Overview

With a list of critically acclaimed and award-winning films, the Naples-born director and screenwriter Paolo Sorrentino has established himself as an auteur of world renown—arguably the most successful and significant contemporary Italian filmmaker. To date, he has written and directed nine films and won an Academy Award, a BAFTA, and a Golden Globe, among others.  This is the first English-language collection dedicated to the prolific director, who has emerged as one of the most compelling figures in twenty-first-century European cinema. International contributors—from the UK, Italy, France, the Netherlands, Australia, Israel, Canada, and the US—offer original interpretations of Sorrentino’s work in film and television. In an invaluable contribution to the existing literature, they examine Sorrentino’s recurrent grand themes, offer new perspectives and cues for discussion, and challenge established notions about the filmmaker and his career.

Full Product Details

Author:   Annachiara Mariani (University of Tennessee, USA) ,  Flavia Laviosa (Wellesley College, USA)
Publisher:   Intellect Books
Imprint:   Intellect Books
Edition:   New edition
ISBN:  

9781789383966

ISBN 10:   178938396
Pages:   240
Publication Date:   14 June 2021
Audience:   General/trade ,  Professional and scholarly ,  General ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Out of stock  
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Table of Contents

Acknowledgments    List of Illustrations   Forward Giancarlo Lombardi   Introduction: The Creative and Artistic Trajectory of Paolo Sorrentino Annachiara Mariani     Part one: Examining and Deconstructing Sorrentino’s Ethos Chapter 1: Private Pain/Public Places: Sights, Sightings, and Sounds of Nostalgia in Youth and The Young Pope Ellen Nerenberg   Chapter 2: Against Postmodernism. Paolo Sorrentino and the Search for Authenticity Mimmo Cangiano   Chapter 3: A Journey from Death to Life: Spectacular Realism and the ‘Unamendability’ of Reality in Paolo Sorrentino’s The Great Beauty Monica Facchini   Chapter 4: Paolo Sorrentino’s Cinematic Excess Lydia Tuan   Part two: Sorrentino’s Real and Symbolic Spaces Chapter 5: Posthuman Sorrentino. Youth and The Great Beauty as Ecocinema Matteo Gilebbi   Chapter 6: Interpolating the ‘blah, blah, blah’: Rome’s Vocalization Through Architecture in The Great Beauty Alex Gammon   Chapter 7: The Great Beauty: A Journey Through Art and Relations in Search for Beauty Michela Barisonzi   Chapter 8: The Urban Dimension as Film Character: Rome in The Great Beauty Carla Molinari   Part three: A Journey into Sorrentino’s Psyche Chapter 9: The ‘Primal Scene’: Memory, Redemption and (The Image of) ‘Woman’ in the Films of Paolo Sorrentino  Russell Kilbourn   Chapter 10: Anxiety (of Influence) and (Absent) Fathers in Paolo Sorrentino Sandra Waters   Chapter 11: ‘È solo l’alito di un vecchio’. Obscenity, Exchange Regimes, and the Catastrophe of Aging in Loro. Nicoletta Marini-Maio   Part four: Sorrentino’s Postsecular Pope Chapter 12: The Young Pope’s Credit Sequence: A Postsecular Allegory in Ten Paintings. Russell Kilbourn   Chapter 13: The ‘Fabrication’ of Religion in The Young Pope: the Double Irony of Post-Secular Iconicity Monica Jansen and Maria Bonaria Urban   Chapter 14: The Young Pope Between Television and Celebrity Studies  Anna Manzato and Antonella Mascio    Interview with Carlo Poggioli (costume designer of Paolo Sorrentino) Annachiara Mariani   Bibliography              

Reviews

'This is an extremely valuable contribution to Sorrentino scholarship that, especially when read in conjunction with Kilbourn's monograph, provides a provocative, wide-ranging and thought-provoking overview of Sorrentino's originality and significance. Moreover, it does not fail to engage with the more controversial and divisive aspects of his work, such as his treatment of gender (addressed in essays by Russell Kilbourn and Nicoletta Marini-Maio) and alleged privileging of style over content (addressed in essays by Lydia Tuan and Michela Barisonzi). The book should be of great interest to anyone concerned with Italian cinema, contemporary Italian culture, or the state of global film and television today. Sorrentino has finally achieved the recognition he deserves within academia and I am sure this exciting new collection will only serve as a spur to further scholarship.' -- Alex Marlow-Mann, Modern Italy

Author Information

Annachiara Mariani is an assistant professor of Italian. She received her Laurea (BA-MA) in foreign languages and literatures from the Università di Bologna and her Ph.D in Italian from Rutgers University. Her research interests are in Italian cinema, National and Trans-National media studies, and Italian theatre. She has authored a book on the Grotesque Theatre and Pirandello (2013). She has also published numerous articles, essays, film reviews, book reviews on Italian Theatre, Cinema, and the interrelation between cinema and literature. She has recently published a special edition of the journal of Italian cinema and media studies on Sorrentino’s films and TV series. She is currently working on a book-length project on today’s portrayal of the Italian Renaissance through popular culture and television series Flavia Laviosa is senior lecturer in the Department of Italian Studies at Wellesley College. Her research interests are in Italian women filmmakers. She is the founder and editor in-chief of the Journal of Italian Cinema & Media Studies and the book series Trajectories. She has authored chapters in the volumes He Was My Father (Peter Lang, 2018) (edited by S. Gastaldi and D. Ward), The Italian Cinema Book (BFI, 2014) (edited by P. Bondanella), A New Italian Political Cinema? Emerging Themes (Troubadour, 2013) (edited by W. Hope) and Popular Italian Cinema and Politics in a Postwar Society (Bloomsbury, 2011) (edited by F. Brizio-Skov), and written articles published in the Journal of Mediterranean Studies, Studies in European Cinema, JOMEC, Rivista di Studi Italiani, Italica and Incontri: Rivista Europea di Studi Italiani. She has also guest-edited the Special Issue of SEC, ‘Cinematic Journeys of Italian Women Directors’ (8:2, 2011) and edited the volume Visions of Struggle in Women’s Filmmaking in the Mediterranean (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). Contact: Department of Italian Studies, Wellesley College, 106 Central Street, Wellesley, MA 02481, USA.

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