Olga’s death liberates Claudia; in Il mio domani, Monica starts a new life after her father’s death. The viewer suspects changes in the lives of characters following the death of Nebbia in Forza cani, though the film ends before resolution or closure is achieved. Contrary to Come l’ombra and Il mio domani, both of which are set in dazzling light and sweltering summer, Forza cani is a very dark film, shot mostly at night, in a cold, rainy city photographed in reddish tones. In Spada’s works, Milan is not recognizable as Milan (Poesia che mi guardi is the exception). Rather, it represents, in Spada’s words, the “topos of the western city,”8 and is deprived of any distinctive trait. Indeed, in Forza cani, Milan does not appear much on screen. Rather, it is described verbally or otherwise evoked by the characters. For instance, before the viewer can understand where the story is set, Franco says: “La conosco bene io Milano, meglio di chi ci è nato. Si credono chi sa chi. Sta diventando una città di merda. La nebbia mi piace quando c’è, ma il freddo no.”9 Franco describes a hostile city according to the stereotype of the cold, foggy city in the north, populated by unfriendly people. With his southern accent, Franco is representative of the internal wave of immigration Milan has received since the 1960s, and he is now the spokesman of Italians who feel threatened by foreign immigration. This monologue and the presence of various minor immigrant characters in Forza cani become the germ for Spada’s subsequent film, Come l’ombra, where the filmmaker reflects on the issue of immigration in Italy.

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While Franco is representative of a negative portrait of the city, through the character of Tetra, who repeatedly stresses the beauty of the city, Spada offers a positive portrait of Milan. While the camera shows Tetra in close-up, denying the spectator a view of the city, Tetra says to Nebbia, “È bella Milano dall’alto!” (How beautiful Milan is from above!). Throughout the film there are inserts in which Tetra, looking into the camera, talks about Nebbia from a roof terrace. Serving as the filmmaker’s alter ego, Tetra, like many of Spada’s female protagonists, contemplates the city from this aerial perspective. In The Practice of Everyday Life (1984), Michel de Certeau argues that the observation of a city from above allows one “to see the whole,” which is impossible through walking, the typical way of experiencing a city, what is readily accessible to most people. Contemplating the city in its entirety, in de Certau’s words, “allows one to read it, to be a solar Eye, looking down like a god” (92). In other words, the contemplation of the panorama of the city is a powerful experience that brings pleasure to the “voyeur god” who is moved by the desire to understand the city’s complexity as if it were a text to be read, as well as a desire to distance oneself from it. Likewise, de Certeau points out that the panoramic view shows the city as immobile, in so much as its intrinsic mobility is hidden from the observer by distance. From this perspective, the aerial view of Spada’s characters, as will be discussed later with Come l’ombra, is related to their own immobility and signifies the filmmaker’s desire to appropriate urban space through its representation. In Forza cani, however, the Milanese urban landscape remains offscreen; thus, the viewer is denied the experience of the total god-like view, and so the pleasure of “seeing the whole.” Moreover, as the city in this film is persistently shot at night, in dark streets, or in scarcely illuminated places, it remains an unknown space to the viewer. In Forza cani, one can identify in nuce many of the leitmotifs that Spada develops in her later filmography. For instance, the aesthetic trope of flânerie, which will be applied to female characters to represent their relationship with urban space. Nebbia, being an urban poet, is in a way a flâneur, an invisible presence in the city, living at its margins, strolling the streets during the night to post verses around Milan as if its walls were pages to write on. Similarly to the filmmaker, his work makes poetry visible in the city, subtracting it from its own anonymity for the alienated inhabitants. The verses leave a trace in the city landscape and force the passers-by to interrupt their predetermined and repetitive paths and interrogate themselves. Hence, with Forza cani, Spada begins a discourse on the necessity of poetry and the role of the artist, which she develops fully in Poesia che mi guardi, a documentary film devoted to the poet Antonia Pozzi.

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Given that poetry is a recurrent theme in all four of Spada’s works, Forza cani and Poesia, shot almost ten years apart, engage in an intense dialogue with each other. They share the characters of the urban poets who, incognito, write on the city walls: in Forza cani, Nebbia, and in Poesia, the group H5N1. In addition, both employ, in different ways, the visual strategy of flânerie as a form of self-expression through the medium of poetry, and both films insist on the idea of making “the invisible visible,” a principal attribute of filmmaking. Antonia Pozzi, a poet whose work has been neglected for decades, is made visible by Spada’s film Poesia che mi guardi. Born in 1912 into an upper-class Milanese family, Pozzi grew up during fascism and began writing poetry and practicing photography at a young age, although her family, which was well connected to the Partito Nazionale Fascista (PNF), always impeded her artistic activity. At the beginning of the 1930s, she became part of a group of intellectuals who gathered around the philosopher Antonio Banfi. With the introduction of the fascist racial laws in 1938, many of Pozzi’s friends were forced to leave Italy, and she reportedly fell into a condition of isolation that eventually compelled her to commit suicide in 1938. Pozzi’s poetry was ignored for years and published only after her death, in severely truncated and censored versions supervised by her father, mainly after World War II. It was not until recently that the poet began to receive critical attention, mostly thanks to the work of the scholar Graziella Barnabò, author of Pozzi’s biography, Per troppa vita che ho nel sangue.10 The Pozzi film project was born out of the initiatives for the symposium intended to highlight the importance of Pozzi’s work, which took place at the University of Milan in 2008 on the fiftieth anniversary of her death. Spada structures Poesia che mi guardi using a combination of family film footage and Pozzi’s black and white photographs, documenting both her life and work. Viewers hear many of Pozzi’s poems in voiceover, though never illustrated by explanatory pictures. To the contrary, she translates the meaning of Pozzi’s poetry through the places that inspired it. For instance, when we hear in voiceover the “Cantico della mia nudità” (Song of my nakedness) describing the poet’s body, the camera pans across a group of empty school desks at which Pozzi supposedly sat. At the same time, Spada creates a parallel fictional structure to represent her own research on Pozzi, and on the city of Milan. In so doing, she creates a contemporary frame in which to reenact Pozzi’s life and avoids simply making a film about a dead poet, or, as Spada puts it, “un film sulla morte.”11 Pozzi’s story is told in voiceover by Maria, Spada’s fictional alter ego. From the beginning of the film, Maria undertakes a peregrination

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throughout the city, walking or driving, in search of the places where the poet lived and found her inspiration. Along this journey, Maria meets the H5N1, a group of young street poets from Pavia, to whom she introduces Pozzi’s work, and they start exploring Milan and retracing Pozzi’s itineraries in the city while discussing the value of Pozzi’s poetry together. “Antonia non abita più qui da settanta anni” (Antonia has not lived here for 70 years) is heard in voiceover while the screen shows the elegant Liberty building in which Pozzi lived with her family. By opening with such a statement, Spada establishes the city as the primary source of her discourse. Therefore, Pozzi’s story is articulated through the places that she visited or lived, creating, in effect, a portrait of Milan in an arc of time spanning from the 1930s to today. Similar to Claudia and Olga from Come l’ombra and Monica from Il mio domani, Maria engages in a form of flânerie; as we shall see later in this chapter, for these female characters, walking signifies an inner journey of the self, but also a path to connect with other women’s art, and, at the same time, a journey into the city to observe its transformation over time. Contrary to Come l’ombra and Il mio domani, where Milan is either characterized by supermodern architecture or by the gray anonymity of a periphery deprived of any recognizable traits, in Poesia, Milan regains its historical dimension and the distinctiveness of an Italian city. As one can observe from Spada’s shooting journals (see figures 7.1–7.3), which reveal in fascinating ways the genesis of each of her films, the filmmaking process requires that Spada retrace a photographic map of the city from Piazzale del Duomo with Vittorio Emanuele II’s gallery (though the cathedral is left offscreen), to Piazza Scala with the theater, then Via Pomposa and Via Mompiani. As the narration unfolds, it creates a trajectory from the center to the peripheral Piazzale Corvetto, where the poet spent much time and is now buried. Thus, Poesia is not merely a portrait of Pozzi, but also an autobiographical film in which the filmmaker reflects on her love for poetry, on the meaning of her own art, and on her role as an artist. In the final scene of Poesia, Pozzi’s face, with her verses written next to it, appears on the walls of a streetcar moving throughout Milan. It is a reparative finale for all the years that her work was neglected, and a statement on the intent of the film. The very fact of making a documentary film on a modern poet not consecrated in the canon of Italian literature is inherently an act of “making the invisible visible” and even more so if we consider Poesia to be part of the feminist project of reinscribing women in art history as well as in film history.

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Figure 7.1 Poesia che mi guardi, Marina Spada’s set journal, 2009. Courtesy of Marina Spada.

Come l’ombra and Il mio domani: Women in the Landscape “Domani” Se chiudo gli occhi a pensare quale sarà il mio domani, vedo una larga strada che sale dal cuore di una città sconosciuta verso alberi alti d’un antico giardino.12 —Antonia Pozzi, 1931

With Come l’ombra Spada continues an aesthetic discourse on the city of Milan and an investigation of female subjectivity in an urban context.

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Figure 7.2 Poesia che mi guardi, Marina Spada’s set journal, 2009. Courtesy of Marina Spada.

Differently from other Italian female filmmakers, “autrici interrotte” (interrupted women auteurs),13 who are prevented by film production mechanisms from developing their own poetics, Spada exercises her own authorial gaze through emancipating herself from the mainstream film industry. Like Forza cani, Come l’ombra is also shot outside the Italian film industry, using a digital format to reduce production costs. After being

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Figure 7.3 Poesia che mi guardi, Marina Spada’s set journal, 2009. Courtesy of Marina Spada.

included in the “Giornata degli autori” (The Day of the Authors) at the International Venice Film Festival in 2006, Come l’ombra was welcomed by Italian critics, who recognized Spada as one of the most interesting filmmakers to emerge in recent years. Significantly, she was the only Italian female filmmaker included in this competition. Set in a desert-like summer in Milan, the film narrates an encounter between Claudia and Olga, a young Ukrainian woman who has recently arrived in Italy. Claudia is a single, independent young woman living a

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repetitive life. She works in a travel agency and attends a Russian language school, where she becomes attracted to her professor, Boris. When they are about to begin a relationship, Boris asks her to host his “cousin” from the Ukraine while he is on a business trip. Reluctantly, Claudia accepts under the condition that it will be for just one week. Despite Claudia’s initial diffidence, the two women become friends. One night, just as they are starting to feel close, Olga fails to return home. To find her, Claudia journeys throughout Milan, only to be interrupted by a call from the police announcing Olga’s death. Looking again at the shooting journals (see figures 7.4–7.6), it is apparent that Spada’s cinematic vision has many cultural references: from global auteur filmmaking, to photography, painting, and poetry. As one can see from the excerpt included in this chapter, next to images of paintings and photographs, are annotated shot numbers. Every take is modeled on different art forms: a preexisting image, coming out of an iconographic study of specific visual models. Spada’s filmmaking is inspired by Jean-Luc Godard as well as by painters such as Mark Rothko, Mario Sironi, and the contemporary Italian photographer Gabriele Basilico. As previously mentioned, Spada’s imagery is heavily indebted to Antonioni, not only for its attention to women’s subjectivity as interpreters of modern alienation, but also in terms of frame composition and camera movements. The opening scene of Come l’ombra establishes the formal characteristics of a substantial part of the film. It is a direct quotation of Antonioni’s La notte, a film Spada also quotes in Il mio domani. In La notte, Antonioni shows the Milan of the 1960s, when wild property speculation was taking place as a result of the country’s economic growth. While the camera accompanies an elevator’s downward movement, it shows the image of the city reflected in the windows of the Torre Branca. In La notte, as in Italian cinema in general, Milan is the symbol of the “economic miracle” and, thus, the elect place to represent upper-class alienation. In Come l’ombra, where Antonioni’s elevator returns, Claudia, the protagonist, looks at the city from inside the tower; the landscape seems to be the same, and, as shown later in the movie, Milan is still the place of alienation for the female protagonists. The image of the woman appropriating urban space by contemplating the city from above, or by strolling its streets, represents Spada’s poetic matrix and the major visual leitmotif of all of her films. The woman in the act of looking through a window, as well as that of one exercising a mobile gaze, are clearly self-referential, in so far as they replicate the act of auteur filmmaking. To use de Certau’s figure, Claudia, as Spada’s alter ego, represents “the voyeur-god” experiencing the “all-seeing power,” like

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Figure 7.4 Come l’ombra, Marina Spada’s set journal, 2006. Courtesy of Marina Spada.

the filmmaker who engages in a discourse on the city, and thus states, at the beginning of her film, her authorship. While in Forza cani the aerial view of the city was left offscreen, the urban landscape in Come l’ombra—which is Claudia’s POV shot—is framed by the window in an extreme long shot. It follows her over the shoulders, close-up, alla’ Antonioni. Immediately after, as the camera

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Figure 7.5 Spada.

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Come l’ombra, Marina Spada’s set journal, 2006. Courtesy of Marina

pans in a circle, a series of aerial pictures of the city are shown, heralding the meaningful presence of the urban landscape in the film. In Come l’ombra, as in Il mio domani, the image of Milan reflects the stamp of Basilico, who, for many years, has engaged in an artistic dialogue with the filmmaker, thus representing a major reference point for her miseen-scène.

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Figure 7.6 Come l’ombra, Marina Spada’s set journal, 2006. Courtesy of Marina Spada.

Basilico, a contemporary (and recently deceased) Italian photographer, is known for his portraits of cities, such as those of Beirut and Moscow. He began a photographic investigation of Milan between 1978 and 1980, which documented the so-called architettura media (middle architecture) of the “ugly” city’s periphery, the privileged location of Spada’s films. In one of Basilico’s first and most well-known works, Milano ritratti di

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fabbriche (Milan, Factory Portraits), a series of industrial landscapes are assembled in which Milan is portrayed as pure architecture, as static space deprived of human presence, cars, and other elements that might evoke the idea of movement intrinsic to a modern city. In his Architetture, città, visioni (Architectures, Cities, Visions), Basilico provides a poetical account of one of his first experiences photographing Milan: La città era semideserta e un vento straordinariamente energico aveva ripulito l’orizzonte: era una giornata di luminosità eccezionale, uno di quei rari giorni che stupiscono i milanesi perché “si vedono così bene le montagne che sembra di poterle toccare con una mano.” Il vento, quasi assecondando una tradizione letteraria, sollevava la polvere, metteva agitazione nelle strade, puliva gli spazi fermi, ridonando plasticità agli edifici, rendendo le prospettive delle strade in una sorta di maquillage atmosferico che permetteva alla luce di proiettare con vigore e nettezza le ombre degli edifici. (24)14

Interestingly, while the original script of Come l’ombra, written by Daniele Maggioni, required only “Immagini della città,” Spada filters the generic city view through Basilico’s representations of Milan. In fact, the account given here, which describes a “spazio fermo” (immobile space), perfectly applies to one of Spada’s shots of Milan. The two artists share the same imagery of the city as described earlier: deserted, empty, still, quiet, uneventful, and anonymous—all characteristics that enhance the loss of identity experienced by the characters. Truly, a dialectic relationship is established between the characters and the space they inhabit: the deserted city seems an extension of their inner void, and vice versa the inner void is determined by the external space. In order to understand how the landscape creates meaning in the narration, one can observe how it is treated in the editing process. In Come l’ombra, the urban landscape is often interjected in the different sequences, creating a pattern in the structure of the film. Pier Paolo Pasolini used a similar technique in Mamma Roma (1961), abruptly inserting the image of the Basilica of Saint Giovanni Bosco in several sequences, creating an association of meaning between the protagonist’s death and the city of Rome. Similarly, in Come l’ombra, a metaphysical landscape, sometimes disconnected from the diegesis, persistently interrupts the flow of the narration. The repetitive appearance of the immobile landscape highlights the female protagonists’ inability to act, their solitude, and the impossibility of their being visible in the city. At the same time, it creates a distance in terms of spatial relationships between them and the city itself.

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To underscore Claudia’s existential immobility, the camera shows her repeatedly observing the town from which she is distant, but also while she is alone in her apartment, or enclosed in other indoor spaces, “under glass,” so to speak. For instance, she is shown behind a streetcar’s or café’s window. In addition, the camera is always kept at a distance and frames the subject through another element, creating an obstacle to direct vision of the profilmic. This framing strategy creates a sense of entrapment while impeding full identification with the protagonist. While Claudia is frequently seen entrapped in closed spaces, Olga, in opposition, is mostly framed outside the house, thus placed in the landscape while exploring and appropriating the urban space. As Susanna Scarparo and Bernardette Luciano write in their essay devoted to migration as depicted in Italian cinema, “Gendering Mobility and Migration,”15 “Olga invades the landscape, map in hand, and seems determined to negotiate it.” Given that Olga engages in the activity of strolling and observing the streets of Milan as a flâneuse would do, Scarparo and Luciano define her as “a modern legitimized ‘streetwalker’” (171). In the late 1980s, Janet Wolff’s cutting-edge essay “The Invisible Flâneuses: Women and Literature of Modernity” generated a critical and theoretical debate around the possibility of female flânerie. Wolff defines the concept of flânerie as the quintessential experience of modernity, and analyzes the social conditions and norms preventing women from engaging in such activity in the urban context of the mid-nineteenth century. She writes: “There is no question of inventing the flâneuse: the essential point is that such a character was rendered impossible by the sexual divisions of the nineteenth century” (47). Wolff denies the possibility of female flânerie, in so far as women were confined to the private sphere, thus denied the access to public space. While the occupation of public space by so-called respectable women is always regulated by the male presence, the prostitute, commonly called “streetwalker,” seems to be the sole unfortunate female version of the flâneur. Spada’s Olga, thus, is not a prostitute walking the streets to sell her body, nor part of the spectacle enjoyed by the male passersby, but an active subject who “wanders through the city window-shopping, purchasing cheap imitation commodities, thus buying rather than selling pleasure” (171), in other words a female version of the flâneur-consumer, according to Walter Benjamin’s interpretation of the Baudelairean figure. As a female immigrant from Eastern Europe, Olga’s cinematic character is, surprisingly, not connoted as a prostitute on a plot level, as very often happens in Italian cinema.16 Nevertheless, prostitution seems to be an extradiegetic, unavoidable label for Olga. First, as we can observe in the set journal (see figures 7.5 and 7.6), on a level of mise-en-scène,

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Olga’s character is based on Jean-Luc Godard’s Nana, the Parisian prostitute of Vivre sa vie (1962); second, Olga is labeled as a prostitute by her own immigrant community. When Claudia starts her journey throughout the city to look for Olga after she disappears, she distributes around flyers showing a close up of Olga’s face. Under her face, Claudia writes in Russian “Kto eë videl?” (Who saw her?), a question that, again, raises the issue of invisibility. When Claudia returns to the corner where she posted the flyer, she discovers that someone has written “kurva” over Olga’s face, a Russian insult meaning whore. Since the word is written in Olga’s language, it is significant that her own community does not authorize her to exit the stereotype of the migrant prostitute. In defiance of such framing, Claudia rips down the flyer and continues her search for Olga. After only 20 minutes from the beginning of the film, Olga disappears from the landscape. As the set journal shows, the character of Olga, framed as Godard’s Nana, enters “un campo vuoto” (an empty scene), looks around, and turns her gaze toward the camera. In that moment, the narration is suspended and the absence of sound creates a disquieting atmosphere. Louis Althusser would describe this moment as the interpellation, the moment in which the film’s ideological message is conveyed to the audience. Olga’s gaze is finally active and directed toward the viewers to whom she exposes herself. In Spada’s words, she is addressing them by saying: “E adesso mi devi vedere per forza” (And now you must look at me). It is one of the most intense moments of the film, announcing an abrupt end to Olga’s story. Pressing the point, Olga’s gaze into the camera is followed by the recurrent empty landscape, inevitably associated with the woman’s death. As Àine O’Healy noted in her essay “Border Traffic,” in many films of migration, such as Carlo Mazzacurati’s Vesna va veloce (Vesna Goes Fast, 1996) and Giuseppe Tornatore’s La sconosciuta (The Unknown, 2006), violence functions as a sort of mandatory transition for the female immigrant. It seems that the beauty of the woman’s body ought to be disfigured and exposed to the view of the spectator, who is interpellated as a “compassionate witness to her abuse.”17 Differently from the films cited earlier, in Come l’ombra, the female immigrant is not saved by a man, but is presumably murdered. Nevertheless, in Spada’s film, the bleeding woman’s body is not represented but only evoked. When Claudia is called by the police to identify Olga’s dead body, the camera remains outside the morgue, almost as if her death might be obscene, and hence, cannot be represented. Adopting a narrative strategy that harkens back to the original notion of drama and Greek tragedy, where violence is never depicted, Spada leaves the terrifying event offscreen, frustrating

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the spectators’ expectations of directly witnessing what happened to Olga, thereby forcing them to question those who are responsible. Olga’s death propels Claudia on a journey through the city that forces the viewer to reflect on the relationship between women’s bodies and the urban landscape. In Come l’ombra, the city is deprived of human presence to the extent that, when Olga, and later Claudia, enters it they seem almost extraneous. This is the case with two different shots, both depicting the protagonists in the landscape in the act of looking. During her peregrinations, Claudia walks across a desolate street. As in Antonioni’s films, the camera arrives before the character, and leaves after. Thus, at first, it shows a billboard truck in the middle of the street advertising some exotic vacation by exposing a seminaked woman. Since such a stratagem should be used to seduce hypothetical clients, the very presence of the truck in the middle of such a deserted street seems absurd. In the following shot, Claudia enters the frame, stands and stares at the billboard with her arms on her hips. Even though the camera does not show her face, her pose suggests that she is quite bothered by the advertisement. There are other shots in the film showing similar billboards. In two other moments in the film, Claudia is shown at a window observing the landscape. As countershots return the images of the empty town, giant posters of women in “tempting” poses appear on buildings at least twice. Spada seems to suggest the idea that women as erotic objects are a consistent part of any urban landscape, and while criticizing female objectification, proposes a recodification of the female body by reinscribing it into the landscape.18 On the other hand, Claudia, who at the beginning of the film stood immobile while observing the city, is leaving it at the end of the film. Having finally overcome her stasis, she undertakes, with Olga’s suitcase, the reverse journey toward the Ukraine, presumably to return Olga’s belongings to her family. Most importantly, through the bus window, she is now observing a mobile barren landscape that, accompanying Claudia’s gaze, scrolls on the screen. With Come l’ombra, Spada shows an authorial female gaze that, while investigating female subjectivity, attempts to recodify the female body, which is usually seen in mainstream cinema (i.e., male cinema) as either an erotic object or as a victim of male violence. Though it might be argued that by exercising a dominant look on the Other she does not escape the objectification of the female body embedded in filmmaking; by keeping her camera always at a distance, which denies the view of the woman’s violated body, Spada makes visible not only the migrant’s body but the Italian woman’s body as well, inscribing both into the urban landscape. With Il mio domani (2011), Spada continues her aesthetic explorations of her home city of Milan while continuing to use flânerie to articulate

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female subjectivity in the urban space. As with Come l’ombra, her fourth film is also—to use Roland Barthes words—“a tissue of citations.”19 In fact, the father-daughter relationship at the center of the film is reminiscent of Antonioni’s Il grido (1957), which is also set in the Po Valley (see figures 7.7 and 7.8). Monica’s strolls in the city recall again those of Lidia from La notte, and the Milanese location of the Fidia building is a direct quotation of Cronaca di un amore (Story of a Love Affair, 1950). Thus, Antonioni’s cinema, beyond being a mere reference point for the mise-en-scène, merges into the fictional matter, underpinning the narration.

Figure 7.7 Spada.

Il mio domani, Marina Spada’s set journal, 2011. Courtesy of Marina

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Figure 7.8 Il mio domani, Marina Spada’s set journal, 2011. Courtesy of Marina Spada.

The main protagonist of the film is Monica, an intelligent and attractive woman who works as a human resources manager in a consultancy firm. Despite her success, Monica is a tormented person who leads a solitary life in Milan. She entertains a relationship with her married boss and regularly visits her elderly and sick father in the countryside.

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When he dies, the story reveals that Monica has a profound resentment toward her mother, who, when Monica was a child, abandoned her family for an amorous adventure in Greece. A few years later, when the relationship ended, she returned to her home village with another daughter. Neither Monica nor her father were able to forgive her. After his death, Monica enters a profound state of crisis that eventually leads to a transformation of her life. The relationship with her stepsister, long conflicted, falls apart, impeding Monica’s contact with her nephew, a fragile adolescent who Monica loves dearly. Her lover Vittorio leaves her to go to Paris, and she realizes that the firm she works for is manipulating her. She perceives her job as dishonest after realizing that the motivational speeches she gives employees are deceptively intended to make them accept the fact that they are being fired. In reaction, she decides to make a tabula rasa. Parallel to these events, Monica attends a photography class where she is learning to compose her self-portrait. Symbolically, in the end, she places herself in a new picture by starting a new life elsewhere, repeating her mother’s journey to Greece. As in Come l’ombra, in Il mio domani, the death of someone is also a necessary sacrifice that mobilizes the central character, forcing her to exit from a condition of stasis. In both films, the path of reshaping the self leads the protagonist away from the city in so far as displacement and relocation in a new landscape become essential conditions for the regeneration of the self. While in Come l’ombra the barren landscape seen along the road in the final scene replaces the alienating urban cityscape that occupies the screen for almost the entire film, Il mio domani is structured on a continuous alternation of two different landscapes, that of Milan, where Monica lives, and that of the country, where she goes to visit her father. In Il mio domani, female subjectivity is articulated through the country/city dichotomy; however, neither of these two poles is connoted as positive or negative. In her book Space, Place, and Gender (1994), the feminist geographer Doreen Massey explores the idea that spaces and places are defined in terms of social relationships, and therefore are not only gendered, but constitute the construction of gender itself. Discussing the equation nature/woman as well as home/woman, Massey argues: “Woman stands as metaphor for nature [. . .], for what has been lost (left behind), and that place called home is frequently personified by, and partakes of the same characteristics as those assigned to, Woman/Mother/ Lover” (10). Massey rejects the common idea, codified by patriarchal society, that women are more at ease in nature (as opposed to the city), as well as in domestic space, conceived as “the” female space where they can fulfill the social role of mothers and wives.

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None of this conceptualization of places can be applied to Spada’s film in which the country, far from being an idyllic and safe place, epitomizes Monica’s grief as much as the city. As confirmation, the country is photographed with static shots, slow camera movements on somber skies over the usual inanimate landscapes. The silence, the melancholic music, and the sparse dialogue Monica entertains with her father contribute to creating a sense of anxiety. In addition, the house, which is supposedly Monica’s childhood home, far from being a welcoming space, appears squalid and empty, mirroring Monica’s inner void. It can be argued that the domestic space here (the father’s house as well as Monica’s house in the city), in contradiction to the common view, speaks to the lack of the mother, and that the country is indeed a place “to be left behind,” without nostalgia. Ultimately, the country signifies her problematic childhood, while Milan represents, beyond her unresolved conflict, a possibility of liberation from the past. As Wilson states in The Sphinx in the City, “The city might be a place of liberation for women, it offers women freedom” (1992: 7). Wilson argues that, thanks to its large dimensions, the city is less likely to exert the patriarchal control on women that a community in a smaller place often does. Hence, the ability of women to lose themselves in the anonymous urban crowd represents a chance of emancipation and social mobility, which is what Milan at first offers to Monica, the protagonist of Il mio domani. Although the character of the mother is absent from the filmic text, she is depicted by Monica during a conversation with an occasional lover. This dialogue indirectly serves to suggest a reflection on women’s changing condition, and to introduce in the narration a different type of woman to counter Monica’s. The mother left her family to follow a lover and open an ice-cream store with him in Greece. When both the business and the romance end, she returns to her home village with another child, one born outside of her marriage. But, as Monica said, “nobody helped her.” It is implied in Monica’s account of her mother’s life that she suffered the consequences of stepping outside her social role, with poverty, isolation, and immobility. In this perspective, Monica’s life is quite different from her mother’s. Through living in the city, she obtains the possibility of living an independent life, outside codified feminine roles; however, she still needs to forgive her mother in order to start a new life. Monica’s crisis is articulated in the film through two stories that create different levels of narration in the plot. The first is the series of lectures that Monica gives as a human resource manager; the second is her peregrinations throughout Milan. In one of the first scenes of the film, Monica speaks to a small audience about the positive value of emptiness.

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As she tells her students, in ancient China, emptiness was written with an ideogram called MU. This ideogram represented the concept of emptiness not as the threatening nonexistent space, but, on the contrary, as a real space that can be inhabited. In several sequences, while Monica struggles to create that empty space in order to embrace that change, she continues discussing the importance of conceiving emptiness as an opportunity to change. However, empty space is not represented positively in the film; on the contrary, it generates a sense of anxiety and profound loneliness. In moments of crisis, as Lidia from La notte, and all of Spada’s female protagonists, Monica wanders throughout empty streets and piazzas. The character is shot in long takes from high angles, showing the allglass buildings, which emphasize the modernity of Milan’s architecture, though also depicting a city deprived of the confusion, of the crowd, of the urban life that one would expect. The phantasmagoria, the spectacle of the modern city that was the object of observation of the flâneur of the nineteenth century, is completely lost. However, in Il mio domani, Spada establishes a correspondence between the construction of a city and the formation of a woman’s identity. During her peregrinations, Monica lingers to observe several construction sites, which, in real life, are due to the Expo that will take place in 2015. Despite the absence of human life as would be seen outdoors, the city seems to be undergoing a major process of remodeling and development. Hence, Spada continues a work of documentation of the city’s transformations begun in Poesia che mi guardi, as well as an investigation on female subjectivity, suggesting that female flânerie is an act of introspection and identity formation. Nevertheless, upon a closer analysis of the film script, and when considering in which moments the character strolls the city, flânerie can be interpreted as act of rebellion too. In “The Woman in the Street,” Rachel Bowlby observes that “the woman in the street is somehow out of place, at least out of her place” (1992: 9; emphasis mine). Bowlby interprets female walking as an act of breaking gender roles that require women to be confined to the private space. In Spada’s film, walking can also be considered a crossing of borders. Monica’s walking, in fact, is “about motions for change” (2). It is about quitting places, like her house or her job, which she needs to leave behind in order to reposition herself in a new landscape. As seen through this analysis of her opus, Spada’s stories are born from places rather than characters whose lives, in fact, originate and are shaped by the different places that figure in her films. The figure of the flâneuse, as well as that of the woman contemplating the urban landscape from the city heights, is, therefore, Spada’s poetical matrix.

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All of these films portray female protagonists in a similar psychological position, one of searching, questioning, crisis, and immobility. The autobiographical origin of this recurrent image is explained by Spada in her essay “La mia città” (My City): “Nei pomeriggi liberi passo e ripasso negli stessi luoghi della città per non sentirmi estranea, per marcare il territorio come i cani, per rivedere quel paesaggio post industriale struggente come un quadro di Mario Sironi.”20 Walking throughout the city helps the filmmaker to feel a sense of belonging to Milan, inscribing herself into the landscape and finding the building blocks of her cinematic work. Looking at Spada’s work within the context of Italian female filmmaking, a map that has yet to be drawn, it appears that cinema directed by women in Italy suffers from a double problem: on the one hand, a lack of critical attention; on the other hand, the issue of visibility in the film industry. The expression “il fenomeno della donna regista” (the phenomenon of the woman director), often used by Italian critics to define one of the original features of the “New Italian Cinema,” demonstrates a certain disbelief around the idea of a woman with a camera, almost as if it were an oddity. Spada, after struggling to establish herself in the establishment film industry, found alternative ways of production and distribution and is receiving increasing critical attention. She is now emerging as one of the most compelling Italian contemporary directors among numerous other women directors, who are also developing an aesthetic project focused on female subjectivity in urban contexts.

Notes 1. “I was born in Milan and have always lived in the same suburban neighborhood and I too, like Alda Merini, would only leave Milan for heaven. [. . .] I’ve always wanted to make movies, affirming life within fiction against the ravages of time. I shoot films to gain a sense of the world, to better understand the present.” Translation in Il mio domani. Un film di Marina Spada. Fotografie di Gabriele Basilico + Toni Thorimbert, ed. by Giovanna Calvenzi (Milan: Kairos, Costrasto, 2011), 9. 2. Elizabeth Wilson, The Sphinx in the City: Urban Life, The Control of Disorder, and Women (Berkeley, Los Angeles, Oxford: University of California Press, 1992), 7. 3. See Keith Tester, The Flâneur (New York and London: Routledge, 1994), 3. 4. “I was born in Milan and have always lived in the same suburban neighborhood and I too, like Alda Merini, would only leave Milan for heaven,” in Calvenzi, Il mio domani, 9.

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5. “Poets work at night/ when time does not press on them/ when the crowd’s noise is hushed/ and the hour’s lynching is over. Poets work in the dark/ like night hawks or nightingales/ whose song is so sweet/ and fear they are offending God. But poets, in their silence/ make a higher noise/ than a golden dome of stars.” The Second Hump, Vol. I (May 2010–April 2011). See: http://thesecondhump.blogspot.com/2011/05/poems-by-alda-merini.html (last accessed on March 31, 2013). 6. “An important step toward the democratization of film in Italy” (author’s translation). 7. “The day rumbles/ Empty, just empty/ Nothing resounds/ In the night only darkness” (author’s translation). The verses were composed by the scriptwriters. 8. In a Q&A that followed the screening of Il mio domani at Lincoln Center in June 2012, Spada also declared: “There is a lot of talk about globalization, but there’s also a kind of globalization of architecture, a dialogue that is taking place among solids to the extent that some cities could be anywhere in the world.” 9. I know Milan well, better than the people born here. Who do they think they are? It is becoming a crappy city. I like when it’s foggy, I don’t like when it’s cold though (author’s translation). 10. Graziella Bernabò, Per troppa vita che ho nel sangue. Antonia Pozzi e la sua poesia (Milan: Vienepierre, 2004). 11. “A film about death.” See Spada’s conversation with the author in the appendix. Milan, June 2012. 12. “If I close my eyes to think of how my tomorrow will be, I see a long road that rises from the hearth of an unknown city toward the tall trees of an ancient garden” (translation in the DVD of the film by Kairos Film, 2011). 13. Barbara Maio, in the book Invisibili, highlights the phenomenon of the “autrici interrotte.” In fact, a conspicuous number of filmmakers in Italy, after struggling to debut, did not get over their “opera prima,” or had to wait many years before getting the chance to produce a second movie. For example, after Autunno (1999) and Inverno (2002), Nina Di Majo had to wait eight years before making Matrimonio e altri disastri, while Anna Negri, who made In principio erano le mutande in 1999, had to wait almost ten years before making her next film, Riprendimi, in 2008. 14. “The city was semi-deserted and an extraordinary energetic wind had cleaned the horizon. It was an exceptionally bright day, one of those rare days in which the Milanese people are surprised ‘they can see the mountains so well that it seems as if they can touch them with their hands.’ The wind, going along with some literary tradition, stirred up the dust, shook the streets, cleaned the still spaces, conveying plasticity to the buildings. It restored the streets’ perspective with a sort of atmospheric maquillage that allowed light to clearly and sharply project the buildings’ shadows” (author’s translation). 15. In the last two decades, a significant number of Italian films dealt with themes like the struggle for integration, intolerance, racism, violence, and

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prostitution, but also themes of transnational love stories and friendship. According to the film databank compiled by Oxford University, built from the research project “Destination Italy,” which is devoted to the representation of immigrants in Italian media, over one hundred films in which immigrants are main or minor characters were produced between 1990 and 2010. See Carlo Mazzacurati’s Vesna va veloce (1996), Francesco Munzio’s Elvis & Marilyn (1998), and Giuseppe Tornatore’s La sconosciuta (2006). Aine O’Healy, “Border Traffic: Reimagining the Voyage to Italy,” in Katarzyna Marciniak and Anikó Irme, eds., Trasnational Feminism in Film and Media (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 41. As other Italian female intellectuals, Spada reacts to Lorella Zanardo’s protest of the erasure of women’s identity from the television screen. As Zanardo says in her documentary film Il corpo delle donne (The Woman’s Body, 2004): “Le donne, le donne vere, stanno scomparendo dalla tv e sono state sostituite da una rappresentazione grottesca, volgare e umiliante” (Women—real women—are an endangered species on television and they have been replaced by a grotesque, vulgar, and humiliating representation). Roland Barthes, “The Death of the Author,” in Image, Music, Text, translated by Stephen Heath (New York: Hill and Wang, 1977), 130. “On free afternoons I roam and roam again through the same places of the city so as not to feel any estrangement, and to mark the territory as dogs do, to view and review that post-industrial landscape which is as touching as a painting of Mario Sironi” (translation in Il mio domani 81).

Bibliography Barthes, Roland. “The Death of the Author.” In Image, Music, Text. Translated by Stephen Heath. New York: Hill and Wang, 1977. Bowlby, Rachel. Still Crazy after All These Years. Women, Writing and Psycoanalysis. New York and London: Routledge, 1992. Calvenzi, Giovanna, ed. Il mio domani. Un film di Marina Spada. Fotografie di Gabriele Basilico + Toni Thorimbert. Milan: Kairos, Costrasto, 2011. Certau, Michel de. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984. Forgacs, David. “Antonioni: Space, Place, Sexuality.” In Spaces in European Cinema, ed. Myrto Konstantarakos. Exeter, England; Portland, OR: Intellect, 2000. Lissoni, Andrea, ed. Basilico, Grabriele. Architetture, città, visioni. Riflessioni sulla fotografia. Milan: Bruno Mondadori, 2007. Massey, Doreen B. Space, Place, and Gender. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994. O’Healy, Aine. “Border Traffic: Reimagining the Voyage to Italy.” In Trasnational Feminism in Film and Media, ed. Katarzyna Marciniak and Anikó Irme. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.

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Wilson, Elizabeth. The Sphinx in the City. Urban Life, The Control of Disorder, and Women. Berkeley, Los Angeles, Oxford: University of California Press, 1992. Wolff, Janet. “The Invisible Flaneuse: Women and the Literature of Modernity.” In Feminine Sentences. Essays on Women & Culture. Berkley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990.

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Envisioning Our Mother’s Face Reading Alina Marazzi’s Un’ora sola ti vorrei and Vogliamo anche le rose Cristina Gamberi

I would feel as if I were drugged, sitting there, watching those damned dolls, thinking what a success they would have made of their lives if they had been women. Satin skin, silk hair, sawdust heart—all complete. —Jean Rhys The first blow against the monolithic accumulation of traditional film conventions (already undertaken by radical filmmakers) is to free the look of the camera into its materiality in time and space and the look of the audience into dialectics, passionate detachment. [. . .] Women, whose image has continually been stolen and used for this end, cannot view the decline of the traditional film form with anything much more than sentimental regret. —Laura Mulvey The sorrow of the stranger might give us a different angle on happiness, not because it teaches us what it is like or must be like to be a stranger but because it might estrange us from the very happiness of the familiar. —Sara Ahmed

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Introduction Alina Marazzi occupies a very special place in the history of Italian women filmmakers for her experimental style and feminist approach.1 By using found footage and home movies Alina Marazzi questions the Western representation of the “Woman” and re-visions real women’s complex interior landscapes. She pays particular attention to motherhood (either realized or unfulfilled) as a problematic condition of identity and investigates the crucial role of the mother-daughter relationship. Marazzi’s trilogy Un’ora sola ti vorrei (2002), Vogliamo anche le rose (2007), and Tutto parla di te (2012) explores the sense of displacement, failure, and inadequacy women face whether they choose to perform traditional social roles or to reject the socially validated idea of happiness. Marazzi’s work also reflects on the difficulties for women in struggling for freedom and self-fulfillment in an oppressive society. The women Marazzi represents are always caught in the conflict between the narrow limits of traditional feminine roles and their personal perspectives: they are subjects “in opposition.” This conflict is personal— for it reveals the subject’s radical “otherness” and uniqueness—and at the same time political, because it is related to women’s inability to cope with being wives and mothers and with their sexuality. Marazzi conveys this personal and political conflict by intermingling two contrasting forces (Bergonzoni 2011: 248). On the one hand, found footage and visual archival material epitomize the collective and official register centered on political and social events. On the other hand, women’s stories, thoughts, and feelings are conveyed through their diaries in a continuous tension with the film’s images. This inner rift generates a form of female displacement, which is represented in Marazzi’s works by a complex—and continuous—short-circuit between words and images. Archival images, both official and private, have contributed in the past to shaping the dominant image of femininity. In Marazzi, this representation of “woman as fiction” is revealed by showing the socially constructed nature of found footage, which is historicized or used against the grain through the editing, thus intensifying “the dialectical collision between the inherent perspective of the original and its radical re-use that remains a characteristic of the compilation documentary” (Bruzzi 2006: 27). The result is that the questions of gender and femininity are always deeply represented as influenced by historical forces and not as “purely textual/ visual representation” (de Lauretis 1987: 24). However, Marazzi intends neither to reconstruct historical truths nor to propose an historical interpretation of Italian second wave feminism. Rather, Marazzi adopts a feminist point of view by privileging female personal perspectives,

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as she herself notes: “I wanted to tell the story from a subjective point of view because that has so much to do with feminism. I wanted to make a subjective film. [. . .] What feminism did for the first time is to give value to personal experiences of women, and men [. . .] it made the personal become political” (Bale 2010). The private register is in fact constituted by real stories recorded in the diaries and letters of real women, which structure the narrative plot of the documentaries. In the last 30 years feminist scholarship has shown that diaries are a gendered genre that uncovers women’s history, lives, and narratives (Bunckers and Huff 1996; Schiwy 1996; Blodgett 1989; Gannett 1992; Nussbaum 1989; Tarozzi 2006). According to Adrienne Rich (1979), the journal is a “profoundly female, and feminist, genre” due to its fundamental relation with the home, the hearth, the family, the sexual, the emotional— in other words, with the private sphere, which has historically been associated with women (217). Yet Marazzi’s use of women’s personal diaries does not mean that she confines women to the intimate and emotional sphere. Women’s diaries in fact reveal how their lives, their bodies, and sexuality have deep political implications, for they display critical awareness about the asymmetrical power relation between the sexes. What also emerges as a feminist strategy in Marazzi’s work is the use of a female first-person narrator combined with female voice-over. In Marazzi’s documentaries the female “I” controls the narrative: female authorship creates a protagonist who is both female and autonomous (Frye 1986: 47). The female voice gives meaning and purpose to the storyline and shares with the audience her perspective on the events. The female voice-over (a rare occasion in cinema, as Kaja Silverman [1988: 50] has noted) reinforces her position of superior knowledge and inverts the usual sound/image hierarchy. Marazzi’s documentaries create a new syntax, a new language, which is based on the interplay between women’s thoughts, feelings, and voices on the one hand and the images the viewer sees on the other: found footage is edited either to support and illustrate or to be in contrast and collide with female stories. The director’s aim is precisely to conflate these two narratives as her films seek to draw out the buried and unofficial story of Italian recent past. She proposes an interpretation of historical events through the lives of women who have struggled to assert their rights to divorce and abortion, as well as to define their roles in a changing society. This short circuit between images and the women’s voices is possible through a complex editing montage, which plays a crucial role in Marazzi’s poetics. The editing reminds one of Soviet cinema and echoes political and independent American documentary filmmaking from the

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1970s. The montage becomes the very act of resignification to subvert gender stereotypes: the assembly hall becomes the “room of one’s own” for the maker of women’s films. The editing, the mixing of genres, the merging of fiction and nonfiction, pastiche and parody, and the unusual degree of intertextuality are used as feminist strategies to subvert dominant meanings about women in popular culture. By undoing the coherence of the original material, Marazzi’s hybrid works reread and re-vision the footage from a different point of view, crafting critical and subversive arguments out of it. The Context The cultural context in which Alina Marazzi works is crucial in understanding not only the documentaries’ central issues, but also her distinctive style and her feminist approach. First, Marazzi decided to use documentary after studying film studies in London in the 1980s, where she “had the chance to watch many experimental movies, many films from different parts of the world and [. . .] the opportunity to get to know the great tradition of British documentary” (interview with Marazzi). Second, in recent years Italian documentary filmmaking has experienced a significant revival, which has produced extremely insightful and critical developments. The new wave of Italian documentary has been increasingly concerned with challenging the so-called realistic objectivity of cinéma vérité, adopting instead a more subjective and personal approach. According to Adriano Aprà (2003: 189), this “subjectivization of the gaze” blurs any clear distinction between fiction and cinéma vérité: the illusion of reality—typical of the traditional documentary—is broken, challenging the very possibility of looking objectively at the visual archive of the past. Likewise, Marazzi’s documentaries, due to the use of home movies, archival material, and their personal narrative register, deeply undermine the notion that documentary is principally concerned with transparency, objectivity, and nonintervention. Moreover, due to its ironic and satirical approach, We Want Roses Too has also been associated with other contemporary Italian documentaries that “similarly engage with events in twentieth-century Italian history, presenting a serious issue in an almost tragicomic manner and highlighting the ongoing and topical relevance of the issue at hand” (Holdaway 2012). Yet if Marazzi’s documentaries can be seen as part of a wider national wave, they resonate both with the rich debate on gender equality and the political condition of women in Italy in the past few years. The increasing concern about the distorted and degraded representation of

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women in mainstream media, portrayed as mere erotic objects of male desire, can be seen as a natural consequence that sprang from so-called Berlusconismo.2 Not surprisingly, some women filmmakers were on the front line in fighting back against this misogynistic culture, trying to draw attention to the issue.3 Their works reflect on the erosion of gains that Italian women thought were permanent: the fruit of the struggle for civil rights and the equality of the sexes in the 1960s and 1970s. I propose that Alina Marazzi’s work should be read within this “new wave of Italian feminism,” for this social and cultural framework has contributed to reclaiming real and historical female subjectivities, to questioning the stereotypical mass-media representations, and to thinking about the major divide between the first generation of Italian feminists and their daughters and granddaughters. More broadly, Marazzi’s works can also be related to the tradition of women filmmakers who have used the form of documentary and found footage to explore reality, to critique stereotypical images of femininity, and to investigate their past. From the pioneering works of Jane Shimane and Anita Thacher in the 1970s, to experimental movies by Cécile Fontaine, Peggy Ahwesh, and Louise Bourque, found footage—through the crucial role of editing—has been used to express a critical and deconstructive approach based upon the act of resignification, becoming one of the most fertile areas for women filmmakers. One of the key experimental strategies for using found home footage, liberally used by Marazzi in her work, is precisely the combination and juxtaposition of newly recorded and composed voice-over narration with home images that have been recut, refilmed, and/or recontextualized. Like many other feminist documentaries, Marazzi’s works can therefore be situated within a specific realm of feminist film practice: first, for its attempt to reorientate and interrogate material from home movies; second, for its explicitly autobiographical attitude; and finally, for its representation of “the struggle of women to gain control of the word and the image, so that the voice of women may be heard” (Freiberg 1987: 337). Un’ora sola ti vorrei Un’ora sola ti vorrei (Italy/Switzerland, 2002) is a documentary that constitutes a unique case in contemporary Italian cinema. Using only a compilation of family home movies, Un’ora sola ti vorrei reconstructs the life of the director’s mother, Liseli Marazzi Hoepli, by using the diaries and letters she had written since she was an adolescent and by editing the home movies Liseli’s father—Ulrico Hoepli—had shot (a private collection

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of 8-mm and 16-mm material, dating back to the 1920s).4 Only a few clips are excerpted from archive footage provided by the “Fondo Privato Giorgio Magister” (1958–1962). Un’ora sola ti vorrei was critically acclaimed: among others, it won the prize for best documentary at the 2002 Torino Film Festival and at the 2003 Newport International Film Festival, and in the same year received special mentions by the jury at the Locarno Film Festival and at the international It’s All True Festival in São Paulo in 2003.5 Un’ora sola ti vorrei was brought to the attention of critics and audiences for using family movies, uniquely in Italian cinema.6 According to the film critic Antonio Costa (2007: 85), in Un’ora sola ti vorrei Alina Marazzi explores “new horizons in terms of experimental style and language,” in her innovative use of found footage, and in the documentary’s main thematic issues. Despite its unprecedented success, at first the documentary was not meant to be public, as it simply arose from Marazzi’s private need to reconcile herself with the loss of her mother, who committed suicide in 1972 when Alina was only seven. “For most of my life,” the director notes, “my mother’s name has been ignored, avoided, hidden. Her face also. [. . .] My mother, whom I had known very little and forgotten for the most” (Marazzi 2002). Un’ora sola ti vorrei is in fact Alina Marazzi’s quest for her mother, Liseli, who suffered from depression and spent many years of her adult life in psychiatric clinics. Un’ora sola ti vorrei is indeed a strikingly touching biographical movie that resonates most intimately in its combination of poetic intensity and critical analysis. A home movie sequence shot in saturated colors opens the documentary. Liseli, a blond and beautiful young woman, is portrayed lying on the grass during a mountain holiday. She looks enigmatically into the camera. Then the camera films her husband, Antonio Marazzi, and two young children eating (one is the director herself, who does not otherwise appear in the movie except for a few short scenes like this one when she is still a little girl). The voices of Liseli and Antonio, separately recorded on a 45-rpm record, are edited as the acoustic track of the scene. In the 45-rpm record Liseli and Antonio ironically mock the authoritarian parental tone adults use to scold their kids and spur their children to eat. The disc ends with Antonio talking with Liseli about her coming back by train from Switzerland and inviting his wife to sing a Swiss song. However, Liseli strikes up an Italian song, Un’ora sola ti vorrei (which gives the title to the documentary), until her voice is interrupted by a scratch; then the same song starts up again, in a professional recording from the 1930s. After the prologue and film titles begins the documentary proper, which radically breaks with the conventions and forms of the traditional objective documentary style. Liseli is reading a letter to her daughter Alina to tell the story of the former’s mother, her engagement with her

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father, and the birth of their children, Liseli included. This “impossible letter,” read by the director herself as a female first-person narrator voice-over, deliberately violates conventional realist codes and unsettles the biographical register of the movie. The letter in fact states from the very beginning its fictive nature, immediately unveiling Liseli’s death as an inescapable fact: her story has already been written. The mood of the film, with its autobiographical and confessional tone, is immediately established as nostalgic by the posthumous narrator, which reveals how she has been scarred by a major trauma (Silverman 1988: 52). Mia cara Alina, quella voce che hai appena sentito [. . .] è la mia voce, la mia voce di trent’anni fa [. . .]. In tutto [in] questo tempo nessuno ti ha mai parlato di me, di come ero, di come ho vissuto, di come me ne sono andata. Voglio raccontarti la mia storia, adesso che è passato così tanto tempo da quando sono morta. (My beloved Alina, the voice you have just heard [. . .] is my voice, my voice of thirty years ago [. . .]. In all these years nobody has told you about me, about my life, about my death. Now, many years after my death, I want to tell you my story.)

The complex interplay between the director’s (real) voice and her mother’s voice, which is the director’s voice doubling as her mother’s (fictional) voice through a female extradiegetic first-person narrator, represents one of the crucial feminist features of the movie. By disembodying the female voice, Marazzi is able to subvert the notion of women represented primarily as body and passive erotic objects for the male gaze. The female voiceover with its transcendental and omniscient vision speaks with utmost authority, for it is situated in a framing space outside the diegesis. Liseli’s first-person narration also represents the reappropriation of her own voice and eventually leads her to become the protagonist of her own story: the movie thus becomes her counter-herstory. Moreover, the director’s choice to read her mother’s diaries and letters symbolizes the process of identification between daughter and mother that lies at the core of the movie, which allows the director to reappropriate the lost and forgotten mother. The representation of these two women, mirroring each other through their voices and gazes, contributes to establishing a female genealogy based upon the mother-daughter relationship structured as a double.7 The presence of the daughter-director is also immediately clear in the opening of the second part of the documentary when Liseli’s request, “Please, do not read this diary,” is consciously transgressed by Marazzi, who unfolds her mother’s story by filming the pages from her diaries and her photographs. We discover that beyond her apparently idyllic childhood in a wealthy Milanese family, the young Liseli asks serious questions about life, relationships, and love. The story narrates the life of the teenage

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Liseli, who finds her own mother first a perfect and then an unattainable role model. Then comes Liseli’s marriage, represented as a romantic fulfillment of love. In the meantime Liseli’s emotional difficulties increase and a loss of confidence begins to creep in: a sense of inadequacy to fulfill her family’s expectations. This discrepancy between Liseli’s inner feelings and her world is conveyed by juxtaposing her words with apparently common, spontaneous images from everyday life. For example, a beautiful scene portrays Liseli washing and delicately touching her daughter Alina, while her commentary has a completely different tone: “I found out that I am not able to do all the things that I was supposed to have learnt in the last few years and this thought obsesses me.” The depression, described in a succession and accumulation of medical reports from psychiatric hospitals accompanied by the sounds of breaking glass, takes the audience into the last and third part of Liseli’s life with a crescendo of inexorable intensity, like a journey into the infernal circles.8 Liseli’s diary entries are commented on by the images that attempt to visually represent Liseli’s interior landscapes during her illness. Continuity, analogy, and metonymy connect us to Liseli’s confinement in Swiss mental hospitals. Movie fragments of psychiatric records symbolize Liseli’s institutionalization. Diary pages are filmed to support her reflections on her own illness. Images of trees evoke the garden of the hospital where Liseli often takes a walk. While preserving the archive’s origins and its original meaning, the creative cutting allows Marazzi to resignify home movies from their original meaning thereby imposing a fresh interpretative framework. The presence of the director’s gaze is revealed through the recurring close-ups of Liseli’s enigmatic face, which confers a lyrical nuance to the documentary—what Pier Paolo Pasolini would have called “cinema of poetry,” where the cinematic structure comes close to the poetic prose of modernist fiction (Bergonzoni 2011: 251). By employing free association of images and correspondences between Liseli and her mother, Marazzi reelaborates her family’s visual memory and reconstructs the evocative and nostalgic power of her mother’s face. Un’ora sola ti vorrei corresponds, in the words of Marazzi (2002), to my personal quest for my mother’s face. An attempt to give life back to her, even if only on the screen, a way of celebrating her, through these memories. [. . .] To tell the story of my mother with these old films is for me to give dignity to the memory of the person who gave me life. I consider it a present for myself, for her, for all parents and children.

However, the documentary achieves its most lyric moments in the tragic contrast between words and images, reproducing through oxymoron that

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which imprisons Liseli’s life. Her sense of inadequacy in taking care of children and her solitude in the United States, where she longs for her family and friends, are visually contrasted with happy images of Liseli playing with the children in the garden and feeding them at the kitchen table. The long list of antidepressants (read by the voice-over as overlapping words) is set against close-ups of Liseli accompanied by music: Liseli’s sulky face as a child and immediately after Liseli’s dreamlike expression as a girl. Or Liseli’s voice blaming her parents for not being supportive, while summer home movies of a happy and peaceful family unfold on the screen. The documentary ends with the same recorded disc we heard in the opening scene and the same video during a summer mountain holiday. Liseli’s story thus seems to end back at the beginning, apparently tracing a circular narrative. However, now the audience knows her story: they know what it means for her to come back from Switzerland; they know what is behind the enigmatic look into the camera of a beautiful young woman lying on the grass; and when in the final scene a newspaper article reports Liseli’s suicide, the audience knows the real meaning of that song she just begins to strike up. Then the professional recording Un’ora sola ti vorrei is played again for the last time. At first glance, the narrative structure of Un’ora sola ti vorrei seems to be chronological, in keeping with its biographical subject matter. When looked at more closely, however, the film presents a fragmented style, which disrupts temporal and visual linearity. This sense of fragmentation is stylistically conveyed by alternating color with black-and-white sequences and by intertwining images of Liseli as an adult woman with images of Liseli as a small child. Different rhythms are used while editing the shots: some images are in slow motion, others are frozen in frame-stops; some are edited through fast cutting, others are repeated several times. Moreover, extradiegetic sound effects, such as whispers and background noises, disrupt the extradiegetic narrator’s commentary, contributing to an evocative and dreamlike atmosphere. [S]entivamo l’esigenza di arricchire la colonna sonora con un tappeto di suoni e di musiche. Che poi ho aggiunto lavorando con un montatore del suono, che ha operato a più strati. Alcuni dei brani musicali che ho scelto hanno un valore affettivo per me, altri invece rimandano alle atmosfere del tempo. In più ci sono una serie di rumori, di suoni e di voci bisbigliate che abbiamo aggiunto come se si aprisse un baule da cui escono parole, pezzi di carta, fotografie, filmati, suoni, voci di bambini. [. . .] Tutto questo mi sembrava che c’entrasse con il modo in cui mettevamo insieme questo materiale della memoria. (Sorrentini 2003) (We felt the need to enrich the soundtrack with a tapestry of songs and sound effects. I added these songs and sounds while working with the sound editor, who operates with multiple layers. Some of the songs I selected have

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a special meaning for me; others recall the atmosphere of the epoch. Moreover, there are many sounds, noises, whisperings, which we added to reproduce the sound of the opening of an old trunk from which come out words, pieces of sheet, pictures, videos, sounds, children’s voices [. . .] I thought that everything was relevant and connected with the ways we were gathering these materials of memory.)

On the one hand, the fragmentation suggests the impossibility of any temporal linearity; on the other hand, the movie stands as a vehicle for memory and as a work of mourning, which recomposes a life into a cathartic ensemble (Goisis 2007). Yet this fragmentary style is counterbalanced by some recurring motifs—primarily musical and fairy-tale ones—that make the temporal narrative structure cyclical. Music, for example, plays a crucial role in emphasizing the recurring close-ups of Liseli and in underlining the most harrowing moments. The German folk song Hänschen Klein reinforces the feeling of lost childhood; Un’ora sola ti vorrei marks the nostalgic desire for the lost mother; and the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs composed by Henryk Górecki stresses the sadness of Liseli’s later life. Fairy-tale elements are also ubiquitous in Liseli’s narration. But references to her childhood fairy-tale world serve only to reinforce the distance between fairy tale and her displacement in real life: “Avevo sempre vissuto nel benessere, in una specie di illusione di serenità dove i problemi non esistevano. Ma già allora è come se sapessi che non avrei mai trovato il mio posto nel mondo” (I grew up in comfort, in a sort of illusion of serenity where problems did not exist. Yet it is as if I knew even then that I would not find my place in the world). The images of harmony and peacefulness, joy and prosperity of a happy upper-middle-class family exacerbate this broken fairy-tale illusion: the home movies clash painfully with Liseli’s anguish—with her increasing impatience toward her parents, her family, her upbringing. Her words are used mainly as a counterpoint to the images, depriving them of their original meaning. Liseli’s self-representation in her diary, by contrast, is designated as the very (and only) place of authenticity. The continuous tension that arises from the documentary lies precisely here, in the painful conflict between the inauthentic nature of the amateur movies and the authenticity of Liseli’s selfrepresentation. The intertwining of chronological narrative, fragmentation, and cyclical patterns complicates Liseli’s subjectivity, which emerges only through fragments, pieces, and traces. Fragmented words and movie sequences gradually compose her figure as a “broken mirror.” By using this metaphor I want to suggest that Marazzi does not pretend to reflect her mother’s subjectivity

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and life as a unified whole, since she is aware of how the memory of her mother can be composed only through images created by others (especially by Alina’s grandfather). Tragically entrapped between her public appearance and inner feelings, between appearing the “Woman” and being “a woman,” Liseli cannot find a sense of authenticity: indeed, while talking to her therapist, Liseli says that everything in her past was like a “pose.” The word “pose,” in the sense of posing in front of the camera, is also revealing about Marazzi’s reflection on the role of classical cinema in representing women as the passive object of the male gaze (Mulvey 1975). Marazzi is inviting us to reflect on the feminist discourse of representation of women: refusing to pose means in fact to refuse to visually represent women as a mere spectacle, but it also means to unveil a woman’s subjectivity and assume her own perspective. In this sense, it is possible to read the documentary not simply as a biography, but more broadly as a reflection about the power of cinema in relation to women’s social conditions. This work also reveals how in the private and public spheres of home movies, spontaneity and fictional real life and representation are intertwined. According to Luisella Farinotti (2006: 500), Ulrico Hoepli’s home movies, by celebrating familial bonds through recording the most important family rites (weddings, christenings, holidays and trips, etc.), are not only keepers of personal and private memories, but also create a collective mise-enscène of memory, where social, cultural, and aesthetics codes are inscribed. Ilaria Fraioli, the editor of the documentary, echoes this argument when she describes Ulrico Hoepli as an “authoritarian cameraman.” His sense of mise-en-scène and style clearly emerges from his amateur home movies and mirrors specific aesthetic values going far beyond their apparently private nature (Marazzi and Fraioli 2003: 94). Not only is Ulrico Hoepli’s amateur status and his apparently naïveté as cameraman questioned, but the nature of home movie and archival material is also problematized. Beyond their apparent aim to document “the trivial, the personal and the inconsequential,” home movies are shown as neither innocent nor artless records (Bruzzi 2006: 18). Through her documentary Marazzi exhibits how the original document is not a stable, pure, or authentic record of reality. On the contrary, through her critical eye as a filmmaker and the collision between images and sounds the document is presented as not fixed, but infinitely accessible, open, and mutable (Bruzzi 2006). Vogliamo anche le rose Alluding to the 1912 Lawrence Textile Strike, when women workers chanted the slogan “We want bread, but we want roses, too!,” the

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documentary Vogliamo anche le rose (85’) aims to portray the deep changes brought on by the sexual revolution and the feminist movement in Italy during the 1960s and 1970s by reconstructing the true stories of three Italian women. Even though it seems quite different, according to Marazzi, Vogliamo anche le rose is a continuation of her first film project. In the following passage, Marazzi reveals how much nostalgia drives her to turn back to the past to explore unrealized possibilities, unpredictable turns, and crossroads in what might have happened in relation to her mother. Certamente Vogliamo anche le rose è il passaggio successivo di Un’ ora sola ti vorrei, il seguito di una storia là dove si era interrotta. Tutto succedeva contemporaneamente a Milano e queste vite femminili, quella di mia madre, quella delle femministe, così diverse eppure unite da una condizione di disagio, non si sono mai incrociate: forse se fosse avvenuto, se alla mamma fosse capitato di rispecchiarsi negli stessi sperdimenti e ribellioni di altre donne meno fragili, la malattia non avrebbe avuto il sopravvento,la depressione non avrebbe chiuso attorno a lei tutte le porte di fuga. (Quoted in Aspesi 2007) (Vogliamo anche le rose is the follow-up to Un’ora sola ti vorrei, the sequel to a story at its point of interruption. Everything happened simultaneously in Milan and these female lives, those of my mother, those of the feminists, so diverse and yet united in a condition of hardship, never crossed: maybe if it had happened that my mother had had the occasion to mirror herself in the bewilderment and rebellions of other, less fragile, women, the illness might not have taken over, the depression wouldn’t have closed all means of escape around her.)

The movie looks back at the end of the 1960s and the 1970s, exploring what was behind the social revolution, when the feminist movement questioned male supremacy and called for a deep change in gender relations. The Second Wave of Italian feminism became a popular mobilization that fought with remarkable strength and radicalism for women’s rights, carrying out epic battles for divorce (1971) and abortion (1978), and united women across the social and political spectrum. By the end of that decade, however, feminism was in decline and at the beginning of the 1980s the movement gradually disappeared from the public scene and took different directions. Marazzi’s film addresses the crucial role those struggles played in achieving equal rights, suggesting that no victory can be taken for granted forever. Like in Un’ora sola ti vorrei, Vogliamo anche le rose centers on women’s subjective experiences through the diaries of three anonymous women discovered at the Italian National Archive of Diaries.9 Narrated in vaguely

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chronological order, the stories of Anita, Teresa, and Valentina show that despite some differences the protagonists share the same feelings: they no longer feel part of a society based on the patriarchal family and question the power of husbands and the supremacy of males. Every story is composed of excerpts from a diary—read as a voice-over by a professional actress—and is visually supported with a woman’s face taken from archival material or experimental movies, to help the audience to visually identify the narrator. Selected in collaboration with the writer Silvia Ballestra, the three diaries are characteristic of the 1970s for the emotional and political turmoil they express. However, the use of the present tense throughout the narration shortens the temporal gap that separates those women from the present. We discover that their questions and desires, their fears and troubled relationships, their conflicts and contradictions are not so different from those of women today. The same editor who worked on Un’ora sola ti vorrei, Ilaria Fraioli, helped Marazzi to edit the vertical montage of the images, an archive of thirty hours of moving images, interviews, talk shows, and commercial videos, all collected at the Italian National Television (RAI) archives— and clips from home movies and experimental films from private collections. The editing plays a key role and it structures the documentary on two different levels, in a continuous dialogue between public and private: on the one hand the visual and official apparatus, on the other hand the personal narrative register that stresses the uniqueness of the three protagonists. The archival material from RAI plays the role of representing the “official” image of femininity, while Italian experimental movies represent the need for social change that runs through Italian society at that time. By undoing the coherence of the images’ mimetic qualities, Marazzi on one hand created a very hybrid and kaleidoscopic work, where the filmed fragments “are folded and forced by the tireless work of editing into attractions and distractions, until creating a new narration and a new meaning” (Bonifazio 2007; Zonta 2008: 83). On the other hand, she also constructed a polyphonic text of women’s voices, which underlines the primary importance of multiplicity in the work of women filmmakers (Carson et al. 1994). In Vogliamo anche le rose, unlike in her previous documentary, Marazzi adopts an ironic and parodic approach. “A darkly humorous undercurrent runs throughout, emerging at times from the dramatic irony implicit in our modern viewpoint, at others from the simple ridiculing of misogyny through editing, animation and the non-diegetic soundtrack. And yet this humor coincides with some very poignant scenes” (Holdaway 2012). As with other women artists, feminist parody represents one of the keys to understanding the film. Marazzi uses parody to penetrate the

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cultural discourse, to explore it, and to contest it from within. Parody as a feminist strategy allows her to speak the language of the dominant, but to subvert it through ironic strategies of exaggeration, understatement, or literalization. It is the mode that allows her to mimic mainstream speech, but to do so through recontextualizing it and therefore without subscribing to its implied ideals and values (Hutcheon 1989). Parody therefore becomes the privileged strategy with which to react critically and creatively to the dominant culture and to construct a new cultural identity, one that foresees a new relationship with history, in which women had previously marginalized subjects. Feminist parody in Marazzi’s documentary takes on an aspect of a joyous carnival, while nevertheless maintaining a critical attitude toward the representation of women in a male hegemonic culture (Gamberi 2009). The opening sequence is worthy of attention. “Curiosity, you are a woman,” declares the first sequence in a manipulated 1950s commercial for a facial cream by Nino and Alfredo Pagot. An immaculately dressed 1950s housewife enters a curiosity store and gazes into a crystal ball to see her future. But she reels in shock when she sees a girl who dances naked in a park—a clip inserted from Parco Lambro (1976), a documentary of one of the fathers of Italian video activism, Alberto Grifi. The year in the future is 1976. The girl in Parco Lambro dances at the Festival of Youth Proletariat, organized by the magazine Re Nudo, an organ of the youth counterculture. Alina Marazzi uses Grifi’s footage to underline the radical and extreme changes that have occurred in only two decades: the housewife’s terrified expression signals the impossibility of expressing female pleasure and sexuality before the emergence of feminism. “At the sight of this liberated woman”—Marazzi notes referring to the naked girl dancing—“almost a new Eve in the garden of Eden, the woman from the ‘50s is struck with horror, because she is suddenly conscious of where it will all finish, while she is still part of a world where nothing has happened” (Marazzi 2008). This opening scene already contains the beginning and the end of the story, since it shows the film’s journey: the desire to look at ourselves from an historical perspective in relation to the changes in customs and mores, particularly in the sexual sphere. The first diary, by Anita, delicately portrays a shy teenager in 1960s Milan. She is intimidated by overtly sexualized images, but in search of emancipation from her Catholic education and her oppressive father. Her diary calls into question the inevitability of marriage, but she feels she has no alternative. Paura di compiere 19 anni, di frequentare l’università. Mi ribello all’idea del vestito bianco, dei parenti, del matrimonio, del contratto legale, della cerimonia in chiesa. Come si fa a vivere fuori dalle convenzioni sociali?

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(Fear of turning 19, fear of going to college. I rebel against the idea of the white dress, of relatives, of marriage, of the legal contract, of the church ceremony. How can we live outside of the social conventions?)

Through Anita’s diary we understand how the feminist movement and the sexual revolution took place first in women’s consciousness, only later becoming a mass movement. Anita’s words echo the whispers of thousands of women feeling the same insecurities and fears, before the sexual revolution brought on by the feminist movement. Marazzi shapes Anita’s contrasting emotions, her insecurities, and religious taboos with footage taken from Alfredo Leonardi’s Se l’inconscio si ribella (1968), where black and white slow motion pictures portray two young men playing, dancing, and touching each other with joyful tenderness and homoerotic pleasure. The second diary tells Teresa’s story and although written only a few years later, in 1975, it expresses very different experiences. As a young woman who is sexually active and in love, Teresa discovers that she is pregnant, and abortion, until now an abstract political goal, becomes an urgent and concrete reality. Her diary narrates her odyssey from the southern Italian region of Puglia to Rome to resort to a clandestine abortion, as abortion was still illegal and considered a crime. The theme of abortion is especially appropriate since it is an emblem of the accomplishments of Italian second wave feminism. It also represents a strong thematic and political choice, for it is linked with women’s sexuality and constitutes the politicization of women’s private sphere, revealing how biopolitics affects female bodies. Teresa’s story shows that sexuality (and maternity) play a crucial role in defining one’s own sense of identity, and more importantly her identity as a woman without being a mother. Teresa’s heart-breaking narration displays her abortion in painful detail: I lay down and I felt that icy instrument that disproportionately enlarged my vagina. The lady had prepared two syringes and I felt the needles penetrate the uterus. Not long after torpor arrived and I became incapable of any reaction. But I felt lots of pain everywhere. My body didn’t respond to me, I was all rigid and cold. [. . .] My feet, my legs, my knees, my thighs, I couldn’t feel them anymore, the cold had become unbearable, my blood had frozen. I was a total block of frozen pain. (Marazzi 2008)

But she also demonstrates her self-determination and her desire for freedom when she eventually claims, “For the first time I felt within me the force of a thousand lions. Fear in me had vanished, and in its place there was a new consciousness: I had the right to freedom. A kind of freedom reached not through lies [. . .] but through courage and dignity. The next phase had begun” (Marazzi 2008).

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Marazzi brilliantly connects us to Teresa with several sequences filmed by her: images of a boat sailing on the ice and naked feet walking on ice. As Marazzi noted, It was necessary to go back to images that visualized, even at a symbolic level, that which was being narrated. The images of ice came about because in the diary it spoke of sensations of cold and therefore the association was fairly immediate; the fact that there are feet that walk on a frozen surface was because it seemed to me that Teresa’s diary recounted a journey over difficult, uneven and painful terrain. From here the idea to film walking feet was born: it is a symbolic, evocative image.

The image of a woman walking on ice in a hostile environment recalls Adrienne Rich’s (1972) visual metaphor in When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision, where she claims the necessity for women to appropriate male cultural traditions through the act of re-vision and where she describes the difficulties for women in exploring their own psychic landscapes: For writers, and at this moment for women writers in particular, there is the challenge and promise of a whole new psychic geography to be explored. But there is also a difficult and dangerous walking on the ice, as we try to find language and images for the consciousness we are just coming into, and with little in the past to support us. (19)

Using the same imagery, both Rich’s and Marazzi’s texts indicate that the solitary and uncertain journey of a woman can turn into the starting point for raising the collective consciousness. Teresa’s narration metaphorically positions itself as the link among the private sphere, Anita’s diary, and the feminist activism represented by the final diary. This third diary, entitled Diary of Sex and Politics, was written in 1978 by Valentina, a woman active in the feminist Roman collective “Il Governo Vecchio.” Her reflections focus particularly on the Women’s Liberation Movement, and how strengths and weaknesses among women affect her life and her political vision. Her diary also shows the end of the first era of feminism after the referendum for making abortion legal in 1978. Her personal and political quest for female role models and feminist genealogies reflects the uncertainty many feminists felt in this period of transition. Bisogna trovare un modello da seguire. Ci guardiamo intorno e vediamo che non ce ne sono. Alcune prendono i soldi dal marito. Qualche altra ha avuto sempre uomini importanti. E ci sono forse le vere emancipate che passano da un uomo all’altro, ma con caratteristiche di stabilità. (We need to find a role model to follow. We look around and we cannot see one. Some women take money from their husbands. Others always

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associate themselves with powerful men. And there are also the truly emancipated, who go from one man to the next, but with somehow stable features.)

Valentina’s feminist engagement is visually supported with clips taken from Adriana Monti, a feminist filmmaker, whose works—such as Il filo del desiderio (1977), Il piacere del testo (1978), and Ciclo continuo—depict militant moments in which women function as a chorus. These three diaries, along with the archival footage, provide the visual and auditory base “that wants to go beyond historical reconstruction, to gather as much as possible all of the emotional and existential truths of which history is made up” (Persico 2008: 21). As the film progresses, the three stories are interwoven with moments witty and sad, nostalgic and celebratory, in a wider storyline in which many voices are heard. There are the wives going to evening school to gain a different life from the one they have. There is a woman engaged in housework who declares that girls don’t know what to expect after marriage. There is a group of women working on a tarot card telephone who discuss the nature of marriage. A young Sicilian bride agrees with the feminists, but the very idea of living like them seems impossible: such things have not yet reached her part of the world. Marazzi also uses footage of angry protests and brutal arrests to signal women’s political awakening. This is true of a sequence shot in Campo dei Fiori, Rome, on International Women’s Day in 1972, when riots between feminists and police marked the starting point of the feminist movements in Italy. However, although Vogliamo anche le rose has a very explicit political intention, shots of protests are very limited, for the director preferred footage of interiors and close-ups, faces and individuals. Firstly, because she wanted to distance herself from the traditional iconography of the 1970s (“grey, bleak, consisting only of protests and fights in the streets”); secondly, in order to underline the extent of the spread of people’s reflections on what was happening and “to reveal the private aspect of that decade” (Persico 2008: 24). The combination of the private and intimate spheres with the political horizon is reinforced by sequences excerpted from X chiama Y, a short experimental film made in 1967 by Mario Masini, which portrays his wife and children. Fascinating and poetic clips from this movie—accelerated, suspended, in reverse—show a female figure who conducts a life that at times appears traditional (we see her bustling around the kitchen or giving the baby its bottle), while at others seems transgressive and unconventional: in one sequence we see her playfully hiding behind a wedding veil. According to Fraioli, her presence is “the key to understanding this interrelationship between the three lives and the historical periods” and

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it is Masini’s wife who links the three women’s lives and the historical period in which they lived, as “there is something profoundly modern in her way of moving and looking” (Grosso 2008: 42–43). Although the movie does not celebrate the past, at the end of it one senses a vague nostalgia for something that has been lost. These materials rewrite a story of the recent past, in the light of an uncertain future. Marazzi’s concern for the present is evident in the final few minutes: the film ends with a list of laws that have affected gender rights in the period covered by the film until the present day, which also includes a number of attempts to retract antecedent laws, demonstrating that many fundamental legal issues remain unresolved. Critical Nostalgia Despite some differences, both documentaries not only share the same stylistic choice of combining archival footage with female voice-over, but also look back at the same historical period: the end of the 1960s and the 1970s. As the historical setting of both documentaries indicates, what emerges as a crucial feature in Marazzi’s work is nostalgia, understood as a longing for a place (the lost home) but also a “yearning for a different time—the time of our childhood, the slower rhythms of our dreams” (Boym 2001). Particularly relevant in Marazzi’s nostalgic approach to the past is the importance attributed to the mother(s), either real or symbolic. Both movies represent an ideal quest for the mother’s face(s) and voice(s). This nostalgic driving force, in fact, makes Un’ora sola ti vorrei a work of mourning, which recomposes the fragments of Liseli’s life into a cathartic ensemble. Marazzi (2002) said that in Un’ora sola ti vorrei she wanted “to convey the strong feeling of nostalgia that I felt when first watching those images. [. . .] Nostalgia as a necessary feeling for overcoming a loss. Nostalgia as an essential condition for living.” Not surprisingly, the practice of found footage has been popular with those directors who “deal with, amongst other things, experiences of abandonment, mourning and death” and for whom family movies are intimately linked with nostalgia (Danks 2002). But this movie also retraces a familiar female genealogy from grandmother to granddaughter in a continuous chain defined by Marazzi as “rispecchiamento” (mirroring). The form of critical nostalgia that drives Marazzi is evident when she states how mirroring oneself in one’s mother’s face helps not only to reclaim one’s own past, but also to discover one’s real and symbolic origins. “Ho preso [. . .] in mano la mia vicenda, e nel raccontare quella

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di mia madre ‘mi’ sono raccontata la storia delle mie origini, per cui è come se nel film ci fosse un doppio livello: biografico e autobiografico” [I took my life in my hands, and by narrating my mother’s story, I told myself the story of my origins, therefore it is as if the movie has two levels the biographical, and the autobiographical] (Marazzi and Fraioli 2003: 92). Marazzi’s documentary is thus conceived at the same time as biography (of the mother/s) and as autobiography (of herself). Similarly, Vogliamo anche le rose, while imagining three women’s lives as counter role models, is tracing a journey toward past symbolic mothers to understand the present. For these reasons, Marazzi’s works do not simply linger in regressive stances or melancholic attitudes. On the contrary, she offers a critical tool to interrogate the articulation of the past into the present. Both documentaries share a critical nostalgic approach, which is not sterile, but generative. It is not reactionary, but progressive. Marazzi does not sentimentally celebrate the past, but recognizes in it a potential critique for the present, and invokes a positively evaluated past world in response to a deficient present world. Her perspective on nostalgia is more as “historical emotion,” rather than an individual condition, which is very much a symptom of our modern time and at the very core of the modern condition (Boym 2001). This sentiment of loss and female displacement that runs throughout contemporary cultural and political Italian society turns to the past to find and create new sources of female identity, agency, and empowerment by establishing a strong female and feminist genealogy that is now perceived as missing. The director, by addressing the mother-daughter relationship and by stressing the fictive nature of her own act of reappropriation, is not only recovering the figure of the mother(s), but is focusing on the present to reflect on the crucial role of daughters. These women from the past stand as possible models for having refused to conform to the roles that society has assigned them (Brandoni and Quercia 2009). In other words, Marazzi shows us that searching for our mother’s voices is not only a form of feminist historical inquiry, but it is also a feminist empowerment for interpellating the positions that patriarchy has assigned to daughters. Notes The author would like to thank Monika Otter and an anonymous reader for their helpful comments on an early version of this chapter. 1.

Alina Marazzi, born in 1964, lives and works in Milan, Italy. She has worked as assistant director for feature films and video art projects. As a

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documentary director, her filmography includes: Il declino di Milano (52´, Italy, 1992); Mediterraneo, il mare industrializzato (52´, Italy, 1993); Il Ticino è vicino? (46’, Italy, 1995); Ragazzi dentro (45´, Italy, 1997); Il sogno tradito (46´, Italy, 1999); Un’ora sola ti vorrei / For One More Hour with You (55´, Italy, 2002); Per Sempre (52´, Italy, 2005); Vogliamo anche le rose /We Want Roses Too (84´, Italy/Switzerland, 2007). 2. Berlusconismo refers not only to the prime minister’s political leadership, but also to the pervasive cultural attitude of sexism and contempt of women that he helped to shape. 3. The businesswoman and director Lorella Zanardo attracted popular attention with her documentary The Body of Women, which forced people to recognize that the TV they were familiar with was full of scantily clad women, and directors Francesca and Cristina Comencini wrote and took around the country the play Libere (2010), which centered on feminism and the generation gap between two women. The documentary The Body of Women (Il corpo delle donne, 25’, Italy, 2009) is a compilation of sexist images that can be seen on Italian television every day. It has been made by editing a series of sequences taken from television broadcasts accompanied by the voice of the Lorella Zanardo, alternating between the personal dismay and indignation with quotes from famous authors such as Pier Paolo Pasolini and Galimberti. The Body of Women shares many stylistic similarities with Marazzi’s work. Written by Cristina Comencini and directed by Francesca Comencini, Libere is a play structured as a dialogue between a middle-aged and a younger woman. 4. The author of the home movies is Ulrico Hoepli (1906–2003), the son of the founder of the publishing house Hoepli. 5. “Best Director” 20th Torino Film Festival; “Jury’s Special Award” 55th Festival Internazionale del Film di Locarno; 43rd Festival dei Popoli Firenze; 7th Maremma Doc Festival; It’s All True Documentary-Film Festival SaoPaulo Brazil, 2003; “Grande Award” Newport International Film Festival, 2003; “Silver Olive Award” Kalamata Documentary; “Duel Award,” 2002; Award “Rivista del Cinematografo” Rassegna Libero Bizzarri; “Best Director” Sulmona Film Festival, 2005. 6. Although domestic, amateur, experimental, and fictional narrative cinemas have a longer history that may well date back to the birth of cinema, it is only in the period after World War II that this process of hybridization comes most clearly to the fore. Many of these films can also be situated within a specific realm of feminist film practice that attempts to reorientate, recontextualize, and to essentially interrogate the film and photographic records passed on from parent to child. It is the recontextualization of these representational materials that predominantly constitutes the “found” or collage aspects of these experimental films. This type of cinema can be closely related to a more general feminist film practice for its engagement “with the struggle of women to gain control of the word and the image, so that the voice of women may be heard” (Freda Freiberg, “Time’s Relentless Melt: Corinne Cantrill’s In This Life’s Body,” in Annette Blonski, Barbara Creed, and Freda

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Freiberg, eds., Don’t Shoot Darling! Women’s Independent Filmmaking in Australia [Australia: Greenhouse Publications, 1987], 337). 7. When Liseli looks at the camera, as Marazzi notes, the impossible and imaginary dialogue between the mother and her daughter takes place. By editing the home movies, Marazzi reappropriates the camera’s gaze, and this makes it possible for her to look back at her mother. 8. It is interesting to note that the first signs of depression appear in the United States, where Liseli had moved with her children and her husband, and then in Switzerland, where she was treated in psychiatric clinics. Depression is thus associated with a foreign and strange country, where Liseli is isolated from the family. 9. The National Archive of Diaries is located in Pieve di Santo Stefano, Tuscany, and was established in 1984 thanks to the idea of Saverio Tutino, a writer and journalist. The aim of the archive is “to collect the stories of individuals to create a history of our country.” Every year the archives runs a competition and the winning text is published.

Bibliography Agazzi, Elena, and Vita Fortunati, eds. Memoria e saperi: Percorsi interdisciplinari. Roma: Meltemi, 2007. Aprà, Adriano. “La rifondazione del documentario italiano.” In L’idea documentaria: Altri sguardi sul cinema italiano, edited by Marco Bertozzi and Gianfranco Pannone, 187–192. Torino: Lindau, 2003. Aspesi, Natalia. “Nel mio film i diari femministi,” la Repubblica, August 1, 2007. http://ricerca.repubblica.it/repubblica/archivio/repubblica/2007/08/01/nelmio-film-diari-femministi.html (accessed July 23, 2012). Bale, Miriam. “We Want Roses, Too: A New Language for Italian Feminism.” The L Magazine, April 23, 2010. http://www.thelmagazine.com/TheMeasure/ archives/2010/04/23/we-want-roses-too-a-new-language-for-italianfeminism (accessed May 23, 2012). Bergonzoni, Maura. “Alina Marazzi’s Un’ora sola ti vorrei and Vogliamo anche le rose: The Personal Stands for the Political.” Studies in Documentary Film 5.2–3 (2011): 247–252. Bertozzi, Marco. Storia del documentario italiano: Immagini e culture dell’altro cinema. Venezia: Marsilio, 2008. Bertozzi, Marco, and Gianfranco Pannone, eds. L’idea documentaria: Altri sguardi sul cinema italiano. Torino: Lindau, 2003. Blodgett, Harriet. Centuries of Female Days: Englishwomen’s Private Diaries. Gloucester: Sutton, 1989. Bonifazio, Paola. “Feminism, Postmodernism, Intertextuality: We Want Roses Too (2007).” Literature-Film Quarterly 38.3 (2007): 171–182. http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Feminism,+postmodernism,+intertextuality%3A+We+Want +Roses+Too%282007.-a0234720445 (accessed May 23, 2012). Boym, Svetlana. The Future of Nostalgia. New York: BasicBooks, 2001.

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Brandoni, Alessia, and Giovanna Quercia. “Alina Marazzi—Donne che non aderscono ai modelli: Intervista.” Schermaglie: Cinema inoltre, March 5, 2009. http://www.schermaglie.it/primopiano/1032/alina-marazzi-donne-che-nonaderiscono-ai-modelliintervista-parte-prima (accessed May 7, 2012). Brenez, Nicole. “Montage intertextuel et formes contemporaines du remploi dans le cinéma experimental.” CiNéMAS 13.1–2 (2002): 49–67. Bruzzi, Stella. New Documentary: Second Edition. Abingdon: Routledge, 2006. Bunkers, Suzanne, and Cynthia Anne Huff, eds. Inscribing the Daily: Critical Essays on Women’s Diaries. Ann Arbor: University of Massachusetts Press, 1996. Canova, Gianni. “Alina Marazzi e Un’ora sola ti vorrei.” Un’ora sola ti vorrei, 2002. http://www.retescat.com/unorasola.it (accessed March 20, 2013). Carson, Diane, Linda Dittmar, and Janice Welce, eds. Multiple Voices in Feminist Criticism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994. Costa, Antonio. “Alina Marazzi: il documentario e il suo oltre.” Quaderni del CSCI 3 (2007). http://www.iuav.it/Ricerca1/Dipartimen/dADI/Working-Pa/ wp_2007_22.pdf (accessed March 20, 2013). Danks, Adrian. “Photographs in Haunted Rooms: The Found Home Experimental Film and Merilee Bennett’s A Song of Air.” Senses of Cinema 23 (2002). http:// www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/02/23/haunted.html (accessed June 28, 2012). Farinotti, Luisella. “La ri-scrittura della storia: Un’ora sola ti vorrei di Alina Marazzi e la memoria delle immagini.” Comunicazioni sociali, Il metodo e la passione: Cinema amatoriale e film di famiglia in Italia 3 (2006): 497–502. Fortunati, Vita, Annamaria Lamarra, and Eleonora Federici, eds. The Controversial Women’s Body. Bologna: Bononia University Press, 2003. Fortunati, Vita, Gilberta Golinelli, and Rita Monticelli, eds. Studi di Genere e Memoria Culturale/Women and Cultural Memory. Bologna: Clueb, 2004. Freiberg, Freda. “Time’s Relentless Melt: Corinne Cantrill’s In This Life’s Body.” In Don’t Shoot Darling! Women’s Independent Filmmaking in Australia, edited by Annette Blonski, Barbara Creed, and Freda Freiberg. Australia: Greenhouse Publications, 1987. Frye, Joanne S. Living Stories, Telling Lives: Woman and the Novel in Contemporary Experience. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996. Gamberi, Cristina. “Alina Marazzi’s Docu-diary Vogliamo anche le rose.” Cinemascope: Independent Film Journal, Special Issue on Female Subjectivity and Cinematic Representation 12 (2009). http://www.cinemascope.it/ Issue%2012/PDF/CRISTINA%20GAMBERI.pdf (accessed May 28, 2012). Gannett, Cinthia. Gender and the Journal: Diaries and Academic Discourse. New York: State University of New York Press, 1992. Genna, Giuseppe, ed. Tu sei lei: Otto scrittrici italiane. Roma: Minimum Fax, 2008. Goisis, Pietro Roberto. “Quest for a Lost Mother: Alina Marazzi’s Un’ora sola ti vorrei.” In Projected Shadows: Psychoanalytic Reflections on the Representation of Loss in European Cinema, edited by Andrea Sabbadini, 21–34. London: Routledge, 2007.

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Holdaway, Dom. “We Want Roses Too.” Directory of World Cinema. http:// worldcinemadirectory.co.uk/index.php/component/film/?id=947 (accessed May 7, 2012). Hutcheon, Linda. A Theory of Parody: The Teachings of Twentieth-Century Art Forms. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2000. Inzerillo, Andrea, and Nicoletta Scapparone. “Una storia più grande: Incontro con Alina Marazzi.” Jura Gentium Cinema: Cinema and Globalization. http:// www.jgcinema.com/single.php?sl=intervista-alina-marazzi (accessed May 7, 2012). Kuhn, Annette. Family Secrets: Acts of Memory and Imagination. London: Verso, 1995. Lamarra, Annamaria, and Eleonora Federici, eds. Nations, Traditions and CrossCulture Identities (European Connections). Oxford: Peter Lang, 2010. de Laurentis, Teresa. Alice Doesn’t: Feminism, Semiotics, Cinema. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984. ———. Technologies of Gender: Essays on Theory, Film, and Fiction. London: Macmillian Press, 1987. Marazzi, Alina. Un’Ora sola ti vorrei, 2002. http://www.retescat.com/unorasola. it/index.html (accessed May 7, 2012). ———, ed. Le rose. Milano: Feltrinelli Real Cinema, 2008. Marazzi, Alina, and Ilaria Fraioli. “Un’Ora sola ti vorrei.” In L’idea documentaria: Altri sguardi sul cinema italiano, edited by Marco Bertozzi and Gianfranco Pannone, 89–101. Torino: Lindau, 2003. Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Screen 16.3 (1975): 6–18. Nussbaum, Felicity. The Autobiographical Subject: Gender and Ideology in Eighteenth-Century England. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989. Persico, Daniela. “Una conversazione con Alina Marazzi e Silvia Ballestra.” In Le rose, edited by Alina Marazzi, 11–34. Milano: Feltrinelli Real Cinema, 2008. Rich, Adrienne. “When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision.” College English 34.1 (1972): 18–30. Schiwy, A. Marlene. A Voice of Her Own: Women and the Journal-Writing Journey. New York: Fireside, 1996. Silverman, Kaja. The Acoustic Mirror: The Female Voice in Psychoanalysis and Cinema. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988. Sorrentini, Barbara. “Un’ora sola ti vorrei: Intervista alla regista Alina Marazzi.” Altrocinema (2003). http://www.altrocinema.it/archivio/archivi/alinamarazzi.htm (accessed June 28, 2012). Tarozzi, Bianca, ed. Giornate particolari: diari, memorie e cronache. Verona: Ombre Corte, 2006. Zimmermann, R. Patricia. “The Amateur, the Avant-Garde, and the Ideologies of Art.” The Journal of Film and Video 38 (1986): 63–85. Zonta, Dario. “Chi è cosa . . . Vogliamo anche le rose e il cinema underground italiano.” In Le rose, edited by Alina Marazzi, 83–98. Milano: Feltrinelli Real Cinema, 2008.

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Alina Marazzi’s Women A Director in Search of Herself through a Female Genealogy Fabiana Cecchini

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ilm scholars discuss the inception of New-New Italian Film in La Meglio Gioventù. Nuovo Cinema Italiano 2000–2006 (Zagarrio 2006: 11), and identify a mixed generation of directors and producers engaged in the creation of a “cinema diverso” (different cinema) for the new millennium (12). Scholars attribute this new generation with introducing innovation into Italian cinema through their experimentation with cinematic techniques, narrative strategies, and intelligent, but less direct social critique, to generate original national cinema. Commenting on the definition New-New Italian Film in his essay entitled “Certi bambini . . . I nuovi cineasti italiani” (Certain children . . . the new Italian filmmakers), Vito Zagarrio chose the expression “la meglio gioventù” (the best of youth), borrowing the title of Marco Tullio Giordana’s film to describe this new wave of filmmakers to mark the separation of this group from previous generations and to further emphasize their unconventional creativity.1 There are both famous and unknown names included among the most influential new directors that the scholars consider to be innovators since the originality of their stories and cinematic techniques is what counts: Paolo Sorrentino, Alina Marazzi, Paolo Franchi, Matteo Garrone, Luca Lucini, Alex Infascelli, Andrea and Antonio Frazzi, and Piergiorgio Gay. In addition, special attention is given to the directors that form part of the independent group called Ring-Registi Indipendenti Nuova Generazione (Ring-Independent Filmmakers of the New Generation) established in 2004. The singers

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Franco Battiato, Paolo Conte, and Luciano Ligabue are also considered as case studies of musicians who have turned to directing films. Although Zagarrio maintains that it is difficult to draw a map of this big new wave of filmmakers, scholars have attempted to find the common ground on which these new directors operate, pointing out the importance of certain external aspects of the films that are crucial to their success, with the following factors considered to be the most significant: ●

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the use of digital technology such as DVDs, blogs, chats, and social networks to communicate ideas; websites announcing the films or narrating the making of the films, webcams and digital cameras facilitating the uploading of clips onto the web; the fundamental role of local festivals or cultural events for the projection of the film to make the experience of watching the movie a more collective experience while attempting to gather a wider consensus and audience, and in many cases, prior to the film’s theater distribution; publication of the DVD accompanied by a booklet explaining the making of the movie and all the intellectual references in it with a double objective: on the one hand to strengthen the relationship between literature and cinema; on the other, to support the circulation of the film so that it will be available for purchase everywhere, for instance, in DVD stores, bookshops, newsstands, and so on. The film can therefore be targeted at all art-lovers and not just moviegoers. The idea is to whet the audience’s interest on a larger scale.2

If critics agree that technology has helped the film industry to become stronger and more accessible both to the public and to authors, scholars noted the lack of harsh social criticism from the point of view of content and storyline due to the powerful censorship and budget cuts imposed by Berlusconi’s government. However they all agree on the existence of a socially and politically committed intellectual filmmaker who is still able to describe contemporary Italy and Italians despite the “«sistema perfetto di repressione» in cui ogni cineasta è diventato «poliziotto di se stesso,» autocensurandosi e autoreprimendosi” (“«perfect system of repression» in which filmmakers make «policemen of themselves,» self-censoring and self-restraining.”3 In this new landscape the documentary emerges as a privileged form of narration with respect to the fiction film, a tool capable of committed cinematic investigation and communication. This applies in the case of both private or public stories, and when the director is engaged in social critique or in an intimate account of his/her life

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(Zagarrio 2006: 14–16). In La Storia del Documentario Italiano, Marco Bertozzi considers documentaries that focus on the following issues to be remarkable examples of socially and politically committed productions: (1) the events following the G8 meeting in Genoa 2001 represented in Francesca Comencini’s Carlo Giuliani, Ragazzo (2002), Davide Ferrario’s Le Strade di Genova (2001), Francesco Maselli’s Un mondo diverso è possible (2001), and Paolo Pisanelli’s Don Vitaliano (2002); (2) Italian contemporary social issues depicted in Marco Turco’s Un altro paese (2005), Daniele Vicari’s Il mio paese (2006), and Biutiful Cauntry (2007), by Esmeralda Calabria, Andrea D’Ambrosio, Peppe Ruggero (Bertozzi 2008: 290–293, 297–310). Similarly, the scholar Gianni Canova mentions Sabina Guzzanti’s Viva Zapatero! (2005) and Quando c’era Silvio (2006) by Enrico Deaglio and Beppe Cremagnani as two of the most creative and effective attempts to portray Italian politics through the exploration of a variety of artistic tools such as theater, music, TV reportage, satire, and comedy.4 Given the vast proliferation of documentaries in the last decade, the scholar Gianni Canova proposed a “cartografia provvisoria, non esaustiva” (temporary map that doesn’t cover everything) in an effort to highlight the directions explored by “la meglio gioventù” (Zagarrio 2006: 36). Canova’s map classifies the authors into five different categories: (1) the “neo-autarchici” (neo-self-sufficient category) who are distinguished by the fact that they make their movies on a low budget or with no budget thanks to exploitation of all the opportunities offered by digital technology; (2) the “neo-dark” category includes those directors who revisit gothic stories, making horror or noir films that pointedly differ from the films made by masters like Dario Argento; (3) the “post-fordisti” category that focuses on themes concerning the global economy, jobs, and the financial struggles of today’s Italy; (4) the “neo-glocal” category that narrates the effects of globalization starting from a description of small local places to then extend to an analysis of more universal environments; (5) the “post-mélo” category recounts tales of love and unattainable desire in order to investigate human relationships (Zagarrio 2006; 36–38).5 Narrowing Canova’s subdivisions down to fit the documentary form, Marco Bertozzi suggests that three major categories can be identified: il documentario-ritratto, frutto quindi dell’incontro con uno o più personaggi paradigmatici; il documentario di analisi storica e sociale, nel quale ancora una volta si sviluppa il principio narrativo delle “storie esemplari”; il documentario-diario, in cui prevale l’intenzione dell’autore di muovere da un’esperienza autobiografica, viaggio, memoria familiare o comunque rilettura decisamente personalizzata del mondo intorno a sé. Quasi totalmente assente è il modello del film saggio.

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(the documentary-portrait, the result of a meeting with one or more archetypal characters; the historical and social analysis documentary in which the director adopts the “story as exemplum” as the narrative principle; the documentary-diary, where the author’s intention is to focus on an autobiographical experience, a trip, a family memoir or a personal reading of the world around him/her. The film-essay model is almost totally absent.) (Bertozzi 2008: 259)

In terms of content, even though Bertozzi and other researchers in Zagarrio’s La meglio Gioventù agree that all these documentaries portray a variety of themes, including immigration (i.e., L’orchestra di Piazza Vittorio, by Agostino Ferrente, 2006), the transposition of literary reportage into docu-fiction (i.e., Gomorra, a book by Roberto Saviano, 2004, and a film by Matteo Garrone, 2008), the intimate recollection of private family memories (i.e., Un’ora sola ti vorrei, by Alina Marazzi, 2002), and the history of famous Italian women in Giovanna Gagliardo’s Bellissime I–II (2004, 2006), or Vogliamo anche le Rose, by Alina Marazzi (2007), Gianni Canova puts forward the hypothesis that the bildungsroman form, meant as the “novel of development”6 is what inspires the stories of most of these new authors (Zagarrio 2006: 34–36). It is interesting also to note that although female directors are treated separately under the chapter “il cinema al femminile” (films by women; Zagarrio 2008: 16; Bertozzi 2008: 293), their productions are usually discussed along with the male productions, abolishing sexist barriers in terms of authorship but acknowledging that gender differences may or must exist in content and form.7 I would like to focus on Alina Marazzi’s documentaries Un’ora sola ti vorrei (For One More Hour with You, 2002), Per sempre (Forever, 2005), and Vogliamo anche le Rose (We Want Roses Too, 2007) within the context of this new cinematic panorama. Canova includes Alina Marazzi among the new directors that belong to the “neo-autarchici” group and Bertozzi classifies her as a director that uses the “documentario-diario” technique. Her films represent the challenges and innovation she faces as a woman and an artist in terms of narrative strategies, themes, techniques, and intellectual commitment. Considering that Marazzi works with home movies, archival footage, found footage, and all types of photographic materials, she was able to create an original documentary style, challenging the traditional norms of the genre. By employing what I consider to be an autobiographical approach to genre and content, her films acquire both private and public value, offering a personal and intimate perspective of herself and her existence, while also being charged with more universal undertones. By first exploring her own personal growth, the director then extends her investigation to the whole female spectrum.

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Starting with Un’ora sola ti vorrei, Marazzi collects her childhood memories, and remembers her mother who committed suicide when Alina was only seven after having suffered a nervous breakdown. Her documentary Per sempre focused on the reasons why young women decide to spend their lives in religious seclusion and devote their lives to God. She concludes the series dedicated to women’s roles in society with the female revolution in the Italy of the 1960s–1970s with Vogliamo anche le Rose Recently, Marazzi concluded the production of the fictional film Tutto parla di te (It’s All About You; forthcoming in April 2013), focusing on the emotional involvement of two women facing motherhood.8 Therefore, I would like to propose interpreting Marazzi’s films as filmic bildungsroman whereby the personal journey taken in the “quest for a lost mother”9 in Un’ora sola ti vorrei led to an exploration of the psychological path taken by young women to reach their momentous decision to join enclosed orders in Per sempre, which in turn extended to an examination of the course traveled by women to attain liberation in Vogliamo anche le Rose. Therefore, taken together these three films contribute toward the creation of a “genealogia femminile” (female genealogy) for both Marazzi (Un’ora sola ti vorrei) and all women (Vogliamo anche le Rose). I believe that through her films Marazzi’s goal is twofold: on the one hand they serve as a tool to accomplish her self-discovery process as woman and artist; on the other hand they posit themselves as an invitation to all women to rethink the female situation today, and not to forget the conquests made through the political and social battles of the past: C’era soprattutto il desiderio di riflettere sulla condizione femminile, ma non in astratto. Sono partita da me e da quello che mi sta intorno, dall’osservazione della mia vita e delle ragazze che conosco [. . .]. Ripercorrere le mie radici lungo una genealogia femminile ha significato ritrovarmi sia come persona che come autrice [. . .] In altre parole, riconoscere la mia madre vera è stato riconoscere la mia madre simbolica (Above all I wanted to reflect on the situation that females find themselves in, but not in the abstract. I started with myself, observing the world around me, my life and the women that I know [. . .] I was able to gain a deeper knowledge of myself as a person and as a female author by revisiting my roots through the female line [. . .] In other words I was able to recognize my symbolic mother by recognizing my real mother.) (Marazzi 2008a: 12)

Since Marazzi’s investigation involves the female sphere, her films raise questions concerning gender, gender roles, and female identity, becoming a mirror showcasing issues to which every woman can relate. They

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can also therefore be analyzed under the lens of an Italian feminist perspective since the author uses the strategy of partire da sé (beginning from oneself), and affidamento (entrustment) as she unveils through her statements—la pratica del partire da sé is defined by Chiara Zamboni as the “necessity to reconstruct one’s past and understand the feelings and contradictions we deal with ordinarily” (Scarparo 2004: 203); affidamento is explained by Mirna Cicioni as the “recognition of, and reliance on, differences in competence between women” (Scarparo 2004: 210).10 Moreover, it is important to note that Marazzi’s DVDs are accompanied by books, websites, and blogs through which the director attempts to reach her audience by inviting it to participate in forum-discussions or by giving more in-depth insights into the messages of her films. It is worth also mentioning that Marazzi collaborated with the Italian writer-journalist Silvia Ballestra for the script of Vogliamo anche le Rose. Ballestra’s works are concerned with feminist and female history11: this cooperation strengthened Marazzi’s intertextual relationship between literature and cinema, which I believe is one of the fundamental strategies adopted by the director to create a multifaceted autobiographical documentary style. I will therefore devote the next chapter to an analysis of the narrative and filmic strategies the director uses to imbue the stories she tells with her personal experience in order to ponder her female identity as a young woman and director. Un’ora sola ti vorrei, Per sempre, and Vogliamo anche le Rose: A “Female Trilogy” for a Female Cinematic and Virtual “Docu-diary” Alina Marazzi began her cinematic career as an assistant director to Giuseppe Piccioni and collaborated with many other directors such as Piergiorgio Gay, Giovanni Maderna, Giuseppe Bertolucci, and Godfrey Reggio before starting her independent career in the film industry with the documentaries L’America me l’immaginavo (1991), Il declino di Milano (1992), Mediterraneo, il mare industrializzato (1993), Ragazzi dentro (1997), and Il sogno tradito (1999).12 Un’ora sola ti vorrei (2002) marks the start of her success and a first step toward the configuration of what she called “un’ipotetica trilogia” (a hypothetical trilogy). Un’ora sola ti vorrei was followed with Per sempre (2005) and completed with Vogliamo anche le Rose (2007) (Marazzi 2006: 125–126). Cristina Gamberi uses the term “docu-diary” to designate the style employed by Marazzi in Un’ora sola di vorrei and more especially in Vogliamo anche le Rose. The “docu-diary” approach involves the exploitation of found footage, home videos, and

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archival material to create “a product that is kaleidoscopic in the variety of genres and sources utilized, where the filmed fragments «are folded and forced by the tireless work of editing into attractions and distractions, until creating a new narration and a new meaning»” (Gamberi 2009: 4). Similarly to the fragmented writing of a diary, then, each clip or image shapes the unified narration of the film.13 I would like to borrow Gamberi’s expression to apply it to Marrazzi’s entire production: I intend “docu-diary” to refer to both the aspect that the film technique connects different visual fragments to compose the documentary in diary style, as proposed by Gamberi, and the aspect that each film constitutes a chapter of the “docu-diary,” a section of the visual autobiographical account in progress, or the diary she is building from Un’ora sola ti vorrei to Vogliamo anche le Rose. Each film can therefore be interpreted as a step toward the bildung,14 the development and subsequent “presa di coscienza personale” (personal awareness; Marazzi 2008a: 12) of herself and the female universe to which every woman can relate. In an interview, Marazzi herself points out some similarities and differences in her three films: ●

●

●

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The use of the diary as the fictional ploy to construct the narration— although Per sempre favored the more traditional “documentarioritratto” structure in which Alina interviews the nuns face-to-face. The common theme of women who cannot “aderire a dei modelli, sia che siano modelli che vengono dall’esterno, che so, dalla famiglia, dalla società, dalle convenzioni, come nel caso di Un’ora sola ti vorrei, sia che se li scelgano loro stesse come le monache di clausura in Per sempre” (conform to convention, whether they are externally established conventions like the family, society, accepted standards as in Un’ora sola ti vorrei, or where it is the women themselves who choose what they want like the enclosed order nuns; Brandoni and Quercia 2009). Consequently, the theme of the woman who rebels against social conventions and makes the final decision after a difficult and tormented psychological battle—Liseli’s story in Un’ora sola ti vorrei, Valeria in Per sempre, and all three women in Vogliamo anche le Rose; The use of found footage, archival material, home videos in Un’ora sola ti vorrei and Vogliamo anche le Rose—in Per sempre Alina interacts with the characters through interviews. The autobiographical value that Marazzi aimed to confer to her films, as a woman and an author, in order to activate a process of personal discovery and social commitment.15

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In addition to the aforementioned factors, I believe another common element is the extra material that the director compiled to complement the films: the booklets, the DVDs, extras (interviews, outtakes, etc.), the websites, and blogs accompanying the DVDs (except for Per sempre for which, to my knowledge, no webpage or book was dedicated). I do not think that they can be treated separately from the films, which need to be contextualized and analyzed through the information provided by the extra material. In fact, these tools are both informative and provide further elements on the production and distribution process, and also form part of the strategy adopted by the director to reach the audience on a more comprehensive level: they give background to the reasons behind Marazzi’s decision to make the movies the way she did, and they contain fundamental articles and criticism that can help understand the historical background informing the plots; above all, they contribute to forging her bildungsroman of self-investigation and discovery. In fact, as the research on autobiography carried out by Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson (2010) demonstrates, Media technologies do not simplify or undermine the interiority of the subject, but, on the contrary, expand the field of self-representation beyond the literary to cultural and media practices. New media of the self revise notions of identity, and rhetoric and modalities of self-presentation, and they prompt new imaginings of virtual sociality enabled by concepts of community that do not depend on personal encounter. (168)

This is why I believe supplementary material cannot be underestimated or excluded from the content of the films since readers are always invited to refer to the film, and spectators who want to explore the film further can find the extra reading material readily available. Marazzi can give more profound shape to her personal “docu-diary” through this constant exchange and interaction between movie and book, author and audience, giving it the characteristics of a life narrative, as theorized by Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson: “as somewhat a narrower term [than life writing] that includes many kinds of self-referential writing, including autobiography [. . .] Life narrative, then, might best be approached as a moving target, a set of ever shifting self-referential practices that engage the past in order to reflect on identity in the present” (Smith and Watson 2001: 3).16 According to the two scholars, in the “Visual-Verbal-Virtual Contexts of Life Narrative,” the concept can evolve and be conceived “as a general term for acts of self-presentation of all kinds and in diverse media that take the producer’s life as their subject, whether written, performative, visual, filmic or digital” (Smith and Watson 2010: 4). Thus, the scholars

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Jörge Dünne and Christian Moser coined the term automediality to clarify the point that the new media are not only “tools” contributing to the composition of an autobiographical account, rather they become constituent components to “expand the definition of how subjectivity is constructed in writing, image or new media” (Smith and Watson 2010: 169). Marazzi’s films, Un’ora sola ti vorrei and Vogliamo anche le Rose, in particular, are good examples of how the transformation and evolution of the autobiographical genre has been exploited by experimenting with documentary techniques and the Internet to create a single text. If we take a closer look at all the components of Un’ora sola ti vorrei film, DVD, book, and website www.unorasola.it,17 we understand immediately that the film experience is not limited to movie theaters only: it began in local festivals, then moved to theaters and TV programs; the dvd+book package is still so successful that Marco Bertozzi (2008) refers to it as having “divenuto ormai oggetto di culto” (acquired cult status already) in his La Storia del Documentario Italiano due to its content, style, and message (279).18 In fact, as Marazzi relates in “La fortuna di un’ora” the film was initially presented at several festivals, then it finally got the attention of the press through the website, private TV channels, and by spreading the word. The press praised both the story and the cinematic style, which contributed to its public success (Marazzi 2006: 112–127; Bertozzi 2008: 280). Marazzi’s personal involvement in all this automediality can be appreciated by what she did while touring to introduce the movie: fascinated by the fact that people wished to talk to her after having seen the film, she started a webpage to illustrate how it was made, gave the list of showings, and much else. She then opened a virtual “libro degli ospiti” (guests’ book) on her webpage, where people could comment or communicate with her (Marazzi 2006: 116). The Internet became “uno spazio ed una vita ulteriori per il film” (a second space and life for the film; Goisis “Un’ora sola ti Vorrei”), or in Pietro Roberto Goisis’s words “a transitional space [. . .] a bridge between her, the film, Alina and memories” (Sabbadini 2007: 34). Consequently, “seguire il film diventò quasi un lavoro a tempo pieno. Ne avevo bisogno e non volevo lasciarlo andare da solo” (following the film became almost a full time job. I needed it and I did not want to let it travel by itself; Marazzi 2006: 116). Marazzi then published the book Un’ora sola ti vorrei in 2006, a summary of the journey that the critic Lea Melandri (2006) considered to be “insieme analitico e creativo” (both analytical and creative). In fact, Alina Marazzi (2006) and the film’s editor Ilaria Fraioli used the book to set out their intellectual approach to the project: they underline the influences of pratica del partire da sé (beginning from one self), of affidamento (entrustment), and of the process of identificazione

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e rispecchiamento (identification and mirroring) that are typical in feminist practices and gender studies (52, 60). Therefore, both the narration and interpretation of their work can flow “in chiave femminista” (feminist style; Melandri 2006). The process of Marazzi’s Bildungroman and subsequent productions also flow “in chiave femminista.” Hence, even though Marazzi understood the importance of literature, new media, and technology as a strategy for success in her role as artist-director, I believe that her attachment to the entire project on a personal level as a woman was a further strategy to broaden the appeal of Un’ora sola ti vorrei. In my opinion, it is the convergence of all these factors that gave birth to a new cinematic approach and a new documentary style. As Marazzi explained in the book, she relives the memory of her mother Liseli through the use of found footage, home videos, and archival material found in her grandfather’s boxes and closets. Apart from some historical clips borrowed and edited by a family friend to create the cultural frame of the 1950s and 1960s (Giorgio Magister; Marazzi 2006: 25), all the clips are taken from her grandfather Ulrico Hoepli’s private collection: Marazzi chose clips from 1938, when Liseli was born, up to 1972, the year she died. Some pictures portraying Marazzi as a child and the family, some postcards written by and to Liseli, excerpts from Liseli’s secret diary, and letters read by Marazzi’s voice-over are combined with her grandfather’s home movies. Marazzi placed heavy reliance on literature (especially from American writers) to organize her mother’s biography. This was used to clarify the links between the off-screen voice and images, Liseli’s clips and personal entries, the story line, and the emotions it can provoke.19 The authors she was reading inspired the fictional device of a “lettera impossible” (impossible letter) that Liseli writes Marazzi to start the film’s narration with the goal of establishing a dialogue between Marazzi and her mother (Marazzi 2006: 35). It also serves to explain the reasons that led her to create a family documentary: Mia cara Alina, quella voce che hai appena sentito, quella voce che scherza e ride e che fa finta di sgridare te e Martino, è la mia voce, la mia voce di trent’anni fa. L’avevamo incisa su un disco con papà per farvi uno scherzo, ti ricordi? In tutto questo tempo nessuno ti ha mai parlato di me di chi ero, di come ho vissuto di come me ne sono andata. Voglio raccontarti la mia storia adesso che è passato così tanto tempo da quando sono morta (My dear Alina, the voice you have just heard, that voice that jokes and laughs and pretends to scold Martino and yourself, is my voice, my voice from thirty years ago. Your father and I recorded it to play a joke on you, do you remember? In all this time, no one has ever talked to you about me, to tell you who I was, how I lived and how I died. Now that so much time has elapsed since I died, I want to tell you my story.)20

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The letter is used to begin the autobiography, and as the narration proceeds, spectators can discover all Marazzi’s roles in the film. As she admits: “sono bambina nel super8, nelle fotografie e nelle lettere, sono madre come voce narrante, sono figlia adulta nelle mani che sfogliano le cartoline; sono Alina nello sguardo che riprende” (I am the child in the Super8, in the photographs and letters, I am the mother as the narrating voice, I am the adult daughter in the image of the hands browsing through the postcards; I am Alina staring through the lens as I shoot the film”; Marazzi 2006, 100). Significant clips here are close-ups of postcards with updates on Alina’s school reports (“Cara mamma, ho pigliato 10 e lode!”; “Dear Mommy, I got an A+!”), Christmas drawings by Marazzi, the family announcing a trip to the beach signed by “Martino e Alina”: the images are accompanied by Marazzi—the narrating voice reading the letters in which Liseli asks her to send her these things (“Fammi un bel disegno e mandamelo!”; Draw me a nice picture and send it to me!). Additional shots of Marazzi and her brother playing in a park of Milan during the winter time, Marazzi riding a bicycle, some family pictures, or just showing Marazzi and her mother are interspersed with readings from Liseli’s letters from the hospitals updating her daughter on her condition, coming home, and birthday wishes in order to strengthen the extent of the dialogue and the female bond between mother and daughter. In a type of modified cinematic “oblique gaze,” Marazzi and Ilaria Fraioli moved the male gaze from behind the camera (the grandfather’s) to the female gaze in front of the camera (the mother’s and Alina’s), shifting the narration from the person who shot the film to the person being filmed in an attempt to release the “anima femminile imprigionata in quelle scatole” (the female soul imprisoned in those boxes; Marrazzi 2006: 50) where films, pictures, letters, and diary were hidden for years. If one of Alina’s goals was to unmask the lies behind the happiness shown by the family scenes (Marazzi 2006: 50), her other goal, as director, was to render Liseli’s story more universal: the first chapter in the “docu-diary” that would be completed by Per sempre and Vogliamo anche le Rose. In fact, while watching Un’ora sola ti vorrei, we become acquainted with Liseli’s doubts on marriage and fidelity, her uneasiness, her wish that men and women could share the housework (“non voglio una donna di servizio. Voglio che [Antonio] mi aiuti a lavare i piatti che mi aiuti a cambiare i pannolini ai bambini, se ne avremo”; I don’t want a housemaid. I want Antonio to help me with the dishes and changing diapers, if we ever have children); her hesitations and difficulty in accepting the societal roles that women must conform to—the dutiful daughter, mother, and wife21:

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Sarei una selvaggia, vorrei che lui mi facesse da mangiare tanto sarei gelosa della nostra vita privata. Ma un uomo non può sottomettersi, così l’unica è proporgli di essere la sua amante, così lui non si lega con una selvaggia. E quando la vita selvaggia lo diverte, viene ogni tanto. (I would like to be wild, and for him to cook for me since I am so jealous of our private life. But a man cannot submit himself to a woman’s will, so the only thing to do is for me to offer myself as his lover, so he won’t marry a wild girl. And when the wild life amuses him he will come to me, sometimes.)

While these entries from Liseli’s diary are read, images and clips portraying her in conversation with friends, trying on different kinds of women’s hats are shown along with footage from her wedding to streng then the contrast between the false bourgeois world she inhabited and the real emotions she was facing and fighting. The fictional letter conceived by Marazzi the author concludes: “Avevo sempre vissuto nel benessere, in una specie d’illusione di serenità, dove i problemi non esistevano, ma già allora, era come se sapessi che non avrei mai trovato il mio posto nel mondo” (I was from an affluent family, living in a world where everything seemed to run smoothly, without problems, but I already seemed to have been aware that I would never find my place in the world). The notion of feeling “Fuori dal mondo” (Out of this world; 1999), to quote a film by Piccioni, with whom Marazzi worked as assistant director, is the thematic link between Un’ora sola ti vorrei and Per sempre: the isolation of the enclosed order nuns, the reasons behind their refusal to live in society, and what had pushed them to choose this type of existence are the themes explored in the documentary. Out of the three major films, this is the one that received less critical attention, perhaps because as Raffaele Meale noted, “è un film imperfetto, tanto insicuro sull’universale, quanto Un’ora sola ti vorrei era apparso sicuro sul personale” (it is an imperfect film, as unsure at a universal level as Un’ora sola ti vorrei was sure at a personal level; Meale 2005).22 However this may be because it has the most traditional format of the three. By adopting the face-to-face interview technique, Marazzi’s voice as the “voice of God” (Nichols, 2010) narrating the story, the film is thematically very close to Piccioni’s Fuori dal mondo and therefore loses any sense of innovation, originality, or poetic connotation compared to the previous film. However, even if Per sempre can be considered as a transitional phase between the personal and universal levels pointed out by Meale, I believe that some noteworthy common features emerge: I agree with Veroica Maffizzoli who thinks of the documentary as a “diario” (diary) of Marazzi’s encounter with the nuns (Maffizzoli 2005). She therefore used the literary narrative device, this time her own, to structure the documentary, shifting between the nuns’ views on the female situation to a more collective consideration of the

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female sphere, and back again to herself as a woman and artist: “essere donna, mi ha aiutato molto a entrare in sintonia con loro, probabilmente un uomo avrebbe fatto più fatica” (I found it easier to connect with the nuns since I was a woman, a man would probably have found it more difficult; Goisis 2006, “Per Sempre”). Finally, the autobiographical act takes form, in a process in which the “questione privata” (private matter) of Un’ora sola ti vorrei “non è più una questione privata” (is not a private matter anymore), since the themes disclosed in Liseli’s diaries are now explored in the context of a female community (Meale 2005). Moreover, if we follow Goisis’s interpretation of both titles, the link between the two films is even stronger: “the notion ‘for ever’ also introduces another time dimension: ‘one more hour’ is not enough, as the desire is to remain with one’s mother [. . .] ‘for ever’” (Sabbadini 2007; 34).23 This way, the time dimension represented by the single hour that Marazzi wants to spend with her mother is, in the title of the first film, expanded into the eternity, in the title of the second. Per sempre therefore becomes the second chapter of Marazzi’s “docudiary,” a second step toward completion of the hypothetical trilogy of her life narrative, Marazzi’s bildungsroman. In Le Rose, the book accompanying the DVD of Vogliamo anche le Rose, the director says that she first had to understand the reasons behind the choices made by enclosed nuns when filming Per sempre before tackling the issues behind the sexual liberation of the 1970s (Marazzi 2008a: 12). However the documentary techniques, story-telling, advertising, and messages reflect what had been done as well with Un’ora sola ti vorrei. The same audiomediality, that is, DVD+book package, website (www. vogliamoanchelerose.it), the combination of cinema and literature, use of the diary as the literary form of narration are again the strategies adopted to reach the audience on a larger scale and from several angles. This time, though, the personal investigation becomes a social and political commitment: Vogliamo anche le rose recounts the history of Italian feminism, and in particular the battles waged by women at the end of the 1960s and throughout the 1970s to set off the sexual revolution that took Italian culture from the grip of patriarchal control and to lay the laws on and allow divorce (1970) and abortion (1978). In the online synopsis Marazzi states that her intentions were to go beyond a mere historical reconstruction [. . .] In this film, I chose to examine the history of women in Italy from the mid-1960s to the late 1970s in order to relate it to our current present so charged with conflicts and contradictions; I did this with the intention of offering food for thought on issues that remain partially unsolved, or are even radically challenged today. (http://www.vogliamoanchelerose.it/#sinossi)

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In my opinion, Marazzi’s desire to complete her autobiography is hidden behind this history of the woman’s movement: she reconstructs the major events behind the position of women in Italy in order to gain greater insight into herself as woman and artist, and thus to round off her “docudiary.” In fact, while Marazzi talks about the major female political rallies and debates, she also uses many archival clips from the Italian underground cinema and images and TV clips from popular shows of the time (Marazzi 2008a: 83–98).24 Both the movie and the supplemental book Le Rose take the form of a small film history manual for Marazzi the artist; the content and “cronologia essenziale di un cambiamento” (the essential chronology of change) appearing at the end of the film and Le Rose (133–139) take on, for Marazzi the woman, the role of a woman’s history handbook, in search of her genealogia femminile (female genealogy). As in the previous films, the private and public also intertwine in Vogliamo anche le rose through a combination of stories from secret diaries belonging to some women woven into real historical events happening in Italy. Anita, Teresa, and Valentina are three fictional women whose life and diaries illustrate three aspects of the era in which women were questioning gender roles and female identity: Anita’s uneasiness with her situation, Teresa’s abortion, and Valentina’s political involvement drive forward the narrative. Even though the experiences were real and found in the diaries discovered in the Pieve Santo Stefano National Diary Archive (45–52), the narrative is fictional since the names of the authors were replaced with those of the actresses who gave them voices to respect their privacy (53; Gamberi 2009: 6). The fictional aspect was also enhanced by the use of some unknown people appearing in clips from found footage, home videos, or archival material to give them faces (Marazzi 2008: 39) since their private memories needed to be edited, cut, or adapted for the purpose of the film and illustrated with images that did not correspond to real lives. Once again, the documentary genre has been challenged and mixed with literary imagination. Once again, I believe that Marazzi adopts this strategy to continue forging a new cinema and attempt to convey the film’s message to all spectators, be they men or women: the message being an invitation not to forget the achievements of the past so that we can improve our situation in the present. To this end, the collaboration with the writer and journalist Silvia Ballestra was fundamental. Silvia Ballestra is very active in Italian social and political criticism through her articles and columns in the national newspaper of the left, L’Unità. In the years in which the abortion law was discussed and risked being repealed (2006–2008), she wrote several reports to remind people where they stood and was sued several times by the former prime minister Berlusconi for her blunt

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opinions on the sex scandals surrounding him.25 Although Ballestra only contributed to the script of the diaries, I believe that her involvement in the Vogliamo anche le rose project is another strategy adopted by Marazzi to place her film on a more collective and autobiographical footing, this time ideologically directed toward vigorous feminist debate: the film can therefore be considered to be a response to the question put forth by the journalist Francesco Merlo asking where he could find the old-time feminists crying “l’utero è il mio e lo gestico io” (the uterus is mine and I will decide what to do with it; Merlo 2006), when complaining about the lack of militant feminism in Italy to claim justice and revenge for women who were brutally killed or raped. It could also be an answer negating the statement that Italy is “the land that feminism forgot!” by the American writer Zadie Smith (2009: 167, 170) after a stint living in Rome, in a society full of veline, and to testify that feminism is actually still alive and kicking. Hence, the last step of the hypothetical female trilogy, Marazzi’s “docu-diary,” and the path leading to a female genealogy and the construction of a bildungsroman reaches its conclusion— but not its end since Marazzi is already at work on her next project. Although Marazzi says that she doesn’t have a precise “posizione ideologica” (ideological position) and her intention in making these films was to create “ritratti di donne” (women’s portraits; Marazzi 2008a: 12), I believe that the themes she chose, the Italian feminist theories, and the material she employed to support her books and influence her documentaries strongly highlight the feminist-oriented intellectual approach that flows from Un’ora sola ti vorrei to Vogliamo anche le rose. To conclude, even though the journalist Margherita D’Amico, still wonders where “Quella voce perduta delle donne” (That lost voice of women; D’Amico, 2009) was up to a few years ago, when complaining about the absence of politically and socially engaged women, I believe that Alina Marazzi is capable of reviving that submerged (not lost) voice and will continue to engage in dialogue with all women given sufficient funds to back her productions. For the director’s biography, please see interview in part II of this volume. Notes 1. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are mine. Vito Zagarrio, “Certi bambini . . . i nuovi cineasti italiani,” in La Meglio Gioventù. Nuovo Cinema Italiano 2000–2006 (Venezia: Marsilio Editori, 2006), 11–22. “Arriva adesso quella che chiamiamo, con un omaggio al fortunato titolo di Marco Tullio Giordana, «la meglio gioventù»: un’atipica «generazione» (altra parola, ahimè, abusata), «vergine» rispetto ai pregiudizi ideologici di quelle precedenti, che

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2.

3.

4. 5. 6.

7.

8.

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pone il problema di un ulteriore ricambio” (The «the best of youth,» to pay homage to that popular epithet given by the director Marco Tullio Giordana to his film, is emerging now: an atypical “generation” [another word, alas, overused], who is “virgin,” i.e. not influenced by the prejudices of previous generations, posing the problem of further change) (12). For further discussion of the points summarized here, see the essays included in Zagarrio, La Meglio Gioventù, and also in Marco Bertozzi, Storia del documentario italiano. Immagini e culture dell’altro cinema (Venezia: Marsilio Editori, 2008).. Zagarrio, La Meglio Gioventù, 17. Zagarrio is referring to a statement by the young director Daniele Gaglianone (17); the scholar Marco Bertozzi, while studying the role of documentaries as tools to investigate Italy and its society, observes that “La situazione è degenerata sino a rendere «merce» inguardabile gran parte dei programmi in chiaro: un attentato sistematico alla cultura del paese, un progressivo, programmato e scanzonato scivolamento verso la perdita, anzi, la svendita, dei nostri riferimenti identitari e della nostra capacità di raccontarci” (“The situation degenerated to the point that all films and TV programs are unwatchable «merchandise:» a systematic attack against the culture of our country, a programmed and mocking slide toward the loss, or the sell-off of our identity and ability to narrate ourselves”; Storia del documentario italiano, 298). See Gianni Canova, “Eppur si muove. Innovazione, rottura, discontinuità,” in Zagarrio, La Meglio Gioventù, 33–39, 34. See Gianni Canova’s essay for further discussion on each group and the directors cited as examples to represent them (ibid., 34–39). The debate over the translation and meaning of the German word “bildungsroman” and the literary genre is an ongoing topic that I cannot address here due to lack of space. Please refer to the following studies for more information on the theoretical discussions: Ellen McWilliams, “The Coming of Age of the Bildungsroman,” in Margaret Atwood and the Female Bildungsroman (Surrey, UK: Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 2009), 5–40; Giovanna Summerfield, and Lisa Downward, New Perspectives on the European Bildungsroman (London, GBR: Continuum International Publishing, 2010); and Tobias Boes, “Modernist Studies and the Bildungsroman: A Historical Survey of Critical Trends,” Literature Compass 3.2 (2006): 230–243. In this chapter, I adopt the translation and the literary concept of the bildungsroman as “traditionally [. . .] regarded as the novel of development and social formation of a young man” (Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson, eds., Reading Autobiography. A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives [Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001; second edition, 2010], 262). See Cristina Paternò, “Un cinema al femminile,” in Zagarrio, La Meglio Gioventù, 135–142; Marco Bertozzi, “Occhi di ragazza. Dalle donne al mondo,” in Storia del documentario italiano. Immagini e culture dell’altro cinema (Venezia: Marsilio Editori, 2008), 293–296. Announcement retrieved from the website accompanying the film: http:// www.tuttoparladite.it/(accessed on April 2013).

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9. Roberto Pietro Goisis, “Quest for a Lost Mother: Alina Marrazzi’s Un’ora sola ti vorrei,” in Andrea Sabbadini, ed., Projected Shadows. Psychoanalytic Reflections on the Representation of Loss in European Cinema (New York: Routledge, 2007), 21–34. 10. See also “Libreria delle donne di Milano (Milan Women’s Bookshop),” in Paola Bono and Sandra Kemp, eds., Italian Feminist Thought: A Reader (Cambridge, MA: B. Blackwell, 1991), 109–138. This edition collects some of the most influential writings of the feminist groups that formulated theories on the “pratica del partire da sé” and “affidamento,” between the end of the 1970s and the 1980s. 11. Silvia Ballestra is the author of many successful books such as: Il disastro degli Antò (1992), La Giovinezza della Signorina N.N. (1998), Nina (2001), Tutto su mia nonna (2005), Contro le donne nei secoli dei secoli (2006), and Piove sul nostro amore. Una storia di donne, medici, aborti, predicatori e apprendisti stregoni (2008). Il disastro degli Antò was adapted in La Guerra degli Antò (1999), a film by Riccardo Milani. As a journalist, Ballestra writes for the national newspapers L’Unità, Il Corriere della Sera, and Io Donna. Her personal website http://www.silviaballestra.it/ gives more information on her biography and work (accessed on July 17, 2012). 12. L’America me l’immaginavo (1991) recounts the experiences of immigrants on the Sicilian island of Marettimo; Il declino di Milano (1992) is a portrait of the “moral capital” at the beginning of the “Tangentopoli” political scandal concerning money laundering and extortion; Mediterraneo, il mare industrializzato (1993) documents the pollution of the environment and the job market in Italy; Ragazzi dentro (1997) is about the world as seen by young boys in Italian juvenile detention centers; Il sogno tradito (1999) is about street children who talk about the political and social situation in Romania ten years after the fall of the dictator Ceausescu (Roberto Pietro Goisis, “Un’ora sola ti vorrei: intervista con Alina Marazzi,” Psychomedia. Salute Mentale e Comunicazione [2007]. http://www.psychomedia.it/cine@forum/interviste/ marazzi.htm). 13. In her text, Gamberi is quoting from Dario Zonta. “Chi è cosa . . . Vogliamo anche le rose e il cinema underground italiano,” Le Rose (DVD+book) (Milano: Feltrinelli Editore, 2008a), 83. 14. I have to note that the translation of the German term bildung poses many literary and conceptual problems that I cannot go into here for lack of space, but I recommend the following studies for further discussion on the topic: McWilliams, “The Coming of Age,” 5–40; Summerfield and Downward, New Perspectives on the European Bildungsroman. Here, I adopt the translation and theory of the scholar Tobias Boes, who prefers “to render Bildung with the more neutral term ‘development,’ in order to highlight the intimate connection between personal and historical change” (“Modernist Studies and the Bildungsroman,” 241). 15. See the interview by Brandoni and Quercia’s “Donne che non aderiscono ai modelli,” Schermaglie. Cinema e inoltre, March 5, 2009, http://schermaglie.it/primopiano/1032/alina-marazzi-donne-che-non- aderiscono-

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16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

22.

23. 24.

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ai-modelliintervista-parte-pri%E2%80%A6; and the discussion by Cristina Gamberi in “Vogliamo anche le Rose: The ‘docu-diary’ of Alina Marazzi,” Cinemascope. Independent Film Journal, year v, no. 12, January 12, 2009, http://w w w.cinemascope.it/Issue%2012/PDF/CR ISTINA%20GAMBERI.pdf. For further information on the notion of autobiography, I suggest the studies by Smith Sidonie and Julia Watson, Reading Autobiography. A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001; second edition, 2010). The website is no longer available; however most of its contents were published in the book accompanying the DVD. See Alina Marazzi, Un’ora sola ti vorrei (DVD+book) (Milano: Rizzoli Editore, 2006). See also the review by the journalist Silvia Ballestra in L’Unità, where she notes that after the showing at the film festival in Locarno (Switzerland), it became “un vero culto nei circuiti alternativi e colti” (a true cult movie in the alternative and cultured film circles; Silvia Ballestra, “‘Un’ora sola con ciò che resta di mia madre.’ Un piccolo evento di culto lo struggente, bellissimo racconto per immagini di Alina Marazzi,” L’Unità, February 23, 2003). “Leggevo molta letteratura dello stesso genere, tra cui i Diari di Sylvia Plath e un libretto di Clive S. Lewis che si intitola Diario di un dolore. Insomma, cercavo di leggere i diari di persone che potessero ispirarmi per raccontare il film” (I was reading many books of the same genre, including The Journals of Sylvia Plath and a booklet by Clive S. Lewis entitled A Grief Observed; Marazzi, Un’ora sola ti vorrei, 25). Moreover, the novel My Dark Places by James Ellroy helped Alina to find the necessary emotional distance between herself, the characters (parents and relatives), and the story she was about to tell (36). The transcription from the DVD and the subsequent English translation is mine. The song that Marazzi is referring to is Un’ora sola ti vorrei, sung by Fedora Mingarelli, 1938. Since it is impossible to transcribe the DVD’s transcript of all the entries of Liseli’s diary referring to the topics mentioned here, I provided some of the most significant sections here and summarized other sections. I recommend the following articles: Veronica Maffizzoli, “Per Sempre, di Alina Marazzi. Perseguire un sì [Mercoledì 16 Novembre 2005],” NonSoloCinema, vol. II, n. 4 (2005), http://www.nonsolocinema.com; Raffaele Meale, “Per sempre. Non è più una questione private,” Sabato August 13, 2005, http://www. cinemavvenire.it/locarno/non-e-piu-una-questione-privata/per-sempre; Roberto Goisis, “Per Sempre, di Alina Marazzi,” Frenis Zero. Scienze della mente, Filosofia, Psicoterapia, Creatività (2006). Giugno, http://web.tiscali. it/freniszero/goisispersempre.htm for a more critical analysis of Per sempre. I believe these are the most significant ones. See also Goisis, “Per Sempre, di Alina Marazzi,” for an expansion of this interpretation in psychoanalytical terms. For an in-depth analysis of Marazzi Vogliamo anche le rose, in addition to Cristina Gamberi’s article, see also Paola Bonifazio, “Feminism, Modernism,

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Intertextuality: We Want Roses Too,” Literature Film Quarterly 38.3 (2010): 171–182. 25. See note 11 in this chapter; also Ballestra is the author of one of the five articles that appeared in the December 2009 issue of Rolling Stone Italia, in which Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was mockingly elected “rockstar of the year.” Ballestra was prosecuted for accusing him of fascist ideology. Then, her article “La Chiesa e il regalo di Papi” reporting on the sex scandals involving the prime minister with some escorts, which appeared in L’Unità (July 13, 2009), drew the journalist and the newspaper into another legal battle.

Bibliography Atakav, Eylem, ed. “Female Subjectivity and Cinematic Representation.” Cinemascope.Independent Film Journal, year v, no. 12, January 12, 2009. http://www.cinemascope.it/Issue%2012/INDEX_N12.html (accessed March 29, 2012). Ballestra, Silvia. “‘Un’ora sola conciòcheresta di miamadre.’ Un piccolo evento di culto lo struggente, bellissimo racconto per immagini di AlinaMarazzi.” L’Unità, February 23, 2003. Bertozzi, Marco. Storia del documentario italiano. Immagini e culture dell’altro cinema. Venezia: Marsilio Editori, 2008. Boes, Tobias. “Modernist Studies and the Bildungsroman: A Historical Survey of Critical Trends.”Literature Compass 3.2 (2006): 230–243. Bonifazio, Paola. “Feminism, Modernism, Intertextuality: We Want Roses Too.” Literature Film Quarterly 38.3 (2010): 171–182. Bono, Paola, and Sandra Kemp, eds. Italian Feminist Thought: A Reader. Cambridge, MA: B. Blackwell, 1991. Brandoni, Alessia and Giovanna Quercia. “Alina Marazzi ‘Donne che non aderiscono ai modelli’/intervista parte prima.”Schermaglie. Cinema e inoltre, March 5, 2009. http://schermaglie.it/primopiano/1032/alina-marazzi-donneche-non-aderiscono-ai-modelliintervista-parte-pri%E2%80%A6 (accessed July 16, 2012). D’Amico, Margherita. “Quella voce perduta delle donne.” Corriere della Sera, February 17, 2009. De Mari, Massimo, Elisabetta Marchiori, and Luigi Pavan, eds. La menteal trove. Cinema e sofferenza mentale. Milano: Franco Angeli, 2006. Gamberi, Cristina. “Vogliamo anche le rose. The docu-diary of Alina Marazzi.” Cinemascope. Independent Film Journal, year v, no. 12, January 12, 2009. http://www.cinemascope.it/Issue%2012/PDF/CRISTINA%20GAMBERI.pdf (accessed March 29, 2012). Goisis, Roberto Pietro. “Per Sempre (2005), di Alina Marazzi.” Frenis Zero. Scienze della mente, Filosofia, Psicoterapia, Creatività (2006). Giugno. http://web.tiscali.it/freniszero/goisispersempre.htm (accessed March 26, 2012).

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———. “Quest for a Lost Mother: AlinaMarazzi’s Un’ora sola tivorrei.” In Projected Shadows. Psychoanalytic Reflections on the Representation of Loss in European Cinema, edited by Andrea Sabbadini, 21–34. New York: Routledge, 2007. ———. “Un’ora sola . . . ma di magia.” In La mente altrove. Cinema e sofferenza mentale, edited by MassimoDe Mari, Elisabetta Marchiori, and Luigi Pavan, 200–215. Milano: Franco Angeli, 2006. ———. “Un’ora sola ti vorrei: Intervista con Alina Marazzi.” Psychomedia. Salute Mentale e Comunicazione. http://www.psychomedia.it/cine@forum/interviste/marazzi.htm (accessed July 16, 2012). Maffizzoli, Veronica. “Per Sempre, di AlinaMarazzi.Perseguire un sì [Mercoledì 16 Novembre 2005].”NonSoloCinema, anno II, n. 4 (2005). http://www.nonsolocinema.com (accessed March 29, 2012). Marazzi, Alina. “Baby Blues.” November–December 2011. http://alinamarazzi. wordpress.com/ (accessed on July 20, 2012). ———. Le Rose (DVD+book). Milano: Feltrinelli Editore, 2008a. ———. “Tuttoparla di te/Baby Blues.” Milano: Mir Cinematografica, 2013. http:// www.mircinema.com/scheda-film.php?id=16 (accessed on April 2013). ———. Un’ora sola ti vorrei (DVD+book). Milano: Rizzoli Editore, 2006. ———. “Vogliamo anche le Rose.” Milano: Mir Cinematografica, 2008b. http:// www.vogliamoanchelerose.it/ (accessed on July 20, 2012). McWilliams, Ellen. “The Coming of Age of the Bildungsroman.”In Margaret Atwood and the Female Bildungsroman, 5–40. Surrey, UK: Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 2009. Meale, Raffaele. “Per sempre.Non è più una questione privata.”Sabato 13 Agosto 2005. http://www.cinemavvenire.it/locarno/non-e-piu-una-questione-privata/ per-sempre (accessedMarch 29, 2012). Melandri, Lea. “L’ora d’amore di Alina e Liseli.” Liberazione, November 30, 2006. Merlo, Francesco. “Stupratore in libertà, giudice sotto accusa” La Repubblica, August 24, 2006. Nichols, Bill. Introduction to Documentary. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2010. Sabbadini, Andrea, ed. Projected Shadows. Psychoanalytic Reflections on the Representation of Loss in European Cinema, 21–34. New York: Routledge, 2007. Scarparo, Susanna. “Feminist Intellectuals as Public Figures in Contemporary Italy.” Australian Feminist Studies 19.44 (July 2004): 201–212. Smith, Sidonie, and Julia Watson, eds. Reading Autobiography. A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives. Minneapolis: University ofMinnesota Press, 2001; second edition, 2010. Smith, Zadie. “Notes on Visconti’s Bellissima.” In Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays, 168–182. New York: Penguin Press, 2009. Summerfield, Giovanna, and Lisa Downward. New Perspectives on the European Bildungsroman. London, GBR: Continuum International Publishing, 2010. Zagarrio, Vito. La Meglio Gioventù. Nuovo Cinema Italiano 2000–2006. Venezia: Marsilio Editori, 2006.

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Filmography L’America me l’immaginavo (1991) Il declino di Milano (1992) Mediterraneo, il mare industrializzato (1993) Ragazzi dentro (1997) Il sogno tradito (1999) Un’ora sola ti vorrei (2002) Per Sempre (2005) Vogliamo anche le Rose (2007) Tutto parla di te/Baby Blues (forthcoming 2012)

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Angela/o and the Gender Disruption of Masculine Society in Purple Sea Anita Virga

The Disturbing Figure of Angela/o Purple Sea (2009),1 directed by Donatella Maiorca, is one of only a few Italian films that deal directly with the theme of lesbianism, and Maiorca’s representation of the relationship between the two main characters, Angela (Valeria Solarino) and Sara (Isabella Ragonese), establishes the film as a forerunner in this field.2 Indeed, the struggle to realize this love story is not an incidental or secondary motif of the film, but the central one. Inspired by Giacomo Pilati’s novel Minchia di Re (2004), in the transition from the written word to visual images, the film puts more emphasis on the “irregular” love between the two girls, while the book focuses exclusively on the protagonist and her life as a female husband and cross-dressing woman, independent of the lesbian relationship. The latter, therefore, adopts more the feature of a bildungsroman, narrating the life of the protagonist beyond the marriage and ending with her death, where the former is based on the specific struggle of the two girls to realize their relationship in spite of the patriarchal society to which they are subjected. The difference—here only quickly mentioned—between the book and the film underlines the clash and the disruption represented by the story of Angela within the patriarchal society as it is figured in Maiorca’s work. As a matter of fact, the film plot developed alongside the love story discloses specific

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attention to gender relationships and their connection to the exercise of power, broadening the issue from the historical time in which the narration is set (the end of nineteenth century) to the contemporary age, and spatially from a little village on the island of Favignana, Sicily, to the wider Italian society. The events of the film seem deeply connected to the specific society of that time and place, but the discourse connected to these events has significance beyond the simple plot. The beginning of the film is a kind of preamble that focuses on the childhood of the two protagonists, whose early friendship already suggests the possibility of the development of a more mature love. While the natural and spontaneous nature of this love challenges social conventions and rules, it is not indicative of any sort of deviance that one would see as inherent to homosexuality. Angela is rebellious and wild, while Sara seems to be more submissive and capable of accepting the general rules of society3: indeed, the existence of this lesbian love does not seem to faze her, but she cannot imagine an actual future in which she and Angela live together as a couple. In contrast, Angela is convinced that being with Sara is the only possibility she will accept in her life, and in accordance with this conviction, she refuses to marry the son of one of the men who works for her father at the quarry. This refusal represents the breaking point of the equilibrium of the story, which so far has been developed without great tension despite the intensifying “irregular love” of the protagonists. This breaking point clarifies a leitmotif of the movie as well as the specific issue of the gender relationship: visibility is what matters. All the deployments of power run on the binary dichotomy visibility/concealment. The romance between Angela and Sara is able to develop as long as it remains a private matter, hidden from the social gaze, in a private territory removed from the imposition of patriarchal society. However, as soon as Angela makes her desire public, declaring it to her father, her love for Sara can no longer be pursued. The only way to escape from this impossibility is to change the nature of the implied terms: rather than two girls, there must be a “female” and a “male” person. The mother devises this subterfuge and Angela agrees to a compromise with her father: she changes her identity, becoming “Angelo” by wearing more typically masculine clothing and assuming a male role. As a man, she can finally marry a woman and their lesbian relationship, as far as society is concerned, can be considered heterosexual. Though it may seem bizarre and cinematic, this solution is well documented by history, which records many instances of women, not necessarily lesbians, disguised as men to enjoy more rights, to be able to work or travel, and, in some cases, to marry another woman (Oram and Turnbull 2001). However, the cross-dressing practice should not be seen

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as a mere means of survival for the lesbian couple, or a means for women to enjoy more freedom, but rather as a significant challenge to heterosexual society. If we adopt Homi Bhabha’s (1994) notion of “mimicry,” which was originally used in a postcolonial context to describe the relationship between colonizer and colonized, we find a similar strategy playing here in the context of gender relations: within patriarchal society, the subaltern lesbian woman imitates the man, acting as a man does and therefore inserting herself into the practices of power. In this way, she becomes “a subject of a difference that is almost the same, but not quite” (86). The imperfect image that the “woman-become-man” transmits to patriarchal society defies those very values that demand the transformation in the first place. There still remains a residue, a gap between the copied image of man and the one thought as the original, so that the differences do not affect the copy, but rather undermine the original. The latter, indeed, receives a similar image of himself, which however does not fully conform to the ideal self-image he previously had. The whole structure, built on certainties, precise dichotomies, absolute rules, and defined roles subsequently cracks. Angela, once she becomes Angelo, is precisely this crack, the rift in the wall of the patriarchal structure from which to contemplate the possibility of a different way to live and interpret genders. In the vestments of both Angela and Angelo, the protagonist is a disturbing figure for the rigid setting of the society of the time: someone who does not conform to the rules either as a woman or as a man. Therefore, the hybrid figure of Angela/o becomes a symbol of disruption within this kind of society, questioning not only the assigned gender roles but also the very idea of the existence of two genders. However, in reality, we are actually dealing with a double disruption, since there is a double subalternity that breaks the meshes of the dominant pattern: one that affirms the protagonist as a woman, and one that affirms the protagonist as a lesbian. Angela’s transformation suggests that a woman cannot be the subject of desire, but only its object. Indeed, she is not given the option of making decisions about her private life—it is a right that Angela can earn only by transforming into Angelo. If Angela does not want to renounce her role as a subject of desire, the change of the last letter of her name restores the order that was thought to be natural, and which is described by Butler (1990: 126) as a total cultural and social construction: “the category of sex and the naturalized institution of heterosexuality are constructs, socially instituted and socially regulated fantasies or ‘fetishes,’ not natural categories, but political ones.” She further explains that, through repetition of the same practices, the matrix of heterosexuality and gender hierarchy is established and reinforced to seem like a natural order. Within this matrix, there is continuity

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among sex, gender, sexual practice, and desire, so that assigning a sex to a person means automatically associating certain practices and behaviors with him/her: a man is a male human being who loves women; a woman is a female human being who is loved by a man. A woman must be a man in order to love—that is what happens to Angela. Nevertheless, she is Angelo purely socially, with no actual biological transformation to speak of, a subject master of her/himself with full decision-making; this change, however arbitrary it may seem, does not just put into question the authority of Angela/o within the film, but rather the authority of any Angelo beyond the boundaries of cinema. If it takes so little to transform the fortunes of a subject—changing the “a” to an “o”—it is clear that the subject’s position in society does not so much depend on the intrinsic qualities of the subject itself, but rather on purely conventional rules. In many senses, therefore, Angela/o represents a disruption within patriarchal society: the way she chooses to realize the romance with Sara is not at all to bend to the rules of society, which requires heterosexual love and marriage, and men in control; on the contrary, entering as a woman into this male realm, she openly shows how these laws have no basis except in convention and tradition. Gender changing is not a tribute to the masculine and heterosexual society, but a way to question it, revealing its fallibility. A side story to the main plot seems to add a note to the challenge represented by the lesbian couple in regard to society. After Angela’s transformation, her father dies in a nonheroic way: caught “in flagrante” with his sister-in-law (Angela’s aunt), he backs away and accidentally falls into a well. His lover, seeing no means of escape from the scandal, follows him, throwing herself voluntarily into the well. After this tragedy, the mother reveals with contempt the secret affair in which her husband and sister had been engaged. Furthermore, Angela’s aunt was supposed to live as a nun because of an “incident” that occurred years ago with the parish priest, and which had resulted in an unwanted pregnancy and a subsequent abortion. As a result of this double death, Angela takes full possession of the place previously occupied by her father, both in the home and in the workplace. Apart from this, however, the digression on the family relationship between the father and the aunt, never developed earlier in the film, seems to be an almost insignificant detail to the story. It would be better, therefore, to seek its meaning not so much in the chain of the plot events, but rather within the context of gender relations. In these terms, we see that those same rules to which Angela is forced to adhere are transgressed by the same person (in this case, the father) who represents their bulwark. The monogamous heterosexual society imposes laws established on the dichotomy of male/female

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and man/woman in order to maintain the system of power and male oppression passed off as natural; therefore, this society cannot allow differences because they would contest the binary opposition upon which the regime is based. However, the discovery of Angela’s father’s affair reveals the hypocrisy of the very people who seek to maintain this binary order. Furthermore, it is worth noting that, despite the scandalous connotations of this breach of rules, it is still permissible, and the woman, once again, does not have a voice in the matter: in fact, the mother, aware of the affair, cannot rebel against it, denounce it, or take action. The fact that the death of Angela’s father is so trivial seems to be an ironic commentary on his authority as a padre-padrone. The Pervasive Control of Masculine Society Her father’s death marks the final step of Angela/o from a subordinate position to a position of command, that is, from daughter to son and, finally, from son to master. However, before reaching that position, Angela/o, along with Sara, is forced to endure different moments in which the masculine society seeks to reaffirm its supremacy, and to punish “deviation” by displaying control and violence over the female body. The ultimate goal is to reestablish that continuity among sex, gender, sexual practice, and desire described by Butler, or which Adrienne Rich (1980) calls “compulsory heterosexuality.”4 Rich, elaborating on Kathleen Gough’s list5 of characteristics of male power in archaic and contemporary societies, provides an explanation of the forms used by men to enforce heterosexuality on women. In these terms, we find some specific moments of the film in which the female body is subjected to male violence as described by Rich/Gough. One of the primary examples is that of the confinement of the woman through different means, listed by Rich (1980: 638) as “rape as terrorism, keeping women off the streets; [. . .] ‘feminine’ dress codes; [. . .] sexual harassment on the streets; horizontal segregation of women in employment; prescriptions for ‘full-time’ mothering; enforced economic dependence of wives.” Male characters in the film employ many of these methods in order to prevent or counteract Angela’s love for Sara, and, above all, to restrict their freedom as women. Rich also mentions the denial of women’s sexuality, especially lesbianism, by means of punishment, including death: one of the consequences is forcing sexuality upon them, particularly through rape and arranged marriage. In this way, a woman is turned into an object, good to be used “in male transactions—[use of women as ‘gift’; bride price; pimping, arranged marriage]” (639; emphasis in the

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original). In addition, Rich recalls two other aspects of this violence, which, although not explicitly shown in the story of film, form a sort of “natural” background. They are: 7. to cramp their creativeness—[definition of male pursuits as more valuable than female within any culture, so that cultural values become the embodiment of male subjectivity] 8. to withhold from them large areas of the society’s knowledge and cultural attainments—[by means of noneducation of females; the “Great Silence” regarding women and particularly lesbian existence in history and culture, sex-role tracking, which deflects women from science, technology, and other “masculine” pursuits; male social/professional bonding, which excludes women; discrimination against women in the professions]. (639–640)

The method of confinement remains the most evident in the film; indeed, a turning point of the plot is the imprisonment of Angela: her father keeps her off the streets in order to make her change her mind about Sara. In this case, violence comes in the form of exclusion and concealment of the female body from society. The “lesson” inherent in this punishment is clear: Angela can exist only as a heterosexual woman. There is no conceivable alternative. The lesbian body physically suffers the same cultural erasing perpetrated throughout history—the “Great Silence,” in Rich’s words. The confinement of Angela also has another meaning: she must implicitly serve a double penance, as she is not only a lesbian but also a woman: “My father wanted a baby boy because having a girl is a shame. It’s even worse than death,” Angela states at the beginning of the movie. As a woman, she cannot be of financial help to her family. The only way she can be helpful to the family is through marriage. Here is another point from Rich’s list. Angela’s father wants her to change her mind in part because he has already promised her in marriage to one of his most faithful workers and helpers. She is the prize for the good work of the man, and through this gift her father not only ensures greater loyalty from his assistant but a future successor in his business as well. As a woman, Angela cannot be a subject of desire, and as a lesbian she cannot exist. After varied unsuccessful attempts by her father to change her mind, Angela’s mother has the intuition to “change” her daughter’s sex in order to save her. This is another form of violence that Angela has to suffer: the obligation to become something else in order to be herself. The disguise of masculinity, here, is functional to the set-up of the lie that is taking place: the alleged inexistence of the woman, and especially the lesbian woman. However, as previously mentioned, in this disguise, and

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in this “male” violence, is concealed, almost ironically, the strength of the lesbian opposition, which survives as a residue in the male mask.6 Because of this residue, Angela never completely becomes Angelo, but still remains, though perhaps not explicitly, a slash inside of her identity—Angela/o.7 Because of this, even after the change, the protagonist is subject to the control of patriarchal society. The physical examination prior to military service is the moment in the plot of the film in which society seeks to verify once again the correct identity of the individual. Despite the doctor’s awareness of Angela/o’s identity, he forces her to undress in front of him: here, contrary to what happened before, violence is perpetuated through the exposition of the (naked) body. Concealment and exposition are two sides of the same type of violence, in which the male gaze plays a fundamental role. If in the first case the concealment of the body was intended to deny the existence of Angela as lesbian, her exposure in the second case is to achieve precisely the opposite purpose, to deny her the position within the society that, in the dis/guise of a man, she claimed. The forced undressing is also the first step of the aforementioned and feared physical violence. The aim is to reestablish, through physical evidence, the hierarchies within society, restoring female submission and reminding Angela of her inferiority. Through the play of the editing, the director suggests the importance that the male gaze holds in the control and supremacy over women. In fact, after the injunction to completely undress, Angela/o goes back behind the screen that serves as a dressing room, to hide from the eyes of the doctor. The camera, however, detaches from the naked body of Angela/o to rest on the nervous and greedy eyes of the doctor, returning finally to the nudity of the protagonist, barely concealed behind the screen. Angela/o’s naked body in front of him is once again the object of his searching gaze, which the camera shoots frontally in a medium shot with Angela/o’s naked body in the foreground. The emphasis is therefore on the man who controls, searches, looks. As a matter of fact, not surprised to find himself in front of a female body, the doctor reveals that he was already aware of this “secret,” but says, “I wanted to see with my own eyes”—a phrase that emphasizes the importance of vision. The controlling male gaze is followed by the actual violation of the body, which occurs twice: when a man—Ventura, the former fiancé chosen by her father—tries to abuse Angela/o and when Sara, in order to get pregnant, has intercourse with a man—Tommaso—who previously loved her. In the first case, the final goal, in addition to revenge, is, once again, to remind the lesbian woman of her lack of masculinity. Along these lines, in a discussion on pornography, Rich (1980: 641) notes “that sexuality and violence are congruent; and that for women sex is essentially masochistic,

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humiliation pleasurable, physical abuse erotic.” As a consequence, in a heterosexual affair, the submission and suffering of the women is something “normal” and “natural” due to the inferiority of the female sex, while in a homosexual affair between women the equality in the pair is seen as “unnatural,” “queer,” and “sick.” Pornography, therefore, is one of the ways to establish the natural course of sexual affairs and justify violence against women. The abuse perpetrated by Ventura against Angela seems to follow the idea hidden behind pornography: both are attempts to reassert the value of the subjugation of women in a relationship that can only be heterosexual. In addition, there is also the unmasking and the overthrowing of the woman who claims to occupy the place of a man without having the necessary “requirements”; that is, without having a penis. The underlying idea seems precisely this: violent intercourse between a man and a woman is more natural than a loving exchange between two persons of the same sex. In contrast, the sexual encounter between Tommaso and Sara, carried out in order to realize an otherwise impossible pregnancy, seems anything but violent. The fact that the woman is consenting and the intercourse is necessary to the pregnancy does not mean, however, that there is not also a form of violence in this case. The very same editing of the scene suggests it: the man, who clearly feels pleasure during the act, is in a dominant position, while the woman, suffering, is in a position of complete submission. Tommaso agrees to help the lesbian couple to have a child because of the love he has always felt for Sara, but this generous spirit is guilty of a sense of revenge and a desire to reappropriate and resubjugate women, specifically Sara. Indeed, by ignoring Sara’s pain in favor of his own pleasure, he disregards the woman, her presence, as if she were just an object, thus attempting to regain what traditionally, by right, belongs to the man: his moral and physical supremacy over the woman, his dominion over her. Particularly effective are two shots, one in the middle and the other at the end of the scene, both portraying the two bodies in full shot from above, emphasizing the heaviness of the body of Tommaso over that of Sara—and of course his physical supremacy, which corresponds to his position of dominance within the hierarchy of the society. In addition, the editing interweaves the sex scene with images of Angela at work in a quarry. While Tommaso dominates Sara, Angela has a fit of anger against a worker who drops some granite boulders. Angela collects these rocks only to throw them violently back to the ground, while the editing intertwins this explosion of anger with images of the rhythmic movement of Tommaso over Sara. In this way, the quick alternation of the two scenes establishes a

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parallel between the acts of Angela and those of Tommaso, both united by significations of violence. A reference to Foucault can be useful here, in order to better frame the stages of control to which Angela and Sara are subjected—in particular, the theory of sex as a set of disciplines and strategies implemented within the biopolitics emerged at the end of the eighteenth century, and the idea of power and authoritarian control expressed in Discipline and Punish (1977). In the latter book, Foucault defines a society with a pervasive control aimed at the creation of productive individuals’ compliance with the law. The Panopticon described by Foucault is the symbol of this control perpetrated through vision—or the constant fear of being watched and consequently punished because of behaviors outside the law. This kind of control is what we have observed to be exerted over Angela. The control of sexuality, discussed by Foucault in The History of Sexuality: The Will to Knowledge (1978),8 is a particular and specific stage of this pervasive monitoring imposed by law in order to maintain “order”—believed to be the one, natural right for human beings. Angela’s father has an almost unlimited power over her, aimed at taming her, disciplining her, and making her conform to the standard idea of society, an idea based on the workforce, in which the human being is intended to be productive: man through work, woman through marriage. A lesbian woman is not included in this system and, as such, should be punished in order to be regulated and reinserted, at the end, into this productive process. The prison as an apparatus for transforming individuals is therefore the form of segregation that Angela’s father imposes on her. The death penalty is the ultimate punishment for a person who cannot be changed, and it is the end that would have awaited her had her mother not intervened. The doctor within the military institution assumes the role of a substitute for the father-master and, ultimately, represents the law and the control exercised by patriarchal society. His behavior has the characteristics of an attempt to discipline through the construction of a discourse about sex and sexuality in which the exposure of the body is involved. “Power spoke of sexuality and to sexuality; the latter was not a mark or a symbol, it was an object and a target” (Foucault 1978, 147; emphases in the original). Object and target—we can add—of the male gaze, through which power is exercised. Within this regulatory scheme, the lesbian woman can only be a deviant; in Criminal Woman, for example, Cesare Lombroso, writing at the end of nineteenth century, reduced the lesbian woman to a form of atavistic and biological-based sexual deviation (see Mary Gibson 2002). As such, society—in the person of the father and of all the other male characters who stand for him—implements all kind of strategies to force the

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lesbian to conform to heterosexual rules. The deviance is to be punished and corrected. An Important Film The director, Donatella Maiorca, and her production crew succeed expertly in depicting a climate of pervasive control that attempted to discipline sexual diversity—precisely because it was considered different; in this environment, such diversity has no room for self-expression and is forced to hide and disguise itself. However, the same film does fall prey to certain clichés about lesbians. The review on the site culturagay.it highlights some of them, starting with the beauty of the protagonists: La bellezza delle due protagoniste, scelte come se nella rilettura di una storia vera si volesse infondere fin dall’inizio un giudizio: la protagonista deve essere bella, perché incarna un ideale che vuole risaltare come giusto, quasi sacro, quello della giustezza, della quasi sacralità dell’amore di una donna per un’altra donna. Visione romantica? Riduzione del lesbismo alla sola emozione totale, dimenticando quelle parziali, e la realtà tutta prosaica e, perché no, felice, che si possono avere relazioni con le altre anche solo erotiche? Scelta commerciale che preferisce i bei voti, le icone, a quelli più realistici? (The beauty of the two protagonists, chosen as if in the rereading of a true story, intends to impart a judgment from the very beginning: the protagonist must be beautiful, because she embodies an ideal that wants to stand out as correct, almost sacred, that of the correctness, the near sacrality, of the love of one woman for another. A romantic vision? A reduction of lesbianism to mere total emotion, forgetting any partial visions, or indeed the mundane, and—why not—happy reality, that one can also have relationships with others that are solely erotic? A commercial decision that favors good reviews, icons, over the more realistic?)

The very same name of the protagonist, “Angela,” which in Pilati’s original text was the simpler “Pina,” expresses an angelic vision of a lesbian relationship between two women: once again, wanting to reevaluate the female figure, it ends up putting the woman on a golden pedestal. The review goes on to mention the character of the baroness: È bella anche la Baronessa (Lucrezia Lante della Rovere) che, bontà sua, è l’unica voce “dal continente” ed esprime sia la decadenza (non per niente è nobile . . .) della sua bisessualità un po’ torbida che il desiderio sessuale tout court, quello “diabolico” che non interessa un copione tutto incentrato sull’amore unico.

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(Also beautiful is the Baroness [Lucrezia Lante della Rovere] who, in all her kindness, is the only voice “from the continent” and expresses both the decadence [not for nothing is she noble . . .] of her somewhat murky bisexuality as well as sexual desire tout court, the “diabolical” one of no interest for a script focused entirely on a single love.)

Indeed, the baroness in the film represents the other common perspective on lesbian relationships: the one that sees them as murky, dark, erotic, and perversely attractive precisely because they are prohibited. Also, the beautiful Sicilian landscapes contribute to the idea of an idyllic love, pure, linked to the beauty of the protagonists—and if sometimes the countryside appears to be wilder, it is a likely reference to the rebellious nature of Angela. The latter never doubts her same-sex love, while Sara, at least in the beginning, offers some resistance to this idea: her main concern is not an inner acceptance of this love—something that she has no difficulty doing—but rather the thought that “these are things that you do not do.” Finally, Gianna Nannini’s soundtrack speaks of a heterosexual love that one can infer from a few words that in Italian are forced to be gendermarked and cannot therefore remain ambiguous (as they would be in English): “mi accorgo che sei sveglio,” “sogno che sei un urlo di bambino intrappolato” (“I realize that you’re awake,” “I dream that you are a cry of a trapped baby”). The soundtrack might be seen as a small detail, but it ultimately appears out of place compared to the theme of the film and seems to prove that it is impossible to completely remove oneself from a heterosexual framework. Apart from these missteps, the film remains a significant work because, as mentioned at the beginning, it can be considered almost one of a kind—and certainly a sign of an opening, even in Italy, toward an underdeveloped theme in Italian cinema. The long and extreme sex scenes between the two women might seem a further tribute to male voyeuristic taste and the cinema of the spectacular, but they actually represent the rupture of a major taboo that accepts only heterosexual kisses and sexual acts on screen. The presence of these scenes can help change the public’s imaginary as well as symbolic function of women in films and society, while at the same time challenging the hegemonic existence of heterosexual sex presented under the dominant sign of masculinity. Through the personal stories of Angela and Sara, the film shows a wide range of devices that the homosexual woman was/is forced to endure. However, all these strategies aimed at the denial of homosexuality reveal, on the contrary, the existence of an indelible “other,” a subaltern, who continually returns—one could say under various forms, even when this “other”

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seems permanently bent to the rules of heterosexuality. The growing concern within the film to control and regulate the presence of homosexuality, to define it within the canons of heterosexuality, demonstrates the continued presence of a disturbing “other” that cannot be completely removed under any certain terms and that continually acts to undermine the model of a heterosexual society based on male domination. Donatella Maiorca, in this way, does not just offer a comment on Sicilian society in the late nineteenth century, but also a profound reflection on the modern day, where the discussion about homosexuality is still a hot-button topic and where it is difficult to conceive of a society more open to the various possibilities for individuals to express their sexuality. Despite attempts to confine homosexuality within definite limits, to normalize its presence within the society in order to make it compatible with the heterosexual pattern, and think of it as merely a deviance, a subcategory of the “norm,” the presence of homosexuality (and all the different possibilities that it entails) remains an element of disturbance to the dominant structures in the Italy of today. Director’s Biography Donatella Maiorca was born in Messina in 1957. Her film directing debut was in 1998 with Viol@, a film based on the theme of virtual sex. Her second film, Purple Sea, which garnered some positive reviews, came out in 2009. In the time between the two works, she worked for RAI as a director for various TV series. Notes 1. Please note that the film is referred to as The Sea Purple in IMDb and by the British Film Institute. Here I use the title as it appears on the original DVD. 2. There are only two other recent films with a lesbian subject worthy of mention: Benzina (2001) by Monica Lisa Strambini, and Riparo (2007) by Marco Simon Puccioni. In the former, the protagonists take the tone of “diabolical” and “perverse” lesbians, who act out of the social rules both in their private life following their “unnatural” love, and in their social behavior, killing the mother of one of them and hiding her body in the car. The lesbian relationship here does not seem to be an issue; it is not a moment of meditation on society and gender topics, but only the pretext for this incredible and dark story. Most significantly, however, the second film, in which the lesbian theme is part of a broader reflection on the discourse of exclusion and diversity, is intertwined with the issue of migration.

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3. In these details, the plot follows the common pattern of lesbian movies: within the couple there is always a more rebellious and resolute person, identified with the “masculine” part, the one who will perform the male role, and a more conformist, fragile person, who will act as the “female” of the two. 4. In her essay “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence,” Rich shows “the enforcement of heterosexuality for women as a means of assuring male right of physical, economic, and emotional access” (“Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence,” Signs 5.4, Women: Sex and Sexuality [summer 1980]). She shows how heterosexuality is presented to women everyday starting from their childhood as the only possibility for their sexuality, where the lesbian possibility is removed from history. Indeed, she speaks against the term “lesbianism,” for it carries a clinical meaning, instead suggesting the use of the term “lesbian existence” to indicate the historical presence of lesbian and “lesbian continuum” to “include a range—through each woman’s life and throughout history—of a womanidentified experience” (648). 5. Kathleen Gough (1925–1990) was a British anthropologist whose work is focused especially on South Asia and South-East Asia. Rich elaborates on Gough’s essay “The Origin of the Family,” in Rayna R. Reiter, ed., Toward an Anthropology of Women, where the anthropologist discusses the family organization within archaic society. In particular, what draws the attention of Rich is the part devoted to the position of women in hunting societies. Gough argues that in such societies, women were not particularly subjected to men as they played a key role in providing food. According to the scholar, submission increases with the rising of surplus wealth, which causes social stratification and allows some men—thanks to the monopoly over weapons and freedom from child care—to acquire power over other men and over women. 6. Also, as Judith Butler reminds us, “In imitating gender, drag implicitly reveals the imitative structure of gender itself—as well as its contingency” (Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity [New York: Routledge, 1990], 137). 7. However, it is worth noting that, as Monique Wittig (1986) highlights in her essay “The Mark of Gender” (The Poetics of Gender [1986]: 63–73) my adoption of the slash is not entirely correct, and denounces the limitations of the language in which we express ourselves and that, therefore, also forge our cognitive categories. The choice of an “a” or an “o,” in fact, forces even the sexual identity in a binary option: “a” as feminine, “o” as masculine. Their coexistence separated by a slash would indicate a third way, however, not well defined: a middle way between the feminine and the masculine? Not being either one or the other? Being both? However, even this third way is linked to the dichotomy of the first two options. We should, instead, be able to find ways to express the multiplicity that excludes the simple dichotomy of male/female. 8. In The History of Sexuality: The Will to Knowledge (New York: Pantheon, 1978), Foucault claims that the increase in the modern age of rules to control and repress sex, making it taboo, does not show much concern to a sudden

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removal of sex from society, but rather on the contrary, its proliferation, the will to talk and make it a discourse, to base it as “secret truth” within which to find any explanation on our individuality. For this reason, sex becomes a main concern in the seventeenth century, and a tool of control of the population—not something removed from everyday life.

Bibliography Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994. Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1990. CulturaGay. “Viola di mare, ovvero la solitudine lesbica italiana.” Last modified October 26, 2009. http://www.culturagay.it/cg/recensione.php?id=418\. Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Pantheon, 1977. ———. The History of Sexuality: The Will to Knowledge? New York: Pantheon, 1978. Gibson, Mary. Born to Crime: Cesare Lombroso and the Origins of Biological Criminology. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002. Gough, Kathleen. “The Origin of the Family.” In Toward an Anthropology of Women, edited by Rayna R. Reiter. New York and London: Monthly Review Press, 1975. Lombroso, Cesare. Criminal Woman, the Prostitute, and the Normal Woman. Durham: Duke University Press, 2004. Oram, Alison, and Annmarie Turnbull. The Lesbian History Sourcebook: Love and Sex between Women in Britain from 1780 to 1970. London: Routledge, 2001. Pilati, Giacomo. Minchia di Re. Milano: Mursia, 2004. Rich, Adrienne. “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence.” Signs 5.4, Women: Sex and Sexuality (summer 1980): 631–660. Wittig, Monique. “The Mark of Gender.” The Poetics of Gender (1986): 63–73.

Filmography Viol@. Dir. Donatella Maiorca. Perf. Stefania Rocca. Medusa, 2002. DVD Purple Sea. Dir. Donatella Maiorca. Perf. Valeria Solarino, Isabella Ragonese. Strand Releasing, 2011. DVD

11

Ilaria Borrelli Cinema and Postfeminism Maristella Cantini

The way for women to be liberated is not by “becoming a man” or by envying what men have and their objects, but by female subjects once again valorizing the expression of their own sex and gender. —Luce Irigaray

Introduction Ilaria Borrelli was born in Naples, Italy, in 1968. She is a writer, actress, scriptwriter, director, and producer. She has performed in movies, plays, and in French and Italian TV series. Between 1999 and 2007, Borrelli published four novels, Scosse, Luccattmì, Domani si Gira, and Tanto Rumore per Tullia, for which she received critical acclaim and several prestigious literary prizes. After discovering Borrelli’s novels, I became interested in her movies. In this chapter, I will focus on Borrelli’s three feature films: Mariti in Affitto (2004), Come le Formiche (2007), and Talking to the Trees (2012). I will seek to argue that this director’s body of work is innovative and is representative of the postfeminist paradigm in Italy.1 Furthermore, I will examine this paradigm and attempt to contextualize it in terms of social and cultural responses and explore how, or if, this paradigm differs from Anglo-American parameters.

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Novels The narrative in Borrelli’s novels and cinema contains common features and themes. These include young women or adolescent girls who either narrate the story (in her novels) or act as protagonists (in her movies); unusual and puerile male characters, who turn out to be unreliable or violent; and a social background that is portrayed either as suffocating or unsettling. Borrelli directs her films just as she narrates stories: stretching irony to extreme limits, and creating caricatures of her characters, both female and male, to emphasize the paradoxical pressure of social roles and gender oppression. Her tone is both humorous and bitter. In her novels, Borrelli’s critique is openly directed toward malecontrolled culture and social norms that still hold women back from pursuing artistic and intellectual ambitions. Furthermore, in her books, a fierce invective is aimed at mediocre male directors, playwrights, scriptwriters, theater directors, and crewmembers whose arrogance and vulgarity determine women’s approach to media and limit their access to the professions within the industry of show business. The filmmaker analyzes the dynamics of male control and violence toward employees, family members, and partners. Borrelli also describes the conditions faced by young women struggling to obtain a role in Italian show business, and the way they are selected, lured, and used by cinema’s selfproclaimed masters. In my view, rather than simply being written, her novels are “yelled,” and the words leap from the page in an exasperated, loud scream against men’s prerogative, against their lack of professionalism, and their predatory techniques, practiced on a wide range of women with the clear intent to sexually exploit them. In Scosse (1999), Borelli’s first novel, the story is recounted by Sandra, a twelve year-old girl who ponders over her family situation. The interlacing of the narrative has a direct, yet disconcerted, tone. The young girl’s opinions on adults’ immaturity and men’s rapacity are all sugared with irony and hilarious comments. Sandra’s story spans from her experience in Naples, her native city heavily hit by the earthquake of the 1980s, to her moving to Rome. She describes her life in those years, portraying a composite picture of dysfunctional family relationships, political confusion, and ideological crossroads. Domestic violence, child abuse, and sexual harassment of women in the workplace are only some of Borrelli’s concerns. Growing up during the years of dynamic feminist protests, Sandra observes the gap between her mother’s theories and her way of living, and her father’s militant left-wing reputation. He professes emancipated principles on equality and peace, while at home he acts as a violent patriarch. In the novels Luccatmì (2002) and Domani si Gira (2003), the respective protagonists, Simona and Giovanna, struggle to enter the closed

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world of cinema as an actress, in the first book, and as a director, in the second. With merciless humorous efficacy, Borrelli denounces the maze of rules women have to negotiate if they intend to enter the temple of acting or directing. Borrelli also describes amusingly what happens to young women who refuse to perform humiliating nude roles, or reconcile their career advancement with the expected sexual favors to cameraman, crewmembers, and directors. Old, physically repulsive and “self-proclaimed” filmmakers are described, in Borrelli’s novels, as being constantly on the lookout for an opportunity to entrap any young, naïve girl lining up for hours or days to get an audition. The way delusional male self-confidence is described is hilarious and “visual”: The writer depicts with a few brush strokes, vivid and incisive typologies of Italian men. The filmmaker, on the other hand, seems to be refocusing on the very process of directing a movie. She observes the kind of acting roles she is offered, she watches how movies are edited and directed (many do not even provide actresses with a complete script), and finally considers to whom many scripts are addressed. As a matter of fact, many of the roles she is offered are for men’s entertainment only. She realizes that how prepared an actress can be is not a preliminary qualification as in that context professionalism is not a key requirement. To be able to advance in such a career is determinant to know how to be sexually available and choose the right men to please. When she describes how the popular director Porcopagni deals with fifteen-year-old girls, or the intellectual director Demetrio Gallina deals with performers, we, as female readers, sympathize with her genuine rage. Tanto Rumore per Tullia (2005), Borrelli’s last novel, brings into focus women’s friendship and complicity. The male characters are strategically placed in the background of the narrative, almost as a tapestry of passportlike pictures. This narrative device allows the writer to situate women’s issues rather than give men any active role in the story. One key example of this is found in the character of Luca, Tullia’s husband, who falls in a rock climbing accident, and remains in a coma for the entire novel after a brief appearance at the very beginning of the story. Luca would have liked to have a baby with Tullia and he was trying to persuade her to agree. For Tullia, on the other hand, being a mother is not her primary aspiration. Instead, her main preoccupation is to keep her job as a photographer, which is constantly under threat from male competition in an industry that openly privileges men. Tullia deals every day with coworkers’ sexism, which fetters her professional growth and limits her career advancement. After the accident, Luca only really appears in the story through Tullia’s voice, and other male figures in the novel are indirectly given a presence through the stories of the female characters. Men never really “act” in Borrelli’s books. Action is overtly reserved for women: Tullia, Dida, and

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Mila, the three protagonists in the story, move in a context dominated by men, and their actions are often a consequence of men’s abuse. Yet their personal achievements and the solutions they find in attempting to reclaim their sense of identity are central to the novel. Borrelli’s movies use comedy and humor to denounce Italian misogynist culture. She emphasizes, through the form of commedia brillante,2 the importance for women of being together, supporting each other, and refusing to be controlled and manipulated by men. The filmmaker also uses drama to reinforce these same concepts and leaves an open, happy ending signaling the prospect of a spiritual and physical rebirth of her characters. Borrelli’s cinematic style weaves together comedy and activism, reflecting the ambivalent idea of the postfeminist—or newfeminist—paradigm.3 Postfeminism Borrelli’s work is representative of an “Italian-style” postfeminist paradigm. Postfeminism is a term that is more broadly associated, in AngloAmerican media criticism, with third-wave feminism. It implies a complex interface of consumerism, economic freedom, and female empowerment through professional success and financial independence. Postfeminism, as a cultural paradigm, has also been defined as neofeminism and it can only be tangentially applied to Italy for several reasons: the economic situation has reached one of the lowest levels ever registered in the country, and women’s unemployment, according to studies by Chiara Valentini and Francesca Zajczyk, is exacerbated by working conditions that not only penalize women’s careers, motherhood, and individual development, but also tend to marginalize female workers, especially when coming to terms with power and authority (Zajczyk 2007: 102–119). In her article “Televised Bodies: Berlusconi and the Body of Italian Women,” Stefania Benini (2013: 88) discusses “the way Italian media obscures women’s problems as well as their accomplishments.” Furthermore, Benini explains the need for a rebirth of a women’s movement in terms of postfeminist sensibility. The Italian media is focused on a representation of women and beauty through male hegemonic culture, and very little space is left to enable women’s full professional growth, with huge economic repercussions and the consequent stagnation of social and cultural issues. As a writer, director, and producer, Ilaria Borrelli personifies the postfeminist sensibility4 in Italy and Europe in a very innovative way. Her critique against the pandemic male-centered order is corrosive, and her work can be seen as an open revolt against

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a system that resists women’s enfranchisement. For Borrelli, the only way to trigger a change in a country where sexual harassment in the workplace and gender discrimination obstruct women’s advancement is to commit to achieving power and success. Women need to occupy positions of responsibility and leadership. They need to access the restricted area of power and control that, in Italy, is still the prerogative of men. Borrelli is convinced that we need to promote more women to occupy key positions: in cinema it is crucial to have more female producers, more female directors represented at festivals and appointed to juries. It is also imperative to adopt different distribution politics on low-budget and independent works.5 Borrelli’s cinema is a dynamic effort to construct, through various genres, multiple female subjectivities and set them at the center of her narrative.6 In her films Borrelli, does not highlight one single protagonist, but generally focuses on several women and their relationships. Her heroine is never one woman alone, detached from other women. Both as a filmmaker and as a writer, she devotes her attention to women, not as objects of representation, but as individuals engaged in a daily form of resistance against male privilege and power. Her female characters act across genres, move in a space free from classification, where comedy intersects drama or, as in her last movie, Talking to the Trees, drama converges to a happy ending in the form of women’s empowerment. Her female characters are ultimately able to reaffirm their agency and their presence as individuals. In unfolding the cinematic narrative, the director engages in a fundamental postfeminist feature, formally gendering the screen while imposing a devictimizing perspective over the ultimate victims: abused children and in particular little girls. Postfeminism, in terms of cultural trend, tends to polarize concepts such as feminism versus postfeminism, conventional high-brow culture versus popular culture, femininity versus consumerism, and women’s emancipation versus women’s traditional roles. According to Stephanie Genz and Benjamin Brabon (2009a), postfeminism is a kaleidoscopic concept reflecting different theoretic nuances with no parallel in the past: Postfeminism is a concept fraught with contradictions. Loathed by some and celebrated by others, it emerged in the late twentieth century in a number of cultural, academic and political contexts, from popular journalism and media to feminist analyses, postmodern theories and neoliberal rhetoric. Critics have claimed and appropriated the term for a variety of definitions, ranging from a conservative backlash, Girl Power, thirdwave feminism, and postmodern/poststructuralist feminism. In popular

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culture, it has often been associated with female characters like the Spice Girls and Helen Fielding’s chick heroine Bridget Jones, who has been embraced/criticized as the poster child of postfeminism. In academic writings, it sits alongside other “post” discourses—including postmodernism and postcolonialism—[. . .] Likewise, in social and political investigations, postfeminism has been read as indicative of a “post-traditional” era characterized by dramatic changes in basic social relationships, role stereotyping and conceptions of agency. (3)

Genz and Brabon acknowledge the controversial plurality of interpretations around this topic, and convey that postfeminism needs to be inscribed in a specific contextualization and has no comparable phenomenon from the past. Shelley Budgeon (2011), moreover, states that thirdwave feminism is characterized by fragmentation and diversity in a series of challenges that affect its very meaning. She also claims that the main idea is to advance a politics based upon self-definition and the need for women to define their own relationship to feminism in ways that make sense to them as individuals and is oriented on female success (281–283). Yvonne Tasker and Diane Negra in Interrogating Feminism (2007) reflect on feminism and how it interacts or diverges from popular culture and postfeminism, in the attempt to discern essential features and the different challenges they face: Feminism challenges us to critique relations of power, to imagine the world as other than it is, to conceive of different pattern of work, life and leisure. Postfeminist culture enacts fantasies of regenerations and transformations that also speak to a desire of change. Clearly, however, it is unhelpful to mistake one for the other. The challenges facing feminist media critics of an earlier era centered on the need to make women visible, to denaturalize the construction of women’s culture as inherently trivial or banal. The contemporary challenges that postfeminist culture poses for feminist media studies are rather different. Postfeminism displaces older forms of trivializations, generating a sense of newness, yet it also refreshes long familiar themes of gendered representation, demonstrating the ongoing urgency of speaking feminist critique. (22)

I argue that postfeminism is deeply linked—despite its strong alignment with consumerism and its lack of street activism—to the main ideas of second-wave feminism, which was also a very complex movement and was intrinsically highly fragmented.7 I believe that second-wave feminism produced—and didn’t fail8—the most important achievements ever accomplished in women’s history, due to the broad spectrum of consequences that radiated from it, forcing social, political, and cultural

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change. I also believe that postfeminism is operating through different practices and textual strategies to fulfill what feminism left unresolved. Nevertheless, I do not construct my argument in terms of polarization between the two concepts, feminism and postfeminism, but in terms of continuity. Postfeminism here is advanced as a form of cultural beacon, which acts as a new form of resistance against the rigid commandments imposed by second-wave feminism itself. It is an active response to the feminist legacy oriented to empower women and to use irony and self-critical humor, which demonstrates ownership of one’s own limits in order to overcome them. It is an aggressive attack on the patriarchal manipulation of women’s sense of inadequacy and their lack of confidence spanning generations. Bridget Jones, a character highly criticized by a defined area of media studies as a symbol of postfeminism, in the end gets everything she wants, the way she wants it. Her innumerable hilarious comments directed toward herself are not expressed for the purpose of indulging in self-deprecating complaints, but to show how restrictive the framework of possibilities for women can be, in order to be socially acceptable, in terms of her professionalism, fashion, sexual attractiveness, and all the expectations her boss or other male figures nurture with regards to her and to women in general. The postfeminist framework may be idealistically questionable, spiritually challenging, maybe even culturally reprehensible, but it may have a key role, if properly assessed, in emancipating women, in contributing to minimize or eradicate male violence, and in creating a cultural base to reinforce women’s individuality, authority, and self-affirmation. Annette Kuhn explains that “new women’s films may thus position the spectator not only as herself as potential ‘winner,’ but also consequently offer the female spectator a degree of affirmation” (Brundson 1986: 126). Studies on postfeminism focus primarily on media studies, cinema, and women’s literature and are associated with the massive success of movies and books such as Bridget Jones’ Diary and Sex and the City, which have reduced the distance—and increased the concern expressed by many feminist film scholars—between the extremities of culture and popular culture. Stephanie Harzewski explores the dynamics behind “Chick Lit” as a genre that has generated a strong polemic among well-established women writers (from George Eliot to Doris Lessing, just to give an idea of the time-range). They, legitimately, feared the generalization and marginalization of their roles as artists and intellectuals, which they perceived threatened, if not endangered, by products of popular culture. Harzewski (2011: 2) also points out the increasing proximity between Chick Lit and cinema, explaining that the “Chick Lit genre is best exemplified by HBO’s series Sex and the City.”9 The extraordinary number of film studies

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publications invigorating the academic discussion since the late 1970s and 1980s demonstrates, in my opinion, that feminism’s legacy is operating on multiple cultural levels, inducing scholars to investigate popular culture as a significant field of inquiry. Therefore books, magazines, TV shows and series, movies, blogs, and websites have been closely monitored by feminist media critics in order to assess their impact on contemporary culture. Reading between the lines of pink-covered bestsellers or glossy magazines may result in a plurality of messages, often old fashioned and conservative, aiming to restore women’s role to being confined to areas of minimum control, such as the domestic and private arena. I do believe that Chick Lit, and therefore many “Chick Flicks,” can contain subversive narratives that corrode and perhaps even redefine social order. In the attempt to delineate the blurred edges between women’s film and films for women, and to distinguish categories of movies that actually rejected women’s emancipation versus those that opened possibilities for new roles and a more progressive inscription of women in cinema and society, many scholars focused their research on the wide open category of women’s 6films.10 Charlotte Brundson wrote Films for Women (1986). B. Ruby Rich entitled her book Chick Flicks. Theories and Memories of the Feminist Film Movement (1998), using the term “Chick Flicks” to discuss cinefeminism, and directed her analysis to classic Hollywood and European movies. About ten years later, Suzanne Ferris and Mallory Young wrote about Chick Flicks, referring to women’s films and films for women. There is a chronological continuity from the studies circulating in the 1980s to contemporary Chick Flick studies. They all engage in a discussion with feminism and its legacy in contemporary cinema. Chick Flicks points to the revival of a genre that was, initially, diminishing and discriminating against “girliness,” and considers the reappropriation of “pink” as a reaction to the limiting, antifeminine statements of second-wave feminism. Chick Flicks as a cinematic genre has been identified with movies such as Bridget Jones’s Diary, or the HBO TV series Sex and the City, but some critics even link the genre of Chick Flicks to contemporary hits such as The Color Purple and Fried Green Tomatoes, or European movies such as the French Amelie, or the German-Italian coproduction Bella Martha (Ferris and Young 2008: 139). Suzanne Ferris and Mallory Young include in this wide, fluid genre those movies written, directed, and starring women, and that are addressed primarily, but not exclusively, to women. Chick Flicks11 is a genre directly connected to postfeminism, as a form of reaction and resistance to the bias of the male-centered cinematic narrative, and it is in this context that the cinema of Ilaria Borrelli is included. I believe that the artist’s work is innovative and intentionally engaged in a strong social and cultural

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critique not limited to the Italian context. Borrelli reacts to patriarchal oppression in whichever form it manifests. She uses comedy and drama in order to push the boundaries of Italian cinema, to redirect attention toward women’s conditions and ambitions. Both genres, therefore, are the vehicles she employs in her work, using the Chick Flick formula, and embracing the postfeminist paradigm, following the patterns of female friendship films. The scholar Karen Hollinger (1988: 2), in discussing this typology of movies, states that it is a relatively new subgenre of the women’s film genre, with a long cinematic history. Two important concepts here are worth highlighting: (a) that “Chick Flick” is not a deprecating term, since it indicates, as Deborah Barker (2007, 93) simplifies, movies that feature women and their concerns as the focus of the film; (b) the specifics of Italian postfeminism are, by definition, more restricted in comparison to Anglo-American ones. Contrary to what is commonly attributed to the general stereotype of Italian women, female filmmakers do not indulge in particular highly fashionable standards. In dressing their characters, they do not use lingerie, shoes, or any special sexually appealing clothes. Women portrayed in movies by Italian women filmmakers, or in some cases, how Italian female directors reflect themselves in their movies, do not have special or elaborate hairstyles, such as those in typically defined Chick Flicks—Sex and the City or In Her Shoes, to name the most successful and those that promoted a closer examination of the genre—or elaborate heels, makeup, or costly accessories. Their attractiveness comes from other sources, and forms part of their “ordinary style.” The representation of Italian cinema icon, identified with stars such as Sophia Loren, Anna Magnani, and Gina Lollobrigida, instructed to play characters that used feminine wiles and seduction to control their men, is replaced by women who try to manage a career, family obligations, and/or men’s mediocrity. Furthermore, from a literary perspective, in Italy there is almost no Chick Lit production or distribution. The only novel that could have resembled a Chick Lit story with a working woman at its center is out of print, according to Rachel Donadio (2006).12 For Italian women, there may be the sex, but not the city, since, as I have already mentioned, the occupational situation and the widespread male chauvinism in the workplace contribute to a discouraging environment for women. As a consequence, they tend to accept underpaid positions, and often withdraw from the idea of pursuing success and power with heavy repercussions in terms of personal independence and the possibility of motherhood. Contextualization is extremely important in the case of Italy where, in fact, “chick flicks” are directed uniquely by male directors. These “male chick flicks”13 are comedies directed and written by men for a female audience (who by extension will bring

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a male audience too) and it is possible to find an incredible number of movies that are stylistically different from those authored by women. For instance, if we consider recent movies such as Fausto Brizzi’s Pazze di Me (2013) or an older hit such as Gabriele Muccino’s L’Ultimo Bacio (2001), it is interesting to note that a huge cast of professional women actresses are involved. While the respective plots position a weak, spoiled male character at the core of the narrative, with the unconvincing intent to criticize the average Italian man, the final message of the movie is that no matter how mediocre you are, if you marry a beautiful, sexy woman you are totally condoned. And maybe you are not that wimp after all. There is no interest in women’s development or growth or accomplishment if it is not connected and focused on the male protagonist, and intended to enhance his character. The typologies of women portrayed in these kinds of pejorative (for women) “male chick flicks” reinforce the idea that women are unstable, demanding, overwhelming, and invasive of male personal space. They need to be well-dressed, fit, and good looking in order to attract the attention of the male character that is unmistakably central and sustains the leading role. Ilaria Borrelli’s Movies The parallels with Borrelli’s work in terms of postfeminist specifics are more evidently related to her first two comedies. Nevertheless, I include her last film as well, for the use she makes of drama and because it, consistently with the other two films, features women and their tragedies as the main concern of the narrative. In my analysis, the Italian filmmaker is able to realize what Hilary Radner (2009: 6) attributes to Jane Campion’s cinematic style: “[she] slowly moves the arena of domestic melodrama or romantic comedy into other genres.” The setting of Borrelli’s first feature film, Mariti in Affitto (2004), moves from Procida, a small Italian island near Naples, to New York. The opening scene is a high shot of the deep blue Mediterranean Sea as viewed by tourists approaching the island by boat. The powerful movements of the waves, the brilliant colors of the coast, and the close-up of the port are images associated with the natural beauty of the Italian landscape. The sunny profile of the island sets the expectations for picturesque exotic images. Nevertheless, a low-angle shot of the boat from the small pier evokes its remoteness and claustrophobic atmosphere, while the limiting human interactions are figuratively reinforced by an overview of the stacked housing distribution, so typical and so unmistakably vexing. The outside world is represented by a boat full of American tourists visiting

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the island for the day while the “inside” world is represented by Maria Scocozza (Maria Grazia Cucinotta), a lonely woman who works on the port as a shoemaker. She has two young children and is in desperate financial need; her work doesn’t provide enough income for her family. Her husband, Vincenzo (Pierfrancesco Favino), went to America to sell his sculptures and never returned. The reproachful behavior of Procida’s women, who, in a chorus of gossip, blame Maria for her husband disappearing, and the pressure from “Don Peppino,” the caricature of the local Mafioso, put all the stereotypes in place: the provincialism of Italian life, and the restrictive traditional limitations on women’s options and expectations. The mise-en-scène resembles the stage of commedia dell’arte, which exhibits fixed typologies of characters, and where the roles for women were often those of triggering the action rather than dynamically taking action. Don Peppino’s insistence with his repugnant proposals causes Maria to flee, with her children, to New York in search of her husband. The shift of setting is spatial, visual, and auditory, moving from warm and sunny pastel colors to metallic blue and gray, to vertical buildings and from human voices to extreme noise, quite different from Procida’s coneshaped microcosm. If the small island looked like a “moving canvas”14 with its sunny colors and perfect Mediterranean lighting, the American metropolis is a big urban maze where stereotypes, violence, and human interactions are no less complicated than in the little world of the island. In both places, Maria struggles to affirm her own identity. In Procida, the oppressive social rules are determined by the male-managed economy; in New York, Maria meets poverty, displacement, and a total absence of social connections. Maria’s sense of personal pride and of social acceptability is entirely uprooted. The Italian American family running the restaurant where Vincenzo is supposed to be working shows the other side of Italians, albeit a stereotypical view. The separation from a strong cultural framework opens the door to limitless possibilities of how to live, but in doing so diminishes any sense of values and integrity. Borrelli repeatedly mocks stereotypes such as the arrogant, immigrated Italian, his “mammone” son, who is inept and spoiled, neglectful of Italians but also unable to identify with Americans. The restaurant owner’s wife, furthermore, is shown as insensitive and unable to contain her husband’s hubris, denying Maria’s family water and food. The proverbial generosity of Italians is debunked. Their cultural identity lost. In New York, Maria immediately perceives that everything she had learned in life may not find a corresponding social meaning in the new country. Gender oppression and lack of financial resources back in Procida find their match in the “Big Apple” where everything is bigger, including poverty and discrimination. Maria

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will be able to change her life only when she changes her perspective toward Vincenzo and the male universe. She will be able to accomplish a radical change with the contribution of another woman, Charlene Taylor (Brooke Shields), the American wife of her husband, who is also pregnant with his baby. While the comedy unfolds with hilarious and sometimes grotesque sequences, the story develops a double heroine. Charlene is Maria’s alter ego, who symbolically complements and develops her persona. The two stars, Maria Grazia Cucinotta and Brooke Shields, represent, respectively, Italian and American icons. Both women have similar physical frames and similar features: their long curly hair and similar height are details that make the protagonist’s double quite plain to the viewer. In addition, they will end up completing each other. The flexibility of Charlene’s work, made possible by Maria’s skills, will make a profitable joint venture for both women. When the two women first meet they are fierce antagonists, until they realize that fighting for a man is not worthwhile. Maria’s skills as a shoemaker and Charlene’s integration in the job market as a TV-sales agent could be combined and, if it is not possible to pursue the American dream, maybe it is possible to compromise with a more modest Italian American dream. In fact, Charlene and Maria decide to “prioritize themselves,” put Vincenzo aside, and raise their children together. Charlene loses interest in Vincenzo and entertains herself with Raul (Diego Serrano), a sweet, handsome, and generous man, reliable with children and sexy, while Maria opts for “renting” Vincenzo, who is now working for the agency Rent-a-Husband, only when she needs help around the house or, eventually, sex. The postfeminist paradigm here is clearly in motion: the subaltern male characters, female friendship, and the collaborative effort of the two women to gain independence and control of their lives. Borrelli’s second feature film, Come le Formiche (2007), is the story of two sisters living together in the family’s Umbrian winery. Again the surrounding picturesque space, apparently endless, gives an immediate and subtle impression of a restricted environment. The “moving canvas” imagery resurfaces in the scene where Ruggero (Fred Murray Abraham), the patriarch, paints a typical Italian country landscape outside the beautiful country house, fringed with cypresses and blue hills displayed right in front of his eyes. The mediocrity of the painting that we see from a close-up behind Ruggero hints at the male character. Childish and self-centered, he has transformed beauty and richness into something banal, just like painting a masterpiece with no artistic sensibility. Stereotypes are in play. The perfect Italian setting, with supposedly genuine family bonds, is immediately undermined by the male characters’ mediocrity and their subtle attempts to manipulate women

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for their own benefit. The leading character, Sveva (played by Galatea Ranzi), is dealing with conflicting familial relationships: a hostile connection with her sister, her hard-to-please father, and her inept French husband Nicolas (Philippe Caroit), who tries to manipulate the entire family to induce them to sell the winery. Like in the previous movie, we glimpse Sveva’s double in her sister Desideria (Patrizia Pellegrino) who, at first sight, appears to be the complete opposite to her sister in terms of her characteristics. Sveva is strong-willed and hardworking. Her dream is to produce a great wine and save the property, which is at risk due to its debts. She has purpose and determination. Desideria, unlike her sister, relies on her physical appearance to secure men’s approval, and is frustrated for she easily gives up on her dreams and she finally admits her desire to have a baby. Adina, Sveva’s eleven-year-old daughter, plays a mirroring role for the adults in general, and for the two sisters in particular. Adina is smart and sensitive. Curiously, she has the habit of observing ant life15 and she is fascinated by the similarity of those insects’ interactions with human behavior. Adina uses a small digital camera to film the ants’ busy crawling. Adults in her family have a very busy life too, and like the ants, they can be mean to each other and move fast and chaotically. So she films them too: they tell lies, they fight, they work frenetically, and they engage in extramarital relations. The male characters, in particular Nicolas, Fabrizio, Desideria’s husband (Enrico Lo Verso), and Ruggero, their father, don’t really have any positive impact on the business or on their family’s economic situation. Nicolas is pathetically naïve and a clear burden to his wife. Fabrizio is in love with Sveva, while Nicolas tries to seduce Desideria and convince her to sign over the family homestead. A momentary swapping of husbands gives the two sisters a reason to talk about themselves and finally collaborate to save the winery. Their reciprocal love and friendship are more important than the men in their lives. The two sisters’ reconciliation brings new opportunities and new perspectives. Meanwhile, Adina operates as spectator, commentator, and director of the family movie. Adina’s candid approach to life enables her to film reality using the ants’ incessant work as an analogy for human life; when she acquires familiarity with their routine, she is also able to notice inexplicable idiosyncrasies, even ferocity, resembling human behaviors. As Adina’s film begins, secret, illegitimate kisses, brutal fights, confusing confessions, and pathetic lies are clearly unwound, and the entire family is exposed to the plain truth. As in Hans Christian Andersen’s famous fairytale The Emperor’s New Clothes, only when the little boy cries aloud that the emperor is parading naked is the excited crowd able to finally see reality and the absurdity of it.

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In her movie Il più bel Giorno della mia Vita (2002), Cristina Comencini used this same cinematic device. Comencini’s story revolves around a young girl, Chiara, who is going to celebrate her first communion. The film covers the events preceding the actual celebration, during which Chiara needs to attend Sunday school and learn about the gospel and the Bible. Observing her relatives’ lives, Chiara is puzzled by the contradictions she notes observing adults’ behavior. In her family, nothing actually follows the religious codes they pretend to ascribe to: lies, adultery, gay sex and other debunked commandments. The day of her communion, Chiara receives a digital camera, and she starts to film her family reunion in an attempt to capture and then process what she sees. The idea of the young girl operating the camera in Comencini’s and Borrelli’s films seems to have a similar purpose: to grasp the plain truth from another angle. A camera in a young girl’s hands implies a representation of reality free from manipulation.16 Mariti in affitto and Come le Formiche contain all the basic features of postfeminist Chick Flicks, the women’s films that Karen Hollinger (1988) defines as female friendship movies and explains that female friendship films not only dramatize their female characters’ shaping or reshaping of their sense of self, but [. . .] they reach out to their audience to implicate them in the female quest for self-development. As such, they set out to form not only the self-images of their female characters but also the sense of identity of their female viewers as well. (244)

The emphasis for the Italian director is clearly on women’s friendship, self-fulfillment and personal improvement. The happy ending is a way to empower women, fueling their motivation to reinstate values that are important to them, and to reaffirm female subjectivity as central. Establishing a new way to interact with each other, Sveva, Desideria, and Alina are able to hold the family together but with new, clear rules. Nicolas is arrested after committing a major fraud, Fabrizio takes responsibility for his marriage, and finally, Ruggero admits his mistakes as a father and goes along with his daughters’ decision. Talking to the Trees is Borrelli’s most recent work, set in Cambodia (2012). The film opens in an intense, green forest where a young girl, Srey (Setha Moniroth), one of the protagonists of the story, is binding a tree with a silky red scarf. The girl is talking to the tree, reassuring it about some open cuts in its trunk. A pounding sound progressively takes over. A young boy runs toward Srey, screaming to warn her about the bulldozers. A Westerner timber trader is leading a devastating operation in order to log padouk trees. Huts and shacks are demolished and an old woman, their grandmother, is hurt and abandoned. Children are

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dispersed. The scene changes to present Mia (Ilaria Borrelli herself) as a well-known photographer in Paris, dealing with the monotony of daily life, and admitting to be quite frustrated by her life. The cold urban setting is blue-tinged, sterile, and almost vitreous, suggesting stability and even atrophy, antithetical to the deep green and intense yellow of the Cambodian jungle. Mia decides to visit her husband who often travels to Cambodia for work. When she arrives at the Koh Kong Luxury hotel, she is unable to check in because she can’t find her documents. At the front desk she asks repeatedly for her husband, and spots him casually leaving on a rickshaw, toward the outskirts. She follows him, but something starts to alarm her. The concierge’s look at the hotel and the hesitant responses of the rickshaw drivers on the street when she asks to follow the Western man strike her as premonitory. She follows Xavier (Philippe Caroit) to a remote area covered in garbage, with decrepit huts and shacks leaning on a putrid riverside. Mia notices only Western men around and children running on the mud. Mia is now frightened and puzzled. She keeps following Xavier from afar until he disappears into the slums. When she finally is able to see him from behind the curtains of a window, he is unmistakably having sex with a little girl, none other than Srey who first appears in the opening to the film. She has been kidnapped and forced to work in a brothel. Mia’s repulsion is overwhelming and she faints. When she wakes up, she is surrounded by other children trying to comfort her. From this point on, the movie is a sequence of fast-paced actions: Mia is surprised in the brothel by Sanan, the brothel’s pimp, when she decides to set Srey free and organizes to take her home. Srey hides two other girls, Daa and Malin, on the back of the truck that Mia has provided to escape. Then Sanan, in complicity with the police, and Xavier (unaware of what Mia has learnt about him) hunt her and the little girls down, across forests, rivers, and dusty roads. In this movie Borrelli changes genre and setting. Cambodia, as one of the world’s capitals of child prostitution, represents the archetypal degeneration of the patriarchal mindset. Mia’s attempt to save the girls is contrasted by huge cultural barriers. In addition, Mia’s kidnapping has a symbolic resonance in the movie’s narrative. The mother she wanted to be is now enacted by the urgency of removing these children from violence and death. Secondarily, Srey and Mia share an intimate and repulsive connection in the form of Xavier. While hiding, suffering from the symptoms of withdrawal from cocaine addiction, and overwhelmed by panic and frustration, Mia accuses Srey of having stolen her husband and having enchanted him with her sexual tricks. Srey reassures Mia, detailing her life in the brothel and describing disturbing details of men’s sexual perversions. The roles here are clearly crossed and overlapped: Mia’s childish and insensitive behavior is diverted by a wise Srey, who

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is maternal and mature. Like in the previous movie, the child is weaving the plot. The girl’s deep connection with nature, her love for her brother and her friends, and her deep human compassion situate her character at the center of the narrative. Like Adina does with her camera in Come le Formiche, Srey is able to show Mia her real self and, therefore, her way out of an empty existence spent between addiction and numbness. Mia, on the other hand, decides to risk her own life for the rebirth of a child, as only a mother could do. The catharsis and the empowerment for these two women can be seen on two levels: the mother/daughter relationship is expanded to a women’s supportive friendship. The end of the movie is the start of a new life for the protagonists: Xavier is stabbed to death by Daa’s little sister, who was also in the brothel. The girls are freed after Sanan, the violent procurer, is shot to death by a police officer who, in the end, decided to support Mia’s venture, and Srey and her little brother are reunited with their father. As mentioned previously, Borrelli stretches the margins of the Chick Flick genre, filming stories of solidarity and liberation. The contextualization of the genre in Italy and in Europe more widely is crucial, especially if we intend “women’s film” to be those movies written, directed, or produced (or all three) by women with the intent and purpose of empowering the female character, indicating a possible path to self-affirmation and independence that, by extension, is transmitted to the female spectator. Borrelli’s postfeminist cinema does not portray women as pink-clad super-shoppers with big plans and a Chihuahua in their handbag—no woman director in Italy does. The yappy, smart, young Harvard graduate portrayed in Legally Blonde, the early representative movie of the Chick Flicks genre, is not a figure who is socially recognizable in Italy, where women graduate late, are often underemployed even with excellent qualifications, and need to work hard to occupy key positions from which they can easily be marginalized or even dismissed through agerelated discrimination, or for family choices (Valentini, Zazjick, Davi). It is rare and always very hard for many women with no special privileges to have the opportunity to find a job that pays enough to allow them to be independent and secure. Ilaria Borrelli knows the scenario all too well. Her work is centered on women who can fight back through winning visibility, voice, and power. Director’s Biography Ilaria Borrelli studied piano at the Conservatory of Santa Cecilia in Rome and graduated in 1987. After a long acting career, she decided to move to New York to attend the New School where she gained a certificate

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in film production in 1998 and continued to study acting and screen writing at NYU. In Paris she studied at Corinne Blue Actor’s Studio Method in 1996. Her feature films include: Mariti in Affitto (2004), Come le Formiche (2007), and Talking to the Trees (2012), which received five nominations at the Festival of Montreal in 2013. Notes 1. The first writer and critic to talk about Borrelli’s comedy as “postfeminist” was Patrizia Carrano. See Sette (October 2003). http://www.mymovies.it/ dizionario/critica.asp?id=12339 (last accessed on February 26, 2013). 2. The “commedia brillante” is a form of comedy also known as “commedia all’italiana,” quite popular in Italy during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. Here, tragic elements are essential to the comical outcome of the text. 3. The term is used with or without a hyphen. In my use of the term there are no significant implications and the hyphen is a mere graphic sign. Some scholars specify this detail, noting that the hyphen is a distinctive mark to highlight the temporary idea of a time shift indicated in the prefix “post.” Genz asserts that the prefix was the actual focus of critical examination. Please note that in this study, I also use the term “postfeminism” as a synonym of “neo-feminism.” Hilary Radner (2011: 2) writes about this convertible definition: “I will argue that this other unnamed movement, which I will dub, for want of a better term ‘neo-feminism,’ has been the primary influence in developing what is now casually referred as ‘post-feminist’ culture.” 4. Rosalind Gill uses the term “sensibility” referring to postfeminism, avoiding the term “movement,” which she considers more suitable for second-wave feminism, and not appropriate for postfeminism, in her article “Postfeminist Media Culture: Elements of a Sensibility,” European Journal of Media Cultural Studies 10 (2007): 147–166. 5. Skype interview with the filmmaker, recorded on Audacity and tape, June 5, 2012. 6. This expression is inspired by the study on Jane Campion, Cinema, Nation, Identity, edited by Hilary Radner, Alistair Fox, and Irène Bessière (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2009), 6. 7. I allude to the endless different trends in second-wave feminism. Kellie Bean lists them quite exhaustively in her study: from radical feminism, Marxist feminism, lesbian-feminism to ecofeminism, prolife feminism, cyber-feminism, and many more. She also states that prefix feminisms are markers of “private” not “social” ambitions (Post-Backlash Feminism. Women and the Media since Reagan-Bush. Jefferson, NC; London: McFarland &Co., 2007], 4–5; 178). I find this observation to be another point of contact between postfeminism and second-wave feminism. See also Shelley Bugdeon, “The Contradictions of Successful Femininity: Third-wave Feminism, Postfeminism and ‘New’

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9. 10. 11.

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13. 14.

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Femininities,” in Rosalind Gill and Christina Scharff, eds., New Femininities. Postfeminism, Neoliberalism and Subjectivity (Basingstoke, UK; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 279–292. I refer to Angela McRobbie’s seminal work The Aftermath of Feminism. Gender, Culture, and Social Change (London: Sage, 2009), where she expresses concern toward the disarticulation of feminism and the idea of “feminism undone.” While I sympathize and agree with those concerns, I acknowledge the possibility of a rereading of the Aftermath in a noncelebrative and noncondemning way, but as a subtle change and a spurious form of reaction to unsustainable polarizations imposed by second-wave feminism. Postfeminism may be judged to be continuing what feminism started, only in a different context and with different and even synchronized practices. Feminism too followed dissimilar trajectories. I would like to point out the closeness and even the overlapping of the concept of Chick Lit(erature) and cinema in this scholar’s work. Feminist film scholars have debated this topic for over three decades. A major issue has been to find some sort of common definition. Chick Flicks, for me, are movies authored and/or written by women. However many critics do not make a clear distinction. As a matter of fact, Hilary Radner includes Pretty Woman, Maid in Manhattan, and other commonly defined Chick Flicks in the category; Ferris and Young include the French Amélie. I consider Chick Flicks authored by women to be the most indicative of the postfeminist idea. I refer to Camilla Vittorini’s novel Qualcosa Bolle in Città (Milano: Mondadori, Red Dress Ink, 2007). For an overview of international Chick Lit, see the article by Rachel Donadio “The Chick-Lit Pandemic” (March 19, 2006). There is no specific academic criticism about the topic of male-directed “chick flicks” at this time. This expression was coined by Gavin Smith in an interview with Kathryn Bigelow. See “Give Article Title,” in Deborah Jermyn and Sean Redmond, eds., The Cinema of Kathryn Bigelow. Hollywood Transgressor (London; New York: Wallflower Press 2003), 20. The Italian title could be translated into English as “Just like ants.” Instead, the English title is Wine and Kisses. Chus Gutierrez (born in Granada in 1962), a well-known female director in Spain, makes some interesting comments about the concept of realism in cinema: “How can one talk about realism in a medium where absolutely everything is manipulated? Reality and cinema have everything and nothing in common. On the one hand, the great majority of, if not all, the stories that are told, are born from reality . . . On the other, the manipulation is so great, so global, that an hour and half of celluloid has nothing to do with an hour and a half of the life of the person who pays for the ticket and sits in a seat” (Isabel Santaolalla, The Cinema of Iciar Bollaín [Manchester; New York: Manchester University Press, 2012], 14). I believe the quest for a way to reproduce reality free from manipulation is a pressing issue for many contemporary European, and other, filmmakers.

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Bibliography Barker, Deborah. “The Southern Fried Chick Flick: Postfeminism Goes to the Movies.” In Chick Flicks: Contemporary Women at the Movies, edited by Suzanne Ferriss and Mallory Young, 92–118. Routledge: 2007. Bean, Kelly. Post-Backlash Feminism. Women and the Media since Reagan-Bush. Jefferson, NC; London: McFarland &Co., 2007. Benini, Stefania. “Televised Bodies: Berluscono and the Body of Italian Women.” Journal of Italian Cinema & Media Studies 1.1 (2013): 87–102. Brown, Helen Gurley. Sex and the Single Girl. New York: Barnes & Noble, 2004. Bolton, Lucy. Film and Female Consciousness. Basingstoke, UK; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Borrelli, Ilaria. Domani si Gira. Cava de’Tirreni, Salerno: Avagliano Editore, 2003. ———. Luccatmí. Cava de’Tirreni, Salerno: Avagliano Editore, 2002. ———. Scosse. Lago Patria, Napoli: Vittorio Pironti Editore, 1999. ———. Tanto Rumore per Tullia. Sperling & Kupfer, 2005. Brunsdon, Charlotte. Films for Women. London: British Film Institute, 1986. Budgeon, Shelley. “The Contradictions of Successful Femininity: Third-wave Feminism, Postfeminism and ‘New’ Femininities.” In New Femininities. Postfeminism, Neoliberalism and Subjectivity, edited by Rosalind Gill and Christina Scharff, 279–292. Basingstoke, UK; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Butler, Alison. Women’s Cinema: The Contested Screen. London: Wallflower, 2002. Davi, Klaus. Fallocrazia. Perché gli Uomini Hanno Paura delle Donne e le Escludono dal Potere. Milano: Rizzoli, 2007. Donadio, Rachel. “The Chick-Lit Pandemic,” March 19, 2006. http://www. nytimes.com/2006/03/19/books/review/19donadio.html?pagewanted=all&_ r=0 (accessed October 20, 2012). Douglas, Susan J. Enlightened Sexism: The Seductive Message That Feminism’s Work Is Done. New York: Times Books, 2010. Ferriss, Suzanne, and Mallory Young. Chick Flicks: Contemporary Women at the Movie. New York; London: Routledge, 2008. ———. Chick Lit: The New Women Fiction. New York; London: Routledge, 2006. Garrett, Roberta. Postmodern Chick Flicks. The Return of the Woman’s Film. Basingstoke, UK; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Genz, Stephanie, and Benjamin A. Brabon. Postfeminism. Cultural Texts and Theories. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009a. ———. Postfeminities in Popular Culture. Basingstoke, UK; New York:Edimburgh University Press, 2009b. ———. Postfeminist Gothic: Critical Interventions in Contemporary Culture. Basingstoke, UK; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Gill, Rosalind. “Postfeminist Media Culture: Elements of a Sensibility.” European Journal of Media Cultural Studies 10 (2007): 147–166.

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Gill, Rosalind, and Christina Scharff, eds. New Femininities. Postfeminism, Neoliberalism and Subjectivity. Basingstoke, UK; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Harzewski, Stephanie. Chick Lit and Postfeminism. Charlottesville; London: University of Virginia Press, 2011. Hollinger, Karen. In the Company of Women: Contemporary Female Friendship Films. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988. Johnston, Claire, ed. Notes on Women’s Cinema. London: Society for Education in Film and Television, 1973. Kaplan, E. Ann. Feminism & Film. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. McCabe, Janet. Writing the Woman into Cinema. London; New York: Wallflowers, 2004. McRobbie, Angela. The Aftermath of Feminism. Gender, Culture, and Social Change. London: Sage, 2009. Radner, Hilary, Alistair Fox, and Irène Bressière. Jane Campion: Cinema , Nation, Identity. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2009. ———. Neo-Feminist Cinema, Girly Films, Chick Flicks and Consumer Culture. New York: Routledge, 2011. Ross, Karen, ed. The Handbook of Gender, Sex, and Media. Malden, CT: WileyBlackwell, 2012. Santaolalla, Isabel. The Cinema of Iciar Bollaín. Manchester; New York: Manchester University Press, 2012. Tasker, Yvonne, and Diane Negra. Interrogating Postfeminism. Gender and the Politics of Popular Culture. Durham; London: Duke University Press, 2007. Thornham, Sue. What if I Had Been the Hero? Investigating Women’s Cinema. Basingstoke, UK; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. Trivelli, Anita. L’Altra Metà dello Sguardo. Roma: Bulzoni Editore, 1998. Valentini, Chiara. O i Figli o il Lavoro. Milano: Feltrinelli, 2012. http://www.sentieriselvaggi.it/164/7069/Mariti_in_affitto,_di_Ilaria_Borrelli.htm (interview June 4, 2004, Giancarlo Mancini). Vittorini, Camilla. Qualcosa Bolle in Città. Milano: Mondadori, Red Dress Ink, 2007. Zajczyk, Francesca. La Resistibile Ascesa delle Donne in Italia. Stereotipi di Genere e Costruzione delle Nuove identità. Milano: Il Saggiatore, 2007.

Part II

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Skype Interview with Alina Marazzi June 2012 Cristina Gamberi

Cristina Gamberi: I would like to start from the beginning. What is your artistic background and when did you start making documentaries? Alina Marazzi: In the 1980s, after secondary school, I decided to go to London to study cinema since I have always been interested in visual arts and photography. During my stay in London and thanks to my university education, I had the chance to watch many experimental movies, many films from different parts of the world and I had the opportunity to get to know the great tradition of British documentary. Starting from there, it was natural to use documentary when I came back to Italy. CG: You have used archival material in your documentaries. Where did this interest in found footage come from? AM: I can’t say much about my attraction to archival material . . . When I think about it, looking back to my work, I realize that my interest in archival material was already present in my first documentary (Mediterraneo, Il mare industrializzato, 1993, 52’). Thanks to the foundation I received as a young director, I used Super 8mm films, found footage, family photos, and letters to narrate migration stories in a small fishing village in Sicily. The documentary tells the story of fishermen, but it is narrated from the women’s perspective: I was already interested in the female point of view. The idea of telling one’s life story by using and interpolating different languages and materials has always been in my vision, in my poetics. And this use of different languages found expression in the most important

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and foundational moment that was Un’ora sola ti vorrei. When I came back to Milan, the city where I was born, I started to make documentaries mainly focusing on social and cultural themes, working for Rai,1 for the Italian-Swiss Television and also directing a documentary about detention homes for Raidue (Ragazzi Dentro, 1997, 2 × 45’). CG: Many women directors in the past have used found footage in their work. Why is there a particular preference for these kinds of material? When you made Un’ora sola ti vorrei, were you aware of women’s tradition and female genealogy of found footage and compilation documentaries? AM: When I made Un’ora sola ti vorrei (2002) I used found footage to tell the specific story of my mother and not for merely aesthetic reasons. Un’Ora sola ti vorrei represents one of the first examples in Italy—or maybe it is the first—where private archival material is made the most of. From 2000 there has been an increasing interest in found footage: on the one hand family found footage has been used as a source of life story telling; on the other it has been used as a primary source for historical studies. Drawing on private and informal material has now become a trend. In the past there were many women directors who used found footage, but also men directors. I think that today many young women directors use documentary, with or without found footage, first because there is a growing interest for intermingling different languages and for narrating a story where past and present are connected. Second, the choice to use documentary is related to production processes. This means that normally it is much easier to control and manage a movie, which is usually self-produced, with a very small crew. Finally, there are also reasons linked to the director’s intention. In other words, the documentary has become a stylistic form able to give importance to the gaze of the author, where the director’s vision and subjectivity can be expressed. Whatever form women’s directors choose, cinéma vérité, fiction, or compilation documentary, the female attitude seems to fit better with the documentary. The capacity to create a strong relation with their subject and at the same time express their position in this relation, I think is something where women’s directors are the best. CG: Can you tell me more about Un’ora sola ti vorrei (For one more hour with you)? AM: I made it ten years ago and after so many interviews, it is difficult to talk about this movie . . . Un’ora sola ti vorrei arises from a very personal and long journey, which took many years. Before editing the home movies my maternal grandfather shot, I had already watched these

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materials. The process required me a lot of time, especially because when you approach these kinds of images, so informal and common, you need a special carefulness in dealing with them. I approached my grandfather’s movies cautiously and with love. Un’Ora sola ti vorrei is a sort of family album, which at the beginning was meant just for me, and only later started to have a life of its own. The making of the movie was long, and divided into various phases. To edit the material, I turned to Ilaria Fraioli, with whom I had previously worked, while I was working on my mother’s diaries and letters. In the initial project I thought of using Sonia Gessner’s voice2 to interpret my mother, but after some rehearsals, we decided to use my own voice. CG: Did you expect that Un’ora sola ti vorrei would garner such positive reviews from both the public and the critics? AM: I must confess that the audience reaction surprised me, the way in which the movie has been hailed. I am still receiving letters and feedback from many people who for different reasons identify themselves in the movie. Everybody is very touched and moved. I did not expect it. Even the reaction abroad has been very positive. CG: What are the differences and similarities between Un’ora sola ti vorrei and Vogliamo anche le rose? AM: Actually, despite their differences, both movies are the follow-up of one another since Vogliamo anche le rose not only explores the life of one woman, but investigates the lives of different women in the years that followed my mother’s story. In Vogliamo anche le rose I continued to mix different narrative paradigms: diaries, found footage, independent and experimental films, private and militant film footage, advertising, music and animation, and so on. What was relevant for me about using diaries was their capacity to record how public events affect people’s subjectivity. I think that diaries are not necessarily truer or more authentic. In other words, diaries can be fictive. However, what it is important to me is to explore the subjectivity, to look into people’s lives, and see what are the effects of what is happening on the macro level. CG: One of the crucial themes that emerge from your documentaries is the central issue of this volume: the female displacement. In your movies there is the recurring motif of not finding a proper place and numerous images reflect this female displacement. AM: Yes, well . . . In my works the central theme is one of women who do not conform to dominant role models, since they do not recognize themselves in the role models at their disposal: they are looking for, they

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are in quest of. I think there is an autobiographical side to that: I am not an ideological person and I do not find myself comfortable with the dominant role models; so I’d like to tell the story of those women who are looking for something. I think this is the main theme in my work. If I should say what links my works, I would say that it lies precisely in portraying female figures who are looking for role models to follow, though without necessarily finding them. In the movie about my mother, Un’ora sola ti vorrei, a woman goes through her malaise to overcome the image that she has been given by others. In Per sempre, we find a novice who leaves the convent starting the process of changing her life. In Vogliamo anche le rose the story focuses on the moment when not only one woman, but many women suddenly discovered that female role models did not match anymore with their feelings and desires. These women thus started changing their lives and the society in which they lived by sharing their needs and desires. So, even if apparently different, the three documentaries share the same quest. CG: From watching your movies, one gets the impression of starting a journey into women’s lives, which are in the past but are linked somehow to the present. In your documentaries the contemporary dimension seems always to be present and your gaze toward the past is never purely celebratory. AM: I always start from the present. My aim is to understand the present. And this is very clear in Vogliamo anche le rose. Starting from the present, I looked back to the past to understand where contemporary gender roles were born from. I decided not to interview women who were the protagonists of those times for they would have talked about the 1970s in the past tense as something already past, maybe by saying only certain things, while forgetting others. What I was interested in was not a historical reconstruction. By using diaries I wanted to explore the subjective dimension. In other words, how events were lived and experienced in women’s lives. Moreover, using diaries and letters with the present tense allows one to feel these stories as present, not only now, but even in ten years. I did not want to talk about the past in the past tense. CG: One of the most relevant themes that emerges from your work is motherhood, whether desired, failed, or refused. AM: Maternity is the central theme of my new movie, coming out next year. In this movie, I explore what it means to be a mother by interviewing women who talk about maternity. Although it is not a documentary, nevertheless it is not even a fiction movie and, like my previous works, it mixes together different languages. I did much research before shooting,

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as you do for a documentary, but in the end I wrote a script that is close to fiction. The movie will be entitled Tutto parla di te (Everything talks about you) starring Charlotte Rampling as the main character. The film unfolds the story of two women of different ages: Pauline (Charlotte Rampling) and Emma (Elena Radonicich). Pauline is a middle-aged woman who holds a secret: she has dedicated her entire life to studying animal behavior while trying to avoid human relations and escaping intimacy. Emma, on the contrary, is an elusive and vanishing young dancer and new mother in the middle of a crisis. Talking about maternity and motherhood is still a taboo. It is still a difficult issue that women are ashamed to talk about. In particular, they are ashamed to talk about this choice of their lives, which is irreversible and which does not allow you to undo it. Many women, and many people around them, are not ready for this moment. It is not easy to confess that you are not feeling happy and that you feel aggressive toward your own child. CG: When did you start to consider yourself a “director”? AM: I don’t feel I’m a “director.” I’ve made some documentaries, but wouldn’t define myself as a “director”! Notes 1. RAI is the Italian state-owned public service broadcaster and the biggest television company in Italy. Raidue is one of the three main television channels. 2. Sonia Gessner is one of Liseli Hoepli’s best friends.

13

Interview with Marina Spada Milan, June 2012 Laura Di Bianco

Marina Spada was born in Milan, where she still lives. She graduated with a music history degree from the University of Milan and the Dramatic Arts School of Piccolo Teatro. She started her career in filmmaking during the 1970s, collaborating with RAI Television, and in 1984 she worked as an assistant to Roberto Benigni and Massimo Troisi on the film Non ci resta che piangere (Nothing Left to Do but Cry). During the 1980s she directed many commercials and documentary films. Since 1993, she has been teaching film production and direction at the School of Cinema of Milan, while writing and directing many video portraits of Italian artists such as Pietro Lingeri, Fernanda Pivano, Arnaldo Pomodoro, Francesco Leonetti, Gabriele Basilico, and Mimmo Jodice. In 2000, she self-produced her first feature film, Forza cani (Come on Dogs!). In 2006, her second film, Come l’ombra As the Shadow also partially self-produced, was distributed by Kairos Film and presented at the Venice Film Festival and other international festivals, winning numerous awards. In 2009 Spada shot Poesia che mi guardi (Poetry You See Me), a documentary about the Italian poet Antonia Pozzi. Her fourth movie, Il mio domani (My Tomorrow), was released in 2011. It was well received at both the International Film Festival of Rome and Lincoln Center’s Italian Film Festival “Open Roads” in New York City. Laura: Marina, you had been working in the film industry for 15 years before directing your first feature film, Forza cani. What was your professional path to becoming a director?

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Marina: I’ve always lived in Milan. The film industry is in Rome, as you know. I never wanted to deal with it. The only time I did was when I worked as an assistant director to Benigni and Troisi’s film Non ci resta che piangere. It was not such an exciting experience. The crew worked as though they were at the post office. It was not what I dreamed of, according to my romantic idea of cinema. I began my career working for RAI Television in Milan. Then they sent me to Rome, and to many of their other branches in Italy. Back then, in Milan, advertising production was still developing. There was a lot to do and a lot to learn. American and British directors were arriving in Italy, and I worked as an assistant to many of them. There were the first remote-control cameras, the first digital special effects. I directed a few commercials, but it was really hard because I’m a woman, and in Italy you can count the women directing commercials on one hand. I was one of those lucky ones for a short time, but my father was a cable car driver so I did not belong to their high caste. At some point I entered a crisis. I was offered a professorship at the film school that I refused for two years because I did not feel good enough. Then in the third year, when I was called again, I accepted and it was the industrial revolution of my life, so to speak. If I had not gone there, I would not have become a director. First of all, because I would not have met my students. Second, because I met my colleagues at the film school, among whom were Daniele Maggioni, who was the dean for over ten years. At that time, he had just finished his experience as Soldini’s producer, with Bread and Tulips. A few years after we met, he asked me to direct a film for him. In the meantime, I spent ten years in psychotherapy. You know women do not authorize themselves to be directors. You wonder, “What do I have to say? Why is it necessary to spend all this money to let me say what I want to say?” So the journey of analysis and Daniele’s thrust were fundamental. Daniele himself wrote Come l’ombra. L: Before discussing Come l’ombra, let’s talk about your first feature film, Forza cani. M: I wrote Forza cani with Maria Grazia Perria, who collaborated on my last film, Il mio domani, as well. The Ministry of Cultural Affairs refused the request for funding because they considered it a typical film about troubled youth. But we decided to do it anyhow and we fought for the democratization of cinema. It was the first independent production in Italy. Everything happened thanks to Daniele. He said, “Let’s go on the Internet, let’s share this project and raise the money.” And we raised 60 million lire, all contributions from people who believed in this film. People would give 100,000 lire in a single donation, or 1,000,000 lire.

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L: If I’m not wrong, when you shot Forza cani, the film project Poesia che mi guardi didn’t yet exist. However it seems to me that those two films engage in a dialogue with each other. Both films have this recurrent theme of poems appearing on the city walls. M: Well, all of my films are in a dialogue with each other about the subject of the city. It’s true that I’d shot Forza cani in 2000, and I began working on the Poesia project in 2005, after shooting Come l’ombra. But now that you make me think about it, in Come l’ombra there is this act of posting flyers on the walls of the city. The protagonist of Forza cani, Nebbia, is an urban poet. He posts verses around the city. When I was working on the script to Poesia, I was looking for a contemporary context in which to frame Antonia Pozzi’s history. In Pavia, I found these anonymous poets, university students, one from the medical school, another two from the faculty of philosophy and literature. L: How did your interest in Pozzi begin? M: During Come l’ombra’s success, I found myself touring the world with the film while I was still teaching at the film school. When I stopped, I immediately wanted to shoot another film, and it had to be a low-budget project, so therefore it had to be shot in Milan. I discovered Pozzi’s work through my therapist. As I mentioned, I had been in psychotherapy for ten years to work on my female identity, because like many other women, I grew up thinking that all the heroes are male. I identified women as passive. At some point, my therapist began to give me cultural references. She introduced me to Maria Zambrano, a philosopher, and other intellectuals including Pozzi. I went around the world to promote Come l’ombra, bringing Pozzi’s poems with me. In December 2005, I went to the Women’s Bookstore in Milan and I got all her books. Then I was contacted by her official biographer, Graziella Barnabò, who wrote a wonderful book on Pozzi. She asked me if I wanted to make a documentary, because in 2008 there was an important conference for the seventieth anniversary of her death. L: You directed many portraits of artists, such as Arnaldo Pomodoro, Gabriele Basilico, and Mimmo Jodice, all of whom are photographers. How did you conceive Pozzi’s portrait, since her work as an artist deals with words rather than images? M: Pozzi’s portrait came after a series of video portraits I’d done, the first of which was Fernanda Pivano in 1994. I shot Poesia in 2008 and edited it in 2009. It was the first portrait of a nonliving artist. Actually, I made a film about Pietro Lingeri, who was an architect; in that case,

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I just showed his work. With Pozzi, I did not want to make a film about death, but a film about the necessity of poetry. It was very hard, three years of delirium, because I did not have a reference point. The other problem was how to “frame” the poems, how to show them on the screen. I chose to work on the poems’ subtext. For example, think about the scene where the voice-over says, “This is my fake baby.” What images could I show in that case? Children maybe? Pozzi did photograph many children, but it would have been the most trivial solution. Then I asked myself, What could this verse have meant to her? She talks often in her poetry about growing flowers. I think that, truly, she is opposing nature’s generative power with her own inability to give birth. So I thought of showing the X-ray plate of a woman’s pelvis, to signify a woman’s empty womb. L: In this documentary film, like in all of your films, the city functions as a real character in the narration. What is Milan’s role in Pozzi’s story? M: I showed the city’s changes over time. The locations you see in Poesia are the same as those in Il mio domani. At the beginning of Poesia, we hear Maria, my alter ego, saying, “Antonia hasn’t lived here for 70 years.” I wanted to show the transformation of the city, so I contrasted the current city with that of the 1930s. All buildings from the 1930s are framed from a low angle to exclude the road surface and the traces of modernity. Then there is a discourse on gaze in the film. My eyes were seeking her gaze. Anyway, all the buildings I shot were already there in Pozzi’s time, in every city district she used to visit. L: Let’s talk about Come l’ombra now, which was very well received by critics. It was selected by Fabio Ferzetti at the Venice Film Festival, under “Giornate degli autori” (The Day of the Auteurs). As you said, it was the only Italian film, and more importantly, the only one directed by a woman in this category. How did the project start? You mentioned that Daniele wrote the script and then asked you to direct it. M: It was my birthday, in 2003. Daniele was on working his first script. Before the shooting, I spent one year with Ukrainian women and six months in school learning Russian. I worked on the dialogue. I included Gabriele Basilico’s representations of the city wherever the script simply said: “Images of the city.” L: How does the collaboration with Basilico work? M: I’m glad you’re asking me this question so I can clarify something. Basilico did not work on my film as a cinematographer. He worked with me to elaborate the imagery of the city. Gabriele, like me, turned his gaze

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to the city. He became an internationally known photographer by doing city portraits; he did Moscow, Sao Paulo. Now when a city wants to have its official portrait made, it calls Basilico. Milan was like a gym for my gaze, as it had been for his. We share the same urban imagery. For Come l’ombra, we discussed which parts of the city we were going to shoot. We did the location scouting together; we decided the camera angles together. And we did the same for Il mio domani. I took some pictures of the places I intended to shoot, and I discussed with him if what I was showing was representative of the city. And then he did the reverse: for the book about Il mio domani, he went and photographed all the places I shot. L: The way you compose the shots, your way of shooting a scene before the characters have entered the frame, and then remaining on the scene even after the characters have left, reminds me of Antonioni’s method. Including framing women from over the shoulder . . . M: Well, at the beginning of Come l’ombra, when Claudia exits the Tower Branca, there is a direct citation. That scene quotes the opening sequence of Antonioni’s La notte from a reverse point of view. And I tried as much as possible to use the sequence shot, as opposed to editing. Instead of the shot-counter-shot sequence, and then the two characters together, I made only eight cuts. I used this method in my new film too. L: Would you say you’re influenced by Antonio Pietrangeli’s work? M: I don’t know. He is certainly an author that I admire, but I wouldn’t say I absorbed him as I absorbed Antonioni. Why do you ask? L: Well, there is a moment when Olga is moving around the apartment wearing a white nightgown, and she leans on the window. It reminded me of a scene from Io la conoscevo bene (I Knew Her Well). M: I can tell you the reference points that I’m aware of. They are Antonioni’s La notte, a Chinese film titled Millennium Mambo, and Godard. I keep very detailed shooting journals, so you can actually see how I compose my shots. L: Your camera always stays at a certain distance, and very often viewers see the characters behind a glass. M: That is a specific feature of Come l‘ombra. We wanted to make a film of observation; it was like observing insects under a microscope. L: I’d like to discuss that scene when Olga and Claudia are having dinner. Olga talks about Italy as the land of Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Armani. That dialogue is particularly interesting concerning discourse on immigration in Italy.

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M: During the preparation of Come l’ombra I met many Ukrainian women, and someone told me where they went to church on Sunday. One of them introduced me to their group, and each Sunday I went to mass with them, and we had lunch together, each bringing her own food. I spent a lot of time chatting with them. The women I met, they would have gone to Germany, or France, but they really wanted to come to Italy, because they believed Italy was the sunny country, where people are kind, where people enjoy life, eat good food . . . all the clichés! Hence what Claudia says, “Do not fool yourself”— that is what Italians think. “It’s hard here, it’s very hard for us!” That’s why many of us ask immigrants, “Why did you come here?” The question does not imply, “I don’t want you,” but rather, “I think you’re crazy to come here. Look at this awful country!” However, Olga answers, “It’s better than in Kiev.” L: As a matter of fact, that scene is shot in such a way that the viewer has to sympathize with Olga; we see her bright face, while Claudia is sitting with her back to the camera. We can’t help but hear only Olga’s point of view. M: But Claudia’s point of view is not racist; it’s not what the middle-class Italian would say: “Go back to your country.” Claudia’s point is much more civilized. The question is, “Why here, where it is so difficult?” L: It’s not a welcoming attitude. M: Oh, absolutely not. This movie was originally called The Invisible Ones. Claudia is as invisible as Olga. Truly, groups of immigrants like the Ukrainians, Chinese, and Filipinos rarely deal with Italians. Maybe we don’t care what kind of life they live, and vice versa. L: So, are there parallel worlds in the city, in your opinion? M: When Claudia starts searching for Olga, she explores worlds that she never imagined brushing against. The women by the station, those are real-life situations. Anita Kravos, the actress who plays Claudia, spoke Russian so she could interact with them. So could Karolina Porcari, who played Olga. L: Those are the only scenes where we can see any crowd in the city; the rest of the movie is quite desolate. Milan is a sort of metaphysical place. M: It’s August. I also wondered, Why is the city so empty? Did they all run away? Is there a plague? Or are they all behind the windows, and they don’t want to interact with other human beings? L: What is the role of the landscape in your film?

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M: I think it is the main role. It’s not by chance that I worked with Gabriele Basilico. The city I represent is not that of the historical center, it’s that of the so-called middle architecture where common people live. L: Thus Claudia’s loneliness is the same loneliness that many women experience in the city. M: To promote the film I traveled a lot, from South America to Hamburg. The cities’ outskirts are all similar. It’s like cities communicate with each other through solids. So certain types of landscapes are familiar to everyone. In many countries many women have come to thank me, saying, “This film is about me, but I did not know I was living a life like this.” I imagined Claudia as one of the thousands of girls who every day spew out from the subway, carrying their bags of organic food and yogurt, going to work thinking that their lives will change tomorrow, that something is going to happen and life will change. L: At the end, Claudia leaves for the Ukraine with Olga’s suitcase, and in a way it’s like she appriopriates Olga’s identity. It’s quite an open ending for Claudia. I’m thinking of Olga’s final shot, which is a very intense moment in the film. M: I wanted Olga to look into the camera, to address the viewers. It’s as though she’s saying, “Look at me! You cannot pretend not to see me anymore. Now you must see me, now something awful is going to happen to me. And probably you have had many people like me around, but never even noticed them.” The woman who introduced me to the Ukrainian community disappeared. I looked for her to tell her that the film was being presented in Venice, but she was gone, and I’ve never found her. L: What about Anna Akhmatova’s verses? Poetry seems to play an important role in your films. M: Poetry is part of my imagery. I was 13 when my brother’s friend gave me Allen Ginsberg’s Hydrogen Jukebox. I love Sylvia Plath, Ann Sexton, Antonia Pozzi. “Forza cani” is the title of a poem by Nanni Balestrini, as we said. Come l’ombra is taken from a triplet in Akhmatova’s poem “To the Many.” I have always been fascinated by the the idea that Akhmatova and Pasternak were the only writers to debut before the revolution, and they chose to stay in Russia, to continue describing what was happening, when they could have chosen to emigrate safely to Paris. So the presence of Akhmatova in my film relates to the Eastern world. I belong to that generation that looked at Communist Russia as a model, and then suffered when Stalin’s misdeeds were uncovered, just like it was painful to discover Mao Tse-tung’s crimes.

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L: Let’s talk about your last film. How did Il mio domani begin? M: Francesco Panphili—the producer of Kairos Films—and I decided to make another movie together. Il mio domani is a film about modernity. I try to make films about the present, and so far—after all we do not know whether I will make other films—women have been the protagonists, the spokespersons of the crisis of modernity, or even better, postmodernity. L: Can you tell me something about the character of Monica? How does her character evolve in the story? M: Monica is a modern character. I wanted to represent the crisis through a woman. Monica, unlike the other Monica from Forza cani, who had a humble job, is a vocational counselor, a common figure in Europe now. She is a woman who has to work through her anger toward her mother, who abandoned her. And somehow this theme belongs to everyone. Monica has an identity problem, and for that reason she goes to Greece, to experience what her mother did. That’s why there is that speech about Athena, the goddess born from her father’s head, who knows she is not invincible—quite the contrary: she accepts her limitations. L: Like in Come l’ombra, in Il mio domani women are represented within the city as lonely, and the city itself is deserted. Is that how you see Milan? Is that really Milan, or merely a place of the soul? M: Yes, it is a place of the soul above all; indeed the protagonists see it that way. It is always the protagonist’s gaze describing the city. Monica strolls around the city to contain her emotions, to understand what to do. For instance, in that scene in which she drops everything, she starts by walking, then she goes to the office and finds out her lover is leaving her to go to Paris without telling her. L: Il mio domani is articulated through the opposition between the city and the country. What do these places represent for Monica? M: It is not a real opposition. They are only different landscapes, but they are both Monica’s soul-places. The countryside is certainly not a joyful place. Monica is able to abandon it only when she begins to make peace with her mother. L: Returning to the topic of the city, I think the poetic core of your work is this image of the woman wandering through the city, an image that reminds us of Lydia in Antonioni’s La notte, which you quoted in Come l’ombra. Incidentally, it’s also a recurring image in many films directed by women, as a kind of leitmotif of female filmmaking. M: That image comes from my relationship with the city. I walk around the city a lot. I try to keep my territory under control, because it’s the

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depository of my identity. I walk through the same places over and over again so as not to feel alienated. I try to understand how the city evolves. I compose my shots in places where I’ve already positioned myself, where I’ve actually found myself. More than simply wandering, these women attempt to find themselves. L: You mentioned before that Georgette, the producer, said she could tell Come l’ombra was a movie shot by a woman. Do you think there is a feminine way of using the camera? M: In my opinion, there is a specific way for each of us; the gaze deals with your imagination. When Georgette told me that I had a female look, I did not get offended. A few years before I would have been. Because femininity in this country is identified with something passive, and something diminishing, but after the analysis, I did not take it in the wrong way. I know my gaze is different from yours because we experience life differently. Obviously this has to do with the fact that I am a woman! L: Do you think there is a kind of ostracism against women in the creative departments of filmmaking? Do we expect women to do a certain type of movie? M: Of course! How many women have tried to jump and failed to do so? My case is a miracle because I’m an outsider, I live in Milan, not in Rome, I come from another story. I had to self-produce my first movies. There is definitely a form of ostracism against debuting filmmakers in this country. Not that it would be easier in other countries. And then, surely women are expected to direct comedies, comedies about women. For my part, I do not know if I’ll continue to make other films given the situation in this country. And if I do get the chance, I don’t know if my next film will be about woman, or about the lack of a woman. In any case, women are expected to do films about women.

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Interview with Alice Rohrwacher Rome, June 2012 Laura Di Bianco

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f all the young filmmakers to debut in Italy during the first decade of the new millennium, Alice Rohrwacher is one of the most sophisticated and interesting auteurs to come to the attention of film critics and audiences. After earning her degree in philosophy and practicing painting and photography, she began directing documentary films. Thanks to the support of the newly born film production company Tempesta, she wrote and directed her first feature, Corpo celeste (Heavenly Body). Although inspired by a scene from Anna Maria Ortese’s novel of the same name, Rohrwacher’s film is not an adaptation or freely inspired version of the book but an original work, albeit one that pays homage to Ortese’s work. After a long production process that lasted four years, the film was released in Italy in 2011. It won the “Nastro d’Argento” as the best opera prima and was nominated for the David of Donatello prize. Corpo celeste was presented at Cannes, the Sundance Film Festival, and “Open Roads” at Lincoln Center in New York City, in addition to many other international film festivals. Rohrwacher’s film is the coming of age story of Marta, a 13-year-old protagonist (played by Yile Vianelo), who moves back to Reggio Calabria in Italy from Switzerland, where her family lived for ten years. To help her integrate into the new community, her mother (Anita Caprioli) signs her up for catechism lessons in preparation for her confirmation. Thus, Marta starts attending the local church, which is populated by bored adolescents and other tragic characters, such as Santa, the fanatical

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catechism teacher, and Don Mario, a priest who is hoping to begin a clerical career thanks to his local political connections. Marta, who is a shy and quiet girl, is at once bewildered and curious. It becomes clear that the preparation for the religious ceremony involves a series of rituals and games that seem to be modeled more on television entertainment than anything spiritual. Feeling completely disoriented and struggling to understand her religion, Marta contemplates the urban landscape of Reggio Calabria (an Italian city rarely represented on the screen), which plays a pivotal role in the narration. Far from being portrayed as sunny southern town, Reggio appears as a squalid, desolate urban periphery that signifies Marta’s sense of loneliness and alienation. Laura: As you know, I am doing research on films directed by women in Italy. It is only in the last ten years that women filmmakers have established their own place in Italian cinema. While watching movies directed by Marina Spada, Francesca Comencini, Roberta Torre, Wilma Labate, Paola Randi, Nina Di Majo, and so on, I came to observe how these women directors represent the city, an urban space that has always been entitled to men. The leitmotif of women’s identity is intertwined with the city’s identity. This subject matter is also central in your movie. Let’s start with your career in filmmaking. You mentioned that you received a BA, and your cultural reference points are literature and painting. Can you tell me a little about that, and the circumstances that brought you to create your first work? Alice: I created my first work in a roundabout way, not expecting that I would do this. When I was a kid, I always dealt with images, photography, painting. Cinema, as a place and as a technology, was never part of my experience, of my family. There was never a video camera at my house; there wasn’t even a movie theater to go to where I grew up. In spite of that, I started by shooting a documentary about a river, the same exact river you see in my film Corpo celeste. Thanks to that, I met the producer Carlo Cresto-Dina. The documentary later became part of a collective film titled Che cosa manca. It took me four years to shoot Corpo celeste. I always thought it was the right amount of time. I was under a lucky star when I met Carlo CrestoDina, who, like me, was making his first feature film. He was very brave, like all those that supported me, since I didn’t have much experience in filmmaking. All of them were nuts! Before then, I had only shot my own “home-made” documentaries. My first time on a film set was actually the beginning of Corpo celeste. L: How did you decide to set your story in Reggio Calabria? What relationship do you have with that city?

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A: I arrived in Reggio Calabria for personal reasons. It’s a city that I know very well, having lived there on and off. It’s a city that accompanied me, marked me not only in a positive way, but also in a negative one. I met the producer to talk about this place, which is where I was living at that time. We expressed the urgency to speak in no uncertain terms about the cultural genocide of a community. I wanted to tell a story through the lens of a place, a place that could also be abstract in a way. What I can tell you about space is that I believe that the landscape a person looks at while growing up is extremely important. I don’t think beautiful or ugly landscapes exist, as they are all interesting in some way. In this moment of my life, I believe that every experience is precious. The landscape is like a gauge that, when it changes, allows you to see things better. It was a big change for me to move from the Umbrian countryside, which is very well ordered, to Reggio Calabria. When I arrived at such a wild place, I felt like I was looking with “naked eyes,” so to speak. It is also for this reason that shooting this film with Hélène Louvart, the French cinematographer, was extremely important. I truly wanted to tell my story through foreign eyes. I wanted somebody else, besides me, to be in this place for the first time, behind the camera. L: Which is, actually, Marta’s gaze? What relation does she have with the city? A: Marta enters and walks across a city that is unknown to her. Her body, her presence, scrapes the image of the city. When she walks she leaves a sign, gentle and clear at the same time. For this reason, Marta resemblances Yle Vianelle, the young actress playing her role, who moved to Reggio Calabria for the shooting. Just by walking, Yle was able to show us a place, defining it through her astonishment. L: What about the role of the church in your film? What portrait of the church comes out of it? A: I wanted to make a “coming of age” novel, and narrate it through the magnifying glass of the church. I didn’t want to confine my story to the church, but I wanted to open it by starting from a constricted place. Earlier I used the term “cultural genocide,” a cultural emptying. Although the church is one of those few institutions still standing for the community, it lacks real questions, any real wondering. It is always about giving answers, a ceremony that lacks a rite. L: Therefore your starting point was the city and the Catholic community with its rituals, especially the way it teaches religion to children, which ends up being grotesque in many ways. First of all, how did you get in touch with that reality? To what extent have you simply documented the facts, and to

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what extent have you reinvented that reality? Here I am referring to those funny scenes in which the kids take the tests on the Gospel, or when they sing songs like “Mi Sintonizzo su Dio” (“I tune myself to God”). A: My starting point was the community that lives in the south of Italy. From there I came to discuss the church. I began to attend catechism lessons. Believe it or not, it’s all true. I mean, through my eyes, it’s all true. During catechism lessons children actually do quizzes on the Gospel. Yes! The quiz exists; you can download it from the Internet. There is much more, but I didn’t want to get deeper into it, because reality is often too unbelievable. At one point the teacher asked a question, “Who constitutes the church?” The choices were: “the Pope, the priests, the immigrants, God’s people, or plants.” While I was shooting that scene, I said: “No one is ever going to believe it! Everyone will think that it is pure invention.” L: Your film has the same title as Anna Maria Ortese’s novel. What is the relation between your film and the literary text? A: I picked this title for its totemic value. In fact, I am a huge admirer of Ortese’s work and her Corpo celeste in particular was a fundamental reference point for me. I liked the idea that it was a good omen for the film. At the beginning of her work, Anna Maria Ortese narrates her discovery of how the earth is suspended in space, as rightfully as the stars and all the other planets that we admire from afar. There is no need to go very far away, because we can feel the same amazement by looking at our own planet. We are used to this planet; we have been delivered to this planet. That’s it! That was the good wish I wanted to dedicate to Marta: that the heavenly world is already here! L: Tell me about the scene in which Maria is in the abandoned church and caresses the crucifix, indulging in observing it and removing the dust. That scene is quite intense, and uncomfortable in its own way. What is its function in the film? A: That scene is the reason the film’s title is Corpo celeste, the heavenly body that everyone talks about, the one that is always far away, unreachable. When the catechism teacher reads the texts, she always says: “You have to think that the body of Jesus is not like yours; it is instead a heavenly body, perfect, distant.” It is quite the opposite; we can touch it. The idea is that the heavenly body is the planet. I wanted to shoot a scene in which Marta finally touches something, a body. Because by the end, Marta never touches anything. I wanted it to be a sensual scene, let’s say. That sensuality came out a little as I was shooting. After all, when a body touches another body, it’s always sensual in that it engages the senses, not that it’s erotic. L: Now here’s a question that lies outside your work, concerning more generally women’s cinematic production in Italian cinema. In your

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opinion, do women directors continue to be ostracized? Are women still expected to shoot certain kinds of movies? A: In my opinion, the problem is on both sides, men and women. On one side, there is a tendency to take shelter behind the idea of being a woman, and the idea that as long as I’m a woman I’m persecuted. There is also a “womanish” interpretation of cinema; there is a willingness to combine in one film every possible feminine aspect for the sake of categorizing it under the label “woman.” I‘ll give you an example in translation, rather than cinema, though translation is still part of this discourse, in my opinion. I was lucky enough to be able to work with Pier Paolo Giarolo for a documentary on translators. I clearly remember an interview with Virginia Woolf’s translator, Nadia Fusini. A huge part of her extraordinary work was restoring Woolf’s original words, because many of the translations have been deformed by the lens of “womanliness.” For example, whenever Woolf wrote “she called her sons,” it was always translated as “she called her little ones.” Her harsh words were not appropriate for women’s collective imagination; therefore, those words were sweetened by terms of endearment. So, I believe that when it comes to films directed by women, something similar happens. L: What can you tell me about the fact that so very few women have been able to take up careers as directors? According to research by Paola Randi, only 6 percent of Italian filmmakers who have directed movies in the last decade are women. A: For a woman it is quite difficult to start, and to win the trust of a crew. Then, when you finally do, there is a very strong connection. Anyhow, compared to Germany, where I live right now, it is undeniable that Italy is different—like whenever someone says, “Oh, that film by a woman director,” as if it were a rare event. This idea of the woman filmmaker as something extraordinary comes easily to us even if it’s hard to admit that and say it out loud. That’s why we are reluctant to have many women do this work. It is probably caused by fear of losing the privilege of being a minority. L: Well, there is actually a small group of women directors in Italy now. Does a dialogue among Italian women filmmakers exist? A: I don’t know because I moved to Berlin right after I finished shooting the movie. I won a scholarship, and consequently I cut myself off from the possibility of having that dialogue. I got along very well with the ones I did meet though, such as Paola Randi, Anna Negri, Costanza Quatriglio, Irene Dionisio. In short, what I mean is that to be a woman doesn’t have to be a shelter, but a point of strength. Sometimes you have to build with sand as if it were stone.

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L: As I told you, this interview will be part of a book titled Italian Women Filmmakers and the Gendered Screen. In your opinion, is there a way to see and represent women, a specific language, or a way to represent female subjectivity in Italian cinema that is different from the one so far offered by their male counterparts? If your answer is yes, how is the female gaze characterized? A: The female gaze does exist; it is multifaceted and highly variegated. The female gaze doesn’t belong only to women, just as the male gaze doesn’t belong only to men. However, I think that the women’s gaze on places is particular. Women have a different perception of places, houses, horizons. If I think of movies directed by women, I can see that space itself is always an important character that determines the development of the story. In my case, the city was the first character. I knew from the beginning that I wanted to work in that city, with the people I met there. L: You represented an aspect of Reggio that is not very well-known on the screen: the less attractive side of the city, the dumping grounds. A: I represented it in a certain way. I believe that it is worse to represent a stereotype of the south than it is to represent a contradiction of that. Also, the urban space outside the city is extremely important. The water—Reggio is a city rich with flowing water. I wanted to represent the city I came to know, the city I was living in. Also, I was a little motivated by rage, because I think those same 800 meters of seafront are not enough to make a beautiful city. Everyone uses those few kilometers of sea to show that Reggio Calabria is a beautiful city. “Beautiful” is probably not even the right word. The neat side of the city has become a cop-out to avoid seeing the rest. My idea was to produce a narrative about the city that could include its defects, to shoot a “flawed film,” so to speak, without representing something that is already known, or something that would satisfy our preconceived notions of the south. I arrived in Reggio when I was in my twenties. I know many of the marvelous things of the city and the region. Because I love these beautiful things, and I respect them, I don’t want to show them. I show only what I hope can be changed; I show what I hope people can see, anything that can open a debate. There was a lot of talking around the representation of the church. Even that dispute, in my opinion, was positive because many people realized that Corpo celeste also represented a hope for change. To me, it is very important to work on what is considered “inappropriate,” to shoot movies that raise questions. By showing that side of Reggio Calabria, I wanted to push toward changing things, not just showing things. Corpo celeste was born in Reggio Calabria, originated by watching a space. Above all, I wanted to offer a narrative about a body in a space.

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Interview with Paola Randi Rome, June 2012 Laura Di Bianco

Paola Randi is an emerging filmmaker; she was born in Milan and lives in Rome. After experimenting with art forms such as painting, theater, and music, she started her career in filmmaking, self-producing numerous short films. In 2011, her first feature, Into Paradiso, was shown in many international film festivals throughout Europe and North and South America, including the Venice Film Festival, where it was presented in the category “Controcampo Italiano.” Into Paradiso has been praised by critics and audiences alike, and its many accolades include being one of Nanni Moretti’s “Bimbi belli” (an honor Moretti created for debut filmmakers), as well as receiving four nominations for the David of Donatello prize. Into Paradiso is an exhilarating comedy, or, as the filmmaker herself describes it, a “metropolitan Western.” The story begins with Alfonso, a scientist, losing his job. In need of an inside favor, he visits an old acquaintance, Vincenzo Cacace, who is running for public office. Vincenzo, in turn, is asked for a “kindness” (delivering a weapon) by Don Fefé a Risa, of the Camorra, and Vincenzo decides to use Alfonso as the unwitting courier. The scientist, completely unaware of what he is involved in, ends up witnessing an execution in a Neapolitan alleyway. Hiding from a gang of criminals, he takes refuge in the Sri Lankan district, which is called Paradiso. Meanwhile, Gayan, a former cricket world champion, arrives in Paradiso expecting it to be a land of opportunity. Disappointed, he begins working as a caretaker to pay for his journey back to Sri Lanka. Through a series of paradoxical and comical events, Gayan and Alfonso meet and

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become allies on a roof terrace in Paradiso, tying the corrupt politician Vincenzo to a chair and hiding from the Camorra’s henchmen that guard the building. Parallel to her work as a filmmaker, Randi collaborated with the cultural association Maude (which takes its name from the character in Hal Ashby’s Harold and Maude), founded by a group of women filmmakers. The association is engaged in several collective film projects and conducts research on women in film and media in Italy. L: Paola, can you tell me about your professional experience before filmmaking? P: I started with drawing, when I was five years old. I come from a very traditional family, in that filmmaking was not considered a reliable profession, nor was any other art form. So, I studied law, and then I spent ten years working with my mother, who was the president of a nonprofit association providing financial support and training to women in developing countries, as well as in Italy. At the same time, at the age of 19, I worked in theater as an actress. Some friends of mine and I collaborated with the University of Milan to start a journal dedicated to experimental theater, hoping to introduce students to theater. We brought theater to places it had never been before. We produced shows in some hangers on the outskirts of Milan, where artists had their ateliers. It was an amazing experience; we invited artists like Peter Brook. Meanwhile, I continued painting and singing. And suddenly, in 2000, everything happened; it was my “tsunami year.” I was 30 at that time, and my mother died; the funding for the theater festival was cut by the new administration, so I decided to move to Rome to look for a job. And I found it with a public relations company. After about a year, though, I was quite depressed. But then one day a friend of my boss came along saying that he wrote a short film, and I said, “I’m going to direct it!” So, I rewrote some scenes and I made a short movie, and I fell in love with filmmaking because I realized that it could bring together everything I was experimenting with up to that point and everything I was passionate about: my interest in social issues, which I had developed working with my mother, and painting, music, and theater, of course. But the problem was my age. I was too old for the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, and I couldn’t afford going to New York City to attend one of those super film schools. So, I enrolled in a school where Silvano Agosti was the dean, and he truly had an ability to communicate important things. He showed us spectacular movies, like Marco Bellocchio’s I pugni in tasca (Fists in the Pocket) or Godard’s À bout de souffle (Breathless), which were both their first movies, and then he told us: “Guys, these filmmakers were like

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you, in the same position, with no money, many good ideas, and ambition. Now it’s your turn!” This helped me overcome the awe I felt for the great maestros, and it made me believe that I could make it, despite being an autodidact. Agosti asked us to shoot a self-portrait without moving the camera, without any editing, and with just the lights we had at home. It was one of the most interesting things I’ve ever done. Then I made another short movie, with Valerio Mastrandrea, who was already quite popular, and it was presented at the Turin Film festival. So I would say at that point I’d found the courage to engage in a filmmaking career. L: So, for a few years you continued doing short films. How did you succeed in having your first feature film produced? P: It happened quite soon. Doing short movies was a way to experiment, and I also did a lot of animation. L: What about documentary films? P: I did my fist documentary film on commission, as part of “Il giorno della memoria” (“The day of memory”). It involved editing about 15 hours’ worth of material shot by young students on a school trip to Auschwitz. Watching the material, I realized that the footage itself retraced the students’ emotional journey. They left with the spirit of someone going on vacation, and little by little they absorbed the memories of those places. I tried to recreate this transformation in the editing. I’m not even Jewish, and for me it was like putting my finger on a fresh wound. I tried to do it in the most respectful way. I didn’t do any other significant work in documentary filmmaking. I was also involved in a very interesting project that never found a way to be financed. It was a documentary about working women and maternity, which is a big issue in Italy. We did a lot of research, and found a number of stories, but the subject is probably still taboo in our country. L: Many women filmmakers, instead, arrive at their fictional films first through documentary filmmaking . . . P: No, not me. I did a lot of research before doing Into Paradiso, which helped me in the writing process as well as in promoting the project. L: The encounter between Alfonso and Gayan is really interesting. Indeed, the Italians in this film do not portray themselves positively in comparison with the Sri Lankan community. Even though Alfonso is a positive character with whom the viewer can identify, the other Italians are either mafiosi or racists—I’m thinking about the character of Vincenzo, or the Signora who hires Gayan as caretaker.

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P: Yes, my movie is about an encounter between an immigrant and an Italian who becomes a stranger in the heart of his own city because he comes out of his shell—he leaves the graveyard where he had lived, so safe and so far from the world of his dead mother. And eventually he is welcomed into a community that carved out its own space in society, and he becomes part of its connective tissue. Not all Italians are racists or mafiosi, of course. Alfonso, the main character is not. Those criminals, as I portrayed them—they’re so sad. The politician is a typical product of Berlusconi’s twenty-year term, which was characterized by a distorted idea of politics and power, very far from what politics should be for the common good. L: What can you tell me about the character of Don Fefé, who is reminiscent of a character in Cipri’s and Maresco’s films? He has such a shrill laugh; he really is not macho or charming the way mob bosses are so often depicted. And even his henchmen are not that scary: they fall asleep all the time, they celebrate their criminal identity—were you playing with the mafia-movie genre? P: I have fun playing with the medium and with different genres. I would say that my film is more a metropolitan Western. I was interested in deconstructing the myth of the malavita. My mafosi are relegated to a former NATO base and an abandoned supermarket, which is a symbol of their own devastation and how much they’ve been seduced by the myth of consumerism. The two henchmen keep debating whether to kill people with a gun or with a knife, which is typical mafia rhetoric, but they spend their life sitting in an alley, in the L’Avvocata district. L: Is there also a reflection on representation in general in Into Paradiso? I’m thinking of that sequence in which Alfonso is trying to reconstruct and understand the events, and so he reenacts them. P: I’m glad you’re asking me this question! I love reflecting on memory and particularly on emotional memory. Filmmaking for me is an intrinsically nostalgic art, different from theater, which happens here and now. It changes at every show, it’s unique and unrepeatable, and like us, it’s transitory, mortal. Film, instead, captures an emotion, one made of images and sounds, happening at a certain moment but which can be reexperienced again and again, always. I like this idea: it sounds like eternity and at the same time it’s so nostalgic. Alfonso becomes the director of his emotional memory. The scene of the police on the roof terrace is a daydream. In that sequence I was doing a sort of raid on his imagination. Alfonso has many of these daydreams, as we all do before a date, or a meeting at work; we rehearse, we modify dialogue, costumes, scenes.

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We create a narrative. That’s why daydreams are much more interesting than night dreams! Those are involuntary outbursts of our unconscious; daydreams, instead, are the product of a series of choices. L: In your film there are many levels of narration. What about the soap opera Palpitazioni d’amore? P: The idea came from my desire to mock the West’s paternalistic attitude that characterizes many tales of immigration. I don’t think we need to teach anything to anyone. I believe, instead, there is a chance for reciprocal enrichment from the encounter with the “Other.” The exchange contains intrinsic respect and valorization of differences, thus there is no superior culture. At the end, what does Alfonso teach Gayan? Palpitazioni d’amore, only a soap opera! Anyway, it was fun to shoot; we couldn’t stop laughing. L: Paola, can we talk about the role of the city? In your film there is a very peculiar representation of the urban space that departs from the codified representation of Naples. What was your approach to a city that has been shown on the screen so much? P: First of all, I want to say that I adore the city. I was born and raised in Milan. I like factories, I like buildings—for me, Naples is a supercity. It’s the city-est city in the world. It’s incredibly cosmopolitan, in continuous motion, and it’s the most vibrant city I ever been in. It’s a living organism with muscles, veins; it has its own body. It has strong contradictions, as do all civilized urban spaces. In Naples, people are extremely welcoming, probably because they’ve always received injections from different cultures over the centuries. It has a very ancient history and an extremely interesting structure. First of all, the popular districts are in the center, in the heart of the city—I’m referring to neighborhoods like Rione Sanitá, Quartieri Spagnoli, L’Avvocata (called Paradiso in the movie). Or Monte di Dio. Milan is structured differently. It has concentric circles: the center belongs to rich people, and the lower classes live outside. This is quite significant! A city like Naples keeps people in its heart. And something else extremely interesting is that the urban landscape changes at every kilometer. For example, if you take a cable car along Via Roma, the central street along the Spanish district, you’ll get to the kind of neighborhood you’d find in Milan. And then there’s Posillipo, with those extraordinary buildings. It’s like being in another world, with those villas and those gardens. Naples is carved out into tuff; in fact, it has an underground system of tunnels, where Garrone shot Gomorra. It’s constructed on many different layers. In the building where I shot Paradiso, you would get to the

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third floor, open a door, and find a street! It was like being in an Escher painting. Naples is a source of constant surprises. During the location scouting I thought that this characteristic of the city would be perfect for what I was trying to represent—the cultural mix, a story of common people. I wanted them to become heroes, the good part of our society. I discovered the roofs when I was doing research. A friend was hosting me in a room that used to be a washhouse on the roof terrace. It was in the district of Monte di Dio, another popular neighborhood near the sea, behind Piazza Plebiscito. This washhouse had a view of the roofs of Naples, and I saw that they were all linked. Up there, the loud noises of the city were just a buzz, and I thought, “Life makes so much noise!” You know, many years ago I went to Guatemala to visit the Mayan Pyramids in the jungle, where George Lucas shot Star Wars. I climbed the pyramids, and I realized that underneath there was such chaos! Monkeys, toucans, and all kinds of animals were screaming. The only way to get some peace was to shut your ears. In Naples, on that roof, it was the same. In the part of the city where we shot the movie, it was like being in a Moroccan city, with that sort of beehive of little illegal houses, one glued to another. But from the outside, you can’t see all that life; you have to get inside, or climb on a roof. L: Paola, can you tell me about Maude, the cultural association of women working in the film and media industry in Italy, of which you’re one of the founders? P: I dealt with what in Italian is called the “questione femminile” (the woman question). There is a huge problem for women in the film industry. Since I dealt with women entrepreneurs for so long, parallel to the movement “Se non ora quando”1 (If not now, when?), which is a great movement, but not specific to women working in film, a number of female directors, screenwriters, DPs, costume designers, editors, and I created Maude. We started with a blog on Facebook. And we try to understand what the main problems we are dealing with are, in order to plan concrete action. In 2010, I was invited to give a lecture on women in Italian cinema. To prepare myself, I start searching for data, and I couldn’t find any. I felt it was urgent to do something about it. I soon found out how difficult it was to get started, just to collect records. We started by analyzing the movies released in Italy in the past three years, and then we compared that data with films released 20 years ago. We learned that of all the directors doing features, only 7 percent are women. That means that of every hundred movies produced, ninety-three are directed by men and only seven are by

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women! And there has been no improvement in the past 20 years. In 1990 the situation was the same. I was sadly surprised by that, thinking that the film industry is considered quite progressive compared to other industries. In the world of business, supposedly more conservative, the main problem is access to loans. When I worked with my mother, during the 1980s, her organization supported a law for female entrepreneurship to solve this problem. Nobody did such a thing for women in film. It’s incredible that everybody trusts women to raise children, but nobody trusts them when it comes to business. In film, the situation for women cinematographers is even worse than for women directors. However, there are women enrolled in photography courses at the Centro Sperimentale, and I wonder what they do after they leave school. The answer is rarely that they get jobs—some of them can only get work on other women’s projects, which rarely get as much of a budget and as much visibility as the ones directed by men. There is real discrimination in the budgets women can obtain. Generally speaking, the budget for a woman director is lower than the budget given to a man. I don’t think any woman director in Italy, except for Comencini perhaps, ever got a budget like Paolo Sorrentino’s. Women tend to work with other women, making movies that ultimately won’t get distribution. So, if you are a DP and you really want to start a career in filmmaking, you’d better make a man’s movie. Talking with other women directors, I realized that many of them get tired of waiting for answers that never come from producers and institutions in the business, and so they self-produce and start making documentary films. Some of them have a real documentarian vocation, but some of them had no choice but to start that way. Another issue is that those women directors who do succeed in making their first feature film have a very hard time making their second movie, or they don’t make it at all. On top of that, there’s the issue of the kind of mindset one has adopt to work on the set. I heard some women say things like, “You must be like a man to work on the set.” And that’s nonsense! The real issue is that there is no organization, no specific place a woman can go if she is harassed or discriminated against. The sexist mentality is so deeply rooted that the border between a joke and sexual harassment is very blurred. Leaving Italy, even for a short time, you understand how women’s expectations for gender equality are very low here. L: I agree. It’s outrageous what women get used to in Italy, but you only realize it once you live in another country where the level of attention to gender equality is higher, or where some attitudes toward women are considered offensive, disrespectful. But it’s also true that Italy has made many steps forward in this regard. In many cities there are now centers where

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women can receive legal and psychological assistance. In Rome there are antiviolence centers, and the law against stalking was approved. P: Yes, it’s true, but the situation is different in film, in my opinion. There’s no mechanism for protection, so women think: “If I speak up I won’t work anymore.” It’s basically the same situation we had when there were no unions, and workers didn’t denounce abuses because there was nobody to protect them. Today there are a number of abuses that are not even acknowledged, the level of self-awareness is so low. Moreover, when there is a collaborative project, say with seven filmmakers, someone decides that at least one of them has to be a woman, mostly to be politically correct, just to satisfy that demand. And this creates a terrible side effect: not only is that one woman in competition with six other men, but she’s also in competition with all her female colleagues, because there’s only one spot for them out of seven! So, this system reinforces the competition among women and that’s surreal! But there are also women who love cooperation, like Antonietta De Lillo, for example. She’s now working on a great collective project, and I’m collaborating on it. L: Is there a common aesthetic, or any common denominator, among women directors? How would you describe the female gaze? P: Well, first of all, we need to consider that women in film all have some common experience, which is the struggle for equality; this should be translated into new ideas far from male stereotypes. L: Are you referring to the representation of women? Can you make an example? P: Let’s take commercials, which I have never dealt with. If a woman directs a Coca-Cola commercial, maybe she’ll propose a new model of femininity, as well as of masculinity. Perhaps there’ll be an opening for a new aesthetic paradigm. L: And that was the feminist goal, to deconstruct certain cliches, images of women built by the male gaze for the male viewer. P: I think we can extend this discourse to models of masculinity too. In Into Paradiso, I tried to depict both women and men outside certain stereotypes. L: Yes, and I like the character of Giacinta very much, a single mother . . . P: I was asked many times about such a “dramatic” choice. I think it’s dramatic if we conform to the traditional Catholic idea of motherhood. I tried to portray a mother who is still the object of desire, not a Madonna, which is so often what mothers must become, according to the traditional

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stereotype. On the other hand, Alfonso and Gayan are not superheroes, nor macho guys, although they are very charming. L: You were talking about the difficulty of doing the second movie, when anyone’s lucky just to make a first one. What was your experience? P: Well, I must say that seeing how things are going now, fingers crossed, it seems like something is happening. I think some women are doing very brave projects. For example, Alice Rohrwacher, who made an extraordinary film—which is not a critique of Catholicism, but a movie about a community that found its own sense within the parish church. Everything is seen from the point of view of a little girl coming from the North. It’s one of the most beautiful films I’ve seen in the last few years. She is really what’s called an auteur. She uses a new language; she doesn’t conform to any cliché. I know that she is now working on her second movie, and I am looking forward to watching it. But many of my colleagues couldn’t do a second movie. We need producers, perhaps women producers, who are willing to take risks, and I understand that during such a financial crisis, it’s really difficult. But we should reflect on the fact that countries in crisis usually invest in research—but not our country, of course! Maybe Germany would be a better example. It should be the same in film. I think crisis can also be an opportunity for revolution. It’s time to ring out the carpet and shake out the dust! Note 1. In January 2011 a group of women—including politicians, journalists, professionals, and artists—launched an appeal to demonstrate in large numbers on February 13. Italian women had had enough, they said, and demanded their dignity. The call to action, the demonstration, and the committees took the name _“Se non ora quando?” which means “If not now, when?” The name was inspired by a novel by Primo Levi, about the Jewish, German, and Polish partisans who fought against Nazi Germany. See the website http://strugglesinitaly.wordpress.com/equality/the-womens-movementse-non-ora-quando/.

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Interview with Costanza Quatriglio July 2012 Giovanna Summerfield

Costanza Quatriglio was born in Palermo in 1973. After having graduated in Law at the University of Palermo in 1997, she attended the Centro Sperimentale per la Cinematografia in Rome. Between 1997 and 2000, she directed several social documentaries. Her first documentary ècosaimale?, shot among children in historical Palermo, won several awards (among these the Gran Premio della Giuria at the Festival of Turin 2000). Her second documentary, L’insonnia di Devi, on the theme of international adoptions, was coproduced by Tele+. Her first feature film L’isola, produced by Dream Film and RAI TV network, was shown at the Festival of Cannes 2003 and distributed in Italy, Belgium, Canada, and Latin America. Well received by the public and the critics, L’isola has participated in many international festivals in the United States and Europe, earning the Fipresci Award at the Festival of Bratislava, the Cicae Award in France, the award for best screenplay at the Festival of Cuenca, in Ecuador, the Cultural Grant from Asia-Europe Foundation at the Festival of Pusan in South Korea, and the Silver Ribbon for best music in 2004. In this fiction film Costanza Quatriglio tells the story of the two young protagonists, Teresa and Turi, living the challenges of a closed society like Favignana. The following year, her mini-series Raiz, which follows a family that migrated from Capo Verde to Italy, was broadcasted on RAI Tre. In 2006 the Sicilian filmmaker presented at the Festival of the Cinema, in Rome, her documentary Il mondo addosso, produced by Dream Film in collaboration with Rai Tre and the support of Unicef, about the lives of young migrants arriving and living by themselves in Italy. Between 2007 and 2008 Costanza Quatriglio has served

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as creative producer of the televised series Un posto al sole produced by Grundy Italia together with Rai Tre and Rai Fiction. In 2009, she produced her documentary Il mio cuore umano, based on the autobiographical book by Italian singer Nada Malanima. Her recent documentary Terramatta has been selected for the session dedicated to Giornate degli autori at the Festival del Cinema of Venice, scheduled for August 29, 2012. It is based on the memoirs of Vincenzo Rabito, Sicilian illiterate of the 1900s, published with the title of Terramatta by Giulio Einaudi, in a volume edited by Evelina Santangelo. The images of the film are accompanied by the electronic music of Paolo Buonvino and the voice-over of actor Roberto Nobile. The film is coproduced by Cliomedia, Officina, Istituto Luce, and the Sicilian Film Commission. In this interview, dated July 2012, the director discusses the needs of the Italian cinema, the contributions of the “invisible” filmmakers, and her personal philosophy behind the video-camera, as filmmaker and as woman. GS: According to the documentary directed by Christian Carmosino, The Invisibles, which lists approximately 35 “new” directors, you would appear to be amongst the listed. Do you really feel “invisible”? And why invisible? CQ: I do not like the title “invisible” because it automatically assumes a perspective extraneous to my work. Certainly, if viewed from the outside, there is the risk of seeing oneself as invisible because we all work hard and at times we are not even rewarded for the least of our efforts. Nonetheless, in time, I understood that invisibility is not a condition but a label. I will give you here my explanation: in the last 20 years, maybe 30 years, in Italy, we have experienced a progressive impoverishment of the cultural demand, due to an offer more or less oriented toward flat, unvarying, and comforting cinematic products. They are so connected to the Power, both in forms and models of representation, that the authors themselves have been conditioned by a censorship so internalized that it has turned into self-censorship. The demand of the spectators has been conditioned because they have had to deal with cinematic works more and more like the televised offers of the popular TV channels. These offers have changed the Italians anthropologically (and for the worse). If we ourselves adopt the point of view of a system in which, in fact, we are unable to recognize ourselves, then, yes, we are invisible. I always look at the glass as being half full, thus instead of invisibility, I would like to talk about freedom. Moreover, I would like to add that recently—maybe because we have really reached the bottom—the audience is becoming more and more demanding, despite

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a nonexisting industry and the total lack of a market that works by the rules adopted by all markets; this gives us hope for the future. On this topic I would like to add that it is this generation of “invisibles” that is able to create a new Italian cinema. All those filmmakers who, like me, have experienced a lack of funds and have grown in a cramped system, without a market, without an industrial system, and without a cultural politics that allow space to its youth, have rolled up their sleeves and have worked hard on documentaries, experimenting, freely, with the language of reality cinema. Thanks to new technologies, we have restored the documentary to its important role of point of reference for all the Italian cinema. In the last ten years, the documentary has, in fact, replaced the narration of the present of fiction film (conditioned, as mentioned earlier, by the authors’ self-censorship), affirming itself as a terrain of novelty and bravery, not only with its themes but also its linguistics. It is a territory of freedom because there are no set rules as far as production and distribution are concerned. The freedom lies in the choice of the subjects and in the length of the films. This freedom is also the result, unfortunately, of the independence of production means and very low budgets. So now, as you can see, the perspective is changed: from invisible, one becomes protagonist! Yes, our generation is giving new life to the Italian cinema. Think of the latest film of the Taviani brothers, Cesare deve morire (Cesar has to die), which is a documentary. GS: Luciano and Scarparo, in an essay that appeared on Studies in European Cinema last year, write that your work is invisible because you seek marginalized subjects, and because as a woman director you are yourself marginalized by critics and by historical accounts of the Italian cinema. But, particularly with your last contributions, you have conveyed that the invisible that interests you is the self, the self of your subjects, your self. Is this true? CQ: Now that’s a topic of great interest to me! Partly, what you say is true, even though I have not been invisible to critics. Critics and scholars have always been amongst the most attentive to the type of work that I do. It is true, though, that there are aspects of invisibility that are innate to the themes and techniques chosen to make films. Being a woman conditions further the manner in which the filmmaker is perceived. Think about, for example, the characters presented by the Italian cinema: how many women do you see that are not wives, lovers, fiancées, or mothers of the male protagonist? Generally, the male filmmaker has more money; the male filmmaker gets the money for narratives that espouse the male perspective. Going back to the theme of marginality, it is true that I have always selected difficult themes. This is part of the DNA of my cinema. I have

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always considered cinema to be a means, a vehicle, and not an end; this is the reason why I choose the films I want to carry out and the stories I want to tell. I choose stories that allow me to challenge myself. To shoot a film, to me, amounts to taking a journey, to having an experience (in the true etymological sense) that has to do both with the urgency (thus the necessity) of telling that story, and with a more dynamic aspect that deals with my growth and my own amazement. It is trying to offer the audience a dramaturgy that is marked by dynamic elements that deal with unveiling and not with demonstrating. Let me clarify this: building my relation with history through a process of understanding based on listening and reprocessing, in the production of the film, even the aspect of rendition of my own process, first interior, intimate, then shared and shareable, is innate. The search of the self has been recognized, at times, as the thread that ties together all of my films. It is probably true, or maybe it has been true in the past. Luckily, though, every film is also the offspring of the hic et nunc of the filmmaker and my films are, at least stylistically speaking, different from one another. GS: It seems, to me, that another recurring theme in your films is fatigue, the fatigue that is, naturally, endemic to life but that, nonetheless, is a negative aspect of life. Yet, your works are always saturated with optimism, hope, strength, and willingness to continue one’s own journey (in an interview, you said that the book as well as the documentary on Nada “concludes itself with a beginning”). Is this optimism, then, a personal stance or an observation from behind the camera? CQ: Often concluding a story with a new beginning does not imply optimism but responds to some exquisitely dramatic demands. My films are often stories of formation, in which the protagonists follow a path of selfdiscovery, a journey that dictates their readiness to start a new route, a passage to a new phase of life. GS: The choice of your themes and subjects is perfectly aligned with the cinematic method you have selected, the documentary. How come then you opted, in 2003, for a different genre, with the film L’isola (The Island)? CQ: I produced my first documentaries in 2000, after having experimented with the language of the fiction shorts. In these shorts, my relation with reality was transfigured by an almost absolute abstraction: extreme, symbolic characters, placed in plastic, figurative settings. There was always something magical and, at the same time, realistic in those shorts. I make these preliminary remarks to say that I have gone from this “introspective vision” (young age?) where I used the pronoun “I” to an

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“extrospective vision” where I abandoned the pronoun “I” to leave space to the girls in Palermo of ècosaimale? rather than to the adopted boys of L’insonnia di Devi, or to the very young migrants of Il mondo addosso. In the meantime, here comes L’isola. It was a unique experience because in this film I really looked for myself through my approach to cinema. I experimented, without knowing it, with the commingling of reality and fiction, creating the foundations for my cinema, finding my own way, my language, and becoming aware of myself and the path that I was taking. In L’isola, I tested what has become the hallmark of my work, not dissimilar from Vittorio De Seta’s, for example: building a fiction made of factual details, in which the narrative elements are completely integrated with the emotional elements born out of the actors’ work. In L’isola these details, especially the life experienced by the protagonists and their emotions, are inserted in fictional contexts at the service of the story and are alternated with the fictional details integrated in real contexts, where, there is to say, an actor is called to belong to a preexisting world, for example, the world of the fishermen during the tuna-netting scene. I would like to add, though, that personally, I have never liked the distinction between fictional film and documentary. To me, there is only one cinema and the demarcation line does not lie in the carrying out of the film itself but in the threshold of modesty that often in the documentary tout court is not easy to cross, while in the staging this could be crossed through the interpretation of the actors. We can see that in fictional film you can enter this abyss with freedom. I think that the documentary is an exceptional tool to ask questions within the most difficult places to frequent, to lead us into unchartered territories without saying much, without being demonstrative. It has to lead us, allowing some time to be lost and to be found again. Disorientation and doubt are essential. Certainly, the issue about language is resolved, and so is the coherence of all the elements of a film, that by eliciting questions do not claim to provide answers. GS: Going back to discussing cinematic subjects, as I am a specialist in women’s studies, I am very interested in your conscious decision to give a voice to women, in all of your works, from your short écosaimale (2000), to your latest Io, qui. Lo sguardo delle donne. What strikes me the most is the way in which these women interact with one another, their availability and support for one another (in L’isola, Teresa is instrumental in tearing down the wall to allow her grandmother to enjoy the view again; Samantha’s mother-in-law becomes her full-time nanny to help her while she is working and raising two children; Antonella works with underserved women who are housed in one of the city’s hospitality centers, just to give a few examples). Do you believe this to be a universal reality?

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CQ: I cannot say that, in general, there is solidarity amongst women. It is true that we live in a society marked by the needs of the male, and so in cinema some topics are not dealt with at all. Thus, they are labeled as female issues. Explain to me why I would need to consider welfare, as in the case of the woman who is full-time grandmother, as a female issue. Does it not pertain to the whole society? GS: I appreciate very much your linguistic precision, particularly the use of the adverbs “here” and “there”—In Il mio cuore umano, while Nada sings in the natural backdrop of Tuscany, one reads “Se io son qui a cantare e voi siete li’ é solamente un caso” (If I am here to sing and you there it is only by chance). Or the beautiful title Io, qui. Lo sguardo delle donne (I, here. Women’s Gaze). Can you explain? What are you trying to convey? CQ: Concerning Nada, I had decided to divide her existential parable into chapters, finding sentences that were hers and that enclosed the meaning of what we were about to see. In that case, here and there are, as you say, markers of the positions that have to do with a specific existential condition. Io, qui is instead a title that I wanted to use for years and which I have thought of on various occasions: the first one was when I produced L’insonnia di Devi whose working title was “io, qui. Viaggio attraverso le adozioni internazionali.” The second time was with Il mondo addosso . . . on the young migrants because I liked the idea of having them use the pronoun “I” within an abstract “here” that was spatial but also temporal; then I changed my mind. GS: In your documentaries, the backdrop seems to be either Rome or Palermo/Sicily. Why these choices? Is this dictated by your personal familiarity with these places or is there any other reason? CQ: Every story has its own needs. Certainly at the beginning, you tell only what you know. I aspire to make international films, to narrate stories that will exit the belly button of my country. I do not want to be labeled as a Sicilian filmmaker; I do not like that because I feel I belong to the world. This is something I have always felt. I make my films in Sicily also because our cinema is conservative. One is Sicilian and makes films in Sicily because these are financed earlier and easier than other stories. GS: Speaking of linguistic and geographical choices, your film L’isola in Spanish carries the title La isla de la isla, which, to me, seems more appropriate, since Favignana is an island off the island of Sicily but also looking at the destiny of Teresa and Turi. Do you agree? CQ: I was very happy to learn that in Spanish the film was titled La isla de la isla, because this gave me the certainty that the distributors of Spanish

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language understood the film and understood it profoundly. L’isola, in fact, shows human relations based on work and on affective ties, and tells of a condition very common in closed societies, in any part of the world. GS: L’isola starts with some very beautiful close-ups of water and fire, symbols of Sicily, but also of humankind, woman and man. Could you elaborate? Were these accidental or premonitory? CQ: Nothing is left to chance. These were pondered choices because the beginning of a film is always a promise. The most important thing is to keep the promise. GS: This film has touched me in a special way for all its innuendos on the physical and psychological compulsions represented in a varied manner in the life of almost all the characters of the set (as it is in real life, after all): from the grandmother and her wall, to Turi who justifies his inability to recite the poem (“aiuto mio padre, faccio il tonnaroto”—I help my father, I am a fisherman), to the mother who has to lie to avoid her husband harming Teresa, to the mechanic and his chains due to the murder he committed. But the scene that really catches the spirit of the film, and I believe, your personal philosophy, is the one with the cow about to give birth, that “intra non ci sta” (cannot stay inside) but that instead is constrained by the ropes pulled in opposite directions to deliver her veal (in poor health at birth but thriving by the end of the film). What is your opinion of the situation of the island(ers) in the twenty-first century? What is according to you the future of the modern woman and man? Can we scream “Liberi siamo” (we are free) now that the anchor, so to speak, has been hoisted? What is the end that the film confers? CQ: The scene of the cow is indeed one of my favorites. Not the scene of the cow that is delivering but the one that you describe, when we hear that she has left because she cannot stand constrictions during her act of delivery. I think that the condition of islanders in the twenty-first century is the same of the one of nonislanders. We live in a world that needs to rethink itself, that needs to question some of its basic aspects: let us consider, for example, the fact that we have not been able to demonstrate being up to the industrial promise. Let us think of the environmental pollution, for which, sooner or later, we will all pay the price. GS: Watching Teresa, I saw my reflection in the mirror (even though in a more metropolitan context) and I started a sort of self-criticism: in spite of the desire of “emancipation” and non-acceptance, Teresa is always under the attentive lead of male characters, her grandfather who continues to protect even after his death, her brother Turi, the young “boyfriend” Leonardo who assumes the role of father-husband, and the old

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friend who will be the mastermind behind the tearing down of the wall. So is this a true (r)evolution or only a failed attempt? CQ: Teresa is unaware and, in her unawareness, she is happy. While growing up and becoming woman, she enters the cage of roles and without even realizing it, she will become just like her mother, prisoner of duties that will take away her happiness. From this point of view, Teresa’s beauty is in her freedom of imagining a future in which her own aspirations do not conflict with the slavery of her social role; it is the same lot of Turi, destined to be a fisherman but who, in reality, wants to be a sailor to explore faraway lands. GS: Teresa, just like Helene (La borsa di Helene, 2000), is the manager of a bar, a world that has always belonged and continues to belong to men. In the film L’isola, Turi says that the delivery is not a spectacle for women, a contradictory statement, indeed, as it is also underscored by the surprised faces of Turi’s friends. According to you, what is, then, the world of women? Where are they more “appropriate”? CQ: The world of women is the same as the world of men. It is only that men do not want to allow any space to women. I grew up thinking that this was a problem of the past; I remember that at my first public interview, on these issues, I answered that I did not comprehend who could possibly still ask questions like this… Becoming a professional has opened my eyes and has made me understand that, unfortunately, this is a valid question today as it was yesterday: how many times, while enjoying the bliss of success, have I heard “do not let it go to your head”? Keep in mind that when I produced L’isola I was only 29 and I looked like a Martian with green and blue antennae, landing from who knows where. GS: I would like to pause a bit and reflect on the chaotic scenario of Helene’s Palermo and Teresa’s Favignana that you leave as is, as only an observer can do, in spite of your direct connection (and attachment) to these realities. How do you succeed in remaining distant, and, at the same, in connecting the spectators with these realities that are unknown to them? CQ: It is the method. The ability to listen. The rendering of the experience and the capacity of restitution. As I was saying earlier, to me the keyword of my work is RESTITUTION. I am only the vehicle through which the spectator can have this experience, an experience above all cinematic in nature, but not only. GS: Can you tell us about your recent documentary, Terramatta—Il novecento italiano di Vincenzo Rabito, analfabeta siciliano (2012)? Why did you pick this subject?

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CQ: When I read the book I imagined right away a personal film that covered the 1900s, outside of the official historiography, to embrace the point of view of the last, poor illiterate man who had contributed to the construction of Italy. I was fascinated by the idea of using the official historiography and contrast it with a very personal use of archival films. There are some sequences in the film in which the irreverence of Rabito toward the Power is indeed shattering. From the start, I understood that I was about to make a film on the story of an illiterate who conquers writing fighting against his own challenges, a universal story that goes beyond his Sicilian origins. Rabito crosses, by foot, a century; enters, rightly so, History: soils History, and together with History, he tells us the story of a life, of a man that in his old age defines his own identity based on the urgency of story telling. Much has been said and written on the 1900s of Vincenzo Rabito, but very little about the journey to self-construction that Rabito undertakes gaining, through cursing, self-awareness, awareness of his own needs, using not only the strength of his arms and his extraordinary work ability, but also that cynicism that will be useful to better his own condition. And all of this despite “quelli che comantano” (those in command), but above all despite his own origins, the fact that he was born from a widow, with brothers and sisters to feed and save from destitution. GS: Why did you choose Roberto Nobile, a very talented actor born in Verona (in the north of Italy), for your voice-over? CQ: It is known that Roberto Nobile was born in Verona. But it is often neglected by his biographers that he was raised in Ragusa, attended school in Ragusa, and is contemporary and friend to Giovanni, the youngest son of Vincenzo Rabito. My choice of Nobile is not dictated, though, by questions of the heart but exclusively by aesthetics. His notoriously hoarse voice gives the film an unmatched emotion because it is the hoarseness of an old man who looks for the meaning of his life. Moreover, Nobile reads the book very well; he understands both its language and its narrative, which is not an easy task. And he also knows how to render all the irony of Rabito, both in tone and innuendo. GS: What do you really want to pass on, more than his biography, of Rabito, with this last work of yours? CQ: Rabito is often studied by historians or literary critics, who, from the height of their science, study, interpret, and judge his language, focusing on how he himself interpreted the big collective events of the 1900s. For myself, I sought to find a voice to give to Rabito the man, the antihero, trying not to judge him, disappearing instead, assuming his own point of view. There is one aspect that scholars have completely neglected and that,

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to me, was instead a revelation: the fact that Vincenzo Rabito’s cultural nourishment has been the world of chivalric romance and of the opera dei pupi. Rabito has an epic vision of himself; he compares his wretched life to the one of Guerin Meschino, unveiling this world of chivalric adventures as the nourishment of his own self and of his self-representation. And there is more: to secure a position as roadman, he had to pass the elementary school exam, which he claims to have passed thanks to his readings, precisely l’opera dei pupi, the story of the Knights of France and of Guerin Meschino. An incredible short circuit: he remembers the tailor of The Betrothed by Alessandro Manzoni: “un uomo che sapeva leggere, che aveva letto più d’una volta il Leggendario de’ Santi, il Guerrin meschino e i Reali di Francia.” Vincenzo Rabito never ceases to amaze! That is why it is important to listen and to follow Rabito without prejudices and without a sense of superiority, remaining astounded, with enjoyment and happiness. GS: What is the future of Costanza Quatriglio, after this experience? What is the future of the Italian cinema? What is the future of the cinema of women, more specifically, according to Costanza Quatriglio? CQ: The future of the cinema of women is to fight to gain some space because in cinema, like in all workplaces, today, in Italy, women have to fight against pockets of isolation and discrimination. My future, I hope, is to make films that I love but with more resources, and above all that our Italian cinema finds pleasure again in telling stories that speak of the present. As I was saying earlier, it is known to everyone that our country is experiencing a deficiency of narration. Let’s think of the wonderful Italian cinema born out of the rubble of World War II. We do hope that out of the present rubble of our country, victim of a political, economic, and cultural crisis, a new awareness will be born and with this new awareness, also a new cinematography able to speak to the whole world.

Contributors

Maristella Cantini is assistant professor of Italian at De Pauw University, IN. She holds a PhD from the University of Wisconsin Madison, and a Laurea in foreign languages and literatures from the University of Pisa (Italy). Her research interests are centered on Italian women’s literature, women’s cinema, and postfeminist studies. Her forthcoming publications include two monographic works, respectively, about a contemporary Italian woman writer, and a woman director. Patrizia Carrano was born in Venice but lives and works in Rome. She has written plays and screenplays for theater and TV, including for several successful and popular TV series that gained a 34 percent audience share. She has published 17 books, and her essays range from Malafemmina. La Donna nel Cinema Italiano (1977) to the biography of actress Anna Magnani, La Magnani, il Romanzo di una Vita (1981, 2004). Her novels include Illuminata: la Storia di Elena Lucrezia Cornaro, Prima Donna Laureata nel Mondo (2000), Notturno con Galoppo (1996), and Le Armi e gli Amori (2003). She has received numerous awards and was recognized by the “Rhegium Julii opera prima” at the Premio Milano. As a journalist she has written for Sette, the magazine of Corriere della Sera, Elle, Amica, and other newspapers. Her forthcoming novel is Doppi Servizi, which narrates sixty years of Italian history through the gaze of the domestic staff of a bourgeois family. Fabiana Cecchini is an instructional assistant professor at Texas A&M University. She holds a Laurea in Lingue e Letterature Straniere (English and French) from the Università degli Studi di Urbino (Italy) and a PhD in Italian studies from the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA. Her main scholarly interests are women’s studies, film studies, and the relationship between film and literature. She has published on Sibilla Aleramo, the nineteenth-century author and feminist and, in cooperation with Ioana Raluca Larco, recently has coedited a collection of essays focused on Italian women writers: Italian

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Women writers and Autobiography. Ideology, Discourse and Identity in Female Life Narratives from Fascism to the Present (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2011). Claudia Consolati is completing her PhD in Italian, cinema, and gender studies. Consolati holds academic certificates from the Center for Teaching and Learning; and the Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies, and Cinema Studies programs at the University of Pennsylvania. Her interests include Italian cinema, women’s studies, cinema and religion, and twentieth-century Italian literature. Her presentations at numerous conferences have focused in particular on cinema and gender, the latest of which dealt with Greta Garbo’s performance in the filmic adaptation of Pirandello’s Come tu mi vuoi. Her article “Motherhood and Interrogation in Valeria Parrella’s Novel Lo spazio bianco (2008)” is forthcoming in the Italica. In 2010, she also published “Speaking Papers, Written Sounds: Female Voice and Oral Tradition in Maria Famà’s Looking for Cover,” in La Fusta. Ms. Consolati’s dissertation deals with the representation of women in postwar Italian cinema, in particular in the works of Rossellini, Fellini, Pasolini, and Cavani. Luke Cuculis graduated from Gettysburg College with a degree in chemistry and mathematics. He is currently pursuing a doctoral degree in physical chemistry at the University of Illinois UrbanaChampaign where his research focuses on genomic editing and the understanding of interactions between single molecules of DNAbinding proteins and DNA. While at Gettysburg College he developed a secondary interest in gender studies, particularly in constructions of masculinity in film. Daniela De Pau earned her PhD in Italian at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is an associate teaching professor at Drexel University, Philadelphia, where she lectures in contemporary Italian literature and film and coordinates the Italian program. Her main research interests are women writers and directors, the relationship between literature, cinema, and other arts, the documentary tradition and language pedagogy. She is the author of numerous articles on contemporary Italian literature and film. She also coedited the books Watching Pages Reading Pictures, Cinema and Modern Literature in Italy (Cambridge Scholar Publishing, UK, 2008) and Zoom D’oltreoceano. Istantanee sui registi italiani e sull’Italia (Vecchiarelli, Italy, 2009), and cowrote Il Divo. Film Study Program (Edizioni Farinelli, New York, 2011) and the

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reader Moda, Stile e Simboli (Edizioni Farinelli, New York, 2012). She is currently working on a book about female autobiographies. Laura Di Bianco is a PhD candidate at the Graduate Center (CUNY), in the department of Comparative Literature. After earning her degree at the University of “Roma Tre” in Film History, she worked for many years at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia as an iconographic researcher and production coordinator for numerous film projects, including the documentary film series Ritratti Italiani—Archivio della Memoria and Mestieri del Cinema. Since 2007 she has been teaching at Queens College and Hunter College in the Romance Languages and Film and Media Studies Department classes on women filmmakers and contemporary Italian women writers in translation. She also teaches film at the New School Film and Food and Italian language at Fordham University. She is currently writing her dissertation on the representation of urban space and female subjectivity in the work of Italian women directors such as Marina Spada, Francesca Comencini, and others. Cristina Gamberi gained a PhD in gender studies from the University of Naples, Italy, for her thesis The Work of Angela Carter, in the Light of Bildungsroman and Fairy Tales. Since September 2010, she has participated in GEMMA, the Erasmus Mundus Programme of Excellence leading to the European master’s degree in women’s and gender studies. She is currently based at the University of Hull, where she is writing her dissertation on Doris Lessing’s autobiographical texts. Her thesis investigates the ambiguous tension in Lessing’s texts, which question autobiography as a genre in relation to gender, oscillating between the great masculine tradition of Western autobiography and a feminist representation of the self as fragmented and multiple. She is the coeditor of “Educare al gendere. Riflessioni e strumenti per articolare la diversità” (Carocci editore, 2010. Reprinted in 2011) and the author of numerous articles on British contemporary women writers. Her research interests include contemporary women’s writing, gender studies, feminist theory, the relationship between gender and education, film studies, and studies on masculinities. Lidia Hwa Soon Anchisi Hopkins earned her PhD from New York University. She is an associate professor of Italian at Gettysburg College, where she lectures on Italian language, literature, and film. Dr. Anchisi Hopkin’s scholarship is firmly grounded in feminist theory and examines ways of questioning traditional conceptualizations of gender and sexuality

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in literature and film. She is the author of articles and presentations on subversive representations of femininity in Gabriele D’Annunzio, on lesbian desire and female sexuality in Italian erotic literature by women, and on French feminist theorists. She is currently working on two projects: an edited volume on race and ethnicity in Italy, and a study on transracial adoption in Italy. The connections between race, gender, ethnicity, nationality, and class amongst other things, that immigrants and transracial adoptees embody offer critical tools for delegitimizing negative stereotypes of race and gender and deconstructing mechanisms that maintain racial/gender order and effect racial/gender oppression. Claudia Karagoz is an assistant professor of Italian and affiliated faculty in the Women’s Studies Program at Saint Louis University. Her primary research and teaching interests are contemporary Italian literature, cinema and culture, gender studies, migration culture, and instructional technology. She has presented numerous papers on these subjects, and organized panels and round tables at national and international conferences. She has published articles on Italian women writers (“L’ottica inconscia del desiderio familiare in Cioccolata da Hanselmann di Rosetta Loy” in L’anello che non tiene. Journal of Modern Italian Literature and “Gazing Women: Elena Stancanelli’s Benzina” in Italica) and essays on Sicilian photographer and filmmaker Letizia Battaglia’s recent work (“Con occhi di donna: le nuove fotografie di Letizia Battaglia,” in Le siciliane (così sono se vi pare). Ed. Giovanna Summerfield. “Palermo Revisited: Letizia Battaglia’s Fine della storia” in Studies in European Cinema). Currently, she is also completing a manuscript on the representation of the mother-daughter bond in contemporary Italian feminist theory and women’s writing entitled Demeter’s Journeys: Mothers and Daughters in Contemporary Italian Women’s Writing. Vera Golini She has been a professor of Italian studies at St. Jerome’s University since 1975, and since 1997 has also directed the Women’s studies program at the University of Waterloo. She is currently president of the Canadian Society for Italian Studies. She also translated Dacia Maraini’s short stories, My Husband, published in English language in 2004. Dacia Maraini is a 2012 Italian Nobel Prize candidate for literature. She is an internationally recognized Italian writer and one of the most widely translated novelists in Italy and Europe. She is the author of novels, plays, poems, and collections of essays. She is also a journalist, a screenwriter, a director, and an activist. She made her literary debut with the novel La Vacanza published in 1962. Her second novel, L’Età del Malessere, won

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the International Formentor Prize in 1963 and has been translated into 12 languages. She has subsequently published 11 more novels, collections of poetry and essays. Her other translated works include Memorie di una Ladra (1973), Donna in Guerra (1975), Lettere a Marina (1981), Il Treno per Helsinki (1984), Isolina (1985), and La Lunga Vita di Marianna Ucria (1990), which has been recently translated into Arabic. Her numerous plays have been performed worldwide. She has directed several documentaries, such as L’Amore Coniugale (1970), Aborto: Parlano le Donne (1976), Mio Padre, Amore Mio (1976), Giochi di Latte (1979), Lo Scialle Azzurro (1980), and Ritratti di Donne Africane (1986). Several films have been made of her books, and she has written screenplays for directors such as Pier Paolo Pasolini, Marco Ferreri, Carlo Di Palma, Margarethe Von Trotta, and Roberto Faenza. Gaetana Marrone is professor of Italian at Princeton University. And she specializes in modern Italian literature and postwar Italian cinema. Her principal publications include articles on nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature, film, and cultural studies. She is the author of La drammatica di Ugo Betti: Tematiche e archetipi (1988); New Landscapes in Contemporary Italian Cinema (1999); The Gaze and the Labyrinth: The Cinema of Liliana Cavani (2000); Lo sguardo e il labirinto (2003; rev. and enlarged Italian edition); a critical edition of Ugo Betti, Delitto all’isola delle capre (2006); and is general editor of a two-volume Encyclopedia of Italian Literary Studies (2007). Robin Pickering-Iazzi is professor of Italian and Comparative Literature at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She has published articles and books on twentieth- and twenty-first-entury Italian culture, most recently the edited volume Donne in Terza Pagina. Racconti, 1925–1942. In process is a book examining representations of mafia and antimafia figures in Italian literature, film, and theory. Chiara Ricci is a writer and independent scholar. In 2003, she began working with the Italian American playwright Franco D’Alessandro. In 2006, she helped produce the documentary “Anna Magnani, ritratto d’attrice” for the fiftieth anniversary of the actress’s Academy Award. In 2008, she graduated in DAMS (Disciplines of Art, Music and Show) with a thesis entitled “The Theatre in Front of the Camera—Theatre’s Elements in the Cinema of Anna Magnani,” and has written a number of articles with Franco D’Alessandro for the “Tribute to Anna Magnani,” held at the “Winchester Italian Cultural Center” to celebrate Magnani’s hundredth birthday. Her book Anna Magnani Vissi d’Arte Vissi d’Amore, published by

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Edizioni Sabinae, won the Giuseppe Sciacca prize. In 2010 she graduated in “Cinema, Television and Multimedia Production” with a thesis entitled “The Cinema in Half-light of Elvira Notari” at the University of Roma Tre, Italy. Currently, she writes about cinema and theater for websites and as a film critic, while continuing her research into Anna Magnani and the history of the cinema and theater. Giovanna Summerfield received her PhD from the University of Florida. She has published and presented extensively on the French and Italian literature of the “long” eighteenth century (1660–1830; with an emphasis on Sicilian writers), religious and philosophical movements, and women’s studies. During her time at Auburn, she has received the CLA Engaged Scholar, 2009–2012, the Outstanding Scholarly Achievement in Women’s Studies, 2009–2010, and the PETL Early Teaching Career Award, Auburn University, in March 2007. She created the Taormina, Italy, Study Programs in 2005. Anita Virga is associate lecuturer at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in South Africa. She received her BA and MA in communication studies from the University of Turin, Italy, and in 2010 she received her MA in Italian studies from the University of Connecticut. She is currently working on her PhD dissertation entitled Un mondo interpretato, reinventato e “ fatto parlare”: rappresentazioni della Sicilia rurale 1860–1922, and she is coediting a book about suicide in the nineteenth century: Voglio morire! Suicide in Italian Literature, Culture, and Society 1789–1919. Her article on Rossellini’s Germany, Year Zero and the theme of suicide is forthcoming in Italica.

Index

Note: Locators followed by ‘n’ refer to notes. 81/2 , 35 Abraham, Fred Murray, 210 Ahmed, Sara, 149 Akhmatova, Anna, 123, 243 Althusser, Louis, 64, 137 Amelie, 216, 226n11 Amore e violenza (Melandri), 97 Anchisi Hopkins, Lidia Hwa Soon, 6, 53–67, 273 Antonioni, Michelangelo, 121, 131–2, 138–9, 241, 244 Aprà, Adriano, 152 Archibugi, Francesca biography, 98 filmography, 100–101 Il grande cocomero: family dynamics in, 92; healing and, 96–8; illness and, 93–6; plot, 92–3 Mignon è partita, 92, 98 Verso Sera, 92 Argento, Dario, 175 Arzner, Dorothy, 3 Austin, J. L., 64–5 Austin-Smith, Brenda, 8 automediality, 181 “autrici interrotte,” 129, 145n13 avventura ancora attuale, 76 Bahktin, Mikhail, 43 Baldry, Anna Costanza, 91 Balestrini, Nanni, 123, 243 Barthes, Roland, 38, 139

Basilico, Gabriele, 131, 133–5, 237, 239–41, 243 Basinger, Jeanine, 2 Battiato, Franco, 174 Baudelaire, 122, 136 Bellassai, Sandro, 55–8, 69n9 Bellumori, Cinzia, 3 Benini, Stefania, 212 Bertolucci, Giuseppe, 178 Bettelheim, Bruno, 68n3 Bhabha, Homi, 197 Bondanella, Peter, 2, 48n8 “Border Traffic” (O’Healy), 137 Borrelli, Ilaria biography, 224–5 Come le Formiche, 220–2 Domani si Gira, 5, 211 films, 218–24 Il piu bel Giorno della mia Vita, 222 Luccatmi, 211 Mariti in Affitto, 218–20, 222 novels, 5, 210–12 overview, 209 postfeminism, 212–18 Scosse, 210 Talking to the Trees, 222–4 Tanto Rumore per Tullia, 211–12 Bowlby, Rachel, 143 Brabon, Benjamin, 213–14 Bridget Jones’ Diary, 214–16 Brundson, Charlotte, 215–16 Bruno, Giuliana, 2, 4, 16–17, 19, 23–4 Butler, Judith, 54, 56, 63–7, 69n8, 197, 199, 207n6

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INDEX

Cannes Film Festival, 263 Cannistraro, Philip, 69n11 Canova, Gianni, 175–6 Cantini, Maristella, 1–8, 209–25, 273 Carmosino, Christian, 264 Carrano, Patrizia, 4–5, 9n2, 10n7, 225n1, 273–4 Cattaneo, Menotti, 19 Cavani, Liliana early films, 73–4 filmography, 87–8 Francesco di Assisi, 73–7, 82, 84 Galileo, 77–8 I cannibali, 78–9 Le clarisse, 83–4 L’ospite, 79–80 Milarepa, 80–2 operas, 88 scholarship on, 1–2, 4, 6–7 secular view, 77 Seventh Circle, 83 Thematic Imaginary, 73–85 themes in works of, 82–5 Cecchini, Fabiana, 173–87, 274 Chick Flicks, 216–18, 222, 224, 226n11 Chinn, Sarah, 64 Cicero, Nando, 3, 9n2 Cicioni, Mirna, 178 cinèma vérité, 152, 232 cinepanettone, 3 “citational grafting,” 64–5 Color Purple, The, 216 Comencini, Francesca biography, 115 filmography, 118–19 Lo spazio bianco: characters, 107–9; inclination in, 114–15; mothers and, 104; plot, 104; portrayal of Naples, 108–11; staging spaces, 111–15; themes, 104–6, 110–11; translation from book to film, 106–7; women’s bodies and, 104–5 SNOQ and, 103 Comenici, Luigi, 115 “concrete brotherhood,” 85 Connell, R. W., 55

Consolati, Claudia, 6, 33–46, 274 Conte, Paolo, 174 Criminal Woman (Lombroso), 203 Cuculis, Luke, 6, 53–67, 274 de Certeau, Michel, 125 de Lauretis, Teresa, 34, 37, 45, 48n7, 50n41, 150 De Pau, Daniela, 89–99, 275 Derrida, Jacques, 64–5 Di Bianco, Laura, 7, 121–44, 237–61, 275 Diaconescu-Blumenfeld, Rodica, 36, 40, 43 Diary of Sex and Politics, 164 Discipline and Punish (Foucault), 203 Doane, Mary Ann, 34, 44–5 Domani si Gira (Borrelli), 5, 209, 211 drag, 54, 63, 65–6, 69n8, 207n6 Dünne, Jörge, 181 Farinotti, Luisella, 159 Fellini, Federico, 29n6, 35–6, 40 femicide, 90 Ferris, Suzanne, 216 Festival of Bratislava, 263 Festival of Cuenca, 263 Festival of Montreal, 225 Festival of Pusan, 263 Festival of Turin, 263 Finocchiaro, Angela, 115n2 flânerie, 122, 125–7, 136, 138, 143 Forgacs, David, 122 Foucault, Michel, 76, 203, 207n8 found footage, 150–1, 153–4, 166, 176, 178–9, 182, 186, 231–3 Fraioli, Ilaria, 159, 161, 165, 167, 181, 183, 233 Franchi, Paolo, 173 Freud, Sigmund, 37–8 Fried Green Tomatoes, 216 Gamberi, Cristina, 7, 149–67, 178–9, 186, 231–5, 275–6 Garrone, Matteo, 173, 176, 257 Gay, Piergiorgio, 173, 178

INDEX 281

gaze Cavani and, 85n5 Come l’ombra and, 129, 131, 137–8 documentaries and, 232, 234, 240–1, 244–5 female, 138, 183, 252, 260, 268 Kaplan on, 42 La Notte and, 131 Lo spazio bianco and, 113–14 Love and Anarchy and, 34–7, 41, 44, 46 male, 34–7, 41–2, 44, 46, 155, 159, 201, 203 Marazzi and, 152, 155–6, 159, 169n7 oblique, 183 Pasqualino Settebellezze and, 55, 57 Rohrwacher and, 249, 252 subjectivization of, 152 violence and, 201 “Gendering Mobility and Migration” (Scarparo and Luciano), 136 Genz, Stephanie, 3, 213–14 Ginsberg, Allen, 243 Giordana, Marco Tullio, 173, 188n1 Godard, Jean-Luc, 131, 137, 241, 254 Golini, Vera, 276 Gough, Kathleen, 199, 207n5 Gutierrez, Chus, 226n16 History of Sexuality, The (Foucault), 203, 207n8 Hollinger, Karen, 217, 222 Infascelli, Alex, 173 International Film Festival of Rome, 237 “Invisible Flâneuses: Women and Literature of Modernity” (Wolff), 136 Invisibles, The, 264 Irigaray, Luce, 34, 37, 41, 209 Italian Cinema from Neorealism to Present (Bondanella), 2 Italian National Television (RAI), 73, 161, 206, 235n1, 237–8, 263 Johnston, Claire, 3, 33–4, 38, 47n7

Kaplan, E. Ann, 2–3, 34, 42–3, 48n7 Karagoz, Claudia, 7, 103–15, 276 “la meglio gioventù,” 173, 175–6 La sconosciuta, 137 Laviosa, Flavia, 91, 96 Ligabue, Luciano, 174 Lincoln Center’s Italian Film Festival, 237 Lombroso, Cesare, 203 Lorcano Film Festival, 154 Luciano, Bernardette, 136, 265 Lucini, Luca, 173 Maderna, Giovanni, 178 Maggioni, Daniele, 135, 238 Maiorca, Donatella biography, 206 Purple Sea: figure of Angelo/a, 195–9; importance of, 204–6; overview, 195–6; patriarchal society, 199–204 Viola di mare, 117n14 Mamma Roma, 135 Marazzi, Alina critical nostalgia, 166–7 cultural context of work, 152–3 “docu-diary” and, 178–9 early career, 178 feminist themes and, 150–2 interview, 231–5; on archival material, 231–2; on early career, 231; on female displacement, 233–4; on motherhood, 234–5; on Un’ora sola ti vorrei, 232–3; on Vogliamo anche le rose, 233–4 La meglio Gioventù and, 173–6 literature and, 178 overview, 150, 176–7 scholarship on, 7 supplementary material released with DVDs, 174, 180–2 themes in work, 177–8 Un’ora sola ti vorrei: critical reception of, 154; form, 154–5; fragmentation, 157–9; making of, 153–4; narrative structure, 155–7; opening scene, 54; voiceover, 155–7

282

INDEX

Marazzi, Alina—Continued Vogliamo anche le rose: Anita’s diary, 162–3; meaning of title, 159–60; opening sequence, 162; parody and, 161–2; politics in, 165–6; relation to previous work, 160–1; Teresa’s diary, 163–4; Valentina’s diary, 164–5 Marcellino pane e vino, 115 Mariaini, Dacia, 276–7 Mariaini, Umberto, 67n1 Marrone, Gaetana, 6, 73–85, 277 Masini, Mario, 165 Massey, Doreen, 141 Mastrandrea, Valerio, 255 Maude (cultural association), 1, 254, 258 Mazzacurati, Carlo, 137 McCabe, Janet, 2 McIsaac, Paul, 33, 47n6 McRobbie, Angela, 2, 226n8 Melandri, Lea, 97, 181–2 Menarini, Roy, 107–8, 117n15 Merini, Alda, 122–3, 144n1 mimicry, 64, 66, 162, 197 Minchia di Re (Pilati), 195 Monti, Adriana, 165 Mulvey, Laura, 2–3, 34, 36–8, 47n7, 48n17, 149, 159 Mussolini, Benito, 22–3, 30n25, 34, 38–9, 45, 54, 56, 58, 66–7, 69n11 Negra, Diane, 214 Newport International Film Festival, 154 Nobile, Robert, 271–2 Notari, Elvira background, 29 Dora Film, 19, 22–3 Dora Film of America, 23–4 film production, 19–21 Gennariello Film, 21–2 lack of scholarship on, 2 overview, 6, 18 themes in works of, 24–9 O’Healy, Aine, 4, 117n20, 137 Ortese, Anna Maria, 247, 250

Parrella, Valeria, 104, 106–7, 109 Partito Nazionale Fascista (PNF), 126, 245n1 Pasolini, Pier Paolo, 77, 81, 137, 156, 168n3 patriarchy Archiburgi and, 89–93, 97 Borelli and, 210, 217, 220, 223 Doane and, 44 guns and, 55–7 Irigaray and, 37 Italian cinema and, 5 Kaplan and, 42–3 Maiorca and, 195–8, 201, 203 Marazzi and, 161, 167, 185 Massey and, 141 Mulvey and, 36–7, 39–40 Notari and, 19 postfeminism and, 215 Spada and, 122 Wertmüller and, 5, 39–40, 42–3, 45–6, 55–7, 59 Wilson and, 142 women’s political countercinema and, 33 performativity, 54, 56, 63–5, 67, 69n8 Piccioni, Giuseppe, 178, 184 Pickering-Iazzi, Robin, 277 Pietrangeli, Antonio, 241 Pilati, Giacomo, 195, 204 postfeminism Borrelli and, 212–18, 220 Chick Flicks and, 222, 224 explained, 225n3 film criticism and, 3 Pozzi, Antonia, 123, 125–8, 237, 239– 40, 243, 245 Practice of Everyday Life, The (de Certeau), 125 Quatriglio, Costanza, 7, 251, 263–72 écosaimale, 267 interview: on documentaries, 264–5; on future, 272; on Invisibles, 264; on L’isola, 266–70; on Robert Nobile, 271–2;

INDEX 283

on Terramata, 270–1; on themes in work, 265–6; on women’s portrayal in film, 267–8 Io, qui. Lo sguardo delle donne, 267–8 overview, 263–4 Radner, Hilary, 2, 8, 218, 225n3 Randi, Paola impact on filmmaking, 7, 121 interview with, 253–61; on documentaries, 255; on early career, 254–5; on female gaze, 260; on Into Paradise, 255–7; on Maude, 258–60; on Milan, 257–8; on representation, 256 Into Paradise, 253, 255–6 Rohrwacher and, 248 study of women’s films, 251 Reggio Calabria, 121, 247–9, 252 Reggio, Godfrey, 178 Rhys, Jean, 149 Ricci, Chiara, 2, 15–29, 277 Rich, Adrienne, 151, 164, 199–202, 207n4–5 Rich, B. Ruby, 216 Riches, Pierre, 84 Righelli, Gennaro, 19 Ring-Independent Filmmakers of the New Generation, 173 Rohrwacher, Alice, 7, 121, 247–52, 261 interview: on church, 249–50; on Corpo Celeste, 248–50; on early career, 248; on gaze, 249, 252; on Reggio Calabria, 249, 252; on women directors, 251 overview, 247–8 Roma, 36 Romito, Patrizia, 90, 93–4, 97 Rossellini, Roberto, 74 Rothko, Mark, 131 ruralism, 56 Russell, Diana, 90, 93 Russell, Ken, 73 Scarparo, Susanna, 136, 178, 265 Scosse (Borelli), 209–10

Se non ora quando (SNOQ), 103, 115n2 Sex and the City, 215–17 Simmel, Georg, 16 Sorrentino, Paolo, 173, 259 Space, Place, and Gender (Massey), 141 Spada, Marina Come l’ombra, 127–44 death in films of, 124 Deserto Rosso, 122 entrapment and, 136 Forza Cani, 123–6 gaze and, 138–9 Il mio domani, 127–44 interview, 237–45; on Basilico, 240–1; on Come l’ombra, 240–2, 244; on early career, 238; on Forza cani, 238–9; on gaze, 245; on Il mio domani, 241, 244–5; on influences, 241–3; on landscapes, 242–3; on Pozzi, 239–40 “La mia città,” 122, 144 landscape in works of, 131–6 L’Avventura, 122 L’eclisse, 122 Milan and, 124–5, 138–9 mothers in work, 141–2 overview, 121–2 Poesia che mi guardi, 126–30 poetry and, 123 prostitution in works, 136–7 treatment of place, 122 violence and, 137–8 walking and, 143 Sphinx in the City, The (Wilson), 142 Stampa, Gaspara, 1 Summerfield, Giovanna, 263–72, 278 Sundance Film Festival, 247 Swept Away, 33 Tasker, Yvonne, 2, 214 Terragni, Laura, 89, 91 Tola, Vittoria, 97 Torino Film Festival, 154 Tornatore, Giuseppe, 137 “transparence-absence,” 5

284

INDEX

Un ragazzo di Calabria, 115 Valentini, Chiara, 5, 212, 224 Vanzina, Carlo, 3 Venice Film Festival, 115, 130, 237, 240, 253, 263–4 Vesna va veloce, 137 Vesuvio Film, 18–19 Virga, Anita, 195–206, 278 “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” (Mulvey), 3, 47n7 Wertmüller, Lina Love and Anarchy: brothel in, 37–43; cinematography, 35–6; family and, 42; female characters, 38–40, 43–4; fetishism and, 38–9; grotesque in, 40–1, 44; masculinity and, 35–7; plot, 33–4; reflections and,

45–6; themes, 34–5; voyeurism and, 37–8 Pasqualino Settebelleze: fascism and, 56–7; gender and, 63–6; grotesque in, 67; gun in, 55, 60–3; linguistic signs in, 65; masculinity and, 54–67; plot, 54; themes, 53–4; women and, 56–7 scholarship on, 1–2, 4, 6 When We Dead Awaken (RIch), 164 Wilson, Elizabeth, 142 Wolff, Janet, 136 Woolf, Virginia, 251 Young, Mallory, 216 Zagarrio, Vito, 173–6, 188n3 Zajczyk, Francesca, 212 Zamboni, Chiara, 178 Zeffirelli, Franco, 74