Italian Women Filmmakers and The Gendered Screen

Italian and Italian American Studies
Stanislao G. Pugliese
Hofstra University
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REBECCA WEST JOSEPHINE GATTUSO HENDIN

University of Chicago New York University
FRED GARDAPHÉ PHILIP V. CANNISTRARO†

Queens College, CUNY Queens College and the Graduate School, CUNY
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Università di Roma “La Sapienza”
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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,
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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.
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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
This page intentionally left blank
Contents
List of Figures xi
Foreword xiii
Patrizia Carrano
Preface xvii
Dacia Maraini
Acknowledgments xxiii
Introduction 1
Maristella Cantini
Part I
1 Napoli Terra d’Amore: The Eye on the Screen of Elvira Notari 15
Chiara Ricci
2 Grotesque Bodies, Fragmented Selves: Lina Wertmüller’s
Women in Love and Anarchy (1973) 33
Claudia Consolati
3 Don’t Bring a Gun to a Fistfight: Deconstructing
Hegemonic Masculinity through the Gun in Lina
Wertmüller’s Pasqualino Settebellezze 53
Lidia Hwa Soon Anchisi Hopkins and Luke Cuculis
4 Adventurous Identities: Cavani’s Thematic Imaginary 73
Gaetana Marrone
5 Healing the Daughter’s Body in Francesca
Archibugi’s Il Grande Cocomero 89
Daniela De Pau
6 Motherhood Revisited in Francesca Comencini’s Lo
Spazio Bianco 103
Claudia Karagoz
x CONTENTS
7 Women in the Deserted City: Urban Space in Marina

Spada’s Cinema 121
Laura Di Bianco
8 Envisioning Our Mother’s Face: Reading Alina Marazzi’s
Un’ora sola ti vorrei and Vogliamo anche le rose 149
Cristina Gamberi
9 Alina Marazzi’s Women: A Director in Search of
Herself through a Female Genealogy 173
Fabiana Cecchini
10 Angela/o and the Gender Disruption of Masculine
Society in Purple Sea 195
Anita Virga
11 Ilaria Borrelli: Cinema and Postfeminism 209
Maristella Cantini
Part II
12 Skype Interview with Alina Marazzi (June 2012) 231
Cristina Gamberi
13 Interview with Marina Spada (Milan, June 2012) 237
Laura Di Bianco
14 Interview with Alice Rohrwacher (Rome, June 2012) 247
Laura Di Bianco
15 Interview with Paola Randi (Rome, June 2012) 253
Laura Di Bianco
16 Interview with Costanza Quatriglio (July 2012) 263
Giovanna Summerfield
Notes on Contributors 273

Index 279
Figures
7.1 Poesia che mi guardi, Marina Spada’s set journal, 2009 128
7.4 Come l’ombra, Marina Spada’s set journal, 2006 132
7.7 Il mio domani, Marina Spada’s set journal, 2011 139
7.8 Il mio domani, Marina Spada’s set journal, 2011 140
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 play-
ing 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 cin-
ematography, 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 possi-
bility 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
xiv FOREWORD
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 film-
makers 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 repre-
sented 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 wom-
an’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 direc-
tor 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
FOREWORD xv
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, extraor-
dinarily 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 den-
sity 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 impos-
sible, to come across a merely consumer idea of sexuality. Liliana Cavani
narrated the morbidity of a sadomasochistic bond, a mirror of very differ-
ent 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 impos-
sible, 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 conclu-
sion, 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 evi-
dent 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
xvi FOREWORD
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 consid-
ered 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 pic-
ture-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 ori-
gins of our national literature, no one has ever introduced writings by our
women mystics, which to this day remain in the various convents, practi-
cally 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
xviii PREFACE
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 admin-
istration 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 imagina-
tion? 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 stu-
dent 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, feel-
ing 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 cen-
turies 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
PREFACE xix
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, iso-
lated, and humiliated for having wanted to be considered for her talent
as a painter. Her works, of great scenic power, display with unmistak-
able 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 margin-
alized 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 prob-
lem: 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
xx PREFACE
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 his-
tory 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 every-
day 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 tech-
nology. 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 distribu-
tion persuaded of this?
Distribution is still the weak link in the propagation and the popu-
larization 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 institution-
alized cinema, clashing continually as they do with the biases and dis-
criminations of cinema’s great industrialists? Or, should they work with
alternative networks whose roots can reach the most critical nerve cen-
ters of society, thus creating groups of consensus, which, however, will
PREFACE xxi
never equal those attained by massively distributed films or reap such

huge profits?
Many women directors rightly handle the world of global distribu-
tion 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 con-
sider the immediate relationship with the public, but rather pays atten-
tion 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 increas-
ingly 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
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, intellec-
tually 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 conversa-
tions 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 read-
ing committee, who gave their time and knowledge to review the mate-
rial 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 contribu-
tors 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
xxiv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
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 sev-
eral 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 exper-
tise, 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 contempo-
rary trends are all profusely explored and discussed by Italian film schol-
ars 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
2 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 aca-
demic 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 syn-
onym for male-authored cinema, and intentionally challenges the exist-
ing 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 text-
book 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 per-
spective 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 criti-
cism, 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, more-
over, 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.
INTRODUCTION 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 consider-
able number of publications authored by male critics. Women filmmak-
ers 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 direc-
tors inundated Italian cinema with erotic, commercial comedies featur-
ing young, naked female protagonists, insistently ignoring the women’s
movement, thereby nullifying its demands. Moreover, this kind of cin-
ema 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 inter-
national 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 terminol-
ogy 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 impos-
sible task of juggling motherhood and pressing job demands (70–84). She
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 denun-
ciation 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 mid-
1990s, 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 main-
tain 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 dynam-
ics 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 ambi-
tious task of filling the void that exists in Italian film criticism. The intent
is to stimulate criticism of and attention toward Italian women filmmak-
ers 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 pref-
ace 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
INTRODUCTION 5
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 actu-
ally 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, jour-
nalism, 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 filmmak-
ers? How are those films produced and distributed? How do they receive
funding? Who is eligible for funding? Why are many of the female direc-
tors 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 writ-
ers, musicians, painters, photographers, poets, or documentary-makers.
Many are scriptwriters, actresses, playwrights, and producers. The primary
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 dif-
ferent angles and quite distinctively from the way in which they are fea-
tured 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 situ-
ations 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 impor-
tant 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, pros-
titution, 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, start-
ing from Elvira Notari (1875–1946), who was the first Italian woman film-
maker 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 gen-
erates 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 reflec-
tion 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
INTRODUCTION 7
article on Liliana Cavani’s Thematic Imaginary. Here the contributor

discusses the ability of the director to depict both spirituality and car-
nality 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 dif-
ferent 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 sur-
face 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 contrib-
utes to frame the female protagonist from a more intimate perspective.
The role of the mother-daughter returns in terms of regaining posses-
sion 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 pre-
sented 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 iden-
tity, but as the woman in particular.
The second part of the book consists of recent and previously unpub-
lished interviews. Some are with filmmakers discussed in the essays to
offer the critical interpretation and direct voice of the filmmakers them-
selves. 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 inter-
pretations, 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
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 free-
dom 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 cre-
ativity. 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 sub-
ject to a more fluid, prismatic, and global one. I privilege an idea of conti-
nuity 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 Twenty-
First 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 direc-
tors’ 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 his-
tories 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
INTRODUCTION 9
authors. There are no histories of Italian cinema written by women scholars,

which is another big void in our body of criticism.
2. 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 mov-
ies 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 film-
makers of those years.
3. http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/jc12–13folder/britfemtheory.
html (accessed March 15, 2013).
4. For an extensive reflection, see Ann Kaplan, Feminism and Film (Oxford,
UK; New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).
5. Aine O’Healy, “Italian Feminism and Women’s Filmmaking: Inter-
sections 1975–1995,” http://tell.fll.purdue.edu/RLA-Archive/1995/Italian-
html/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 con-
ventional academic studies.
6. 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.”
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 condi-
tion 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.
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INTRODUCTION 11
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O’ Healy, Aine. “Italian Feminism and Women’s Filmmaking: Inter-
sections 1975–1995,” http://tell.fll.purdue.edu/RLA-Archive/1995/Italian-
html/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-for-

getfulness, 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 trans-
formations in everyday life in the period between the end of the nineteenth
16 CHIARA RICCI
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 con-
sciousness (Bruno 1995: 69–70). Each individual began to think of him-
self (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 atmo-
sphere, 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 pub-
lic—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
NAPOLI TERRA D’AMORE 17
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 inten-
tion 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 intel-
lectuals 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 sub-
ject 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 cinemato-
graphic 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,
18 CHIARA RICCI
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 impor-
tance 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 pro-
duction. 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, intellec-

tual, 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 mod-
ern 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.
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 pho-
tographer, 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 creat-
ing 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 cinema-
owner gave to his public in order to make them happy and satisfied by the
20 CHIARA RICCI
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 documen-
taries 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 scriv-
eva 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 ammic-
camenti 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 cre-
ated 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’ pro-
duction 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
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 pro-
duction in five series: Grandi romanzi popolari, Grandi canzoni popo-
lari, 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 advanta-
geous offers by various Italian film companies. In 1920, after the open-
ing 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),
22 CHIARA RICCI
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
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 peo-
ple 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 leg-
ge—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).
24 CHIARA RICCI
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 vis-
ited 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 appreci-
ated 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, jeal-
ousy, love, maternity, brotherhood, suicide, madness, honor, homicide,
homeland, dishonor, work, family, marriage, vanity, femininity, war, jus-
tice, 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 identifica-
tion with the protagonists on the screen. These themes, thanks to their
naturalness and spontaneity, make extremely easy and almost involun-
tary 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 reac-
tions 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 moth-
erhood and brotherhood. The absence of only one of these themes is suf-
ficient to create a sort of imbalance in the family on the screen. There
will be the family member’s right and duty—sometimes helped by some-

one 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 pic-
ture 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
26 CHIARA RICCI
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 squa-
glia. (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 moti-
vate 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 with-
out 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 reestab-
lished, too. This way Elvira Notari wants to get a look on the surround-
ing 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
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 abbi-
amo 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
28 CHIARA RICCI
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 coop-
erative. 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 sede-
vano 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 sod-
disfazione, 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 twen-
tieth 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,
another life, light, and memory today: at the beginning of the twenty-
first 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 docu-
mentaries. 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 talk-
ing 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 nur-
turing 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 CHIARA RICCI
11. He was a Neapolitan writer, poet, and playwright (1860–1934).

12. Pseudonym of Rina Faccio (1876–1960), an Italian writer and poet.
13. He was a writer, playwright, and journalist (1819–1891).
14. He was an Italian poet, writer, playwright, journalist, and author of classic
Neapolitan songs (1883–1942).
15. She was an Italian writer and journalist and she founded and directed the
newspaper called Il Mattino (1856–1927).
16. He was an Italian filmmaker, screenwriter, and actor (1886–1949).
17. They are Guglielmo, Roberto, and Vincenzo Troncone. They founded in
1906 the society Fratelli Troncone & C., which became Partenope Film
in 1909.
18. He was an ex-conjurer who understood the hypnotic ability of the cinema.
19. 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.
20. It is a cultural movement (cinema, literature) born at the beginning of 1940s
until 1950s. The art is inspired by the reality.
21. Inspired by the namesake song, by ‘O festino, and by a tale written by Pacif-
ico Vento.
22. This was Dora Film’s satellite film company directed by Eduardo Notari.
23. A little Neapolitan boy.
24. This is how Mussolini termed the power of cinema, and he delivered this
slogan during the opening of Cinecittà (April 21, 1937).
25. Then Mussolini founded the Istituto Luce (1925) and the Centro Sperimentale
di Cinematografia (1935).
26. The fights by knife.
27. The feast of Piedigrotta, which opened on September 7, 1876.
Bibliography
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Milano: Il Castoro, 2005.
———. “La spettatrice muta. Il pubblico cinematografico femminile nell’Italia
del primo Novecento.” In Dall’Asta, Non solo dive, 269–287.
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———. Cinema muto italiano. II. Industria e organizzazione dello spettacolo
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———. Archivio del cinema italiano. Il cinema muto 1905–1931. vol 1. Roma:
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Ass. L. Martinelli, 1996.
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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 quintes-
sential incarnation of feminist Claire Johnston’s call for a women’s
political countercinema operating within the codes of the tradition-
ally 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 con-
dition 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 revo-
lutionary attempts cannot limit themselves to representation. They must
34 CLAUDIA CONSOLATI
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 portray-
ing female oppression, the story line simultaneously shows what misfor-
tunes 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 fas-
cist 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 moti-
vated 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 promi-
nent 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 estab-
lished 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 con-
tentious 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 ambiva-
lence stems from Wertmüller’s personal and cinematic background. The
filmmaker’s notorious flamboyant style and her love for distortion and
GROTESQUE BODIES, FRAGMENTED SELVES 35
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 pre-
sumably 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 alter-
nates 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 con-
firm 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 country-
side 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 cor-
relation 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 sem-
bri un affamato davanti a una rosticceria!” (You have two eyes that make
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 gat-
tino 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 charac-
ter 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 politi-
cal 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 Spatoletti-
Mimì-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 connec-
tion to male visual pleasure is the one depicting the Via dei Fiori pros-
titutes showcasing themselves for their clients at the beginning of the
workday. The sequence is Wertmüller’s own reinterpretation of two simi-
lar 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 phallogocen-
tric 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
based on scopophilia, which, borrowing from Freud, Mulvey defines

as “pleasure in looking at another person as an object.”12 In her femi-
nist 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 con-
templation 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 sco-
pophilic, 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 sco-
pophilic 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 patriar-
chy. 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 prostitu-
tion 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
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 sig-
nifier 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 de-
prived 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 connota-
tive meaning that is presented as a natural given and that, as such, cor-
roborates the “ideology of sexism” at the heart of classical cinema.17
While voyeurism is only initially present during the prostitutes’ show-
case, since immediate material gratification follows the initial visual stim-
ulation, the other key aspect of cinematic pleasure as described by Mulvey,
namely fetishism, is maintained throughout. According to Freud, fetish-
ism 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 mascu-
line 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 voy-
eurism 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 integ-
rity, 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,
and is extremely conscious of her mission but only has indirect political
agency, the film’s women do not demonstrate any awareness of the con-
temporary 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 rea-
sons 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 noninterfer-
ence 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 pac-
ifist pleas. On the one hand, Salomé’s final capitulation, as well as the ani-
mated, 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 mili-
tarism 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 indi-
vidual 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 responsibili-
ties; 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 unquestion-
ably 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 frag-
mentation. 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 fragmen-
tation that the mise-en-scène represents, and possibly denounces, but that
Wertmüller endorses through framing, editing, and camera movements.
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’ show-
case, 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 down-
ward 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 per-
formances correspond to two radically opposed models of beauty and
womanhood—the virgin and the whore. The clash between these two ste-
reotypical 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, exag-
gerated 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 influ-
ence 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, how-
ever, these deformed female characters could be regarded as subversive
of the mainstream, patriarchal order and of its limiting and objectify-
ing ideas of femininity. An advocate of the second faction, Diaconescu-
Blumenfeld sees Wertmüller’s grotesque women as bearers of alternative
paradigms that subvert phallogocentric standards of feminine beauty. In
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 repul-
sive, 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 pop-
ulation, 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 corrobo-
rating 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 per-
petrated by fascism, inside the house of tolerance the camera privileges
medium shots and close-ups to convey a sense of claustrophobic, “uter-
ine” 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 plea-
sure that shuns reproduction. As such, it figures as an antibourgeois alter-
native 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 mater-
nity. Rather, by choosing to represent the Via dei Fiori’s prostitutes as
grotesque, nonreproductive, and segregated, Love and Anarchy thema-
tizes the abjection inscribed in womanhood and motherhood. In Julia
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 genera-
tive powers are perceived as a threat to the male sense of self, a dynamic
that Love and Anarchy reenacts by displacing typically male phobias vis-
à-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 patri-
archal 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 cre-
ate 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 pos-
sibility 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 correla-
tion 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 con-
figuration 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.
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 reevalu-
ated 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, irrev-
erent; 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 delin-
eated 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’ position-
ing 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 align-
ment 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
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 mark-
edly 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 claustro-
phobic close-ups of Salomé’s deadly pale face, covered in white powder
and encircled by oversized steel hairpins, underscore her status of gro-
tesque puppet. As she tells the story of her boyfriend, Anteo, her ghostly
white face and dark eyes stand out, the contrast between the rosy com-
plexion 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 patriar-
chy. 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 hetero-
sexual, 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).
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 ornamen-
tal features. Tonino gains awareness of his mission by repeatedly look-
ing 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 reflect-
ing 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 pre-
cisely what the prostitutes cannot possess. This ban carries deep ideo-
logical 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:
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 reflec-

tions 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 night-
gowns, 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
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.
2. Paul McIsaac and Gina Blumenfeld, “You Cannot Make the Revolution on
Film: Interview with Lina Wertmüller,” Cineaste 7.2 (Spring 1976): 7.
3. Gideon Bachmann and Lina Wertmüller, “‘Look, Gideon—:’ Gideon
Bachmann Talks with Lina Wertmüller,” Film Quarterly 30.3 (Spring
1977): 5.
4. Gabrielle Lucantonio, “L’altra metà dello schermo: Lina Wertmüller,” in
Flavio De Bernardini, ed., Storia del cinema italiano, vol. 12 (Venezia:
Marsilio, 2008), 137.
5. Johnston, “Women’s Cinema as Counter-Cinema,” 29.
6. 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.
7. 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 start-
ing point, Love and Anarchy will also be interrogated from the perspec-
tive 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 femi-
nism developed, which dismissed essentialism, wanted to be constructive
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 move-
ment, 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.
8. 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 introduc-
tion to Man in Disorder, xi–xxiv.
9. 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.
10. 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.
11. Diaconescu-Blumenfeld, “Regista di Clausura,” 400.
12. Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Screen 16.3 (1975): 9.
13. Teresa de Lauretis, Alice Doesn’t: Feminism, Semiotics, Cinema (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1984), 20.
14. 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; empha-
sis mine.
15. Johnston, “Women’s Cinema as Counter-Cinema,” 25.
16. Roland Barthes, Mythologies (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1957).
17. 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 sym-
bolic relevance as it metacinematically represents the gender power dynam-
ics implied in cinema, according to which the spectators identify with the
male characters beholding the female performer on stage. Similar mecha-
nisms 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.
18. Sigmund Freud, “Fetishism,” International Journal of Psychoanalysis 9 (1928):
161–166.
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 Diaconescu-
Blumenfeld, “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 exem-
plified by the Nazi camp officer, Heidi (Shirley Stoler), in Seven Beauties.
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 sen-
sible 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 possibil-
ity 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 stru-
menti 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.
———. Technologies of Gender: Essays on Theory, Film, and Fiction. Bloomington:

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 stru-
menti 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
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.
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)
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
W 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 con-
troversial: 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 misun-
derstanding of Italy’s comedic genre. Scholars such as William and Joan
Magretta recognized in this controversial coupling a carnivalesque tra-
dition 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
54 HOPKINS AND CUCULIS
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 masculin-
ity 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 viril-
ity. 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 insti-
tutionalization 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 concep-
tion 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 imagi-
nary” (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 hege-
monic 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 performa-
tivity, 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, empha-
size the ridiculousness of men “being” women, and thereby reinforce the
essentialist argument that gender is prediscursive, ontologically deter-
mined (men cannot be women because there is an essential difference
between the two genders). But what happens when man tries to inhabit
DON’T BRING A GUN TO A FISTFIGHT 55
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 perfor-
mance, one that attempts to inhabit a model of fascist virility, but falls
short of achieving such a goal. In recent years, scholars in gender stud-
ies 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 cul-
tural 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 con-
temporary 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 fan-
tasy. It boosts men’s self-confidence and enables them to adopt an image
of strength and aggression, thereby creating a distinction between them-
selves 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 intro-
duced 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 illus-
trate 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
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 destabi-
lize hegemonic masculinity.
More than a political party or a nation-ruling militaristic force, the
fascist regime sought to reshape the way Italians thought about them-
selves 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 fas-
cist 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 ath-
letic prowess and physical power in their pupils (Gori 1999). On the oppo-
site 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 moder-
nity 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
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 patriar-
chal 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 dishev-
eled 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 acces-
sory, he delicately places it on his lapel, completing his swank ensemble.
In this scene, normative gender codes and representations are precari-
ously 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 disequi-
librium 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 perpetua-
tion 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 glamoriza-
tion 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 position-
ing emphasizes the rays of natural lighting streaming down, illuminat-
ing the cobblestone streets, a brightness that is reflected in the smiles of
the city residents. Pasqualino is clearly at home in this urban environ-
ment as he saunters down the streets with a look of pleasant complacency.
These images that color the screen are in direct contrast with the dis-
mal German countryside where Pasqualino is trapped in real time. The
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 pro-
moted by Mussolini (Bellassai 2005).
Another indication of Pasqualino’s failed masculinity can be identi-
fied 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 dig-
nity 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 typi-
cally 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 psychi-
atric institution where he serves as an orderly. Thus, for better and for
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 blan-
ket 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 wom-
en’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 com-
mon ground; yet it is in the very use of the gun that his machismo comi-
cally 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 mas-
culinity 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 aggres-
sion, 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 con-
ceptions 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 masculin-
ity is precisely what inspires Pasqualino to carry a gun. But as we shall
see, the gun fails to transfer its symbolic power to Pasqualino, leaving
him comically emasculated. Prior to its failure, the protagonist’s depen-
dence 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 admis-
sion: 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, dra-
matically 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 sym-
bolic power attributed by the gun. This link is further confirmed in the
flashback scene discussed earlier in which Pasqualino is seen prepar-
ing himself for his day on the town. In the midst of his grooming rou-
tine, 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 sym-
bolic role, allowing its possessor to become intimidating and aggres-
sive, 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 dis-
play 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
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 spe-
cific paradigm of masculinity. One, however, that is immediately con-
tested 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 ges-
ture 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 implica-
tions 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 impres-
sion 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
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 inter-
course with Hilde in order to bargain for his life. Such a resolve poten-
tially 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 nec-
essary 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 fas-
cist 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 mas-
culinity is undermined. In the scenes in which Pasqualino is handling a
gun, the weapon only deceptively boosts Pasqualino’s confidence. It fails
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 ridi-
culed 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, leav-
ing 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 aggres-
sion, 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 masculin-
ity 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 so-
called 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 mascu-
linity 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 perfor-
mance 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
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 ‘expres-
sions’ 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 neces-
sary to return to the roots of her theoretical genealogy. Sara Salih explains
that Butler’s notion of gender performativity relies on the linguistic theo-
ries of J. L. Austin and on Jacques Derrida’s notion of “citational graft-
ing,” 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 lan-
guage is a speech act”: the Althusserian interpellative claim “It’s a girl”
pronounced by the doctor upon looking at the newborn, while appar-
ently 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 corpore-
ally 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 utter-
ance 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
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 iden-
tity 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 deter-
mined, 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 insta-
bility of the linguistic sign is meaningful as a subversive approach for
deconstructing oppressive normativity, for re-citation offers the possibil-
ity 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 problem-
atic (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 exagger-
ate the comical effects of transgender to the point of strengthening the
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 norma-
tive gender roles and heterosexuality, thereby affirming the understand-
ing 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 ref-
erence 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 mas-
culinity 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
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 typi-
cal in filmic representations of the Holocaust. However, an interpretation
of Wertmuller’s utilization of such contradictory genres does not neces-
sarily 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 masculin-
ity. 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 mascu-
linity 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 represen-
tations: 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 lan-
guage film, and best screenplay written directly for the screen. This nomi-
nation was particularly meaningful to Wertmüller who admitted that “it is
every Italian director’s dream to be loved in America” (Lillian Gerard, “The

Ascendance of Lina Wertmüller,” American Film [1976]: 21).
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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 com-
media spesso, diciamo che può concludersi a tarallucci e vino, non la nostra com-
media 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.
6. 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).
7. 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).
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 conflat-
ing 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 devo-
tion to his ‘duties’ but vigor and stamina. He was not to be shown partici-
pating 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 informa-
tion 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 rep-
resentation 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, “Mise-
en-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.
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.
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
F 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 halluci-
natory drug that causes him to regress genetically. Altered states of con-
sciousness can be associated with artistic creativity, with the ingestion of
psychoactive drugs, or it can be achieved by means of sensory depriva-
tion, 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 assign-
ment 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
74 GAETANA MARRONE
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 art-
ists 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, sen-

tire quando parlava che era un giovane inquieto e intento a cercare rap-
porti 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 realiza-
tion 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 trans-
formed into a zealous soldier of Christ: the kissing of the leper, the poor
man’s rags, the barefoot beggars all dramatize Francesco’s altered per-
ception and relation to the world. His transformation concludes with
ADVENTUROUS IDENTITIES 75
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 epi-
sode 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 revolution-
ary 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 fol-
lows 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 jour-
ney. 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 antith-
esis between the temporal power in which his father and the doctors of
the Church are invested and his subjective experience. Cavani concen-
trates on the symbolic and spatial area of cultural transitions, liminal
states that induce an ambiguous and indeterminate state of consciousness,
76 GAETANA MARRONE
frequently likened to death, to darkness, and in later films, to bisexual-

ity. As Victor Turner (1967: 102) reminds us, the gnosis acquired at the
liminal stage implies a change in being. Cavani emphasizes the ontologi-
cal 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 disturb-
ing 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 scandal-
ous 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 scandal-
ous 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 unfa-
miliar 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
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 medi-
eval 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 con-
servatrice 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 revolu-
tionary 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 illu-
sory permanence of its authority in matters concerning scientific knowl-
edge. 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, pot-
ere e connivenza” (He had not considered that the Church, as an absolute
power, had always protected itself against controversies, not with open
78 GAETANA MARRONE
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 abju-
ration (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 impor-
tance 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 sci-
enza, ma è anche la causa diretta del ristagno sociale” (that is crystallized
in the past and by favoring scientific immobility, not only prevented sci-
ence 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 epistemolog-
ical 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 genera-
tion 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 physi-
cal 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
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 real-
ity 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 con-
sciousness 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 epito-
mized in the story of a woman in search of her individuality at a time
when gendered power relations were nonexistent. The film, which origi-
nates 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 func-
tion 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,
80 GAETANA MARRONE
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 institu-
tions 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 correspond-
ing 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 epis-
temological 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 per-
forming 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 contestazi-
one [. . .] 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
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 gius-
tifica 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 question-

ing 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 self-
awareness, 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
82 GAETANA MARRONE
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 protago-
nist’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 men-
tal and physical states: from the initial splendor of the images high-
lighting 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 psychologi-
cal 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 tech-
nique 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 pro-
tagonist 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.
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 enter-
tain new experiences, to represent a mode of imaginative behavior that
explores altered states of consciousness and the limits of cultural conven-
tions 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 fea-
ture 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 scan-
dalous love affair. Cavani introduces a state of mind more dangerous, in
which the human subject is placed outside traditional morality. Her char-
acters 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 psychia-
trists, 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 investi-
gate 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 ide-
als. 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
84 GAETANA MARRONE
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 pic-
ture taken, lit by available light. Cavani’s voice, offscreen, is heard ask-
ing 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 fron-
tally, 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 fig-
ures, 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 straor-
dinaria e modernissima, è anzi l’ultima sponda” (Francesco is still valid
today for his immense sense of consciousness. His concrete way of liv-
ing brotherhood is extraordinary and very modern. It is our last fron-
tier) (Riches 1989: 133–134). In Le Clarisse, Cavani creates a genuinely
new mode of portraying the Francescan experience while presenting his
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 jour-
ney 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 cin-
ema 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 dis-
ciples, 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 the-
atrical metaphor, which translates the temporal sequence of the story into a
spatial continuum, which in her 1989 Francesco highlights the figures’ den-
sity 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 set-
tings of Galileo’s trial by the Inquisition visualize the labyrinthine paths of
power; so does Antigone’s torture machine in I cannibali. A centripetal pub-
lic gaze always encircles such Cavanian characters, whose body movement is
choreographed to expose their demise in the historical present.
86 GAETANA MARRONE
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.
_____. “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)
88 GAETANA MARRONE
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
5
Healing the Daughter’s Body

in Francesca Archibugi’s
Il Grande Cocomero
Daniela De Pau
I 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 transgenera-
tional transmission of psychological problems that allow, from a female
perspective, gender discrimination to perpetuate. With this intent, I dis-
cuss 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 misogynis-
tic sociocultural norms. I therefore perceive the mother’s mental disor-
der 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
90 DANIELA DE PAU
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 indi-
cate the misogynistic murders of women by men in all patriarchal cul-
tures. 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 activ-
ist Lagarde y de los Rios changed the term “femicide” into “feminicide”
and further elaborated the concept in order for it to encompass all vio-
lent conditions that lead to the annihilation of women.1 By her defini-
tion, 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 mur-
der or suicide. “Feminicide” occurs, she adds, when the state is incapable
of guaranteeing respect for women’s lives and when it fails to adminis-
ter 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 recog-
nized 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 struc-
tured and deep seated system of control and privilege.” Barbara Spinelli
(2008: 24) points out that in our globalized postcapitalistic and neocon-
servativist times, interpersonal relationships have become more uncer-
tain, 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
HEALING THE DAUGHTER’S BODY 91
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 build-
ing 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 vio-
lence 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 under-
stand that her surrendering to violence and consequent possible annihila-
tion 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.
92 DANIELA DE PAU
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 psycho-
logically difficult process of a woman who tries to free herself from
an oppressive mother role, conceived in her case as a cultural imposi-
tion; the necessity to save her daughter, upon whom the chain of female
oppression was transmitted; and the redemption of a man with a vio-
lent 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 dif-
ficult 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 medi-
cal 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
and dedicated mother. In reality, we learn later that her concern is only illu-
sory, 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 dark-
haired 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 abor-
tion,” 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 “uter-
ine 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 own-
ership 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 soci-
ety maternity is a “colonized place,” and a context in which women can
become the worst enemies for other women (Romito 2008b: 17) and, I
94 DANIELA DE PAU
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 deny-
ing, 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 mean-
ing with impunity.” By disregarding her right to procreate or not, Cinzia
denies the social inequality of her gender and, in so doing, confuses “self-
deception 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 knowl-
edge 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 illus-
trate. Cinzia’s involuntary self-annihilation (which transforms her from
being a victim to being a victimizer) has indeed terrible repercussions for
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 pre-
adolescent 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 frustra-
tion of her need to be loved. Despite her skepticism of doctors and psy-
chotherapists, 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 para-
digms 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 out-
side 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
96 DANIELA DE PAU
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 con-
cretissima 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 chil-
dren cannot be represented with clearly classifiable behaviors, because
behaviors are only symptoms of a “possible” preexisting violent situa-
tion—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 possibil-
ity 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, convic-
tions 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
“uncertain, unsafe, and tempestuous,” as promising the highest possi-

bility 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, estab-
lishing 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 fat-
tore molesto della civiltà—were obscured behind laws, traditions, behav-
ioral norms, and an exercise of power that was considered “natural,”
and that were, for the most part, carried out within intimate relation-
ships often relating to the control over women’s sexuality and maternity
(Melandri 2011: 96). Excluding the rare cases of serious individual men-
tal 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 devel-
ops a violent personality and to define the factors that cause a woman to
98 DANIELA DE PAU
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 posi-
tive 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 chil-
dren 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.
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 engage-
ment 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.
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 ex-
wife, 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 adoles-
cents. 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 regard-
ing 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 repro-
ductive rights.
Bibliography
Bal Filoramo, Liliana. “Analisi psicogiuridica e psicodinamica: la trasmis-

sione 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.deistituzional-
izzazione-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.
100 DANIELA DE PAU
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 giu-
ridico 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)
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)
6
Motherhood Revisited in
Francesca Comencini’s Lo
Spazio Bianco
Claudia Karagoz
A n accomplished director from a well-known family of filmmakers,

Francesca Comencini is also an outspoken critic of the misrepre-
sentation 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 advertis-
ing” (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 men-
talità e i comportamenti che ne derivano stanno inquinando la convi-
venza sociale [. . .]. Il modello di relazione tra donne e uomini, ostentato
da una delle massime cariche dello Stato, incide profondamente negli
104 CLAUDIA KARAGOZ
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 pre-
cisely to counter media and political appropriations of women’s bod-
ies 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 relation-
ship 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 inten-
sive 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 inter-
view, 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
MOTHERHOOD REVISITED 105
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 solip-
sism. Rejecting models of selfhood that privilege either vertical individu-
alism 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 incli-
nation 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 jour-
ney 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 subjectiv-
ity to care for another, engaging in a dual relation marked by dependence
and lack of reciprocity. Numerous shots showing Maria alone, often gaz-
ing 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 interde-
pendency. 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 hes-
itates 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
106 CLAUDIA KARAGOZ
technical and acting casts, also a rare occurrence in Italian cinema.14

It is also the first film the independent production house Fandango entr-
usted 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 construc-
tion 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 protago-
nist 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 reoccur-
rence 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 cin-
ematic representation and to strengthen its political message. The direc-
tor 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 jour-
ney 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 intro-
duced 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 fig-
ure, 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 resusci-
tated, is also introduced to support the film’s political agenda. This epi-
sode is meant to denounce the repressive control exerted by the state over
women’s bodies.17 Ultimately, however, this sequence and the character of
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 protago-
nist 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 simulta-
neously 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-re-
alization; its reliance on forms of transgression that are soon normalized
in the name of a reprogramming of the (neo) bourgeoisie in the dismay-
ing 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 nor-
malizzate, in nome di una riprogrammazione della (neo) borghesia nel
desolante panorama dell’Italia contemporanea) (43). If Menarini’s pes-
simism seems excessive, some of his observations aptly describe Lo spazio
bianco, which indeed features high-quality photography, music, and act-
ing, and foregrounds a bourgeois woman’s journey of self-redefinition.
108 CLAUDIA KARAGOZ
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 rac-
conti) (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 every-
day struggles are only hinted at. When addressed, they remain second-
ary 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 cri-
sis. 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 repre-
sent 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
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 pro-
tagonist, 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 inner-
city “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, how-
ever, appear overstated at times—particularly in some of the exchanges
between Maria and Fabrizio, and in the scenes with Mina. Hints of stagi-
ness 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 signal-
ing the film’s self-consciousness. Lo spazio bianco includes a number of
self-reflective elements: its characters, especially Maria, are often framed
110 CLAUDIA KARAGOZ
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 the-
ater’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 con-
tained within the physical and psychological space of the hospital. When
Maria steps outside her apartment or the hospital, she is usually unac-
companied. 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 flash-
backs, 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 flash-
back, which shows the parallel tubes of a halogen ceiling lamp. These flash-
backs have a number of consequences: they underscore Maria’s isolation
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 expe-
riences 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 lit-
erally: 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.
112 CLAUDIA KARAGOZ
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 sig-
nify alienation and rupture: the frequent occurrence of images of dis-
tancing 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 for-
mer 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 com-
ment on the child, suggesting a lack of interest in children and moth-
ering. 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 occur-
rence: other sequences include impromptu, actual, or imagined perfor-
mances—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 sub-
divide the cinematic frame into smaller frames—an image of fragmenta-
tion signifying the isolation in which each woman experiences her wait.
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 dis-
tancing 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 sup-
port 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 imag-
ine 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, par-
ticularly 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 body-
guards 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, verti-
cality 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
114 CLAUDIA KARAGOZ
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 signi-
fied by the dream-sequence of the mothers’ dance in the ICU, she looks
empathically upon the dance of the other mothers, but does not partici-
pate 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 interdepen-
dent, 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 embod-
ies 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 atten-
tion 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
constructions of motherhood and enriches cultural representations of

women’s experiences in Italy.
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 film-
maker. 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 spe-
ciale (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 histori-
cal, 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 demonstra-
tion. As Finocchiaro speaks, a group of women of all ages gradually sur-
rounds 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
116 CLAUDIA KARAGOZ
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).
4. “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.
5. 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).
6. 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.
7. 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, ini-
tially, 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).
8. 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.
9. Well-known Italian cinematographer Luca Bigazzi was part of Comencini’s
team in Lo spazio bianco.
10. 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.
11. 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.
12. 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.
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, middle-
class, heterosexual paradigm of motherhood, to the exclusion of other pos-
sibilities. 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 predomi-
nantly 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 con-
tinued political commitment of her cinema. Like Bieberstein, I believe that
labeling Comencini’s entire film production middle auteur cinema is reduc-
tive. 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 prob-
lem 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.
118 CLAUDIA KARAGOZ
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)
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 rac-
contare “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 male-
dominated film industry. This burgeoning group represents and posi-
tions 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 film-
makers 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
122 LAURA DI BIANCO
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 street-
walking, 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 prior-
ity operating in those films whereby people were assumed to be more
important than places” (2000: 103). Similarly, in Spada’s cinema, build-
ings, 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 intro-
duces 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
WOMEN IN THE DESERTED CITY 123
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 film-
making experience and numerous other works. Denied funding from the
Italian government, which is the primary financial source of film produc-
tion 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 finan-
cial support to the project and participated in the different stages of the
production, Forza cani was the first independent digital film in the coun-
try. As a collective work, it distances itself from the mainstream Italian
production and distribution system, mainly located in Rome, and repre-
sents, 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 fea-
ture 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 read-
ing 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
124 LAURA DI BIANCO
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 trou-
bled, 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 recon-
nect with his family. Franco recovers from his injury and tries to establish
a friendship with the rest of the group, while continuing his illicit traf-
ficking. 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 con-
fronts 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 neces-
sary sacrifice that opens a series of possibilities for those immobilized in
an existential condition of waiting. In Come l’ombra, Olga’s death liber-
ates 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 red-
dish 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 ste-
reotype of the cold, foggy city in the north, populated by unfriendly
people. With his southern accent, Franco is representative of the inter-
nal wave of immigration Milan has received since the 1960s, and he is
now the spokesman of Italians who feel threatened by foreign immigra-
tion. 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.
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 filmmak-
er’s alter ego, Tetra, like many of Spada’s female protagonists, contem-
plates 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 hid-
den 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, how-
ever, 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 alien-
ated 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.
126 LAURA DI BIANCO
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 invis-
ible 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 philoso-
pher 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 anni-
versary of her death.
Spada structures Poesia che mi guardi using a combination of fam-
ily 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 con-
temporary 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
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 itin-
eraries 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 vis-
ited or lived, creating, in effect, a portrait of Milan in an arc of time span-
ning 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 filmmak-
ing 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 trajec-
tory 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 autobio-
graphical 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.
128 LAURA DI BIANCO
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.
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
130 LAURA DI BIANCO
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
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 ini-
tial 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 jour-
neys 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 inter-
preters of modern alienation, but also in terms of frame composition and
camera movements.
The opening scene of Come l’ombra establishes the formal characteris-
tics 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 tak-
ing 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
132 LAURA DI BIANCO
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
Spada.
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 mise-
en-scène.
134 LAURA DI BIANCO
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
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 agi-
tazione 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 relation-
ship 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 differ-
ent 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 inter-
rupts the flow of the narration. The repetitive appearance of the immo-
bile 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.
136 LAURA DI BIANCO
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 land-
scape while exploring and appropriating the urban space. As Susanna
Scarparo and Bernardette Luciano write in their essay devoted to migra-
tion as depicted in Italian cinema, “Gendering Mobility and Migration,”15
“Olga invades the landscape, map in hand, and seems determined to nego-
tiate 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 engag-
ing in such activity in the urban context of the mid-nineteenth century.
She writes: “There is no question of inventing the flâneuse: the essen-
tial 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 char-
acter 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,
Olga’s character is based on Jean-Luc Godard’s Nana, the Parisian pros-

titute of Vivre sa vie (1962); second, Olga is labeled as a prostitute by her
own immigrant community. When Claudia starts her journey through-
out 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 defi-
ance 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 disap-
pears 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 interpel-
lation, 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 dis-
figured 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 bleed-
ing 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
138 LAURA DI BIANCO
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 pres-
ence to the extent that, when Olga, and later Claudia, enters it they seem
almost extraneous. This is the case with two different shots, both depict-
ing 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 sug-
gests 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
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 remi-
niscent 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 build-
ing 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 Il mio domani, Marina Spada’s set journal, 2011. Courtesy of Marina
Spada.
140 LAURA DI BIANCO
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 attrac-

tive 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.
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 rela-
tionship 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 trans-
formation of her life. The relationship with her stepsister, long conflicted,
falls apart, impeding Monica’s contact with her nephew, a fragile adoles-
cent 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 per-
ceives 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 str-
uctured 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 coun-
try/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 par-
takes 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.
142 LAURA DI BIANCO
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, epit-
omizes 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 con-
tribute 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 unre-
solved 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 chang-
ing 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 liv-
ing 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 cre-
ate different levels of narration in the plot. The first is the series of lec-
tures 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.
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 all-
glass 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 sub-
jectivity, suggesting that female flânerie is an act of introspection and
identity formation.
Nevertheless, upon a closer analysis of the film script, and when con-
sidering 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 con-
fined 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.
144 LAURA DI BIANCO
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 film-
making, 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,” dem-
onstrates a certain disbelief around the idea of a woman with a cam-
era, 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 atten-
tion. She is now emerging as one of the most compelling Italian con-
temporary 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 neighbor-
hood 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 under-
stand 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 neigh-
borhood and I too, like Alda Merini, would only leave Milan for heaven,”
in Calvenzi, Il mio domani, 9.
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 offend-
ing 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://thesec-
ondhump.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 appen-
dix. 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 moun-
tains 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
146 LAURA DI BIANCO
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 represen-
tation of immigrants in Italian media, over one hundred films in which
immigrants are main or minor characters were produced between 1990
and 2010.
16. See Carlo Mazzacurati’s Vesna va veloce (1996), Francesco Munzio’s Elvis &
Marilyn (1998), and Giuseppe Tornatore’s La sconosciuta (2006).
17. 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.
18. 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 wom-
en—are an endangered species on television and they have been replaced by
a grotesque, vulgar, and humiliating representation).
19. Roland Barthes, “The Death of the Author,” in Image, Music, Text, translated
by Stephen Heath (New York: Hill and Wang, 1977), 130.
20. “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.
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.
8
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 happi-

ness, 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
150 CRISTINA GAMBERI
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 rep-
resentation 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 archi-
val 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 dis-
placement, 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 representa-
tion 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,
ENVISIONING OUR MOTHER’S FACE 151
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 asso-
ciated 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 aware-
ness 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 sto-
ryline 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 foot-
age is edited either to support and illustrate or to be in contrast and col-
lide 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 chang-
ing society.
This short circuit between images and the women’s voices is pos-
sible 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
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 domi-
nant meanings about women in popular culture. By undoing the coher-
ence 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 increas-
ingly 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, challeng-
ing 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 satiri-
cal 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
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 contrib-
uted 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 decon-
structive 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 doc-
umentaries, 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 auto-
biographical 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
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 inter-
national It’s All True Festival in São Paulo in 2003.5 Un’ora sola ti vor-
rei 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 documen-
tary. 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
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 moth-
er’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 primar-
ily as body and passive erotic objects for the male gaze. The female voice-
over 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 identifica-
tion between daughter and mother that lies at the core of the movie, which
allows the director to reappropriate the lost and forgotten mother. The rep-
resentation 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 child-
hood in a wealthy Milanese family, the young Liseli asks serious questions
about life, relationships, and love. The story narrates the life of the teenage
Liseli, who finds her own mother first a perfect and then an unattainable
role model. Then comes Liseli’s marriage, represented as a romantic ful-
fillment 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 feel-
ings and her world is conveyed by juxtaposing her words with apparently
common, spontaneous images from everyday life. For example, a beauti-
ful 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 medi-
cal reports from psychiatric hospitals accompanied by the sounds of break-
ing 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
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 fam-
ily 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 con-
veyed by alternating color with black-and-white sequences and by intertwin-
ing 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 cut-
ting, 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
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 every-
thing 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 tempo-
ral 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 rein-
forces the feeling of lost childhood; Un’ora sola ti vorrei marks the nos-
talgic 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 refer-
ences to her childhood fairy-tale world serve only to reinforce the dis-
tance 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 pain-
fully with Liseli’s anguish—with her increasing impatience toward her
parents, her family, her upbringing. Her words are used mainly as a coun-
terpoint 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 inau-
thentic nature of the amateur movies and the authenticity of Liseli’s self-
representation.
The intertwining of chronological narrative, fragmentation, and cyclical
patterns complicates Liseli’s subjectivity, which emerges only through frag-
ments, pieces, and traces. Fragmented words and movie sequences gradu-
ally 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
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 appear-
ance 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 rep-
resenting 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 subjectiv-
ity 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 keep-
ers of personal and private memories, but also create a collective mise-en-
scène 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
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 condiz-
ione 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 simul-
taneously 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 frag-
ile, 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 rela-
tions. The Second Wave of Italian feminism became a popular mobiliza-
tion 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
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 ques-
tion 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 profes-
sional actress—and is visually supported with a woman’s face taken from
archival material or experimental movies, to help the audience to visu-
ally 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 collec-
tions. 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 pro-
tagonists. The archival material from RAI plays the role of representing
the “official” image of femininity, while Italian experimental movies rep-
resent 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
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 subscrib-
ing to its implied ideals and values (Hutcheon 1989). Parody therefore
becomes the privileged strategy with which to react critically and cre-
atively 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 docu-
mentary takes on an aspect of a joyous carnival, while nevertheless main-
taining 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 documen-
tary 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 hap-
pened” (Marazzi 2008). This opening scene already contains the begin-
ning 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?
(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 thou-
sands 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 south-
ern 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 pen-
etrate 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 free-
dom 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).
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 sym-

bolic 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 meta-
phorically 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 per-
sonal 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 can-
not see one. Some women take money from their husbands. Others always
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 femi-
nist 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 individu-
als. 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 giv-
ing the baby its bottle), while at others seems transgressive and uncon-
ventional: 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
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 materi-
als 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 fundamen-
tal 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 differ-
ent 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 over-
coming a loss. Nostalgia as an essential condition for living.” Not sur-
prisingly, the practice of found footage has been popular with those
directors who “deal with, amongst other things, experiences of aban-
donment, mourning and death” and for whom family movies are inti-
mately 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” (mirror-
ing). 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
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 autobiogra-
fico” [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 biog-
raphy (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 under-
stand 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 documenta-
ries share a critical nostalgic approach, which is not sterile, but generative.
It is not reactionary, but progressive. Marazzi does not sentimentally cel-
ebrate 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 mod-
ern 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
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 atten-
tion with her documentary The Body of Women, which forced people to rec-
ognize 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 gen-
eration 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 Sao-
Paulo 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, recon-
textualize, and to essentially interrogate the film and photographic records
passed on from parent to child. It is the recontextualization of these repre-
sentational 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
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 imagi-
nary 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.
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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.
Holdaway, Dom. “We Want Roses Too.” Directory of World Cinema. http://
worldcinemadirectory.co.uk/index.php/component/film/?id=947 (accessed
May 7, 2012).
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Forms. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2000.
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con Alina Marazzi.” Jura Gentium Cinema: Cinema and Globalization. http://
www.jgcinema.com/single.php?sl=intervista-alina-marazzi (accessed May 7,
2012).
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1995.
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Culture Identities (European Connections). Oxford: Peter Lang, 2010.
de Laurentis, Teresa. Alice Doesn’t: Feminism, Semiotics, Cinema. Bloomington:
———. 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.
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6–18.
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Eighteenth-Century England. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins
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rose, edited by Alina Marazzi, 11–34. Milano: Feltrinelli Real Cinema, 2008.
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Cinema. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988.
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razzi.htm (accessed June 28, 2012).
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Ombre Corte, 2006.
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Art.” The Journal of Film and Video 38 (1986): 63–85.
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italiano.” In Le rose, edited by Alina Marazzi, 83–98. Milano: Feltrinelli Real
Cinema, 2008.
9
Alina Marazzi’s Women

A Director in Search of Herself through a
Female Genealogy
Fabiana Cecchini
F 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 mil-
lennium (12). Scholars attribute this new generation with introducing
innovation into Italian cinema through their experimentation with cin-
ematic 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 bam-
bini . . . 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 cin-
ematic 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 atten-
tion 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
174 FABIANA CECCHINI
Franco Battiato, Paolo Conte, and Luciano Ligabue are also considered
as case studies of musicians who have turned to directing films. Altho-
ugh 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 impor-
tance of certain external aspects of the films that are crucial to their suc-
cess, with the following factors considered to be the most significant:
● 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 pro-
jection of the film to make the experience of watching the movie a
more collective experience while attempting to gather a wider con-
sensus 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 circula-
tion 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 moviego-
ers. 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 direc-
tor is engaged in social critique or in an intimate account of his/her life
ALINA MARAZZI’S WOMEN 175
(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 pos-
sible (2001), and Paolo Pisanelli’s Don Vitaliano (2002); (2) Italian con-
temporary 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 catego-
ries: (1) the “neo-autarchici” (neo-self-sufficient category) who are distin-
guished 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 digi-
tal 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 perso-

naggi 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 total-
mente assente è il modello del film saggio.
(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 princi-
ple; the documentary-diary, where the author’s intention is to focus on an
autobiographical experience, a trip, a family memoir or a personal read-
ing 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 por-
tray a variety of themes, including immigration (i.e., L’orchestra di Piazza
Vittorio, by Agostino Ferrente, 2006), the transposition of literary report-
age 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 produc-
tions, abolishing sexist barriers in terms of authorship but acknowledg-
ing 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 con-
text 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, tech-
niques, and intellectual commitment. Considering that Marazzi works
with home movies, archival footage, found footage, and all types of pho-
tographic materials, she was able to create an original documentary style,
challenging the traditional norms of the genre. By employing what I con-
sider 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.
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 fic-
tional 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 gene-
alogy) 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 signifi-
cato 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 them-
selves 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 revisit-
ing 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, becom-
ing a mirror showcasing issues to which every woman can relate. They
can also therefore be analyzed under the lens of an Italian feminist

perspective since the author uses the strategy of partire da sé (begin-
ning 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 accompa-
nied 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 lit-
erature and cinema, which I believe is one of the fundamental strategies
adopted by the director to create a multifaceted autobiographical docu-
mentary 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
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 con-
nects 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 vor-
rei 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 inter-
view, Marazzi herself points out some similarities and differences in her
three films:
● The use of the diary as the fictional ploy to construct the narration—
although Per sempre favored the more traditional “documentario-
ritratto” 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 vor-
rei, 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 tor-
mented 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 inter-
acts 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
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 fur-
ther 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 histori-
cal background informing the plots; above all, they contribute to forg-
ing 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 autobiog-
raphy [. . .] Life narrative, then, might best be approached as a moving tar-
get, 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
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 evolu-
tion 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 immedi-
ately 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 intro-
duce 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 cre-
ative). 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
e rispecchiamento (identification and mirroring) that are typical in

feminist practices and gender studies (52, 60). Therefore, both the nar-
ration 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 vor-
rei. 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 archi-
val 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 litera-
ture (especially from American writers) to organize her mother’s biogra-
phy. 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
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 nar-
rating 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 draw-
ings by Marazzi, the family announcing a trip to the beach signed by
“Martino e Alina”: the images are accompanied by Marazzi—the nar-
rating 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 play-
ing in a park of Milan during the winter time, Marazzi riding a bicycle,
some family pictures, or just showing Marazzi and her mother are inter-
spersed 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 direc-
tor, 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 accept-
ing the societal roles that women must conform to—the dutiful daughter,
mother, and wife21:
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 por-
traying 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 concei-
ved by Marazzi the author concludes: “Avevo sempre vissuto nel bene-
ssere, 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 every-
thing 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 isola-
tion 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 per-
sonal 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) narrat-
ing 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 uni-
versal levels pointed out by Meale, I believe that some noteworthy com-
mon 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
female sphere, and back again to herself as a woman and artist: “essere
donna, mi ha aiutato molto a entrare in sintonia con loro, probabil-
mente 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 autobiographi-
cal act takes form, in a process in which the “questione privata” (pri-
vate 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 “docu-
diary,” 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 tack-
ling 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 politi-
cal 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)
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 “docu-
diary.” In fact, while Marazzi talks about the major female political rallies
and debates, she also uses many archival clips from the Italian under-
ground 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 essen-
tial 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 dia-
ries belonging to some women woven into real historical events happen-
ing 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 memo-
ries 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 sit-
uation 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
opinions on the sex scandals surrounding him.25 Although Ballestra

only contributed to the script of the diaries, I believe that her involve-
ment in the Vogliamo anche le rose project is another strategy adopted by
Marazzi to place her film on a more collective and autobiographical foot-
ing, 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 geneal-
ogy 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 ideo-
logica” (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 documen-
taries 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 dia-
logue 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
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).
2. For further discussion of the points summarized here, see the essays included
in Zagarrio, La Meglio Gioventù, and also in Marco Bertozzi, Storia del docu-
mentario italiano. Immagini e culture dell’altro cinema (Venezia: Marsilio
Editori, 2008)..
3. 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» inguarda-
bile 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).
4. See Gianni Canova, “Eppur si muove. Innovazione, rottura, discontinuità,”
in Zagarrio, La Meglio Gioventù, 33–39, 34.
5. See Gianni Canova’s essay for further discussion on each group and the
directors cited as examples to represent them (ibid., 34–39).
6. The debate over the translation and meaning of the German word “bildung-
sroman” 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 edi-
tion, 2010], 262).
7. 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.
8. Announcement retrieved from the website accompanying the film: http://
www.tuttoparladite.it/(accessed on April 2013).
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 industri-
alizzato (1993) documents the pollution of the environment and the job mar-
ket 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 transla-
tion 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://scher-
maglie.it/primopiano/1032/alina-marazzi-donne-che-non- aderiscono-
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%20GAM-
BERI.pdf.
16. For further information on the notion of autobiography, I suggest the stud-
ies by Smith Sidonie and Julia Watson, Reading Autobiography. A Guide for
Interpreting Life Narratives (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
2001; second edition, 2010).
17. The website is no longer available; however most of its contents were pub-
lished in the book accompanying the DVD. See Alina Marazzi, Un’ora sola ti
vorrei (DVD+book) (Milano: Rizzoli Editore, 2006).
18. 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).
19. “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).
20. 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.
21. 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.
22. 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 sem-
pre. 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.
23. See also Goisis, “Per Sempre, di Alina Marazzi,” for an expansion of this
interpretation in psychoanalytical terms.
24. For an in-depth analysis of Marazzi Vogliamo anche le rose, in addition to
Cristina Gamberi’s article, see also Paola Bonifazio, “Feminism, Modernism,
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.
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http://web.tiscali.it/freniszero/goisispersempre.htm (accessed March 26,
2012).
———. “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/interv-
iste/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.nonso-
locinema.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.
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)
10
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 bildung-
sroman, narrating the life of the protagonist beyond the marriage and
ending with her death, where the former is based on the specific strug-
gle of the two girls to realize their relationship in spite of the patriar-
chal 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
196 ANITA VIRGA
attention to gender relationships and their connection to the exercise of

power, broadening the issue from the historical time in which the nar-
ration 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 con-
nected 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 sug-
gests 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 deploy-
ments 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 iden-
tity, 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 doc-
umented by history, which records many instances of women, not nec-
essarily 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
THE GENDER DISRUPTION OF MASCULINE SOCIETY 197
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 heterosex-
ual 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 subal-
tern 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 transforma-
tion 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 dif-
ferences 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 inter-
pret 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: some-
one 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 domi-
nant 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 natu-
ral, 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 regu-
lated 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 rein-
forced to seem like a natural order. Within this matrix, there is continuity
198 ANITA VIRGA
among sex, gender, sexual practice, and desire, so that assigning a sex to
a person means automatically associating certain practices and behav-
iors 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 biologi-
cal 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 rep-
resents 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 rep-
resented by the lesbian couple in regard to society. After Angela’s trans-
formation, 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 devel-
oped 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 heterosex-
ual society imposes laws established on the dichotomy of male/female
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 scan-
dalous 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 harass-
ment 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 wom-
en’s sexuality, especially lesbianism, by means of punishment, including
death: one of the consequences is forcing sexuality upon them, particu-
larly 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
200 ANITA VIRGA
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 valu-

able 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, tech-
nology, 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; in-
deed, 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 dis-
guise 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
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 protago-
nist is subject to the control of patriarchal society. The physical exami-
nation 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 indi-
vidual. 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 doc-
tor. 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 cho-
sen 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,
202 ANITA VIRGA
humiliation pleasurable, physical abuse erotic.” As a consequence, in a

heterosexual affair, the submission and suffering of the women is some-
thing “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 hetero-
sexual. 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 underly-
ing 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, car-
ried 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 portray-
ing the two bodies in full shot from above, emphasizing the heaviness
of the body of Tommaso over that of Sara—and of course his physi-
cal 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 explo-
sion of anger with images of the rhythmic movement of Tommaso over
Sara. In this way, the quick alternation of the two scenes establishes a
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 con-
trol 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 sub-
stitute for the father-master and, ultimately, represents the law and the
control exercised by patriarchal society. His behavior has the character-
istics 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 devi-
ant; in Criminal Woman, for example, Cesare Lombroso, writing at the
end of nineteenth century, reduced the lesbian woman to a form of ata-
vistic and biological-based sexual deviation (see Mary Gibson 2002). As
such, society—in the person of the father and of all the other male char-
acters who stand for him—implements all kind of strategies to force the
204 ANITA VIRGA
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 dis-
cipline 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 high-
lights 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 protagoni-
sta 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 les-
bismo 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 sacral-
ity, of the love of one woman for another. A romantic vision? A reduc-
tion 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 origi-
nal 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 incen-
trato sull’amore unico.
(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 perspec-
tive 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 rebel-
lious 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 gender-
marked 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 be-
cause, 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 rep-
resent 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 continu-
ally returns—one could say under various forms, even when this “other”
206 ANITA VIRGA
seems permanently bent to the rules of heterosexuality. The growing

concern within the film to control and regulate the presence of homosex-
uality, 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 reflec-
tion 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 sexual-
ity. Despite attempts to confine homosexuality within definite limits, to
normalize its presence within the society in order to make it compat-
ible 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.
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 sec-
ond 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 men-
tion: 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.
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, iden-
tified 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 assur-
ing 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 indi-
cate the historical presence of lesbian and “lesbian continuum” to “include
a range—through each woman’s life and throughout history—of a woman-
identified 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 adop-
tion 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 cog-
nitive 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 dichot-
omy 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
208 ANITA VIRGA
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 popula-
tion—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 pub-
lished 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.
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 male-
controlled 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 busi-
ness, and the way they are selected, lured, and used by cinema’s self-
proclaimed masters. In my view, rather than simply being written, her
novels are “yelled,” and the words leap from the page in an exasper-
ated, loud scream against men’s prerogative, against their lack of profes-
sionalism, 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 opin-
ions 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 ideologi-
cal 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 mili-
tant 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 respec-
tive protagonists, Simona and Giovanna, struggle to enter the closed
ILARIA BORRELLI 211
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 tem-
ple of acting or directing. Borrelli also describes amusingly what hap-
pens 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 delu-
sional 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 act-
ing 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 passport-
like 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
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 misogy-
nist 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 new-
feminist—paradigm.3
Postfeminism
Borrelli’s work is representative of an “Italian-style” postfeminist para-

digm. Postfeminism is a term that is more broadly associated, in Anglo-
American 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 neofemi-
nism and it can only be tangentially applied to Italy for several reasons:
the economic situation has reached one of the lowest levels ever regis-
tered 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 move-
ment 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
ILARIA BORRELLI 213
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 posi-
tions 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 protago-
nist, 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 com-
edy 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 direc-
tor 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 con-
cepts 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 jour-
nalism and media to feminist analyses, postmodern theories and neo-
liberal rhetoric. Critics have claimed and appropriated the term for a vari-
ety of definitions, ranging from a conservative backlash, Girl Power, third-
wave feminism, and postmodern/poststructuralist feminism. In popular
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 writ-
ings, 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 charac-
terized by dramatic changes in basic social relationships, role stereotyping
and conceptions of agency. (3)
Genz and Brabon acknowledge the controversial plurality of interpret-

ations around this topic, and convey that postfeminism needs to be in-
scribed in a specific contextualization and has no comparable phenom-
enon from the past. Shelley Budgeon (2011), moreover, states that third-
wave 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 denatu-
ralize 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 femi-
nism 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
ILARIA BORRELLI 215
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 polariza-
tion between the two concepts, feminism and postfeminism, but in terms
of continuity. Postfeminism here is advanced as a form of cultural bea-
con, which acts as a new form of resistance against the rigid command-
ments 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 confi-
dence 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 innumer-
able 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, spiri-
tually 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 margin-
alization 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
publications invigorating the academic discussion since the late 1970s

and 1980s demonstrates, in my opinion, that feminism’s legacy is operat-
ing 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 actu-
ally 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 dis-
cuss 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 circu-
lating 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, diminish-
ing and discriminating against “girliness,” and considers the reappropri-
ation of “pink” as a reaction to the limiting, antifeminine statements of
second-wave feminism. Chick Flicks as a cinematic genre has been iden-
tified 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 writ-
ten, directed, and starring women, and that are addressed primarily,
but not exclusively, to women. Chick Flicks11 is a genre directly con-
nected 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
ILARIA BORRELLI 217
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 con-
cepts here are worth highlighting: (a) that “Chick Flick” is not a depre-
cating 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 film-
makers, 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 examina-
tion 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 liter-
ary perspective, in Italy there is almost no Chick Lit production or distri-
bution. 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 wide-
spread male chauvinism in the workplace contribute to a discouraging
environment for women. As a consequence, they tend to accept under-
paid 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
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 accomplish-
ment 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 look-
ing in order to attract the attention of the male character that is unmis-
takably 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, consis-
tently 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 limit-
ing 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
ILARIA BORRELLI 219
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 dis-
appearing, 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 tak-
ing 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 cone-
shaped 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 accept-
ability is entirely uprooted. The Italian American family running the res-
taurant 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 “mam-
mone” 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, deny-
ing 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 corre-
sponding 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
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 per-
sona. The two stars, Maria Grazia Cucinotta and Brooke Shields, repre-
sent, 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 flex-
ibility 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 pos-
sible 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 chil-
dren together. Charlene loses interest in Vincenzo and entertains her-
self 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 immedi-
ate 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 charac-
ter. 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 sup-
posedly genuine family bonds, is immediately undermined by the male
characters’ mediocrity and their subtle attempts to manipulate women
ILARIA BORRELLI 221
for their own benefit. The leading character, Sveva (played by Galatea
Ranzi), is dealing with conflicting familial relationships: a hostile con-
nection 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 daugh-
ter, plays a mirroring role for the adults in general, and for the two sis-
ters 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 hus-
band (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 hus-
bands 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’ reconcilia-
tion 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 inex-
plicable 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.
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 contradic-
tions she notes observing adults’ behavior. In her family, nothing actu-
ally 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’ shap-
ing or reshaping of their sense of self, but [. . .] they reach out to their audi-
ence 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 operat-
ion in order to log padouk trees. Huts and shacks are demolished and
an old woman, their grandmother, is hurt and abandoned. Children are
ILARIA BORRELLI 223
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 set-
ting 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 fol-
lowing 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 for-
ests, 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 vio-
lence and death. Secondarily, Srey and Mia share an intimate and repul-
sive 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
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 contextualiza-
tion 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 pro-
duced (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 grad-
uate 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 excel-
lent qualifications, and need to work hard to occupy key positions from
which they can easily be marginalized or even dismissed through age-
related 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 vis-
ibility, voice, and power.
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
ILARIA BORRELLI 225
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 con-
vertible 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 fem-
inism, 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’
Femininities,” in Rosalind Gill and Christina Scharff, eds., New Femininities.

Postfeminism, Neoliberalism and Subjectivity (Basingstoke, UK; New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 279–292.
8. 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 noncelebra-
tive 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.
9. I would like to point out the closeness and even the overlapping of the con-
cept of Chick Lit(erature) and cinema in this scholar’s work.
10. Feminist film scholars have debated this topic for over three decades. A
major issue has been to find some sort of common definition.
11. 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.
12. 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 arti-
cle by Rachel Donadio “The Chick-Lit Pandemic” (March 19, 2006).
13. There is no specific academic criticism about the topic of male-directed
“chick flicks” at this time.
14. 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.
15. The Italian title could be translated into English as “Just like ants.” Instead,
the English title is Wine and Kisses.
16. 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 noth-
ing 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.
ILARIA BORRELLI 227
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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.
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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.
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Journal of Media Cultural Studies 10 (2007): 147–166.
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Neoliberalism and Subjectivity. Basingstoke, UK; New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2011.
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University of Virginia Press, 2011.
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Films. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988.
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in Film and Television, 1973.
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2004.
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Change. London: Sage, 2009.
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———. Neo-Feminist Cinema, Girly Films, Chick Flicks and Consumer Culture.
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Part II
12
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 archi-
val 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
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 deten-
tion 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 tell-
ing; on the other it has been used as a primary source for historical stud-
ies. 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 direc-
tor’s intention. In other words, the documentary has become a stylistic
form able to give importance to the gaze of the author, where the direc-
tor’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 direc-
tors 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 diffi-
cult 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
SKYPE INTERVIEW WITH ALINA MARAZZI 233
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 fam-
ily 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 vor-
rei 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 fol-
lowed 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 mov-
ies there is the recurring motif of not finding a proper place and numer-
ous 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
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 dom-
inant 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 por-
traying 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 documenta-
ries 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 some-
how 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 pres-
ent, 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 cer-
tain things, while forgetting others. What I was interested in was not a
historical reconstruction. By using diaries I wanted to explore the subjec-
tive 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 interview-
ing 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,
SKYPE INTERVIEW WITH ALINA MARAZZI 235
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 inti-
macy. 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 irrevers-
ible 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 con-
fess 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 inter-
national 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 profes-
sional path to becoming a director?
238 LAURA DI BIANCO
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, accord-
ing 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.
INTERVIEW WITH MARINA SPADA 239
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 sub-
ject 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 fly-
ers 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 discov-
ered 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 confer-
ence 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,
240 LAURA DI BIANCO
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 photo-
graph many children, but it would have been the most trivial solu-
tion. 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 sig-
nify 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 cur-
rent 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
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 din-
ner. Olga talks about Italy as the land of Leonardo, Michelangelo, and
Armani. That dialogue is particularly interesting concerning discourse
on immigration in Italy.
242 LAURA DI BIANCO
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 ques-
tion 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?
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 every-
one. 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 end-
ing 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 any-
more. 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 impor-
tant 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.
244 LAURA DI BIANCO
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
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 femi-
nine 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 fem-
ininity in this country is identified with something passive, and some-
thing 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 cre-
ative 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.
14
Interview with Alice

Rohrwacher
Rome, June 2012
Laura Di Bianco
O f all the young filmmakers to debut in Italy during the first decade of
the new millennium, Alice Rohrwacher is one of the most sophisti-
cated and interesting auteurs to come to the attention of film critics and
audiences. After earning her degree in philosophy and practicing paint-
ing 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 ver-
sion 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 interna-
tional 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
248 LAURA DI BIANCO
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 televi-
sion entertainment than anything spiritual. Feeling completely disori-
ented 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 estab-
lished 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 paint-
ing. 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 Cresto-
Dina, 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 rela-
tionship do you have with that city?
INTERVIEW WITH ALICE ROHRWACHER 249
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 country-
side, 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 resem-
blances 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 commu-
nity, 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
250 LAURA DI BIANCO
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 les-
sons. 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 ref-
erence 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, unreach-
able. 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
INTERVIEW WITH ALICE ROHRWACHER 251
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 cat-
egorizing it under the label “woman.” I‘ll give you an example in transla-
tion, 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 inter-
view 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 trans-
lated as “she called her little ones.” Her harsh words were not appropriate
for women’s collective imagination; therefore, those words were sweet-
ened 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.
252 LAURA DI BIANCO
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 repre-
sent 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 moti-
vated by rage, because I think those same 800 meters of seafront are
not enough to make a beautiful city. Everyone uses those few kilome-
ters 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 marvel-
ous 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 real-
ized 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.
15
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 numer-
ous 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 pre-
sented 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 acquain-
tance, 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
254 LAURA DI BIANCO
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 cul-
tural 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 con-
ducts 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 reli-
able 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 sud-
denly, 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
INTERVIEW WITH PAOLA RANDI 255
you, in the same position, with no money, many good ideas, and ambi-
tion. 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 suc-
ceed 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 stu-
dents’ 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 proj-
ect 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 compari-
son 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.
256 LAURA DI BIANCO
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 charac-
ter 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 remi-
niscent 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 intrinsi-
cally 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 transi-
tory, 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.
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 atti-
tude 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 recip-
rocal 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 welcom-
ing, 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 sig-
nificant! A city like Naples keeps people in its heart. And something else
extremely interesting is that the urban landscape changes at every kilo-
meter. 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 gar-
dens. Naples is carved out into tuff; in fact, it has an underground system
of tunnels, where Garrone shot Gomorra. It’s constructed on many dif-
ferent layers. In the building where I shot Paradiso, you would get to the
258 LAURA DI BIANCO
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 indus-
try. 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
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 sex-
ist 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 under-
stand 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 con-
sidered 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
260 LAURA DI BIANCO
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 film-
makers, 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 cre-
ates 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 rein-
forces 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
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 extraordi-
nary 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 usu-
ally 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, pro-

fessionals, 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-movement-
se-non-ora-quando/.
16
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 sec-
ond documentary, L’insonnia di Devi, on the theme of international adop-
tions, 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 pre-
sented 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
264 GIOVANNA SUMMERFIELD
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, pub-
lished 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 out-
side, 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 impover-
ishment 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 representa-
tion, 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 popu-
lar TV channels. These offers have changed the Italians anthropologi-
cally (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
INTERVIEW WITH COSTANZA QUATRIGLIO 265
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 doc-
umentary 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 pro-
duction 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 perspec-
tive. 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
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 ety-
mological 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 drama-
turgy 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 opti-
mism, 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 opti-
mism but responds to some exquisitely dramatic demands. My films are
often stories of formation, in which the protagonists follow a path of self-
discovery, 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 experi-
mented 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
“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 dissimi-
lar 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 dis-
tinction 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 fre-
quent, 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 avail-
ability 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 under-
served 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?
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 can-
tare 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 sto-
ries 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 appro-
priate, 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
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 harm-
ing Teresa, to the mechanic and his chains due to the murder he commit-
ted. 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 cen-
tury 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 con-
tinues to protect even after his death, her brother Turi, the young “boy-
friend” Leonardo who assumes the role of father-husband, and the old
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 with-
out 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 aspira-
tions 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 sur-
prised 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 possi-
bly still ask questions like this… Becoming a professional has opened my
eyes and has made me understand that, unfortunately, this is a valid ques-
tion 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 experi-
ence and the capacity of restitution. As I was saying earlier, to me the key-
word 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?
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 his-
toriography 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 under-
takes 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 condi-
tion. 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 ques-
tions 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,
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 adven-
tures 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 prej-
udices 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 coun-
try 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 aware-
ness, 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 nov-
els 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 fem-
inist and, in cooperation with Ioana Raluca Larco, recently has coed-
ited a collection of essays focused on Italian women writers: Italian
274 CONTRIBUTORS
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 gen-

der 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 Urbana-
Champaign where his research focuses on genomic editing and the
understanding of interactions between single molecules of DNA-
binding 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 lit-
erature 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 lan-
guage 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
CONTRIBUTORS 275
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 par-
ticipated in GEMMA, the Erasmus Mundus Programme of Excellence
leading to the European master’s degree in women’s and gender stud-
ies. She is currently based at the University of Hull, where she is writ-
ing 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 arti-
colare 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 educa-
tion, 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
276 CONTRIBUTORS
in literature and film. She is the author of articles and presentations on

subversive representations of femininity in Gabriele D’Annunzio, on les-
bian 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 transra-
cial adoption in Italy. The connections between race, gender, ethnicity,
nationality, and class amongst other things, that immigrants and tran-
sracial 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, cin-
ema 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 con-
ferences. 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 sicil-
iane (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 stud-
ies 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
CONTRIBUTORS 277
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 prin-
cipal 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
278 CONTRIBUTORS
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 com-
munication 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 nine-
teenth 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 Basilico, Gabriele, 131, 133–5, 237,
239–41, 243
Abraham, Fred Murray, 210 Basinger, Jeanine, 2
Ahmed, Sara, 149 Battiato, Franco, 174
Akhmatova, Anna, 123, 243 Baudelaire, 122, 136
Althusser, Louis, 64, 137 Bellassai, Sandro, 55–8, 69n9
Amelie, 216, 226n11 Bellumori, Cinzia, 3
Amore e violenza (Melandri), 97 Benini, Stefania, 212
Anchisi Hopkins, Lidia Hwa Soon, 6, Bertolucci, Giuseppe, 178
53–67, 273 Bettelheim, Bruno, 68n3
Antonioni, Michelangelo, 121, 131–2, Bhabha, Homi, 197
138–9, 241, 244 Bondanella, Peter, 2, 48n8
Aprà, Adriano, 152 “Border Traffic” (O’Healy), 137
Archibugi, Francesca Borrelli, Ilaria
biography, 98 biography, 224–5
filmography, 100–101 Come le Formiche, 220–2
Il grande cocomero: family Domani si Gira, 5, 211
dynamics in, 92; healing and, films, 218–24
96–8; illness and, 93–6; plot, Il piu bel Giorno della mia Vita, 222
92–3 Luccatmi, 211
Mignon è partita, 92, 98 Mariti in Affitto, 218–20, 222
Verso Sera, 92 novels, 5, 210–12
Argento, Dario, 175 overview, 209
Arzner, Dorothy, 3 postfeminism, 212–18
Austin, J. L., 64–5 Scosse, 210
Austin-Smith, Brenda, 8 Talking to the Trees, 222–4
automediality, 181 Tanto Rumore per Tullia, 211–12
“autrici interrotte,” 129, 145n13 Bowlby, Rachel, 143
avventura ancora attuale, 76 Brabon, Benjamin, 213–14
Bridget Jones’ Diary, 214–16
Bahktin, Mikhail, 43 Brundson, Charlotte, 215–16
Baldry, Anna Costanza, 91 Bruno, Giuliana, 2, 4, 16–17, 19, 23–4
Balestrini, Nanni, 123, 243 Butler, Judith, 54, 56, 63–7, 69n8, 197,
Barthes, Roland, 38, 139 199, 207n6
280 INDEX
Cannes Film Festival, 263 Consolati, Claudia, 6, 33–46, 274

Cannistraro, Philip, 69n11 Conte, Paolo, 174
Canova, Gianni, 175–6 Criminal Woman (Lombroso), 203
Cantini, Maristella, 1–8, 209–25, 273 Cuculis, Luke, 6, 53–67, 274
Carmosino, Christian, 264
Carrano, Patrizia, 4–5, 9n2, 10n7, de Certeau, Michel, 125
225n1, 273–4 de Lauretis, Teresa, 34, 37, 45, 48n7,
Cattaneo, Menotti, 19 50n41, 150
Cavani, Liliana De Pau, Daniela, 89–99, 275
early films, 73–4 Derrida, Jacques, 64–5
filmography, 87–8 Di Bianco, Laura, 7, 121–44, 237–61,
Francesco di Assisi, 73–7, 82, 84 275
Galileo, 77–8 Diaconescu-Blumenfeld, Rodica, 36,
I cannibali, 78–9 40, 43
Le clarisse, 83–4 Diary of Sex and Politics, 164
L’ospite, 79–80 Discipline and Punish (Foucault), 203
Milarepa, 80–2 Doane, Mary Ann, 34, 44–5
operas, 88 Domani si Gira (Borrelli), 5, 209, 211
scholarship on, 1–2, 4, 6–7 drag, 54, 63, 65–6, 69n8, 207n6
secular view, 77 Dünne, Jörge, 181
Seventh Circle, 83
Thematic Imaginary, 73–85 Farinotti, Luisella, 159
themes in works of, 82–5 Fellini, Federico, 29n6, 35–6, 40
Cecchini, Fabiana, 173–87, 274 femicide, 90
Chick Flicks, 216–18, 222, 224, 226n11 Ferris, Suzanne, 216
Chinn, Sarah, 64 Festival of Bratislava, 263
Cicero, Nando, 3, 9n2 Festival of Cuenca, 263
Cicioni, Mirna, 178 Festival of Montreal, 225
cinèma vérité, 152, 232 Festival of Pusan, 263
cinepanettone, 3 Festival of Turin, 263
“citational grafting,” 64–5 Finocchiaro, Angela, 115n2
Color Purple, The, 216 flânerie, 122, 125–7, 136, 138, 143
Comencini, Francesca Forgacs, David, 122
biography, 115 Foucault, Michel, 76, 203, 207n8
filmography, 118–19 found footage, 150–1, 153–4, 166, 176,
Lo spazio bianco: characters, 107–9; 178–9, 182, 186, 231–3
inclination in, 114–15; mothers Fraioli, Ilaria, 159, 161, 165, 167, 181,
and, 104; plot, 104; portrayal of 183, 233
Naples, 108–11; staging spaces, Franchi, Paolo, 173
111–15; themes, 104–6, 110–11; Freud, Sigmund, 37–8
translation from book to film, Fried Green Tomatoes, 216
106–7; women’s bodies and, 104–5
SNOQ and, 103 Gamberi, Cristina, 7, 149–67, 178–9,
Comenici, Luigi, 115 186, 231–5, 275–6
“concrete brotherhood,” 85 Garrone, Matteo, 173, 176, 257
Connell, R. W., 55 Gay, Piergiorgio, 173, 178
INDEX 281
gaze Kaplan, E. Ann, 2–3, 34, 42–3, 48n7

Cavani and, 85n5 Karagoz, Claudia, 7, 103–15, 276
Come l’ombra and, 129, 131, 137–8
documentaries and, 232, 234, “la meglio gioventù,” 173, 175–6
240–1, 244–5 La sconosciuta, 137
female, 138, 183, 252, 260, 268 Laviosa, Flavia, 91, 96
Kaplan on, 42 Ligabue, Luciano, 174
La Notte and, 131 Lincoln Center’s Italian Film Festival, 237
Lo spazio bianco and, 113–14 Lombroso, Cesare, 203
Love and Anarchy and, 34–7, 41, 44, 46 Lorcano Film Festival, 154
male, 34–7, 41–2, 44, 46, 155, 159, Luciano, Bernardette, 136, 265
201, 203 Lucini, Luca, 173
Marazzi and, 152, 155–6, 159, 169n7
oblique, 183 Maderna, Giovanni, 178
Pasqualino Settebellezze and, 55, 57 Maggioni, Daniele, 135, 238
Rohrwacher and, 249, 252 Maiorca, Donatella
subjectivization of, 152 biography, 206
violence and, 201 Purple Sea: figure of Angelo/a, 195–9;
“Gendering Mobility and Migration” importance of, 204–6; overview,
(Scarparo and Luciano), 136 195–6; patriarchal society, 199–204
Genz, Stephanie, 3, 213–14 Viola di mare, 117n14
Ginsberg, Allen, 243 Mamma Roma, 135
Giordana, Marco Tullio, 173, 188n1 Marazzi, Alina
Godard, Jean-Luc, 131, 137, 241, 254 critical nostalgia, 166–7
Golini, Vera, 276 cultural context of work, 152–3
Gough, Kathleen, 199, 207n5 “docu-diary” and, 178–9
Gutierrez, Chus, 226n16 early career, 178
feminist themes and, 150–2
History of Sexuality, The (Foucault), interview, 231–5; on archival
203, 207n8 material, 231–2; on early career,
Hollinger, Karen, 217, 222 231; on female displacement,
233–4; on motherhood, 234–5;
Infascelli, Alex, 173 on Un’ora sola ti vorrei, 232–3; on
International Film Festival of Rome, Vogliamo anche le rose, 233–4
237 La meglio Gioventù and, 173–6
“Invisible Flâneuses: Women and literature and, 178
Literature of Modernity” (Wolff), overview, 150, 176–7
136 scholarship on, 7
Invisibles, The, 264 supplementary material released
Irigaray, Luce, 34, 37, 41, 209 with DVDs, 174, 180–2
Italian Cinema from Neorealism to themes in work, 177–8
Present (Bondanella), 2 Un’ora sola ti vorrei: critical
Italian National Television (RAI), 73, reception of, 154; form, 154–5;
161, 206, 235n1, 237–8, 263 fragmentation, 157–9; making of,
153–4; narrative structure, 155–7;
Johnston, Claire, 3, 33–4, 38, 47n7 opening scene, 54; voiceover, 155–7
282 INDEX
Marazzi, Alina—Continued Parrella, Valeria, 104, 106–7, 109

Vogliamo anche le rose: Anita’s Partito Nazionale Fascista (PNF), 126,
diary, 162–3; meaning of title, 245n1
159–60; opening sequence, 162; Pasolini, Pier Paolo, 77, 81, 137, 156,
parody and, 161–2; politics in, 168n3
165–6; relation to previous work, patriarchy
160–1; Teresa’s diary, 163–4; Archiburgi and, 89–93, 97
Valentina’s diary, 164–5 Borelli and, 210, 217, 220, 223
Marcellino pane e vino, 115 Doane and, 44
Mariaini, Dacia, 276–7 guns and, 55–7
Mariaini, Umberto, 67n1 Irigaray and, 37
Marrone, Gaetana, 6, 73–85, 277 Italian cinema and, 5
Masini, Mario, 165 Kaplan and, 42–3
Massey, Doreen, 141 Maiorca and, 195–8, 201, 203
Mastrandrea, Valerio, 255 Marazzi and, 161, 167, 185
Maude (cultural association), 1, 254, 258 Massey and, 141
Mazzacurati, Carlo, 137 Mulvey and, 36–7, 39–40
McCabe, Janet, 2 Notari and, 19
McIsaac, Paul, 33, 47n6 postfeminism and, 215
McRobbie, Angela, 2, 226n8 Spada and, 122
Melandri, Lea, 97, 181–2 Wertmüller and, 5, 39–40, 42–3,
Menarini, Roy, 107–8, 117n15 45–6, 55–7, 59
Merini, Alda, 122–3, 144n1 Wilson and, 142
mimicry, 64, 66, 162, 197 women’s political countercinema
Minchia di Re (Pilati), 195 and, 33
Monti, Adriana, 165 performativity, 54, 56, 63–5, 67, 69n8
Mulvey, Laura, 2–3, 34, 36–8, 47n7, Piccioni, Giuseppe, 178, 184
48n17, 149, 159 Pickering-Iazzi, Robin, 277
Mussolini, Benito, 22–3, 30n25, 34, Pietrangeli, Antonio, 241
38–9, 45, 54, 56, 58, 66–7, 69n11 Pilati, Giacomo, 195, 204
postfeminism
Negra, Diane, 214 Borrelli and, 212–18, 220
Newport International Film Festival, 154 Chick Flicks and, 222, 224
Nobile, Robert, 271–2 explained, 225n3
Notari, Elvira film criticism and, 3
background, 29 Pozzi, Antonia, 123, 125–8, 237, 239–
Dora Film, 19, 22–3 40, 243, 245
Dora Film of America, 23–4 Practice of Everyday Life, The (de
film production, 19–21 Certeau), 125
Gennariello Film, 21–2
lack of scholarship on, 2 Quatriglio, Costanza, 7, 251, 263–72
overview, 6, 18 écosaimale, 267
themes in works of, 24–9 interview: on documentaries,
264–5; on future, 272; on
O’Healy, Aine, 4, 117n20, 137 Invisibles, 264; on L’isola,
Ortese, Anna Maria, 247, 250 266–70; on Robert Nobile, 271–2;
INDEX 283
on Terramata, 270–1; on themes Se non ora quando (SNOQ), 103,

in work, 265–6; on women’s 115n2
portrayal in film, 267–8 Sex and the City, 215–17
Io, qui. Lo sguardo delle donne, 267–8 Simmel, Georg, 16
overview, 263–4 Sorrentino, Paolo, 173, 259
Space, Place, and Gender (Massey), 141
Radner, Hilary, 2, 8, 218, 225n3 Spada, Marina
Randi, Paola Come l’ombra, 127–44
impact on filmmaking, 7, 121 death in films of, 124
interview with, 253–61; on Deserto Rosso, 122
documentaries, 255; on early entrapment and, 136
career, 254–5; on female gaze, Forza Cani, 123–6
260; on Into Paradise, 255–7; on gaze and, 138–9
Maude, 258–60; on Milan, 257–8; Il mio domani, 127–44
on representation, 256 interview, 237–45; on Basilico,
Into Paradise, 253, 255–6 240–1; on Come l’ombra, 240–2,
Rohrwacher and, 248 244; on early career, 238; on
study of women’s films, 251 Forza cani, 238–9; on gaze, 245;
Reggio Calabria, 121, 247–9, 252 on Il mio domani, 241, 244–5; on
Reggio, Godfrey, 178 influences, 241–3; on landscapes,
Rhys, Jean, 149 242–3; on Pozzi, 239–40
Ricci, Chiara, 2, 15–29, 277 “La mia città,” 122, 144
Rich, Adrienne, 151, 164, 199–202, landscape in works of, 131–6
207n4–5 L’Avventura, 122
Rich, B. Ruby, 216 L’eclisse, 122
Riches, Pierre, 84 Milan and, 124–5, 138–9
Righelli, Gennaro, 19 mothers in work, 141–2
Ring-Independent Filmmakers of the overview, 121–2
New Generation, 173 Poesia che mi guardi, 126–30
Rohrwacher, Alice, 7, 121, 247–52, 261 poetry and, 123
interview: on church, 249–50; on prostitution in works, 136–7
Corpo Celeste, 248–50; on early treatment of place, 122
career, 248; on gaze, 249, 252; violence and, 137–8
on Reggio Calabria, 249, 252; on walking and, 143
women directors, 251 Sphinx in the City, The (Wilson), 142
overview, 247–8 Stampa, Gaspara, 1
Roma, 36 Summerfield, Giovanna, 263–72, 278
Romito, Patrizia, 90, 93–4, 97 Sundance Film Festival, 247
Rossellini, Roberto, 74 Swept Away, 33
Rothko, Mark, 131
ruralism, 56 Tasker, Yvonne, 2, 214
Russell, Diana, 90, 93 Terragni, Laura, 89, 91
Russell, Ken, 73 Tola, Vittoria, 97
Torino Film Festival, 154
Scarparo, Susanna, 136, 178, 265 Tornatore, Giuseppe, 137
Scosse (Borelli), 209–10 “transparence-absence,” 5
284 INDEX
Un ragazzo di Calabria, 115 45–6; themes, 34–5; voyeurism

and, 37–8
Valentini, Chiara, 5, 212, 224 Pasqualino Settebelleze: fascism
Vanzina, Carlo, 3 and, 56–7; gender and, 63–6;
Venice Film Festival, 115, 130, 237, grotesque in, 67; gun in, 55,
240, 253, 263–4 60–3; linguistic signs in, 65;
Vesna va veloce, 137 masculinity and, 54–67; plot, 54;
Vesuvio Film, 18–19 themes, 53–4; women and, 56–7
Virga, Anita, 195–206, 278 scholarship on, 1–2, 4, 6
“Visual Pleasure and Narrative When We Dead Awaken (RIch), 164
Cinema” (Mulvey), 3, 47n7 Wilson, Elizabeth, 142
Wolff, Janet, 136
Wertmüller, Lina Woolf, Virginia, 251
Love and Anarchy: brothel in,
37–43; cinematography, Young, Mallory, 216
35–6; family and, 42; female
characters, 38–40, 43–4; Zagarrio, Vito, 173–6, 188n3
fetishism and, 38–9; grotesque Zajczyk, Francesca, 212
in, 40–1, 44; masculinity and, Zamboni, Chiara, 178
35–7; plot, 33–4; reflections and, Zeffirelli, Franco, 74

Italian Women Filmmakers and The Gendered Screen

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Notes on Contributors 273

who embraced the testimony passed on by Wertmuller or Liliana Cavani.

H ow can we explain that although cinema was first devised by a

great linguistic intensity, originality, and sensuality whose authors lived

as if they were an exceptional memory, confirming the rule of women’s

never equal those attained by massively distributed films or reap such

M y list of thanks is considerably longer than this. My first sincere

Robyn Curtis, Erica Buchman, and the board at Palgrave Macmillan.

Ma la ritorna poi fiacca e smarrita

Furthermore, many comprehensive histories of Italian cinema,

details their stories in interviews with actresses, screenwriters, secretaries,

cinema, as a medium reflecting the culture of our country, is relatively

intention of this collection is to show how rich, intriguing, and “global”

article on Liliana Cavani’s Thematic Imaginary. Here the contributor

directors such as The Cinema of Kathryn Bigelow. Hollywood Transgressor,

authors. There are no histories of Italian cinema written by women scholars,

Napoli Terra d’Amore

Naples is a paradise; everyone lives in a state of intoxicated self-for-

When talking about women in the history of cinema, it is a must to

century and the beginning of the twentieth. In fact, this period—thanks

The Cinema Becomes in the Galleria

This new cultural atmosphere and way of thinking gained momentum in

Cinema and Naples

singers, conjurers (just like Leopoldo Fregoli, Lina Cavalieri, Eduardo

In this fervent context lies the development of the individual, intellec-

The Dora Film

I suoi nemici la chiamavano il carabiniere, ma mia madre era capace di