Giuseppe De Santis and postwar Italian cinema / Antonio Vitti.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Vitti draws on his extensive personal interviews with De Santis as well as on the latter's previously unpublished writings. This volume captures the intelligence, passion, aesthetic flair, and occasionally fiery temperament of this important filmmaker.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

In this first English-language book-length study of de Santis, Vitti analyzes each of the director's films and describes its critical reception. Emphasizing his commitment to sociopolitical issues, Vitti examines de Santis' contribution to the content, intention, and form of neorealism. He describes de Santis' use of popular narratives, like the American Western or Italian photoromance, to entertain while educating his working-class audience. For example, his intent with Riso amaro (Bitter Rice, 1949) was to criticize the postwar Americanization of the Italians and to celebrate the virtues of class solidarity. Vitti argues that de Santis' politics, his attempt to define and offer solutions to social problems, explains his being censored, boycotted, and ostracized by a film industry that in the 1960s would privilege the work of Fellini and Antonioni, whose focus was "on the middle and upper middle classes' existential and neurotic problems." In addition to the biographical profile and film analyses, the text contains passages from de Santis' published and unpublished writing. All collections. S. Vander Closter Rhode Island School of Design