Re-discovering Inventions: Introduction to the History of Italian Cinema Technique (original) (raw)

Early Film Theories in Italy, 1896-1922

2017

This collection is the first to bring together scholars to explore the ways in which various people and groups in Italian society reacted to the advent of cinema. Looking at the responses of writers, scholars, clergymen, psychologists, philosophers, members of parliament, and more, the pieces collected here from that period show how Italians developed a common language to describe and discuss this invention that quickly exceeded all expectations and transcended existing categories of thought and artistic forms. The result is a close-up picture of a culture in transition, dealing with a 'scandalous' new technology that appeared poised to thoroughly change everyday life.

Of Artists and Models. Italian Silent Cinema between Narrative Convention and Artistic Practice

Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 2013

The paper presents the author’s research on the representation of painters and sculptors, their models and their art works in Italian silent cinema of the 1910s and early 1920s. This research deals with both the combination of optical (painterly) vs. haptical (sculptural) cinema. It also problematizes art versus the real, as well as art conceived from cinema’s own perspective, that is within the conventions of European and American cinema. In addition to research in these filmic conventions the author compares how the theme manifests itself within different genres, such as comedy, crime and adventure films, diva films and strong men films. Examples are : Il trionfo della forza (The Triumph of Strength, 1913), La signora Fricot è gelosa (Madam Fricot is Jelous, 1913), Il fuoco (The Fire, Giovanni Pastrone, 1915), Il fauno (The Faun, Febo Mari, 1917), Il processo Clemenceau (The Clemenceau Affair, Alfredo De Antoni, 1917) and L’atleta fantasma (The Ghost Athlete, Raimondo Scotti, 1919...

Topoi of technology in Italian ‘experimental’ industrial film (1959-1973)

In: Proceedings of the International Conference on Music Semiotics in Memory of Raymond Monelle, The University of Edinburgh, 26-28 October 2012 (ed. by N. Panos, V. Lympouridis, G. Athanasopoulos and P. Nelson), Edinburgh: International Project on Music and Dance Semiotics 2013, pp. 394-403, 2013

After discussing some problematic premises of topic theory in relation to the study of cinema, the paper proposes to investigate audiovisual topoi by combining Rick Altman's "semantic/syntactic/pragmatic" approach to film genre with the structural perspective on audiovisual "textuality" developed by Gianmario Borio starting from the reflections of Michel Chion and Nicholas Cook. This methodological framework is applied to the case of Italian industrial cinema. An outline of the history of this non-fiction genre presents technology as a semantic field emerging in relation to the rapid industrialization process during the period of the so-called Italian "economic miracle" (1958-1963). Pragmatic aspects play a significant role. In those years the major industrial corporations and centres for scientific research (Enea, Eni, Fiat, Innocenti, Italsider, Olivetti) invested in cinematographic communication as a means to promote their image and popularize scientific-technological information, taking advantage of state subsidies. On this basis industrial cinema became a field of conscious audiovisual experimentation. Among the musical collaborators we find prominent avantgarde composers engaged in the field of both electroacoustic and instrumental music, such as Luciano Berio and Egisto Macchi. Their contribution produced a radical change in the soundscape of the genre, directly affecting the audiovisual representation of technology. Particularly electronic and concrete music were the fundamental component in the recurrence of audiovisual structures forming new topoi. Among these emerge both topical configurations aiming at producing simple communicational effects and elaborate constructions involving the use of rhetoric figures.

Early Film Theories in Italy, 1896–1922. The Little Magic Machine

2017

The intuitive method consists of making an impression on the senses, but especially sight, in order to arrive at the intellect's comprehension. This method, which was organized in schools by [Johann Heinrich] Pestalozzi [and] applied in kindergartens by [Friedrich] Fröbel has now become universal. Indeed, what modern school does not have abacuses, wall charts, and other intuitive objects? Catholics, however, have not always done a good job in this regard. I remember that at the Seventh Italian Catholic Congress held in Lucca in 1887, a certain Professor Bottaro, a Genoese priest with broad-minded ideas, proposed that we adopt the Fröbelian system in our religious boarding schools and recreation centres. 1 Commendatore Paganuzzi, with that excitement, that impetuousness, and with that eloquence all his own, sprang into action. 2 He railed against such a method, calling it heretical, worthy of excommunication, and a promoter of materialism, since-as he rightly said-it is not possible to have objective representations of spiritual or supernatural things. He added that the Catholic members of Venice's city council have only one victory, which was using their vote to prevent the city from adding a bronze crown to the tomb of Doctor Froebel. By stating these words with the aforementioned vehemence, [Paganuzzi] aroused the enthusiasm of the assembly, which broke out in waves of applause. That applause naturally buried the proposal of poor Professor Bottaro. Despite this applause, I remained sceptical, and with melancholy, uttered that famous verse: 'Victrix causa Diis placuit sed victa Catoni' ('The victorious cause pleased the Gods, but the conquered cause pleased Cato'). 3 Indeed, how can you call a method heretical and excommunicatory when it coincides perfectly with the genesis of our ideas and follows the sequence of our learning? Who doesn't know that the higher faculties always start from some perceivable element in order to exercise their function? In other words, who doesn't know that sensation is the primary material that when elaborated on by human intelligence is transformed into an idea? Call to mind, gentlemen, that stupendous tercet with which the divine Alighieri sculpted in just two [sic] verses the entire gnoseological system of scholasticism: 'Così convien parlare al vostro ingegno, | il quale solo da sensato

Italian Film: The State of the Field

Italian Studies, 2015

Around the 1910s, as Francesco Casetti writes, early commentary on Italian film was 'a kind of muddled discursive crowding, more than an ordered constellation, where different contributions emerge, side by side, even overlapping, but also in dialogue with each other'. Specifically,