Description
Book SynopsisTraces the origins of American cinema's century-long fascination with Italy and Italian immigrants to the popularity of the pre-photographic aesthetic - the picturesque.
Trade ReviewBertellini situates early cinema within a broad geopolitical framework that 'calls for a reconsideration of race as a long-lasting visual form' and invites the film scholar to reexamine the medium's specificity. This makes Italy in Early American Cinema a seminal contribution to the field of cinema studies. June 2011, Vol. 31:2
* Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television *
The book is beautifully illustrated and its sources are often spectacular. Bertellini finds historical evidence where previous researchers found none. . . . Unlike much of recent film historical research, which remains confined to a rather empirical presentation of previously unknown documents, Bertellini wants to insert these archives into a rich interdisciplinary, long-term development. July - December 2010
* Altreitalie *
Bertellini's Italy in Early American Cinema is simply an extraordinary achievement. . . . He has been meticulous and indefatigable in discovering a wealth of original historical source material and honed and re-honed the text into an exemplary model of lucid, sophisticated, critical historical analysis. Vol. 22, 2010
* Film History *
Bertellini's sophisticated interdisciplinary study addresses questions of race moving between Italy and America in the prehistory and early history of film. . . . Bertellini's persuasive thesis that identity-formation works, among other things, through the picturesque, provides a further explanation for our persistent need for a local aura of realist 'authenticity' in our idea of what Italian cinema should give us. July 2011
* Times Literary Supplement *
Bertellini has done a great service not just to scholars of American film, but also to the Italian-American citizen, by concentrating on this overlooked, but rich vein of American culture. August 2010
* Fra Noi *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction: Transatlantic Racial Culture and Modern Visual Reproductions
Part 1. Picturing Italy's Natural and Social Landscapes
1. Picturesque Mode of Difference
2. The Picturesque Italian South as Transnational Commodity
Part 2. Picture-Perfect America
3. Picturesque Views and American Natural Landscapes
4. Picturesque New York
5. Black Hands, White Faces
6. White Hearts
7. Performing Geography
Afterword: "A Mirror with a Memory"
Notes
Filmography
Bibliography
Index
