Italian Cinema Audiences: Histories and Memories of Cinemagoing in Post-War Italy

Review

“This book is a “master class” in exploring the historical culture of moviegoing in postwar Italy. Using an innovative suite of research methods drawn from the “New Cinema History,” and featuring fascinating ethnographic studies, the authors chart the vibrancy of film attendance as the cultural lynch-pin of Italy in the rapidly changing 1950s. They uncover the tensions pitting local against national and systems of film distribution, and gendered dialogues about differences and similarities between Italian and Hollywood star culture. The Italian Cinema Audiences project expertly demonstrates how post-war Italy's diverse publics were drawn together into complex communities of entertainment, at a time when discussion of who was allowed to attend the movies was being negotiated and challenged across the nation.” ―Kathy Fuller-Seeley, William P. Hobby Centennial Professor of Media Studies, University of Texas at Austin, USA

Product Description

We know a lot about the directors and stars of Italian cinema's heyday, from Roberto Rossellini to Sophia Loren. But what do we know about the Italian audiences that went to see their films?

Based on the AHRC-funded project 'Italian Cinema Audiences 1945-60', Italian Cinema Audiences: Histories and Memories of Cinema-going in Post-war Italy draws upon the rich data collected by the project team (160 video interviews and 1000+ written questionnaires gathered from Italians aged 65 and over; archival material related to cinema distribution, exhibition and programming, box-office figures, and critical discussions of cinema from film journals and popular magazines of the period). For the first time, cinema's role in everyday Italian life, and its affective meaning when remembered by older people, are enriched with industrial analyses of the booming Italian film sector of the period, as well as contextual data from popular and specialized magazines.

About the Author

Catherine O'Rawe is Professor of Italian Film and Culture at Bristol University, UK. She is the author of Stars and Masculinities in Contemporary Italian Cinema (2014), co-author of Italian Cinema Audiences: Histories and Memories of Cinema-going in Post-war Italy (Bloomsbury, 2020), and has published widely on stardom, performance, and audiences.

Sarah Culhane is Assistant Professor in Italian at University College Dublin. From 2018 to 2021 she was a CAROLINE Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow in Media Studies at Maynooth University where she led the Irish Cinema Audiences project. She holds a PhD in Italian for the University of Bristol (2017). She conducted her PhD research as part of the Italian Cinema Audiences project (AHRC 2013-2017).