The Cinema of Paolo Sorrentino

The Cinema of Paolo Sorrentino
Author: Russell Kilbourn
Publisher: Wallflower Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2020
Genre:
ISBN: 9780231189927

"Paolo Sorrentino, the director of Il Divo (2008) and The Great Beauty (2013) and the creator of the HBO series The Young Pope (2016) (and The New Pope (2019)), has in recent years emerged as one of the most popular figures in 21st century European filmmaking. Critics, however, remain sharply divided in their opinions of his films and what tradition his work can be placed in. Questions of what his stylistic relationship to Neorealism, the touchstone of virtually all Italian cinema, his local/national identity, and the posturing of his films vis a vis gender and a seemingly reactionary conceptualization of masculinity, his embracing or subverting of the role of art house "auteur," surround his films, with little consensus as to the answers. He is a confounding figure that seems to occupy contradictory roles in each of his films. In taking up the question of how best to contextualize Sorrentino's work, this book tracks his progressive departure from the localized world of Neapolitan and middlebrow "quality cinema" tropes in favor of a more expansive and transnational approach to filmmaking. Sorrentino's more recent work explicitly engages late-capitalist spaces and aesthetics and problematizes authorial interpretation, the idea of the "foreign" film, the supposed dichotomy between the "realist" ethos that has, in the past, dominated Italian cinema, and a "post-realist"/"post-modernist" emphasis on style. Critically, Kilbourn tracks two key themes through Sorretino's oeuvre: the idea of "impegno" - often translated as "commitment" and referring to the social activist aims of Neorealism - and the director's repeated attempts to create a distinctive kind of subjectivity. Though often thought to be mutually exclusive with the flamboyant and de-subjectivized style in much of contemporary art cinema, Sorrentino continues to find ways to merge these themes in his work"--

Paolo Sorrentino's Cinema and Television

Paolo Sorrentino's Cinema and Television
Author: Annachiara Mariani
Publisher: Intellect (UK)
Total Pages: 298
Release: 2021-06-18
Genre:
ISBN: 9781789383751

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.

Alain Elkann Interviews

Alain Elkann Interviews
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2017-09-15
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9781614286325

Alain Elkann has mastered the art of the interview. With a background in novels and journalism, and having published over twenty books translated across ten languages, he infuses his interviews with innovation, allowing them to flow freely and organically. Alain Elkann Interviews will provide an unprecedented window into the minds of some of the most well-known and -respected figures of the last twenty-five years.

Youth

Youth
Author: Paolo Sorrentino
Publisher: MacLehose Press
Total Pages: 164
Release: 2015-12-15
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1681444682

In a luxury spa hotel in the Swiss Alps, octogenarian friends Fred Ballinger and Mick Boyle look back on their eventful and successful lives as composer and film director, surrounded by a host of colorful and eccentric fellow guests, ranging from a South American soccer star to a famous Californian actor and a reigning Miss Universe. Ballinger is there simply to enjoy his retirement, while Boyle is working with five scriptwriters on his last film, which he hopes will be his masterpiece. When Ballinger is invited by Buckingham Palace to conduct his most famous piece at Prince Philip's birthday celebration and accept a knighthood in return, he refuses, citing personal reasons. As for Mick Boyle, he eventually receives a visit from Brenda Morel, his signature actress, who comes all the way from California to give her opinion of this latest film in which she is to star. At the same time as these two men face these turning points, the marriage of Fred's daughter to Mick's son brings further complications. Only by reconciling with their muses, and by coming to terms with old age and the weight of memory that comes with it, can the two friends move forward with what remains of their lives.

Mob Girl

Mob Girl
Author: Teresa Carpenter
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 434
Release: 2016-12-13
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1501166123

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and author of Missing Beauty comes a fascinating inside look at the mafia. Growing up among racketeers on the Lower East Side of New York City, Arlyne Brickman associated with mobsters. Drawn to the glamorous and flashy lifestyle, she was soon dating "wiseguys" and running errands for them; but after years as a mob girlfriend, Arlyne began to get in on the action herself—eventually becoming a police informant and major witness in the government's case against the Colombo crime family.

Italian Style

Italian Style
Author: Eugenia Paulicelli
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 303
Release: 2016-09-22
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1441189157

Since its beginning and during periods of great transformations, movie-going for both men and women was akin to going to a fashion parade. Before the explosion of digital technology and its enchanted world, access to fashion was only accessible on the big screen. Fashion and style became reachable for the masses through cinema. And, with the genre of the fashion film, this continues today. Focusing on a number of crucial films and directors from the silent era to the present, this study will offer, for the first time, an in-depth exploration of the interaction between fashion and Italian cinema. The study, however, will privilege the golden age of Italian cinema, especially the crucial decades of the 1950s and 1960s during which, through the marriage of fashion and film, Italian fashion and style were launched globally. Through the lens of fashion, the study will revisit the films of some of Italy's most important film-makers, such as Antonioni, Fellini, Visconti and others and films as old as Mario Oxilia's silent Rapsodia Satanica (1917) to Luca Guadagnino's I am Love (2009).

Encounters with the Real in Contemporary Italian Literature and Cinema

Encounters with the Real in Contemporary Italian Literature and Cinema
Author: Loredana Di Martino
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 395
Release: 2017-01-06
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1443862282

This volume explores the Italian contribution to the current global phenomenon of a “return to reality” by examining the country’s rich cultural production in literature and cinema. The focus is particularly on works from the period spanning the Nineties to the present day which offer alternatives to notions of reality as manufactured by the collusion between the neo-liberal state and the media. The book also discusses Italy’s relationship with its own cultural past by investigating how Italian authors deal with the return of the specter of Neorealism as it haunts the modern artistic imagination in this new epoch of crisis. Furthermore, the volume engages in dialogue with previous works of criticism on contemporary Italian realism, while going beyond them in devoting equal attention to cinema and literature. The resulting interactions will aid the reader in understanding how the critical arts respond to the triumph of hyperrealism in the current era of the virtual spectacle as they seek new ways to promote cognitive transformations and foster ethical interventions.

An Investigative Cinema

An Investigative Cinema
Author: Fabrizio Cilento
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 308
Release: 2018-07-17
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 3319926810

This book traces the development of investigative cinema, whose main characteristic lies in reconstructing actual events, political crises, and conspiracies. These documentary-like films refrain from a simplistic reconstruction of historical events and are mainly concerned with what does not immediately appear on the surface of events. Consequently, they raise questions about the nature of the “truth” promoted by institutions, newspapers, and media reports. By highlighting unanswered questions, they leave us with a lack of clarity, and the questioning of documentation becomes the actual narrative. Investigative cinema is examined in relation to the historical conjunctures of the “economic miracle” in Italy, the simultaneous decolonization and reordering of culture in France, the waves of globalization and neoliberalism in post-dictatorial Latin America, and the post-Watergate, post-9/11 climate in US society. Investigative cinema is exemplified by the films Salvatore Giuliano, The Battle of Algiers, The Parallax View, Gomorrah, Zero Dark Thirty, and Citizenfour.

The Cinema of Paolo Sorrentino

The Cinema of Paolo Sorrentino
Author: Russell Kilbourn
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 480
Release: 2020-06-16
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0231548621

Paolo Sorrentino, director of Il Divo (2008) and The Great Beauty (2013) and creator of the HBO series The Young Pope (2016), has emerged as one of the most compelling figures in twenty-first-century European film. From his earliest productions to his more recent transnational works, Sorrentino has paid homage to Italy’s cinematic past while telling stories of masculine characters whose sense of self seems to be on the brink of dissolution. Together with his usual collaborators (including cinematographer Luca Bigazzi and editor Cristiano Travagliolo) and actors (chief among them Toni Servillo), Sorrentino has produced an incisive depiction of the contemporary European condition by means of an often spectacular postclassical style that nevertheless continues postwar Italian film’s tradition of political commitment. This book is a critical examination of Sorrentino’s work, focusing on his emergence as a preeminent transnational auteur. Russell J. A. Kilbourn offers close readings of Sorrentino’s feature films and television output from One Man Up (2001) to The Young Pope (2016) and Loro (2018), featuring in-depth analyses of the director’s exuberant and intensified film style. Addressing the crucial themes of Sorrentino’s output—including a masculine subject defined by a melancholic awareness of its own imminent demise, and a critique of the conventional cinematic representation of women—Kilbourn illuminates Sorrentino’s ability to suffuse postmodern elegies for the humanist worldview with a sense of social awareness and responsibility. Kilbourn also foregrounds Sorrentino’s contributions to the ongoing transformations of cinematic realism and the Italian and European art cinema traditions more broadly. The first English-language study of the acclaimed director’s oeuvre, The Cinema of Paolo Sorrentino demonstrates why he is considered one of the most dynamic figures making films today.