Italian cinema in the United States. The anomaly of Luca Guadagnino

Lorenzo Moraccini

The research will introduce the instances of Italian cinema exported in the United States starting from the second half of the 20th century and shed some light on what makes director Luca Guadagnino’s work a peculiarity. The writing will follow an approach pertinent to Italian Studies. The discourse will origin from the literature review on the topic: once suggested the fundamental assumptions of what constitutes a national cinema and how Italy is allowed to represent itself abroad, a first chapter will overview the occurrences of Italian cinema in American theatres, highlighted in the cultural models they vehiculated over the last century and their reception overseas. In a second chapter, the analysis will focus on the translation of such legacy into the 2000s: dwelling on the difficulty of contemporary Italian cinema’s capacity for international circulation (when compared to other European countries), the works of the most recognized directors will be inquired. The examination will include the terms in which authors like Sorrentino and Garrone (among others) have spoken about Italy, what imageries and socio-cultural constructions of the brand-Italy they helped to disseminate, and what languages and narratives appear to be appreciated the most in the US. Proceeding in this funnel structure, the work will finally delve into the exceptionality of Luca Guadagnino’s reception within the borders of Italian contemporary cinema. The research will further considerations about some of the reasons behind the atypical success of Guadagnino’s production in light of its tension between low domestic success and high international praise, and the American one specifically. The study will indulge the popularization of Italy’s depiction in the US, extended by a filmmaking that invests in Italy not only as an exotic and idyllic setting to romantic discoveries but also as a showcase of Italian fascinations ranging from postcard landscapes to folk traditions, from food excellency to historical awareness, through cinema quotations.

ALMA MATER STUDIORUM - UNIVERSITÀ DI BOLOGNA SCUOLA DI LETTERE E BENI CULTURALI Corso di Laurea in Italianistica, Culture Letterarie Europee e Scienze Linguistiche Italian cinema in the United States. The anomaly of Luca Guadagnino Tesi di laurea in History of Italian Cinema Relatore: Prof. Marco Cucco Correlatrice: Prof.ssa. Chiara Checcaglini Presentata da: Lorenzo Moraccini Sessione seconda, novembre 2021 Anno accademico 2020-2021 Table of contents Introduction Through cinema 1. Italian cinema in the US ...................................................................................................1 1.1. In the aftermath of the war: the season of neorealism....................................................1 1.2. The 1960s: a golden age ...............................................................................................8 1.3. 1970s and 1980s: another way .................................................................................... 12 1.4. 1980s – 1990s: success on occasion............................................................................ 16 2. A New Millennium .......................................................................................................... 22 2.1. Different times: a premise .......................................................................................... 22 2.2. Contemporaneity: 2000s and 2010s ............................................................................ 24 2.3. What kind of Italy?..................................................................................................... 29 3. Guadagnino on his own ..................................................................................................44 3.1. Unusual success ......................................................................................................... 44 3.2. Behind the anomaly. Italian? ...................................................................................... 48 3.3. A highly specific kind of Italy .................................................................................... 54 3.3.1. Postcard landscapes ............................................................................................. 54 3.3.2. Food excellency – Food authenticity ....................................................................65 3.3.3. Italian contemporaneity, present history ............................................................... 69 3.3.4. Italian cinema ...................................................................................................... 74 3.3.5. Festivals .............................................................................................................. 79 3.3.6. Luca Guadagnino, the image ................................................................................ 80 Closing remarks .................................................................................................................. 82 References ........................................................................................................................... 84 Index of film titles ............................................................................................................... 93 Introduction Through cinema In the intersection of cultures that the contemporary world offers and imposes, cinema is rightfully partaking in a collection of disciplines that reserve for some the potential to express their talent and commitment in a creative work, and for others the appreciation of these results. Just as with any other kind of personal representation and collective perception, cinema is characterized by a message that is predisposed to an infinite and varied number of interpretations, reasonings and (in)comprehensions, depending on who sends the message, who receives it or the means by which it is transmitted, or even the instruments of its creation. These are basic information, but they are useful to frame the premise that makes pertinent a research such as the one developed in these pages. In order to justify the reasons for it, the discourse must touch on the importance of cinema as the product of an industry, the cinema industry, in fact, responsible for evaluating the terms of structure, transport and expansion of the scope of messages, tasks that are often fulfilled alongside the necessary economic needs of entertainment. Equally, however, it should be fair to consider how these inputs respond to and shape the possibilities of cinema as an artistic discipline, a narrative demand, a stylistic pursuit, and an opportunity for human and social inquiry. The environment of cinema, even when it remains art, must be matched by creative, technical, logistical and economic factors. In his L’Italia sullo schermo1, Gian Piero Brunetta entrusts the words by Charles Pathé, written on September 24th 1926’s edition of the "Ciné-Journal"2, with the burden of introducing the concept of a cinema that, in the ashes of a world conflict, may potentially assume the status of ideal setting for national rebirths and a wider union - a European one - under the instance of peace. This seems like an important task for a technology still at its early stages, and yet the proposal, given the progress of cinematography over the course of the latest decades and the many possibilities that the future still holds, appears to be far-sighted with respect to the Brunetta, Gian Piero 2020, L'Italia sullo schermo: come il cinema ha raccontato l'identità nazionale, Carocci. “It would be possible, somewhere, by regularly putting millions of individuals in communion of ideas through shows specifically conceived for this purpose, to accomplish many good things and above all to take great steps forward in this idea that we must all encourage: the creation of the United States of Europe, which could mark the beginning of great things and in particular of a complete pacification of the continent.”. 1 2 capabilities of this practice within the social sphere. The communion of over millions can, indeed, happen through cinema, and exploit this medium for the delivery and expansion of any message. Or even any identity, if you wish. Film audiences, in fact, by now easily detect the ability and effectiveness of cinema in giving voice to the most varied aspects of a nation, or rather a culture, through the stories and lives of those who are part of it. Brunetta however recalls how this was not always the case. Referring to the diplomatic nature of the film platform, the historian reveals how only recently have scholars begun to question with criteria the legitimacy of cinema as a source. Precisely, they did so since the contemporary world has ensured that almost all films are available and accessible whenever, wherever, and however one wants. Thus, the new possibilities offered by the mass media society meant that the importance of cinema as a source to be consulted in order to understand and investigate different histories and cultures has grown to become inevitable and necessary. The cinema studied today is therefore unavoidably a reliable document, and not only that, but one capable of bearing witness to a double instance: that of the present, understood as the contemporaneity in which films fit and together as interaction with spectators from the most diverse times and places; and that of the past which, at occasions, movies describe and interpret. Included in the range of information that cinema is able, literally, to photograph are nature, humanity, politics, technology, religion, tradition, ideology, imagery, and far more. Films become, to all intents and purposes, a testament to a precise historical situation, and at the same time they provide a contribution to an overall vision. As mentioned, this discourse cannot be separated from the importance of the dynamic between the subject who conveys this range of information through the screen and the spectator who receives it. In these terms, however, this may mean a simplification. More precisely, this research aims at reflecting on how cinema has united Italy with the American market during the course of the twentieth and twenty-first century to date, and more precisely from the postWorld War II period onwards. The justification behind the choice to consider this precise historical window (already appropriately described3) lies in the desire to recapture those characteristics that have established the splendor of Italian cinema and continue to constitute both a model and a term of comparison for contemporary Italian films that, with incredibly lesser reach, manage to make their voice heard in a U.S. market that is so vast and merciless towards foreign cinema. The second post-war period, in this regard, represents the threshold of Fadda, Michele and Noto, Paolo 2020, La circolazione internazionale del cinema italiano: una prospettiva storica in Scaglioni, Massimo 2020, Cinema Made in Italy. La circolazione internazionale dell'audiovisivo italiano, Carocci. 3 a transition, within the field of audiovisual circulation, towards the conception of Italian cinema as an artistic expression of excellence and the consideration of certain countries as international and privileged points of contact, on a critical and industrial level. Among these, obviously, the United States of America would stand out. Throughout the first chapter, these pages will trace back to the post-war period the beginning of the tradition that has seen cinema taking on the role of ambassador and pioneer of a rhetoric, that of quality made in Italy as a repository of models and cultural values, later intended to positively influence the image and perception of the peninsula abroad. As Brunetta points out several times during his essay, the neorealist cinema of the 40s, 50s and up to the 60s was the first arena to host the conveyance of a system of marked and memorable identity traits, so much so that it acted as a guarantee for the other expressions of Italian tradition that later became universal excellence: fashion, design, gastronomy, architecture, and more. The same elements have in fact allowed for new economic, cultural and political networks and interests. The instrument of cinema has been building solid connections in the world's collective imagination, in a way that had been unforeseen, with great influence, to the point of surprising other institutions, both political and cultural, that are far from being as effective in diplomatic relations and cultural mediation. As the second chapter will demonstrate, these entail, to this day, a still enormous weight on the shoulders of those who attempt to introduce Italian cinema into American theaters. Such an occurrence may not avoid furthering an important premise, namely that of the conception of national cinema, a critical instance which, in the international film business, has been defined as a very contradictory status4: each cinematic identity tied to the notion of a single state can be interpreted, in reality, as the result of a vast number of economic, sociological and cultural factors. In addition to all this, however, the definition of national cinema incurs, above all, the concept of relationship and contrast with a transnational and, more and more frequently, global dimension. Inevitably, all studies on the subject recall the importance of the in-depth study carried out by Andrew Higson on the issue: the concept of national identity is more precisely defined by the "experience of belonging to a community, being steeped in its traditions, its rituals and its characteristic modes of discourse” 5. A particularly interesting aspect for the purposes of this paper revolves around the instability of these defining boundaries. A problem, in fact, is likely to emerge: in the process of identifying a national cinema, and for the Italian contest this is certainly true, a tendency often arises to focus only on Elsaesser, Thomas 2005, European Cinema. Face to Face with Hollywood, Amsterdam University Press. Higson, A. 2000, The limiting imagination of national cinema, in Hjort, Mette and MacKenzie, Scott (eds.), Cinema and Nation, Taylor & Francis Ltd. 4 5 those films that narrate an idea of nation as a rigid and precise unit, often consolidated in its borders at an international level. Automatically, everything that is not commonly considered within these edges is excluded in order to leave room for the kind of stories that support such consolidated idea. Italian cinema is very often subject to a similar bias, and owes it for better or worse to the extreme popularity of the neorealist and authorial seasons of the past century. The second and third chapter will prove that there is no lack of examples of filmic models that escape the rigid schematization - both critical and public - that defines a film as Italian, but also how they are still commonly perceived as far from an immediate identification with Italy. In this sense, as with more conservative versions of the nationalist project, the experience and acceptance of diversity is closed off. As Higson notes, "this seems particularly unfortunate as modern communication networks operate on an increasingly transnational basis and cultural commodities are widely exchanged across national borders". In light of this observation, indeed, it does not seem impractical to advance an assumption, underlying this work and pertaining to an Italian Studies perspective: as cultural and technological relations progress in today's world, the frontiers of Italian national cinema are destined to take more elastic, dynamic and responsive forms, but they will most likely do so while remaining bound to certain roots. What these roots will be remains the most complicated and interesting aspect to investigate. A certainty regarding the definitions of national cinema, also introduced by Higson, is seeing it as the product of a tension between 'home' and 'away', namely between the identification of the homely and the assumption that it is quite distinct from what happens elsewhere. In fact, a national cinema is subject to a condition of negotiation, comparison and conflict with respect to different kinds of cinematography. The voice of Italian cinema, for example, can lend itself to self-analysis through a reflection on past events, a snapshot of the present time or, in some cases, a sharp perspective on the future. It can contemplate, therefore, an inward look towards what it considers its own cultural legacy, its identity and community roots. At the same time, however, among the opportunities it could fulfill is that of an outward look, towards other realities equally complex and elusive to grasp, and in so doing asserting its difference from other national cinemas, proclaiming its sense of otherness. In this tension and duality, which touches economic, political and social spheres of influence, the ultimate and inevitable pole of opposition remains the cinema most capable of imposing itself on a global level, Hollywood. In taking into account the occasions for international circulation of "Italian cinema" intended as a representation of models and interpretations of Italianicity by members of the community itself, this essay needs to confront with the dominant industry, today as in the last century, of the global market. While Hollwood is capable of mediating and influencing the domestic markets of most countries, especially Western ones, an important aspect is that from its perspective no national cinema is endowed with the strength and recognition necessary to enter the U.S. domestic market convincingly, or rather in a challenging way. The reactions of countries to this imposition have, over the course of time, been varied: while on the one hand, protectionist policies and specific laws have intervened to support national cinemas with respect to the threats of American monopoly, some European personalities have gladly interpreted the position of their cinema from the point of view of international exportation. Luca Guadagnino's production, fathomed in the third chapter and at the core of this study, represents exactly an experiment, so far successful, of "counteroffensive" (even if, certainly, properly weaker and more marginal) accepted and even welcomed by the United States. As already suggested, this passage into the tight meshes of the US market makes use, in some part, of new expedients given by contemporaneity, in other of techniques established in the second half of the 20th century. Among the former is the modern conception of identity as an argument tied not only to formal and stylistic models, but also to categories of mentality, taste and sensitivity. Among the latter, it is easy to find the example already cited and further explored of the authorial and neorealist cinema successfully exported between the 40s and the60s. This topic requires touching on the discourse of the economic and institutional aspects of the film industries of the two countries, but above all it reflects on the textual and – on a lesser extent – para-textual factors responsible of creating the scale of values on which critics overseas base their opinions on Italian products. Focus of the work, then, will be the elements constituting the set of choices more pertinent to the content of film (plot, casts, locations, cultural references, and so on), plus some inferences surrounding the public images of directors as vehiculated abroad by media. The use of established foreign criticism will serve such purposes on many occasions, while not too much emphasis will be placed on the role of marketing choices, i.e. how the distributor has decided to position the films and their directors on the market. Despite this being significant, the scope of this dissertation relies mostly on the analysis of those directing and filmmaking behaviors that are proving fundamental for revealing how cinema can define and promote Italy, negotiate its instances and forge the very idea of Italian culture abroad. Following this path, the readers will have the opportunity to retrace the undulating motions of Italian success in the American film market during the last century, and then compare it with its models of evolution in the contemporary environment, especially on the heels of the two poles represented by the filmographies of Paolo Sorrentino and Matteo Garrone. At that point, the text will delve into how Guadagnino's cinematic instances belong to a fortunate as much as systematic attempt to export a specific Italian cinematic experience. 1. Italian cinema in the US 1.1. In the aftermath of the war: the season of neorealism The Italian film production soon embraced the role of a fertile space of cultural promotion. Brunetta6 recalls how the first International Exposition of Cinematographic Art in Venice in 1932 was already conceived as official legitimation of a policy, the fascist one of those years, still open to dialogue and welcoming towards international pacification. It is an idea of cinema that seems to be pertaining to the conception that culture and the arts in general function as vehicles of diplomacy, and that immediately took tangible form in Venice: the first International Exhibition called that way, in 1934, saw as many as 17 countries participating in a platform event for the exchange of various communicative, expressive and ideological systems. And it was precisely to the late 1930s that the first European titles (British, above all) appeared on American screens. In that, Italy had not imposed its own voice within a strategic and diplomatic sphere, neither during Fascism nor in the immediate post-war period, but from a cinematographic point of view the Italian market was certainly considered among the most important in Europe. This target was also a source of envy, so much so that in the final stages of the war, while the presence of the Allies in Italy was responding to the call for material aid, economic growth and socio-political recovery, American institutions took advantage of the collapse of the Italian cinema market and decided to enter an industry that appeared not remotely strong enough to be auto sufficient. The diplomatic stance, in fact, saw the United States quickly forget about Italy's position during the twenty years of Fascism and in the first phases of the World War, and instead adopt an empathetic and merciful attitude that would favor an Italian rebirth. This attitude, though, as the film historian points out, does not seem to apply to the world of cinema: during the period of activity of the American organization in charge of controlling the Italian media during the Second World War, the Psychological Warfare Branch, American producers continued to observe the Italian situation with great interest, using their diplomatic resources to deal the final blow to an industry whose 6 Brunetta, G.P. 2020, op.cit., pp. 220 and following. 1 expectations of recovery were almost non-existent. The majors would have gladly extinguished the last energies of the Italian industry in order to present to the Italian public, instead, lowlevel American productions. The fact that this did not happen seems to have proven startling to both parties, and it is precisely the Italian audiences, coordinated by Christian Democratic prohibitionist policies, that must be accredited for their tenacity in not allowing the spreading of certain films, even in such a critical situation. In an unexpected and surprising way, Italian spectators were only minimally affected by the American imposition in this phase; on the contrary, the Italian film industry, whose recovery had been opposed with never-before-seen aggressiveness by its American counterparts, started up again. Not only that, but the films it produced began to reach American screens, building and developing, in just a few years, credibility and influence on an international level such as it would never be matched in the decades to come either by cinema itself or by the action of embassies and official institutions. This glorious entry took place through the circuit of arthouse theatres and independent distribution, two innovative systems, at the time, direct offspring of the crisis of major Hollywood corporations following the landmark legal case "United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc.", in 1948. The new circuits were left with the task of dealing with a market niche, that of European films, recently become uncovered thanks to the disintegration of the vertically integrated system. It was precisely the independent distribution theaters, which would have grown significantly since the late 1940s, that became the ideal environment for the projection and promotion of foreign, and therefore Italian, films. Such products intervened in the market by providing a cinematographic experience, namely that of art cinema, definitely different from the Hollywood model. Initially, these were not very profitable projections, dedicated only to an audience of emigrants or cinephiles. This dynamic, however, abruptly took an unexpected turn. The reference points obviously to the season of neorealism, the most influential in the history of Italian cinema. Between 1945 and 1948, neorealist works interpreted the needs of new and powerful voices, those raised against instances of destruction and humiliation, poverty and dictatorship. The films crossed the frontier not without difficulty, given that many obstacles hindered their importation, first and foremost the monopoly imposed by domestic cinema and censorship, but in any case they managed to reach the most influential audiences and critics in the world, and to leave their mark. Italian cinema could therefore begin to identify a people, a nation, an identity. It could do so by means of the strong expressive power deriving from the new theoretical and creative tools used in neorealist poetic: from a strictly technical point of view, neorealism constituted a strong turn within the sphere of production methods and reference standpoints, just think of the new instances in the fields of shooting techniques, 2 lighting, story writing and editing. Above all, however, post-war stories on the screen no longer needed to be legitimized by traditional literature, subjects and screenplays could be created from scratch, designed specifically for the screen; the narrative could commit with vigor in the promotion of political and social opinions and values, and might even provide a non-optimistic view of the past and present time; the ideal set should become the real one, that of the cities destroyed by bombing and of the bare countryside; the roles of artists and actors could also be to conferred to non-professionals, capable of offering valuable and emotional interpretations thanks to their direct experience of the events recounted; attention would also be paid to the victims, to the last, to the poor, to a drama which is true and tragic, no longer glossy and artificial. Neorealism realized all that. The world itself had changed: in America as well, the war contributed to stress how Hollywood's melodramatic fantasies, heavily relying on forced acting and constructed feelings, could no longer represent a model of popular cinema. It was the new methods used by the cinema of the Italian rubble that opened new paths for European and American cinema and served as a first model for the newborn or nascent cinematography all over the world. This lead would continue to be cultivated in the filmographies of many directors, Italian and not, in the following generations and up to contemporary cinema. Threshold of such occurrence appears to have been Roberto Rossellini’s Rome, Open City (1945), an unprecedented critical and financial (this is the real surprise) success. In so much as America is concerned, the film debuted at the 300-seater “World Theater”, in New York. By the end of the year, having achieved great popularity and consequently opened in theatres all around the US, the film would have become the first non-American to gross over one million dollars (“more than $1,600,000”)7 at the box office. The plot, notoriously, concerns the tragic battles fought by the anti-fascist resistance in the Italian capital not yet reached by the allied troops. Three souls of Italy at the end of the war make up the narrative core of the film: the leftist-communist one, represented by its militancy in constant retreat; the catholic one, dedicated to helping the last and the persecuted; and finally the one of the simple and casual victims, eternalized by Pina's death and Marcello's despair. Together, the two forces the political and the religious - stand as a common front against the latest Nazi-fascist drift. It is not a coincidence that a film with a strong opposition to the regime was so successful in that particular time frame: as already introduced, Fascism was soon removed from the imagination Weiler, A. H. December 22, 1946, 49, “Assorted Notes about People and Pictures”, article on “The New York Times” quoted in Brennan, Nathaniel, Marketing Meaning, Branding Neorealism, in Giovacchini, Saverio and Sklar, Robert 2012, Global neorealism, The Transnational History of a Film Style, University Press Of Mississippi – Jackson. 7 3 and international perception of the new post-war Italy, also in the wake of the moral requalification of the country and, very importantly, of its inhabitants, promoted by films like Rossellini's. Such an intention, in the film, is evident. Not only are the Italians characterized as brave and resourceful fighters, they are also deeply and unequivocally identified as innocent. In a mid-film sequence, this is very clear: when raiding the building where the rebels are believed to be hiding, the soldiers in charge speak German and obey without hesitation; at the same time, the commander advises the translator to "be strict with these tenants," referring to the Italians part of the group, as if to suggest that they are not performing duties in which they believe, and thus not fulfilling the orders with due rigor. The character of the Roman sergeant not only comforts the women who are worried about the future of their families, but he also acts as an inside man who, by deceiving his colleagues, helps Don Piero in his mission to prevent Romoletto from dropping bombs down in the street. Even the other Italian soldiers incidentally characterized with a pronounced Tuscan accent and therefore already configured as outsiders in Rome - are suspicious of him (<<No no, ci vo’ da solo. La tua faccia mi piace poco>>). In short, the Italians lined up on the side of the adversaries seem to be guilty only in part, at least when opposed to the "real enemy", namely the Germans. The majority of them are portrayed as "brava gente", good people, if one wants to borrow a now well-consolidated rhetoric that refers to the lack of closure of the Italian people with their historical past. What emerges from Rome, Open City is, finally, the Italy that the United States feels the duty to save and help in the journey towards the recovery, a land destroyed in body (in the cities, in the rubbles) but alive and willing in soul (in the people, in the values of community and solidarity). The documentary and realist style certainly plays an important role in why the film was so widely seen and appreciated. Undoubtedly, movies like Rome, Open City served the function of demonstrating to the American public the dangers of the regime as experienced firsthand. At the same time, however, both in Italy and in the United States, at the end of the war the population also felt the need to escape from such thinking and instead savor the novelty of a newfound freedom. A cinematography that instead still intervened, and with some brutal insistence, on the themes, could not support this desire. It is important to note, then, how neorealism was also perceived with other eyes, different from those that saw it as a necessary reflection in the relationship with the tragic conditions of war. The realism in Rome, Open City, but this holds true also for the other pillar films of the same thread, is not only about the documentary approach towards war and its intrinsic consequences on the population. Instead, it is a realism that brings other nuances back to the screen: certainly violence, not graphic as contemporary cinema has accustomed to but definitely brutal by the standards of the time; then 4 also promises of eroticism, criminality and a vaguer exoticism. Elsaesser explicitly suggests this when he recalls that "in one often reproduced shot there is a glimpse of Anna Magnani's exposed thighs as she falls, gunned down by the Germans, while in another, a glamorous German female agent seduces a young Italian woman into a lesbian affair while also supplying her with cocaine. To American audiences, unused to such explicit fare, the labels 'art' and 'European' began to connote a very particular kind of realism, to do with explicit depiction of sex and drugs rather than political or aesthetic commitment". 8 The independent circuit, therefore, already classified as the site of a new cultural status promoted by the niche nature of the productions it welcomed, also became the privileged place of a daring, titillating and provocative cinema. A similar interpretation, after all, is verifiable through the promotional strategies engineered by the American distributors, in the case of Rossellini's film Joseph Burstyn and Arthur Mayer. The work of promotion and advertisement developed by the two expert distributors, already richly documented by Brennan 9, played a fundamental role in the popularization of Italian cinema in postwar American film culture. Their business model, necessarily contextualized not only in terms of visual advertising strategies but also in the broader discourses of geopolitics and popular culture into which these films were imbricated, was focused on searching for a worthy film and putting into action any expedient to attract audience towards it. On the basis of the experience consolidated over the years, Burstyn and Mayer combined the opportunity of a cinema that was strongly distant from Hollywood stereotypes with the perspective of foreign film distribution not just as a lucrative business but also as a key vector in establishing international understanding through the supposedly universal language of film. Starting from the explicitness of form and content that Rome, Open City could (and demanded to, on behalf of Italy) import, the relevance of neorealism in this sense was grasped and nurtured. Distribution in the U.S. market, previously free to dictate on the presence of foreign films, at that historical moment felt invited to give voice, or rather screen time, to its allies, drawing on two main rhetorical models: the initial one relied on recognized critics presenting enthusiastic reviews, from "The New York Times" to "The Post", and recommending the film in a very discreet and canonical way; the one that determined a real turning point, on the other hand, involved deviant references focused on the more transgressive qualities of the film in order to promote it. Brennan traces its genesis to an "unintended 'assist' from a New York Times headline declaring that New York was not an open city. Burstyn Elsaesser, T. 2015, op. cit., p. 146 Brennan, Nathaniel 2012, Marketing Meaning, Branding Neorealism, in Giovacchini, Saverio and Sklar, Robert, Global neorealism, The Transnational History of a Film Style, University Press Of Mississippi – Jackson. 8 9 5 claimed to have understood open city only in the terms presented by the film -'a place where, in a war, you weren't able to bomb' - but in its new context realized that he could attach the film to Mayor William O'Dwyer's campaign to rid New York of racketeers, a context in which open city meant 'open to gambling and vice'. Only at this point, Burstyn claimed, did he begin to use sex and titillation to promote the film." The episode introduces well the phenomenon that would take shape in the following years: Italian cinema, identified with the neorealist production (actually corresponding to a minimum part of the entire national production) would export to the United States a double set of meanings, the first promoting humanitarian concern and intellectual appeal, the other systematically dedicated to a voyeuristic curiosity towards stories with elements of forbidden frankness in the fields of sex and violence. American audiences were given a new possibility, usefully defined by Schoonover in the transition from the condition of viewer to the position of bystander: the latter describes the act of coming into contact, through cinema, with the tragic consequences of war and at the same time detaching themselves from it in order to concentrate, instead, on spectacles of crime and sexualized figures10. Rome, Open City is followed by numerous releases fulfilling such a premise. Paisan (1946) strengthen and even amplified American expectations towards Rossellini. It relied on its predecessor’s success but provided the American market with a revolutionary narrative style. Within six episodes set in war period, the plot touches on how the most different occurrences pertain to the broad picture of hatred and anger affecting common people’s lives in a distressing way. Approaching this still striking film, both public and critics responded with praises for the novelty, the effectiveness and, once again, its shattering power. It was publicly released, in fact, escorted by the motto “A New Kind of Movie!”. At the same time advertisements endorsing Vittorio De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves (1948) exploited critical acclaims like “Best Film for 30 Years” together with strictly misleading posters implying a sexual subplot that never appears in the actual movie. The narrative trajectory featured in De Sica's film is tragic, dramatized in the sudden unemployment, and then in the theft of the bicycle, the only instrument that allows hope for a better life, and culminating in the desperation of a father not only scorned by the world, but humiliated in front of his son; in America, as Elsaesser mercilessly reminds, the story is also successful “because audiences loved the story of the man’s seven-year old son, tears in his eyes as he sees his parent humiliated, but in the final shot, slowly clasping his father’s hand again, as they walk away into the sunset”. Further outcomes of this ambivalent policy, and Schoonover, Karl 2009, The Comfort of Carnage Neorealism and America’s World Understanding, in Staiger, Janet and Hake, Sabine (eds.), Convergence Media History, Routledge. 10 6 equally popular and influential, became Shoeshine (1946) and Germany, Year Zero (1948). Indeed, Rossellini and De Sica embodied the role of Italian ambassadors, and those working in American foreign film market could hardly prescind from cultivating tie that was bounding it with the Italian reality. This was an unprecedented collaboration, sealed by an agreement between the main film organizations from the two countries, Associazione Nazionale Industrie Cinematografiche ed Affini (ANICA) and Motion Picture Export Association (MPEA), which established that the 12.5% of Hollywood’s earning for its films screened in Italy went to maintain the Italian Film Export (IFE)11, an agency dedicated to the promotion of Italian films in the United States12. It is from this very moment onwards that the role of Italian cinema assumed even more credibility as a strong identity from the economic point of view and a sustainable alternative from the cultural perspective. Since the 1950s Italian films began to be consistently and systematically present in American cinemas. This was also the desire of the Italian industry, which was not entirely satisfied with the first sensational results such as those of Rossellini and De Sica, and instead aimed at producing films capable of gaining success not only in fame, also in takings. Moreover, those who dealt with cinema in Italy also had to look to the future with vision, and worried about the impact that neorealism was creating, wondering whether it would be a healthy thing for international markets to implicitly link the name of Italian cinema to the single, and ultimately partial, neorealist production. Although appreciated and vaunted, the conquest of audiences and critics risked paralyzing the demand for Italian films, tying it to the expectation of neorealist films and nothing else. Institutions and professionals recognized that in the world's imagination, the emblematic figures of the new Italy that had been launched were becoming those of the sciuscià or the simple women played by Anna Magnani or the bicycle thieves. The agreement between the two organizations therefore also became a way to introduce overseas, in addition to the films that bore the clear sign of neorealism (Europe '51 and Umberto D. in 1952), works not necessarily linked to the same moral and political instances, but instead inherent to a popular, comic or romantic character, which promoted not only the Italy of rebirth but also Italy with its important past identity (1952’s Italy-France co-production The Little World of Don Camillo, for instance). The technique of the Italian industry seems, at this stage, to bind to the scope of neorealism an apparatus, the cultural, artistic and historical, which traditionally surrounded and characterized the Belpaese. This is the birth of what was previously advanced: the first phase of a promotion of the brand Italy as a model of quality and excellence 11 12 Segrave, Kerry 2004, Foreign films in America : a history, McFarland. More in Brennan, N. 2012 op. cit., pp.94-95 7 justified by tradition, authenticity and originality. Cinema, the first instrument to break through in the US, became the pioneer and workhorse. 1.2. The 1960s: a golden age When approaching a chart of the foreign language films that grossed the most in the United States up until 1973, one can notice how out of 13 titles, 6 belong to Italian productions 13. In fact, the widest Italian distribution in the American market dates back to the 1960s: in 1961, the year that saw the greatest expansion of Italian cinema in the USA, 116 of the 875 films distributed in that country were Italian. Above all, these were clearly the years of greatest experimentation in technique, language and expressive richness. According to Brunetta: “il cinema italiano sembra attraversato da un'energia creativa inesauribile, nello stesso spazio convivono almeno quattro generazioni di registi in una condizione di libertà creativa ed espressiva, di possibilità economiche e comunione con il pubblico che non ha eguali in passato. Per oltre un ventennio il cinema italiano, a ondate crescenti, continua a trasmettere i suoi messaggi, mantenendo in prima persona il ruolo di ambasciatore culturale e lasciandosi spesso alle spalle i diplomatici che arrancano per cercare di tamponare quelli che intravedono come pericoli per la nostra immagine all'estero”. 14 These were actually also years in which the Italian cinematographic universe proposed an ambivalent relation with neorealist models. On the one hand, many of the films produced in this time span are linked to the genre of comedy, they star actors of international fame who inhabit universes populated by figures well recognizable in their characterizations (for example, the Latin Lover); they touch on the stories told adopting a cynical sense of humor, while they criticize contemporary society and deal with social progress. On the other hand, the movies develop the well-known personalities of the auteur, those filmmakers who often started their career in neorealism and then matured into particularly innovative and courageous style and All-time foreign language films to 1973 (“Variety”, 21-27 February 2000, 16), reported in Fadda, Michele and Garofalo, Damiano 2018, THE DISTRIBUTION OF CONTEMPORARY ITALIAN CINEMA IN THE UNITED STATES: THE FILMS OF LUCA GUADAGNINO AND PAOLO SORRENTINO, in «Comunicazioni sociali», 2018, n. 3, 369-383, Vita e Pensiero / Pubblicazioni dell’Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore. 14 Italian cinema seems to be traversed by an inexhaustible creative energy, in the same space at least four generations of directors live together in a condition of creative and expressive freedom, economic possibilities and union with the public that has no equals in the past. For more than twenty years, Italian cinema, in increasing waves, has continued to transmit its messages, maintaining the role of cultural ambassador in the first person and often leaving behind those diplomats who struggle to try and stop what they see as dangers for our image abroad. Brunetta, G.P. 2020, op. cit., p.228 13 8 themes. Critically acclaimed art films by Visconti, De Sica, Antonioni and Fellini belonged to such definitions. Their value in the United States was a game-changer, not only for having reached a fame never experienced before, but for having done so according to a circuit, that of festivals and awards, which still today remains a main motor behind the Italian productions landing overseas. It is well known that when the category of the award for "Best Foreign Language Film" was defined at the Academy Awards, the first statuette was awarded to Fellini's La strada (1954). The impact in terms of cultural promotion, both of the film and the director and of the entire national industry, is considerable. What is important to note, for the purposes of this research, is that this further (and final) legitimization occurs in connection with a film whose expressive identity signals, in some ways, a definitive change of pace compared to the neorealist season. In La Strada, despite the fact that the story is original, rather linear, and shot on real locations, elements belonging to a new cinematography, to a poetics untied from what has previously been seen on screens, come together. In the relationship between Gelsomina and Zampanò, understanding human behaviors becomes no less important than the representation of strikes, protests and social outbursts, a filmmaker begins to portray through professional actors its spiritual approach to human life, and be appreciated and recognized for that. However, when it comes to Fellini, there is no film that has had a reach similar to that of La dolce vita (1960). In the wake of its winnings and nominations at the world's most important film festivals, the film was also distributed in the mainstream circuit. It grossed a total of 19.5 million dollars, the best result achieved by a foreign language film up to that year and for much time after that. Above all, it was the christening of authorial cinema in the eyes of critics around the world; along with Antonioni's L'avventura, Fellini's film captured the most attention at the 1960 Cannes Film Festival. In that year, two Italian directors, who up to that moment had always been linked to works which were personal, yes, but still bound by a logical thread that could be clearly interpreted - or at least traced back - to neorealist poetics, overturned the category. With this new model, a piece was added to the cultural baggage conveyed by Italian cinema, that of subjective expressiveness. But among the merits of Fellini’s work, particularly, the most functional to this research is that it contributed in an incredibly significant way to establish in the collective imagination the strength of the bond between the industries in the two countries. Reference here goes to the centrality of the role of Hollywood stardom in Rome, the setting and soul of the film: Marcello is a reporter ('paparazzo', famously, owes this film its origin as a word) who gets lost in a city where levity and lust respond to the discomfort of everyday life. The Roman dolce vita has fully embraced the excesses of an overseas lifestyle, featuring gossips, media and celebrities. 9 Fellini's voice unveils the Americanized idea of Italy built over the years by runaway productions, a cultural hybridization between film industries investing on star personas and exotic landscapes. From here one begins to identify such traits that largely determine the success of contemporary Italian filmmakers. The discourse is easily expanded when one notices how the star personas exported by Italian cinema have influenced the identification of national cinema. Two actors can be very useful, in this case, in order to investigate the phenomenon: Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni. The two are present, alone or in couple, in each of the five most popular foreign films in the United States over the period. In addition to playing the protagonist in La dolce vita, Mastroianni acted for Fellini in 8 ½ (1963), in the role of a director tormented by expressive needs and creative famine, but in the same period he proved to be a prolific and incredibly appreciated actor, so much so that he worked with many of the most quoted directors on the Italian film scene (Antonioni, Monicelli, Petri, Germi, and far more). His public image, closely linked to that portrayed in the films in which he took part, began to define the typical Latin Lover, the virile character par excellence, surrounded by beautiful women and with marked traits of masculinity usually involving a sexual, often even comic vein. At the same time, a deeper reflection would not fail to stress that this character many times fails in this intent, he always tries to be sexually successful but does not achieve it, portraying more of an extremely sensitive inept. This Mastroianni formula appears on screen together with his female counterpart Sophia Loren in Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (1963) and Marriage Italian Style (1964), both directed by Vittorio De Sica and both capable of achieving great success at the box office, grossing 9.3 and 9.1 million dollars, respectively. The former, worth of the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 1965 and globally admired, presents three stories of how different women, cigarette smuggler Adalina, wealthy adulteress Anna and uptown hooker Mara, deal with men in their share of society. Loren, whose fame started with De Sica's Two women (1960), interpreted all three roles and established for years to come her role as an icon on the one hand of strictly working-class roles, peripheral when not proletarian, and on the other hand to parts relating to the greying middle-class world. Within the tragic tale of Two women, also greatly appreciated in the United States (7.2 million dollars at the box office) she was a widow, passionate and courageous, resilient to the raw violence of war, but often, as clear from Mara's story, Loren also became a witness to femininity, to a strongly provocative and eroticized image of women. In Marriage Italian Style she plays Filumena, an ex-prostitute devoted to the man (Mastroianni, again) who over the years arranged for her to get out of the prostitution business and took her into his home, turning her into a mistress and housekeeper, a condition from which Filumena finds the tenacity and craftiness to get out. The 10 public identities of Mastroianni and Loren entered the film star system by right for their roles and interpretations: their personalities as they appeared on screen established a relationship with the film industry they belonged. In the eyes of the spectator, therefore, their names and their characters became an indissoluble appendage of Italian cinema of excellence, almost always paired with the names of the celebrated directors with whom they always worked and whose films could now be identified by their faces and names. Italy, in its cinema, was also being narrated through two prototypes of Italians, adopted as embodiments of the country’s cultural and ideological values by audiences around the world, let alone in the US. Italian women, mothers and cooks, would appear as tough as beautiful. Italian men, contemptuous heartbreakers with moustaches, were guilty of the sole crime of loving women. This is undoubtedly the direction that the main branches of criticism favored when indulging on the cinema of the peninsula, but highlighting the presence of an Italian authorial model, or even an actor’s model, may in fact lead to the mistake of identifying these as the sole force behind such conquests of success and audience. Italian cinema, on the contrary, has also travelled overseas along different paths from those taken by authorial cinema. An accurate reflection on the American reception of the identity models exported by Italy must include for instance the consideration of the phenomenon of co-production, already recognized in the 1950s as a necessary way to expand the possibilities of the Italian industry. As early as 1956, Goffredo Lombardo, “Titanus” chief executive officer other than the president of the Italian Producers Association, clearly stated his vision on the subject. The producer argued that in order for Italy to reach a wider audience, even a global one, it was necessary to start working, at least in the case of a middle-brow production, in synergy with other European cinematographies, and then, once a solid foundation had been built, aim at the American market, which remained the point of reference, with products for an educated audience. The objectives of the co-productions, for which Italy made agreements with France first, and then with West Germany and Spain, were precisely those realized in films like Two Women, which in fact saw Carlo Ponti's “Compagnia Cinematografica Champion” and the French companies “Cocinor”, “Les Films Marceau” and “Société Générale de Cinématographie” (S.G.C.) collaborate for the distribution by “Titanus” proper: pooling resources, launching international stars, creating prestigious "quality" films, opening up domestic markets to the other country, determining eligibility of co-productions for national subsidies. The importance of this typically commercial operation cannot be overlooked, especially when data indicates that in the mid-1960s, 75% of the films realized in Italy were co-productions. Baschiera and Di Chiara underline the relevance of this, reporting that such mechanisms were often mistakenly referred to as “a way of making movies purely 11 aimed at harvesting state benefits, co-productions instead played a pivotal economic role in the development of Europe’s national cinemas, while at the same time having a crucial importance for the definition of minor European genres”15. To this important consideration, related to the past, one could however add a fact, namely that co-production represents, today even more so, a fundamental operation for the promotion and circulation of a so-called national cinema. Contemporary productions often agree with similar goals in working together on a film, and the effectiveness of the results, as will be shown in the course of the study, remains evident. The difference lies in the fact that in today's model, collaboration is primarily about projects targeted toward cultural promotion through an audience ideally tied to high-brow cinema. 1.3. 1970s and 1980s: another way The 1960s were not characterized by the sole circulation of art cinema; on the contrary, the Italian offer constituted of a mixed model of an art cinema and a commercial cinema that the country maintained throughout the 1960s and well into the 1970s. The sphere of this "commercial cinema" includes within it those popular genre films which had been contributing to thicken the entire chain of Italian cinema since the end of the war. Bayman and Rigoletto, in "Popular Italian Cinema"16, explain the phenomenon starting from stressing how, from the 50s to the 70s, Italians became the most frequent theatrical attenders in Europe, and the film industry started to have a remarkable significance for Italy’s economy. The government, as mentioned, favored prohibitionist policies that not only limited the impact of foreign films in Italy, but also required them tax payments and investments that would finance home-produced films, and this regardless of their recognized artistic or cultural prestige. Being able to count on such factors and on the opportunities given by co-production, Italy could achieve one of the widest productions and distributions of films based on popular formulae, filoni. The noun indicates various tendencies, or rather streamlets, within film genres, appealing to masses but only for a more limited period of time. They were conceived as means of titillating the short span attention of passive spectators, those filmgoers who wouldn’t set for demanding plots but still constituted significant consumers. Despite their great popularity both abroad and in Italy, filoni in many ways represented the opposite pole to those high-quality exports Lombardo desired for Italy. Such definition commonly embraces mythological epics Peplum (Pietro Baschiera, Stefano and Di Chiara, Francesco 2010, Once Upon a Time in Italy: Transnational Features of Genre Production 1960s–1970s, in “Film International 8(6):30-39”. DOI: 10.1386/fiin.8.6.30 16 Bayman, Louis and Rigoletto, Sergio 2013, The Fair and the Museum: Framing the Popular in Bayman, L. and Rigoletto (eds.), Popular Italian Cinema, Palgrave Macmillan, p.3 15 12 Francisci’s Hercules, 1958), gritty underworld “Mondo” shockumentaries (Gualtiero Jacopetti, Paolo Cavara and Franco Prosperi’s Mondo cane, 1962), Italian Style Horror films merging Italian gothic (Mario Bava’s Black Sunday, 1960) and giallo (Dario Argento’s The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, 1970), the extremely influential Spaghetti Western (the “Dollars” trilogy by Sergio Leone), crime dramas Eurospy and Poliziesco (Mario Bava’s Rabid dogs, 1974) and comedies revolving around spontaneous sex and parodical seductions (Mariano Laurenti’s Ubalda, All Naked and Warm, 1972). Circulated abroad, many of these B-movies have conquered, overtime, the status of products embedded in popular imaginary. As far as the United States is concerned, it is essential to underline in particular the role of the Italian Western thread, key to the influence of Italian films within the sphere of American popular culture. In the mixed model proposed by Italian cinema, the films set in the dusty and sunny West, packed with violent action and surreal shoot-outs at the service of heroes in hats decisively influenced the trend of Italian production in those years. The most blatant and well-known examples of these results came from the work of directors such as Sergio Leone and Sergio Corbucci, authors, among others, of the Dollar trilogy (A fistful of dollars – 1964, For a few dollars more – 1965, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly – 1966), the first, and Django (1966), the latter. The films integrate to a rather linear story, sometimes recalling social and political imagery, technical elements that draw the viewer's attention and have decreed their fame. One may remember the long and wide camera fields, the close-ups, the soundtracks and the strong characterization of the protagonists, proper infallible heroes in search for justice, when not righteous vengeance. These are the elements that have determined their longevity as cult and meta-cult advocates: an example in this regard may be that of Quentin Tarantino, who in 2012 wrote and directed Django:Unchained directly inspired by Corbucci's original, and in the more recent Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood (2019) has once again re-iterated the wide influence of Spaghetti Westerns, not only in his own filmmaking education, but in that of the entire period. What this research is the most interested in, however, is that the poetics employed in the creation of these products depends on an Italian perception of America and American behaviors: the foolishness of war, gratuitous violence, the arrogance of colonization, and a tendency toward spectacle. Being films written for the public (the American public, as well), Spaghetti Westerns, in their various forms which also include parodic experiments such as the films with Bud Spencer and Terence Hill, can be taken as a model of a more general Italian tendency in coming to terms with Hollywood's demands. These are well differentiated at a stylistic level with the reality more widely appreciated by the critics, the one already discussed of film masters as artistic authorities, but in any case, closely interdependent with it. In fact, the 13 film industry allowed the authors the best conditions to work on their films, but this was also achieved to a large extent by the success that B movies, as demonstrated, were able to gain. With films produced and exported in large quantities precisely because by definition they were designed not for cultural growth but for systematic and repeated consumption, this type of cinema provided the industry with the tools to carry on the authorial model as well. Despite harsh criticism from legitimized voices, the figure of Italian Westerns released in the US started from 3 in 1965, but peaked at 15 in 1968, assessing between 6 and 10 in the following years 17. Elsaesser, on the subject, reminds that “directors like Fellini or Antonioni could make their films because directors like Sergio Leone and Sergio Corbucci were turning out profitable Spaghetti Westerns with Clint Eastwood and Klaus Kinski which were seen by millions in Italy, Spain, France, Germany, the US, Asia, and Latin America”18. A series of different Italian identity paths had thus been created in the United States. On the one hand, that of imports based on the most canonical artistic and expressive precepts, represented by award-winning directors such as Fellini and De Sica, and films that successfully emerged from the most quoted festivals on the international scene; on the other hand, the system of productions and co-productions had developed a new tradition of movies opposed by the critics but present on the screens, even on television, of the large segment of the population that was looking for formulas of consolidated effectiveness as far as entertainment and amusement were concerned: alongside the work of Sergio Leone can easily be juxtaposed Dario Argento's, for example. As already mentioned and further investigated later, these works were equally capable of influencing entire generations of directors, filmgoers and spectators. They did so under the banner of an Italian cinema which, on the whole, could take on the features of an eclectic production, if you like, but at the same time was decidedly capable of linking to each type of exported film a national identity bound both to stylistic innovation and to a personal or national vision with respect to global and American phenomena. The art films on most occasions kept Italy at the core of their stories, often declined in testaments and comments on historical and political events or social dramas. The list includes De Sica and Fellini's latest works, 1970's The Garden of the Finzi-Continis and 1973's Amarcord: the first goes back to the traumas of a rich Jewish family living in Ferrara as Fascism rises and the violence of the war explodes, the second, also set during the ventennio, is the dreamy memory of an Italian youth fragmented by hilarious and melancholic fantasies. Elio Petri's Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (1970) comments with grotesque rigor 17 More about critics reaction, further rehabilitation and the influence of cult Italian Western in: Fisher, Austin 2013, A Cult Called “Django”: On the Controversial Tail of a Transnational Bandito, in “Cine Excess” 1. 18 Elsaesser, T. 2015, op. cit., commenting on reference 11, p.154 14 on the relationship between law, men and authorities in an extremely delicate period for Italian society, which had recently entered the terrorist nightmare of the “Years of Lead”; Lina Wertmüller's Seven Beauties (1975) proposes the life of a man devoted to survival beyond the humiliations of honor and holocaust, and finally broken in the consequence of such cruelty. It is decidedly a historical drama, this time involving an international cast (the importance of such operation will be investigated later), Novecento by Bernardo Bertolucci, released in 1976. And again, Ettore Scola's A special day (1977) is set to its start in the fascist Rome, when Hitler visits Mussolini, and is built on the vicissitudes of a homosexual radio announcer ostracized by the regimes. Even when they do not touch on the wartime past of the peninsula, the films that circulated abroad still appear to be close to the social reasons of their homeland: comedies such as Mario Monicelli's The Girl with a Pistol (1968), even with an evident international targeting (a large part of the film takes place in England) take their cue from the same concept of loverelated revenge of honor that constituted the narrative (and comic) core of 1961's Divorce Italian Style by Pietro Germi. Outside the festival circuit and more distant from the favor of the critics - at least from those of the time - are the works of Leone and Argento. As seen, the events protagonists of their films were studied on purpose so as not to inevitably tie themselves to an Italian identity, on the contrary, they also sought the positive feedback of a foreign audience, perhaps the one that had collaborated in the production of the film itself or the one whose market the industry wanted to explore. The result is that these products have little or nothing to do with the Italian culture or a precise cultural matrix in general. Thus, in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly the nameless bounty hunter played by Clint Eastwood can move freely in the transnational imagination and demonstrate to everyone in an unequivocal way the insane reasons behind conflict and desperate search for wealth. Thus, in Suspiria (1977) Jessica Harper as Susy Bennon can become part of a universal story of crime and esotericism capable of frightening all viewers, regardless of their cultural background. Despite that, however, in the collective imagination the films remain part of the Italian cinematic heritage, and moreover with the characteristic of brilliant innovators and cult impossible to repeat: if Tarantino's citationist works remain, even if debated, by far appreciated, the perplexities posed to Guadagnino after the latter repurposed a version of Suspiria in 2018 will be reported later. The vision they propose is a personal work that advances from Italy and is in any case traced back to this country, but in addition is associated with the idea that the films are originals, early examples, models for postmodern culture and pioneers of pop cinema. It is precisely from the fate of the hidden economic base constituted by the "B series" cinema that one can start to underline the productive crisis that in the early 1970s dramatically 15 reduced the international impact of Italian cinema. Until then, the platform had contributed to the production and distribution of the entire system, but when Hollywood introduced new versions of entertainment into its market (Elsaesser once again cites, for example, the kung fu movies with Bruce Lee and those made in Hong Kong), the opinions of spectators who were not as much attached to the film as to the product naturally shifted to the new releases. As a consequence, the cinema of directors of high international stature, sustained on the scaffolding mentioned above, also declined in numbers and possibilities. At the same time, the United States had already taken advantage of the European experiences and had opened the way to the birth of New Hollywood, the new system of research and stylistic values that framed authors and actors within a revolution of stories and cinematographic narratives. Very significant, in this sense, was that many of the new interpreters of American cinema (and, from then on, of world cinema as well) testified once again to an Italian identity, both as a country of origin (just think of the numerous second or third generation Italian American personalities) and as the first receivers of that Italian cinema imported from the United States after the Second World War. An emblematic example is that of Martin Scorsese, who entrusted his first relationship with cinema and the inspiration of an entire career to his family of Sicilian origins and to neorealist cinema (My Voyage to Italy, 1999); but a similar discourse can be applied to De Niro, Coppola, Pacino, Cimino, De Palma, up to Tarantino. The relevance of Italian American presences in the new face of Hollwood is undeniable, but it is more interesting to underline how a new and profound vision of Italy abroad did not originate from Italian cinema but from a new expressive need completely made in the US and yet able to mark the perception of the peninsula in the country for the years to come. The narrative parables of The Godfather (1972), Scarface (1983), up to Goodfellas (1990) have defined the traits of an idealized and criminal Italian character, very often imagined, or rather referred to a reality that has little or nothing to do with the actual Italy of the years in which it is set, yet directly influential for the perception of Italian cultural traits (and in reality, more strictly Italian American) abroad. 1.4. 1980s – 1990s: success on occasion Besides, it must be said, the voices of Italian cinema were not among the most powerful, and certainly could not prove capable of mediating the strong polarization imposed by Mafia cinema. The Italian film industry saw the number of productions drop dramatically as early as the 1970s; this must also have been a direct result of the growing popularity of the new media, the television, a private screen able to offer comfort and innovation along with a varied and 16 dense film offer. If in 1963 the number of films produced in Italy exceeded 300, and seven years later it was still over 260, in 1984 the figure dropped to less than 100. Italian cinema then had to resort to the importation of foreign products, which were now much more numerous (about 2/3 more) than domestic productions. A direct consequence of this was a much lower incidence on international markets, including the American. Moreover, the overseas context was no longer very open to the importation of foreign films: one of the reasons for this new trend, in addition to what pointed above, was a critical fall in the number of independent distributors, who were mainly involved in the promotion of new homemade independent cinema, a phenomenon that induced majors to embrace niche distribution and create a subsection on their own. Among the operations of this type, those carried out by Miramax stand out. The company had built a reputation in the American independent distribution and by the mid-80s was investing on the acquisition of a careful selection of foreign countries titles to be distributed in the American market. As far as the arrival of Italian cinema in the United States from this period onwards is concerned, Miramax's policies constitute a fundamental step, to say the least. From this very moment, the ways in which Italy entered American theaters began, in fact, to become episodic: few films (in relation to the past) responded to descriptive and expressive needs connected to Italian political, social or cultural reality; many films recovered the consolidated models of American productions that the theatrical public was becoming accustomed to seeing. This meant that really few of the already limited films produced in Italy managed to penetrate the imaginaries overseas, and the four titles that did succeed were all distributed precisely by Miramax Films. Many of the authors of established fame from previous decades, such as Monicelli and Scola, continued to work on the construction and commentary of an Italian identity, but in parallel figures such as Bertolucci began to prefer projects with a completely global scope. The success of The Last Emperor (1987) reports the glorious and disturbing biography of a Chinese emperor, and nonetheless through the victory of 9 of the most coveted Oscars incredibly significantly strengthened Bertolucci's authority as an international master and an Italian author. An influence that, however, can never be consistently associated with the Italian national identity, which instead moved by building on comic developments (the pair Monicelli-Sordi in Il Marchese del Grillo, 1981, for one) and performances of individual actors (Ugo Tognazzi in Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man, 1981; Vittorio Gassman in The Family, 1987). The first two films to emerge from this scenario and not only land, but conquer overseas theaters were Giuseppe Tornatore's Cinema Paradiso (1988) and Gabriele Salvatores' Mediterraneo (1991). Both of them were Miramax’s bets and managed to earn the respect of both audiences and critics: at the American box office, the former earned a total of about 12 17 million dollars (an absolutely remarkable result, if one considers that until then very few foreign films had earned 10 figures grossing), and the latter 4.5, respectively. In addition, both were the recipients of numerous prestigious awards, including the Oscar for Best Foreign Film in the 1990 and 1992 seasons. Two successes of this kind require, for the purposes of the research developed in these pages, further study. First of all, it is important to underline the key role played by Miramax, which, in those years, paid special attention to European acquisitions to be imported overseas in order to make single episodes of international success. The way the company acted, curiously enough, bears some similarities with the techniques adopted by Burstyn and Mayer described at the beginning of this discourse: the model of film promotion often followed two separate trajectories, one that exploited critical instances to support the artistic and expressive reputation of the film, the other more inherent to more or less veiled and misleading indications regarding the content of the stories. Unlike the New York distributors, the Weinstein brothers, who headed Miramax, could count on the formative national experience in exploitation cinema. As mentioned above, Cinema Paradiso turned out to be a winning bet that obtained all the results hoped for and even more. The film was the result of a co-production between Italy and France, but it represents a romantic testament to the universal magic of cinema, vivid entertainment of the small Sicilian village of Giancaldo and integral part of the formation of a young man to life and to his country. Mediterraneo, on the other hand, was produced exclusively by Italian companies, but filmed on the Greek island of Megisti, the material and ideological refuge of the eight affable and unreliable Italian soldiers sent to make it a military garrison but then ended up spending quiet quality time away from war. Both stories focus on rural environments in which culture, traditions and landscape embrace the way of life of their inhabitants, usually characterized by simple and immediate tastes. In general, the atmosphere always remains light, often comical. These peculiarities can also be attributed to the two films that actually, more than any other, have influenced the global public's perception of Italian cinema in the last decade of the twentieth century: Il postino: The Postman (1994) and Life is Beautiful (1997). The two movies, a further example of how the landing of Italian films was linked to single scattered cases, immediately evoke the faces of their main creators and representatives, on screen and off: Massimo Troisi in the first case and Roberto Benigni in the second. These are two important personalities, capable of shaping and conveying a well-defined and direct public image. Both bounded to the world of comedy, the two had their big-screen directorial and acting debut in those critical years of Italian cinema described above, and immediately developed similar styles of performance, involving physicality and gesture, disillusioned approach to the socio-political 18 themes and, for example, the consistent use of dialectal linguistic quotas (Troisi's Neapolitan and Benigni's Tuscan). In 1984 they also managed to work together on Non ci resta che piangere, written, directed and starred by the couple, and able to achieve significant success within the cultural tradition of comedy of those years and still well rooted in the collective imagination of domestic audiences. The Postman, produced by both Italian, French and Belgian companies, tells the story of the friendship between an ordinary mail man and the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, confined to the remote Italian island where he works (in reality, a mix of Pantelleria, Salina and Procida). The relationship, which stems from poetry and maintains the tones of sentimental fables, once again reflects on a pure and simple life, free from the heaviness of cities and articulated narratives. Upon its release in the United States, the film, co-directed by Troisi and Michael Radford, grossed almost 22 million dollars, a result which, as far as a non-English spoken Italian film is concerned, would be surpassed only by Benigni's Life Is Beautiful. Released three years away, this soon became the greatest exception of Italian cinema: the film earned 57. 5 million in the United States alone, a result that remains unmatched to this day (especially for a product made entirely in Italian), and earned Benigni numerous nominations and awards at the most prestigious events, including the Oscars for Best Actor and Best Foreign Film. It is impossible not to mention, in this regard, the scene of the victory, warmly announced from the stage of the Chinese Theatre by that very Sophia Loren who had been so important for the circulation of Italian cinema up until a few decades before. Benigni’s celebration started with him joyfully waving the crowd while standing on top of the chairs in the stalls, supported by the helping hand of none other than Steven Spielberg, and finally culminated with a citation to one of the greatest Italian literary authorities on an international level, Dante (<<L'amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle >>, Paradise, XXXIII, v. 145. Notoriously, the theme of Benigni's film returns to that of an Italian cinema that speaks of the war period, the tragedies of anti-Semitism and labor camps. The approach, however, remains quite different: Benigni plays a father who, interned with his wife and young son, uses all his comedic and improvisational skills to keep the child from weighing the truth of what everyone around him is facing. The context where the plot origins is clearly Italian, but the story, as successful as it was, clearly proved itself able to open up the tragicomic tale to foreign viewers as well. On a para-textual level, Benigni has delivered to the American audience the public image of a volcanic, eccentric, extremely enthusiastic man, not only at the Academy awards ceremony: think also of the occasions in which he was a guest of David Letterman or Conan O'Brian in their very popular Late-Night Shows, situations in which he alternated kisses and hugs with self-deprecating gags. It becomes important to highlight the traits of the two 19 actors/directors, because their distinct personalities and comic identities seem to constitute an important part of the perception of their films in the United States. Troisi, for a long-time victim of heart attacks, died shortly after the making of his film, and did not have the opportunity to promote it. There are, however, numerous testimonies in the American press that refer to his interpretation as the expressive core of the film, suffice it to mention the positive comment of “The New York Times", signed by Janet Maslin: “[The Postman] is an eloquent but also wrenching tribute to Mr. Troisi's talents. The comic unease that he brought to this performance clearly has a component of real pain. But that hint of unease suits Mario's wide-eyed, wistful look and his slow, often dryly funny demeanor”19. As also evident from the contribution, the film definitely revolves around its characters. This is a characteristic that unites it with the other three stories adopted here as a reference. The narrative core of the events is nourished by a continuous investigation, often disengaged, on the profound relationships that exist between individuals in extraordinary environments. With the exception of Life is Beautiful, then, the models that Italy exported in such an occasional and extemporaneous way have a lot in common also as far as the settings are concerned: crystalline seas, warm sun, rural and uncontaminated areas. These similarities bring to light the idea that behind Miramax's astute distribution clearly emerges a pattern, a working model specifically adapted to the demands of the American market with respect to European and, therefore, Italian products. In the eyes of Paul Macdonald, who suggests it in his study on the importation of Life is Beautiful into the United States, the success of the titles mentioned belongs to a well-defined project of the distribution company, which, by conveying given stories, popularized a certain vision of European cinema for the American market; in this regard, “Life is Beautiful fitted this trend perfectly. Guido and Dora’s life in Arezzo evoked exactly the form of idyllic little world Europe present by other Miramax imports. Deportation to the camp demanded the central characters must confront change, but as the film continued in the same playful tone, this was hardly registered as the film confined the realities of genocide to a single shot of heaped corpses”20. Beyond the comments, quite present, about the moral significance of a comic and Maslin, Janet 1995, FILM REVIEW: THE POSTMAN (IL POSTINO); A Lonely Soul And a Beloved Poet, article on “The New York Times”. Available online at: https://www.nytimes.com/1995/06/14/movies/filmreview-the-postman-il-postino-a-lonely-soul-and-a-beloved-poet.html 20 Mcdonald, Paul 2009, Miramax, Life is Beautiful, and the Indiewoodization of the foreign-language film market in the USA in “New Review of Film and Television Studies”, 7(4):353-375. DOI:10.1080/17400300903306706 19 20 non-violent approach to the Holocaust theme, Macdonald also reports a more general theory about Miramax's aims: "with the success of the Italian imports, American audiences were presented with a retreat into a Europe which was historically placed yet apparently timeless, a touristic cinema of welcoming countrysides and easygoing lifestyles". This indication is fundamental in the discourse that this essay wants to pursue: these traits constitute actual instances of a perspective accepted by some of the filmmakers of contemporary Italy, a conception of the possibilities of international circulation adopted and developed in different ways. 21 2. A New Millennium 2.1. Different times: a premise In the previous chapter, it has been examined how the interventions of Italian cinema in foreign markets have undergone continuous evolutions during the 20th century, due to new expressive needs, renewed cultural models and different economic demands. The 2000s took part in this process, bringing with them a series of technological and structural innovations that imposed a decisive change in the way cinema was made and in the manner in which it was transmitted, seen and received. First of all, the advent of digital surprised and then outclassed the formulas of film, defining new systems of production and distribution. This, paired with internet and the almost infinite opportunities it allowed, has led to a substantial change in the world of media, and therefore, of cinema. The development of technologies has remained constant, to the point of ensuring network connections sufficiently stable and fast to facilitate streaming services, legal or not. This has resulted in a drastic change of attitude in the approach and fruition of audiovisual content, now available immediately, or at least within the limits of a rather short time span, especially if compared to that demanded up to twenty, but also ten years ago. For the purposes of this research, it is worth mentioning the dynamics of the digital innovation because it is precisely these, mediating on the circulation and fruition of content, that mark the new criteria to be considered when deeming a film a success or not. Video-on-demand platforms, which, still in the studies of a few years ago, were considered new instruments of an industry in strong change, today declare their position of maximum importance in the global content supply chain. Moreover, in the last two years, which have seen the Covid-19 pandemic forcing the world's population into lockdown, these services have definitively declared their importance21. Novelties of this kind today are not simply legitimized, but are in a predominant position within the market of the influence of audiovisual products on viewers and masses: the releases of films and series for Tv are celebrated as events, anticipated by marketing campaigns Vlassis, Antonios. Global Online Platforms, COVID-19, and Culture: The Global Pandemic, an Accelerator towards Which Direction?, <<Media, Culture & Society>> 43, no. 5 (July 2021): 957–69. https://doi.org/10.1177/0163443721994537. 21 22 fully comparable to cinema's; more and more big names of directors and actors are linked to the original projects produced by various Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, AppleTv; contents no longer end once the viewing experience is over, but willingly enter the collective imagination through social networks. Not only has cinema transformed and moved to new environments, but the recipients of the film texts are naturally inclined to comment on their terms, discuss their assumptions, ponder their effects, ultimately share their total experience as never before. In some ways, Pathé's thought reported by Brunetta at the beginning of this work has become concrete with unimagined traits: today, more than ever, millions and millions of people can be involved as fellow participants in the same message, influenced by means of the cinematographic instrument. Any study that deals with the transmission of certain socio-cultural values, in this case some among those characterizing Italy, from one reality to another, must necessarily keep up with the most recent arrangements by which this takes place. It should be noted, therefore, that the exhibition and visibility spaces for films have grown considerably, and now include not only the more traditional theatrical distribution - even if in fact this, which includes the festival circuit, remains privileged for the purposes of this discourse - but also the greatly popularized distribution wherever, however, and whenever wanted (usually, still, at home). Barra and Perrotta proposed a reflection on this, analyzing the ways in which Italian cinema is distributed in the United States through pay TV and on-demand services: it emerged that the procedures behind this circulation move along two paths, one pertinent to a global idea of "Italian quality cinema" derived from the history of national cinema and nowadays built through film festivals, institutions and international academia, the other, more recent, inherent to the operational needs of the sector, thus constructed on trial and error processes, on the idea of an implied audience and on television and digital logics: “On some occasions [Italian films] play to varying degrees with a stereotyped idea of ‘Italianness’, on others they gloss over all differences in favour of a generic international appeal (with global stars and narratives, in English), or even remould classic categories like author, genre, the ‘great classic’, action and spectacle (regardless, sometimes, of the film’s quality). And it is this mix of industrial and editorial factors that ultimately shapes the image that a large chunk of the US audience – and, thus, the global audience – has of Italian cinema” 22. Here then, the movements of contemporary Italian films Barra, Luca and Perrotta, Marta 2020, Contemporary Circulation of Italian Cinema Across US Television and Digital Platforms, already in Garofalo, Damiano and Holdaway, Dom and Scaglioni, Massimo (eds.) «Comunicazioni Sociali – Journal of Media, Performing Arts and Cultural Studies» (n. 3/2018), Special Issue: “The International Circulation of European Cinema in the Digital Age”. Available online at: 22 23 must be contextualized even more within a global context, and the issue of the defining identity of Italian cinema as a tension between home and away emerges more overtly: if products can travel further, the industry is obliged to gauge this; if the industry favors such a movement, this will help shape the entire direction. In simpler words: if films are made to be appealing to a wider audience, can they run the risk of losing their national identity? In the Italian case, this is the clear premise behind the analysis of a production like Luca Guadagnino's (studied in the next chapter), but it is a practice adopted, in a more or less systematic way, by many authors and many production companies aiming at a greater visibility of their work. In the cinema of the peninsula, a similar approach is adopted especially by those belonging to the circuit of art house cinema and festivals, the most traditionally devoted to internalization. In this sense, it may be interesting to underline the renewed relationship between the author and his own production: authority and authenticity have always been the key words to designate a director as an author, but Elsaesser already underlined how in the contemporary context these seemed less bound to content and more to form: "for Europe and America, not self-doubt nor selfexpression, not metaphysical themes, nor a realist aesthetic are what makes a director an auteur. [...] Instead, auteurs now dissimulate such signatures of selfhood, even where they believe or doubt as passionately as did their predecessors. Authority and authenticity has shifted to the manner a filmmaker uses the cinema's resources, which is to say, his or her command of the generic, the expressive, the excessive, the visual and the visceral."23 One could consider the link with national identity as an element belonging to the set of formulations that filmmakers smoothed out over time; this well introduces a discourse on contemporary cinema in Italy and on how it has spoken of its country in the United States, which remains, even in the first decades of the new millennium, the most influential market. 2.2. Contemporaneity: 2000s and 2010s If - for a research on the reception of Italian cinema in a European environment - two different models of Italian films reaching audiences abroad can be clearly distinguished, in considering the products that become capable of crossing the ocean, the above does not hold. One of the two models, in particular, does not seem to be able to intervene, not even minimally, in the North American market (or the English-speaking one, more generally). Such system concerns films conceived for and directed to, above all, a national target, but then proved to be so https://www.italiancinema.it/contemporary-circulation-of-italian-cinema-across-us-television-and-digitalplatforms/ 23 Elsaesser, Thomas 2015, op. cit., p.51 24 successful that they were imported by other countries, which, in many cases, have significant linguistic and cultural relations with Italy, for example Switzerland and Spain. This will not come as a surprise once one discovers that, in the list of these films, the majority are comedies, precisely the genre that most willingly depends on the socio-political and cultural context of the country: the comedian Checco Zalone, in the films written and interpreted by himself, recounts in an ironic key stories tied to a hypocritical, easy-going, narrow-minded Italianness, declined by commonplaces well rooted in the habits of the country. This is one of the reasons behind the wide success of the movies, which are at the top of the list of the most profitable films ever in Italy: for example, Quo vado? (Gennaro Nunziante, 2016) grossed more than 65 million euros on the domestic market, a few thousand less than none other than Avatar (James Cameron, 2009), which remains in first place. These are films which, however, when exported, do not work in the same way: Quo vado? itself circulated, yes, in 12 markets, but these are extremely modest percentages in relation to the overall takings, and in any case positive results emerge only from European countries with a strong presence of Italian communities or sharing similar cultural and humorous tastes (in addition to Switzerland and Spain, also Portugal, Greece, Romania). Only one model seems to work when it comes to exporting Italian cinema to the United States, that being films pertaining to the festival circuit, an identification that often entails circulation in a niche cinematic environment, but which, in specific cases, has also escaped it. Once again, however, it must be stressed that the impact of Italian films remains weak in the new millennium, especially when compared to the numbers that characterize other European productions. Moreover, films that come out of festivals and circulate in Europe and North America are often co-productions that do not favorably involve Italian audiences. In remarking the marginality of the Italian phenomenon within the American circuit, Garofalo suggested that a reason for this could be found in the type of model on which Italian production, unlike that of the most efficient European countries, has become fossilized: a classic, traditional, canonical highbrow production destined to few that, at the moment of the dissolution, in the American industrial space, of the independent circuit into the mainstream, has undauntedly continued to export “art films loaded with stereotypes and legacies of the cinema of the past, but less and less exportable”24. Data confirms this situation: in the research carried out by Garofalo, Damiano 2020, Global Guadagnino. Strategie di circolazione e ricezione critica internazionale dei film di Luca Guadagnino, in <<Cinergie – Il cinema e le altre arti>>. N.18 https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.22809481/11348 24 25 Holdaway and Scaglioni25, it is clearly visible how Italy has not been able, in the last decades, to produce an offer suitable to establish solid and continuous relationships with the foreign market. This occurs in contrast to other European countries which, despite producing fewer films, manage to export a good number of them (this is the case of, France, Germany and the United Kingdom apart, also Spain, whose more limited number of films reach an average audience twice that of Italian films). Within the same research, the top European films distributed in the United States in terms of admissions are also taken into consideration, and the Italian numbers turn out to be fundamentally lower than the figures that other markets, especially the English one, succeed in conveying through globally appreciated blockbusters. If, aware of this framework, one considers the Italian films seen the most overseas in the last twenty years, one will find that the first two, Call Me by Your Name (2017) and I Am Love (2009), bear the signature of Luca Guadagnino, and are followed by as many titles directed by Paolo Sorrentino: The Great Beauty (2013) and Youth (2015). Guadagnino follows again with Suspiria (2018) and A Bigger Splash (2015), and only here other names enter the ranking: Matteo Garrone appears five times, with Pinocchio (2019), Gomorrah (2008), Dogman (2018), Tale of Tales (2015) and Reality (2012); Nanni Moretti twice with We Have a Pope (2011) and My Mother (2015) and the same can be said for Bellocchio, author of Vincere (2009) and The Traitor (2019). Il Divo (2008) and This Must Be The Place (2011) reaffirm Sorrentino's incidence. There are also two comedies written and directed by Gianni Di Gregorio, Mid-August Lunch (2008) and The Salt of Life (2011). For the rest, there are single appearances of various directors: Capotondi, Tognazzi, Frammartino, Virzì, Munzi, Tornatore, Amenta. 26 Their extemporaneous presence is symptomatic of, on the one hand, a further indication towards the incapacity of the Italian market to penetrate the North American one with consistency, and, on the other hand, of a particular tendency that can be found in the attitudes overseas film industry adopts with regard to foreign films. Cucco, in Economia del film, defined it as a "model of indifference"27, identifying single cases in which an international success, often significant, impacts the market only in a limited temporal window, without, however, altering its future Holdaway, Dom and Scaglioni, Massimo 2018, From Distribution to Circulation: Mapping Italian Films Abroad, in Garofalo, Damiano and Holdaway, Dom and Scaglioni (eds.), «Comunicazioni Sociali – Journal of Media, Performing Arts and Cultural Studies» (n. 3/2018), Special Issue: “The International Circulation of European Cinema in the Digital Age”. Available online at: https://www.italiancinema.it/from-distribution-tocirculation-mapping-italian-films-abroad/ 26 The reference of such chart, together with following data, goes to the table n.5 quoted in Fadda, Michele and Garofalo, Damiano 2018, op. cit. The table is based on information from European Audiovisual Observatory, 2018, and was integrated by this author with recent information on Call Me by Your Name, Suspiria, Dogman, Pinocchio, The Traitor (IMDb, Box Office Mojo, Lumière). 27 Cucco, Marco 2020 Economia del film, Carocci, p. 241. 25 26 possibilities. The most effective example, also reported in the text, can be Roberto Benigni's, whose production after the glorious reception of Life is Beautiful has been dramatically less influential outside of Italy, and considerably more limited in the American context. The same situation involves the various directors mentioned above, who are fully recognized as authors, but of which only single films manage to make their way into a market, the most sought-after on the planet, which often remains, precisely, indifferent towards them. A further system detected by Cucco is that of a foreign market which, having recognized the qualities of a particular author or director, includes their presence in its own ranks of professionals. This trend is one of the operations that Hollywood has been carrying out for decades, in an attempt to open new roads for its influence abroad, in this case recruiting its workers from around the world, directors included. With regard to contemporary Italian cinema, the gaze of the U.S. industry has influenced the career path of Gabriele Muccino, who for years has had opportunities and means to work at the highest levels, suffice it to mention The Pursuit of Happyness, 2006 and Seven Pounds, 2008, both great successes with celebrity actor Will Smith, plus Playing for Keeps, 2012 and Fathers & Daughters, 2015, not as positive in terms of box office and overall ratings but still Hollywood-style products with well-known actors and professionals from the American industry. A similar situation, the outcome of which is yet to be determined, may point at the production of Stefano Sollima, who after the Italian successes related to the universe of Italian crime (he worked at Romanzo criminale from 2008 to 2010, he directed Suburra in 2015, he was in charge of Gomorrah - the series from 2014 to 2016), was called to direct the thriller Soldado in 2018 and the very recent action-packed Without Remorse (2021). Both latter titles are major Hollywood releases, complete with multi-milliondollar budgets and global stars (Benicio Del Toro, Josh Brolin, Micheal B. Jordan). Although it remains interesting to notice the number of layers there may be underneath the relationships between the Italian and American environments, this type of model (defined as "adoption") involves stories that are purely international in scope, when not strictly American, and never refer to the identity roots of the director's country of origin. In fact, it is a model that reflects in a very limited way the aims of this research, tended instead to investigate the Italian share that film authors have imported into North American cinema. The pattern that shall be decisively more useful in this regard is therefore a third one, concerning the circulation system that rewards, with the box-office success, the films that can be traced back to recognizable authors, established over the years in terms of presence at film festivals and consequent distribution, especially thanks to their intervention at an international level. A real, substantial and concrete impact, however, at least as far as the United States are 27 concerned, seems to be attributable only to the first three names on the list, that is, Guadagnino, Sorrentino and Garrone. Temporarily leaving aside the first one, whose specific case will be examined in its anomalies during the following chapter, it is interesting to observe how the instances of the other two directors can be related to a same phenomenon concerning the attitude that the American market has been keeping for decades towards Italian film personalities. It is a "collaboration model", referring to all the cases in which a director of established fame and legitimized artistic value conquers and exploits the possibility of working in cooperation with the industries of other states. A key factor falling under this definition is that, despite the new possibilities that the roads of co-production can enhance, the artistic-financial core of the projects pursued always remains tied to the director's country of origin. The works of Sorrentino and Garrone fit perfectly within this system: both have risen to the honors of the canonical critics, the first one as early as with The Consequences of Love, 2004 and then definitively with Il Divo, 2008; the other, in the same year, with Gomorrah. All three films were presented at the Cannes Film Festival, where they were warmly welcomed by critics and audiences: in 2008, Sorrentino's film was awarded the Jury prize, Garrone's the Grand Prix. Following these successes, the road to international co-productions was opened for the two Italian directors: Sorrentino released This Must Be The Place in 2011, entirely in English, with the contribution of French and Irish production companies; The Great Beauty (2013) although returned to the Italian environment, still represents the greatest international success for the director and saw French interest in the production as well, (as it will then happen in 2018 with Loro); in addition to France, United Kingdom and Switzerland collaborated for Youth (2015), again with an international cast; finally, the recently realized The Hand of God (2021) bears the signature of Netflix, which is also dealing with the distribution. Garrone, for his part, directed Reality, 2012 and Dogman, 2018 in co-production with France, the international Tale of Tales, 2015 and the new version of Pinocchio, 2019 with the involvement, in addition to France, of the United Kingdom. As mentioned, however, the fact that the films are the result of cooperation between several national industries did not dictate new artistic impositions, nor did it require the director/author to submit to certain parameters of internationality at the level of story and content, as happened, for example, in the cases of Muccino and Sollima. Sorrentino and Garrone, embracing the role of creators, writers or directors (showrunners, even, one may say), have been functioning up to date as principal authorities behind the choices of the whole coproduction network. In doing so, their films remain rooted within the cultural background of their authors, and then often strictly related to direct instances of Italian politics, society, cultural models. Therefore, it is appropriate to ask oneself how much this model has been 28 effectively incisive in the American reality: data indicates that even the films that, among the quoted, have achieved the greatest success overseas, that is, The Great Beauty, Youth, Pinocchio and Gomorrah, owed only minimal percentages of their total takings from tickets sold in the United States. In all cases, the trend that can be identified is one of substantial superiority in the numbers obtained from the domestic market and the European context: Pinocchio grossed almost 24 million worldwide, 18 in Italy only and 1.8 in USA; 49% of Gomorrah’s takings were grossed domestically, 45% in Europe, and American spectators accounted for the remaining 6%. As for the most “popular”, The Great Beauty, the percentage of American takings doubled (12%), although always significantly less important than 41% and 47%, the numbers representing Italian and European takings, respectively. The figure repeats similarly for Youth: even if the film was seen mainly in Europe (57%) and less in Italy (32%), American box-office gross accounted for 11% of the total. 2.3. What kind of Italy? Despite the role of the American market in international circulation is not of prime importance, when delving into the productions of Sorrentino and Garrone one refers to the films which, after those bearing the signature of Guadagnino, have, more than any other, exported Italian filmmaking voice abroad. In the last decades, especially their names and titles have contributed shaping the foreign perception of contemporary Italian cinema. As already stressed, these are authors who in most cases have maintained very strong ties with their country of origin, often dealing with its dramas and roots with a personal approach. It is therefore worth starting from these authors in order to examine the qualities with which Italy has been exported through the medium of cinema in this century, still at its early stages. Gomorrah notoriously represented the real international turning point in Matteo Garrone's cinematography. The film is the cinematic transposition of the same-named text written by Roberto Saviano and quickly surged to the status of major literary case in Italy. The book, published in 2006 (Mondadori), had a hard impact on Italian society for the harshness and crudeness with which the author, who stands right from the start as the protagonist and first witness to the truth of what he tells, revealed about the Camorra, the organized crime organization permeating not only the urban area of Naples and its surroundings, but a much broader, even global, sphere. Saviano's storytelling, famously, follows the models of chronicle and narrative together, intervening on the themes of pulp and noir with a constant and incessant documentary evidence. His story is one of denunciation, but also of rebellion and provocation, if we consider that the literary style 29 that is employed willingly concerns excess, hyperbole, in the attempt to render in words the violence of the truth witnessed. The adaptation carried out by Garrone, evidently, reflects these cornerstones in a very limited way: as noted by Benvenuti in her accurate analysis of the transmedia representations of Gomorra as a brand28, the director eliminates all the elements that relate to a poetics of excess, and instead reverts to a humble cinematography, of external observation and, as far as possible, objective and uncritical. Among the choices made in this sense, for instance, is that of eliminating the presence of the main figure of the hero, survivor, and witness of the events, with the intention instead of entrusting the narration to the situations themselves, as first materializations of reality. It is interesting to note, here, how Garrone opted for an interpretation far from a model of glamorous approaches to the world of gangster movies and pulp films centered around stories of violence, in the style of the American operations that became extremely popular with the advent of New Hollywood and post-modernism (from Coppola to De Palma, from Scorsese to Tarantino). Benvenuti points out that the film's first sequence – featuring a strobe lighted tanning-salon montage of executions – testifies that Garrone, indeed, could have completed such a project effectively. Instead, the Italian director handed viewers a film that requires them to come to terms with the events shown and decide on their own will about their scope. Such a strong (potential) link with American cinema does not escape overseas critics, who in fact often report, in their reviews of the film, the innovative imprint of a narrative that, for once, renounces making a spectacle of criminal life. This is the case, for example, in the lapidary incipit written by Kenneth Turan for the “Los Angeles Times” “Gomorrah is a gangster film that departs from the glamorizing norm” 29, but other numerous magazines confirmed: at A.V.Club", Scott Tobias calls into question the cult works of Scorsese and Coppola, inadvertently guilty of a trend that tends towards glamorizing gangster lifestyle, to which the work of the Italian director opposes: Say this for Matteo Garrone’s powerful Gomorrah: It succeeds in siphoning every ounce of glamour out of gangster life. Over the course of this sprawling mosaic about the world’s most fearsome Mafia organization, the Neapolitan Camorra, Garrone makes the business look like a beast of many tentacles, spreading misery and death to everyone it touches.30 Benvenuti, Giuliana 2018, Il brand «Gomorra». Dal romanzo alla serie tv, Il Mulino. Turan, Kenneth 2008, ‘Gomorrah’s’ hazardous-to-health gangster life, article on “Los Angeles Times”. Available online at: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-dec-19-et-gomorrah19-story.html 30 Tobias, Scott 2009, Gomorrah, article on “A.V. Club”. Available online at: https://www.avclub.com/gomorrah-1798205650 28 29 30 Jay Weissberg for "Variety" draws attention to how the reference to Hollywood cinema is direct and at the same time evidently avoided by the director, who re-proposes from Saviano's original text the international appeal that films like Scarface (De Palma, 1983) impose even in the underworld social construction from which, paradoxically, they are supposed to descend: the author notes how Marco and Ciro, the two wanna-be-gangster kids to whom one of the film's five narrative lines is headed, “are obsessed with Brian De Palma’s ‘Scarface’ — the kind of brutal but alluring gangster pic Garrone studiously avoids emulating” 31. Natasha Senjanovic, writing in "The Hollywood Reporter", cites not only Scorsese but also Tarantino, whose "gratuitous violence" is surpassed by Gomorrah, which instead depicts the banal yet incredible everyday life of simple soldiers of organized crime. The intervention then recalls that "the film never caters to those looking for the kind of adrenaline or over-the-top humor or glamor that's come to be associated with the genre" and, finally, in fact highlights Garrone's ability to contextualize the film in the reality: [Garrone] neither judges nor idolizes in his sober approach, and restrains from too many other indulgences, artistic or formulaic, beyond handheld camera work and numerous close-ups. And the faces he chooses, predominantly people plucked from the streets on which he films, make most movie mafiosos look like models”32. It is precisely on such basis that the idea of Garrone as an author promoting a poetics that takes aspects of neo-realism and declines them on the basis of contemporary needs seems to be constructed and sustained: "people plucked from the streets" strongly echoes the neo-realist call for a rough, out-of-canon acting that took advantage of actors connected to the location, which is also real and true. In fact, Turan reports that "because being true to life was important to him, Garrone shot on location, placing many scenes in the hulking housing complex called Vele di Sampi [wrong for Scampia]". The relationship between Garrone and the most influential season of Italian cinema, appropriately analyzed for example by Silvia Carlorosi33, is grounded on sharing the darkest themes of society, brought to light without fuss or excess, but based on single dramatic stories that are as close as possible to cold social struggles. A documentary approach, in Garrone's case, also leaves room for the visual and artistic authority of the Weissberg, JJay 2008, Gomorrah, article on “Variety”. Available online at: https://variety.com/2008/film/markets-festivals/gomorrah-1200522327/ 32 Senjanovic, Natasha 2008, Gomorra, article on The Hollywood Reporter“. Available online at: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/gomorra-125889/ 33 Carlorosi, Silvia 2012, Neorealism, Cinema of Poetry, and Italian Contemporary Cinema in Global neorealism, The Transnational History of a Film Style, University Press Of Mississippi – Jackson. 31 31 contemporary author, who develops his own aesthetic from reality. While not respecting Saviano's accusatory tone, the film Gomorrah provokes through images wide testing of the viewer's emotions. The operation, then, acquires more value when one thinks of the sociopolitical interest that the case had awakened in Italy. The book, on its release, drew the inevitable attention of readers throughout the country to the all too neglected criminal power of the Camorra, to the ways in which it acts, evolves and conquered, over the years, a role as an international agent in the criminal sphere. Garrone's film necessarily broadened the scope of Saviano's denunciation, although it did so by proposing a different vision. By means of five separate stories of ordinary Italians in the area controlled by the underworld, the film insists in a different way, but not ineffective, on the tale of an Italy that is gray, turpish, starved and enfeebled by corruption, addiction and, more generally, by the violence of men and things. On closer inspection, the buzz around Gomorra as a national case also attracted the American media, which have repeatedly reminded their readers that the subject of the film is taken from a book whose author has been living under escort since its publication, following threats received from members of the clans he had accused. This was an event that, paradoxically, attested a profound instance of truth to the story of Saviano, who from a mediatic point of view has become a model of resistance to the mafias. Within the boundaries of the film considered here, however, such a stature amplifies the voice of a story that can be posited as an authorial chronicle of an established, documented, necessary danger to be revealed. Still Senjanovic saw, at the time of the presentation of Garrone's work at Cannes, a solid market for a story with such premises; yet it is fundamental noticing how the author of the American magazine is well aware of the differences that can occur in the circulation and reception of the film in the different European and North American contexts: “Gomorra” is one of the rare dramatic films to come out of Italy in recent years that has the appeal to play well theatrically, at least in Europe, and in festivals worldwide. In the U.S., it should play to the widest possible range of art house audiences looking for a thinking person’s mafia movie. It is therefore considered inevitable that the film, in the brightest of expectations, will circulate only among fans of a niche genre, and mainly because driven by its success at Cannes. Europe, as it would actually be realized once distribution is over, would be its main market. This is a tendency that for Garrone continues to remain constant throughout his production, even after Gomorrah. The immediate reference is to Dogman, the cinematographic rendition of a true case 32 of Italian crime in which a dog groomer from the Roman suburbs became the executor of a murder. A story of exasperation and defeat in the face of the unquenchable demons of wickedness and violence, is again chained to a desolate context deprived of any fertility, of rubble if you will, in a film praised again, precisely for these elements and for the actor's evidence (Marcello Fonte won the Prix d'interprétation masculine at Cannes 2018) by the limited U.S. critics who dealt with it 34. The film is proof of a legitimate directing voice, to whom the doors of international collaborations have been thrown wide open. His commitment, however, evidently does not turn towards stories of culturally universal appeal, but always continues to refer to the Italian context, with a personal approach, particularly appreciated by the production companies with whom he has the opportunity to work more, the French ones (geographically and culturally close to Italian cinema). Reality and Tale of Tales also arrived in the United States: in the former, an original story that sees all the Italian protagonists jousting in a measured tragedy about the bitterest aspects of the world of television entertainment, the matrix of the Italian setting is clearly visible, already in the landscape, but also in the comic vein, in the characterization of the identities of the characters and in the social system. The second lends itself instead to a wider look, given the participation of an international cast and a fantasy approach that lends itself well to be received by the entire audience: among the actors Salma Hayek, Vincent Cassel, Toby Jones, John C. Reilly, and others, mostly non-Italian. These were artists who had trodden the Hollywood stage over the years, and therefore had a potentially global scope, even if – it is worth mentioning – they were non-American actors (except Reilly) who in Hollywood have mainly played roles decidedly characterized by a quota of exotic and foreign otherness. In Garrone's film this potential hook seems not to be exploited so much to attract the audience but (perhaps more coherently, from an artistic-expressive point of view) to take advantage of the acting skills: the role of the stars is strictly at the service of the plot. This, ultimately, leads back to an accurate adaptation of a series of fairy tales, the Cunto de li cunti (or Pentamerone), authored between 1620 and 1630 by the baroque scholar Giambattista Basile. As a matter of fact, even though it is a fairy tale and, at the cinema, a fantasy, i.e. the genre that is traditionally exported from Europe with success all over the world, including the United States (just think of the Harry Potter saga), the original story is a product that draws on popular motives regarding the mainly Neapolitan context in which the writer acted. Moreover, the tones used are dark, sometimes tending to the world of horror. On the whole, therefore, it is not surprising that the presence of well-known actors and English Young Deborah 2018, ‘Dogman’: Film Review | Cannes 2018, article on “The Hollywood Reporter”. Available online at: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/dogman-1112738/ . 34 33 language only partially diminished the Italian and/or European quality of the entire product in the eyes of the American public. All this is confirmed by the more recent experience of Pinocchio, Garrone's most successful achievement in the United States to date, slightly above Gomorrah (if box office only is considered). The main cast, in this case, is exclusively Italian (with the exception of Marine Vacht as the fairy), but the global popularity of the story of the puppet who wanted to become a real boy, eternalized by the Disney animated classic, although of Italian origin, has allowed the film considerable access in American cinema. The film was released by Roadside Attractions as of Christmas Day 2020, and nominated for two technical awards at the Oscars ("Best Achievement in Costume Design" and "Best Achievement in Makeup and Hairstyling"). Moreover, it starred Benigni, an actor known to the public and therefore bearer, together with the story, of a certain familiarity of spectators towards the final product. Together with Tale of Tales, Pinocchio is by right included in that section of Garrone's production that, more than with a neorealist narrative dedicated to daily dramas, has to do with the element of magic and the onirical. In this case as well, the source of inspiration is literary, given that the director has entrusted his film with the role of mediating an original version of the fairy tale by Collodi (1881), including details that are often omitted or sweetened, harbingers of a grotesque tone that Garrone willingly includes in his film. It is precisely the three elements mentioned above (the cinematic heritage of the story, the presence of Benigni and the grotesque element) that defined the various opinions - generally of mournful approval - of the American critics towards the film: among the most enthusiastic was Peter Travers for "ABC News", who wrote underlining the difference with the famous Disney animation and emphasizing the grim and creepy roots that the director included 35. Travers applauded Benigni, who was otherwise guilty of his own "fiasco" version of Pinocchio (2002), in which he himself played the puppet. In his lapidary opinion in "The New York Times", Glenn Kenny defined the film as “enchanting yet befuddling”36, mainly because of the ambiguous nature of the appearance of the creaturecharacters, belonging to an imagery that apparently neither the critic nor viewers expected. For Josh Kupecki of "The Austin Chronicle," remembering first and foremost the educational reach of fairy tale storytelling, the appearance of the grotesque tableux undermined the entire credibility of the film: “Pinocchio’s ultimate transformation from puppet to human boy lacks Travers, Peter 2020, 'Pinocchio' review: A fresh and more grown-up take on the animated classic, article on “ABC News”. Available online at: https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Culture/pinocchio-review-fresh-grownanimated-classic/story?id=74852848 36 Kenny, Glenn 2020, ‘Pinocchio’ Review: An Enchanting Yet Befuddling Adaptation, article on “The New York Times”. Available online at: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/24/movies/pinocchio-review.html 35 34 much of the transcendence inherent in the parable, and thus the film never moves beyond its wooden machinations.”37 The same element was described as "remarkable achievement in special effects" in the article of the "Associated Press", signed by Lindsey Bahr, who in the course of his intervention greatly praised Garrone's operation, so responsive to Collodi's dark quotas and capable of “blending realism and fantasy” 38. A similar definition helps to sum up the Italian experience that Garrone's films are helping to shape in the eyes of the American public. Italy on the screen is concretized above all in the need for realism embodied by the director, who for his artistic and authorial vocation declines it in two quotas, one tending towards the dramatic testimony of a brutal society intensely affected by violence, the other of a magical and fantastic inspiration, rooted in the Italian literary tradition and defined by esoteric traits. The impact of Paolo Sorrentino's cinema represents another pole on which the perception of Italy leans while circulating in the United States. The Neapolitan director's artistic identity was soon linked to the defining image of his country of origin, but it was peremptorily sanctioned with the acclaimed Il Divo, a film that brings to the stage the plots of ambiguity and fascination concerning one of the main political figures of post-war Italy, Giulio Andreotti. The fictional biopic, in the wake of his award-winning participation in Cannes, establishes Sorrentino's stature, already perceived in his previous works (One Man Up, 2001 was praised in Venice and The Consequences of Love, 2004 already won him five David di Donatello and three Nastri d'argento) and implicitly binds him to the voice of someone willing to comment on socio-political instances related to recent Italian history and controversial cultural matters. Coming out in the same year of Gomorrah, Il Divo contributed to ignite in the public debate the conception of a new Italian cinema dedicated to the courageous treatment of the political theme. Together with Loro (2018), however, centered around the figure of Silvio Berlusconi, another politician of huge relevance in Italian political and business history, Il Divo represents only the extreme dimension of Sorrentino's political film perspective. The two are the films that more than any other, in order to be properly contextualized, require from the viewer some major historical and cultural competence of Italian events. The lack of this knowledge, in fact, other than not allowing full comprehension of the plot, renders unstable some aspects of the architecture on which Sorrentino's poetics is built: a dramatization that makes substantial use Kupecki, Josh 2020, Pinocchio, article on “The Austin Chronicle”. Available online at: https://www.austinchronicle.com/events/film/2020-12-25/pinocchio/ 38 Bahr, Lindsey 2020, Review: Italian ‘Pinocchio’ takes the puppet to its roots, article on “Associated Press”. Available online at: https://apnews.com/article/pinocchio-film-review-1a59dcefc245f58b41d8df0e87843c19 37 35 of artistic and cultural references embedded in visual and narrative style excesses. On closer inspection, Sorrentino's cinema in this phase fits in between the achievements of the political cinema of the 60s and 80s, and thus calls into question Rosi, Petri, Pasolini, Bellocchio, and a model of expression that incorporates contemporary media codes into the narrative while preserving the moral agenda of the realist. An approach defined elsewhere as "postrealism". 39Just like Garrone, therefore, since his debut on the international scene Sorrentino calls into question the glorious cinema of the past. He does so, however, precisely with the decisive tinge of glamour, citationism and pop-referentialism that his Roman colleague had carefully avoided. It is above all in the relationship with this type of aesthetic, harbinger of an ironic and choreographic quota, that American critics appreciate Sorrentino's work. On the pages of the "New Yorker", the "Hollywood Reporter", and "Variety", critics spend words of praise for the appropriately disinterested dramatization of such a complex character with such a surprising style. All three articles, in particular, dwell - even extensively - on the central value of the performance of the film's lead actor, Toni Servillo. Jay Weissberg refers to it as “a towering performance”40, Peter Brunette addresses it as “a magnificent job” 41, but Anthony Lane even dedicates a full paragraph to one of the “great actors”, whose performance is “so richly and preposterously enjoyable that you almost feel guilty, at the end, for having savored it to the full” 42. It is worth taking this opportunity to suggest that Toni Servillo himself, the leading actor in Il Divo, may in some way also play a role in the reception of contemporary Italian cinema in its entirety. The actor's collaboration with his fellow countryman director (Sorrentino is from Naples, Servillo is from Afragola, in the province of Naples) is in fact not limited to Il Divo, but began already in One Man Up and The Consequences of Love, and then continued in The Great Beauty, Loro, up to The Hand of God. It is a true partnership that configures the binomial within the great actor-director duos that yet characterized Italian cinema starting from the years of Fellini and Mastroianni, De Sica and Loren, Leone and Eastwood, and then greeted the arrival of New Hollywood (just remember the example of the Scorsese-De Niro couple). Not only that; Servillo also participated, and was appreciated, in Gomorrah, acting for Garrone. In the eyes of the public, the presence of the actor, so constant Marcus, Millicent 2010, “The Ironist and the Auteur: Post-Realism in Paolo Sorrentino’s Il Divo,” in “The Italianist” 30: 246.; Kilbourn, Russel J.A. 2020, “The cinema of Paolo Sorrentino”, Columbia University Press. 40 Weissberg, Jay 2008, Il Divo, article on “Variety”. Available online at: https://variety.com/2008/scene/markets-festivals/il-divo-1200522096/ 41 Brunette, Peter 2008, Il Divo, article on “The Hollywood Reporter”. Available online at: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/il-divo-125690/ 42 Lane, Anthony 2009, Men of Mystery “Il Divo” and “The Limits of Control.”, article on “The New Yorker”. Available online at: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/05/04/men-of-mystery 39 36 even if polymorphic and varied, cannot escape. Even less so to a foreign audience that has in front of it few, or rather very few Italian films, and more or less in each one finds itself observing, and positively noticing, the work of the same person. Around Jep Gambardella, played by Servillo himself, also revolves the film that consecrated Sorrentino in the international environment: The Great Beauty won the Oscar for the Best Foreign Language Film in 2014, and to date it represents, after two works by Guadagnino (Call Me by Your Name and I Am Love), the most viewed Italian film in American theaters in the new millennium. Rome here functions as a stage for the wanderings of the protagonist, a sensitive writer and art critic navigated in the cultural aristocracy of the capital; the spaces of the city become places where to contextualize the nostalgia of an entire life, passed inexorably, in sloth, and directed towards a glimpse of beauty that seems impossible to recover. The description of the city, skillfully embellished by the director and by his long-time collaborator Luca Bigazzi, director of photography, appears to have a central role in the perception of the film, just as Servillo as Gambardella and the testimonies counting the signs of Fellini's inspiration. The title is in fact ambivalent, it can refer to the topographical and cultural fascination of the city that par excellence has built Italian history, but it can also willingly indicate the destination of that perennial quest that the main actor entrusts to the face of his character. In the relationship between the two entities, the choreographic and scenographic apparatus built on parties, splendor, luxuries and lazy superficialities and amusements inevitably recalled the elements of perdition that surrounded Marcello in La dolce vita and haunted Guido in 8 ½. Among the representatives of American media opinion, there are countless references to the film's stature as a natural contemporary continuation of Fellini's work with Mastroianni: if they represented the protagonist's descent into the abyss of a society of unconscious seductions, Sorrentino seemed to take upon himself the burden of bringing to the stage the awareness of "decadence, frivolity and an unknown future". An Italian film, in contemporary times, finally wills to be able to be powerful and interesting, but through a process of cultural legitimation for the American spectator, that derives such qualities from a consolidated idea of national cinema; take what John DeFore writes in "The Washington Post": “a film more ravishingly Fellinesque that many of Federico Fellini’s own movies. Director Paolo Sorrentino doesn’t simply mimic the master’s style and preoccupations, which anyone could do, but conjures the kind of emotions that made “La Dolce Vita”, 37 “8 ½” and others endure. He collects scene of superficial extravagance and eccentricity, then finds the deeper yearnings they conceal.”43 The legitimacy, granted by the critics and sanctioned by the Oscar, proposes with Sorrentino a cinematographic Italy closely linked to its landscapes and its authorities, both actors and directors, present and past. It can be said, then, that both of these spheres of interest respond to a fascination with the Belpaese that refers to that idea of excellence, originality and quality that has been talked about since Italian films first landed overseas. In the contemporary era, as will be seen later over the Guadagnino exception, the concept includes not only the film, but many other material concretions of Italian culture: already here, for example, the architectural richness and the dimension of fashion is clear. To American eyes, the authorial traits that will later be considered Sorrentino's trademarks begin to be defined: the cult of visuals, the melancholic satire towards secular and religious institutions, the persistence of an interest in the great existential themes of “memory, nostalgia, ageing, love, thirst for fulfilment, search for the self, identity crisis, human estrangement, marginality, irony and power” 44. This is the direction of "The New York Times", on whose pages Manohla Dargis focuses on the innovative scope of the voice of a director who tells his own story with the ability to feature in it “cameras flying through Rome, knocking the dust off the city’s monuments and Jep alike.”45 In the course of his production, the Neapolitan director has also taken a path, if not opposite, quite different from the one just seen. This Must Be The Place and Youth represented a not indifferent change of itinerary in a filmography otherwise contained in the pool of representations of trauma and domestic fantasies. With the two films mentioned, however, Sorrentino's gaze has openly widened to the international context: the goals of investigation are the same, sensitivity, nostalgia, self-discovery, but they are portrayed by means of international casts, complete with celebrities (Sean Penn is the absolute protagonist of the first film as the gothic punk music star Cheyenne, Micheal Caine and Harvey Keitel are the two pillars of the narrative in the 2015 film starring also Jane Fonda, Rachel Weisz, Paul Dano). The English language becomes a mediator of the director's poetics, which are nonetheless closely tied to visual impact and the splendors of lush, choreographed staging. One centered on the fears of a DeFore, John 2013, ‘The Great Beauty’ movie review: Finding deep meaning in superficial extravagance, article on “The Washington Post”. Available online at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/goingoutguide/movies/the-great-beauty-movie-review-finding-deep-meaningin-superficial-extravagance/2013/11/26/f8781844-5390-11e3-9fe0-fd2ca728e67c_story.html 44 Mariani, Annachiara 2019, Paolo Sorrentino: A trans-cultural and post-national auteur, in Journal of Italian Cinema & Media Studies 7 (3) pp. 331–338, Intellect Limited. DOI: 10.1386/jicms.7.3.331_2 45 Dargis, Manohla 2013, The Glory of Rome, the Sweetness of Life, article on “The New York Times”. Available online at: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/15/movies/the-great-beauty-starring-toni-servillo.html? 43 38 retired star who sets out to find the Nazi officer responsible for his father's humiliation in the concentration camps, the other focused on the long-standing friendship between two elderly artists and their coming to terms with their lives, both films can be said to offer personal visions on universal stories that shall not be relegated to Italian reality. It is useful to note, however, how the American reception, in both cases, did not spare the films any criticism. The road movie, Sorrentino's first experiment outside of Italy, in the eyes of some American voices, suffers from a rambling story that places “the much-delayed maturation of the bizarre musician in the shadow of the holocaust, or vice versa” 46. The technical qualities of the film are appreciated as proper expressions of Italian craftsmanship already demonstrated in Il Divo, but there is also a lack of excellence in the foundations of the story. What emerges is an undefinable “curiosity”, “unlikely to be embraced critically or commercially”. The technical qualities of the film are appreciated, an expression of Italian craftsmanship already demonstrated in Il Divo, but there is also a lack of excellence in the foundations of the story. An indefinable "curiosity" emerges, "unlikely to be embraced critically or commercially". For some, Youth represented a similar concept, but at the same time it had also placed itself within the overseas imagination in an ambiguous and hereby very interesting position, that of successor to the much-acclaimed winner of the international feature Oscar. The same Todd McCarthy just mentioned for his perplexity about This Must Be The Place writes an enthusiastic review for the new work, which this time is: “an immeasurable improvement on his first, This Must Be The Place, standing much closer to the level of his 2013 triumph, The Great Beauty, as it takes on potentially heavy material in a disarmingly whimsical, intelligent and keen-witted manner”47 While the author in this case does not suffer from the shortcomings of the plot, which he addressed as "scant," but well compensating for by a film that proves itself capable of refreshingly mediating the subject matter and sees a stellar cast work to perfection, the opportunity is instead missed in the eyes of Lane, who suggests that the problem lies in the exaggeration of this beauty, enslaved to a “plot goes round and round and nowhere, and the highlight is a couple of blistering monologues” 48. In short, intervention on the international McCarthy, Todd 2011, This Must Be the Place: Cannes 2011 Review, article on “The Hollywood Reporter”. Available online at: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/be-place-cannes-2011-review190692/ 47 McCarthy, Todd 2015, ‘Youth’: Cannes Review, article on “The Hollywood Reporter”. Available online at: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/youth-cannes-review-797046/ 48 Lane, Anthony 2015, Toil and Trouble “Macbeth” and “Youth.”, article on “The New Yorker”. Available online at: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/12/07/toil-and-trouble-the-current-cinema-anthony-lane 46 39 scene, directly touching the American cinematic universe by means of its actors and stories in which it can feel more at ease, has proved to be a double-edged sword in Sorrentino's case, just as it was in the case of Garrone with Tale of Tales, although that remains a product far separated, in genre and style, from the approaches of the Neapolitan director. The pages of criticism of "The New York Times" (and also the incipit of Lane's article), suggest, in a very interesting way, that in the case of Youth Sorrentino has not reached the faculty of universal narrator, but rather has run into the attempt to export a European soul. The thought is exemplified well in one sentence: “Mr. Sorrentino’s camera glides across a landscape pocked with signifiers of European Decadence, one of the continent’s most durable and distinguished exports” 49 This time, however, despite the "pictorial" skill, the feeling remains superficial, observant and non-investigative, not systematic as in the visceral account of Roman obliviousness. Once again, roots would have served well. In the course of this new millennium, the United States have certainly continued to be aware of Italian cinema, but the fact that its circulation abroad nevertheless takes place according to the terms of the mediation of the cultural and cinematographic apparatus of the past (whether by the director's voluntary choice or by the interpretation of the critics), says a lot about the present and the future of Italian cinema, and allows one to ask if another way of expressing Italy is possible. In this sense, it can be useful to call into play the instances presented in the introduction to this chapter, and recall the interventions that in this phase, following Youth, Sorrentino has made in the world of television. The Young Pope (2016) and - to a lesser extent - its natural sequel The New Pope (2019) have constituted a strong stance in the Italian audiovisual scene, that of the most celebrated director dedicating himself to the small screen, which has become in recent decades one among the most, if not the most, influential tools in the export of narrative, cultural and educational models. Sorrentino stepped into the pay TV miniseries universe coherently with what he showed on the big screen, original stories that revolve around the themes listed above, here focusing with particular commitment to the religious dimension. In the events involving the first American pope in history (for the occasion young and canonically unstable) and his successor (calm, statuesque, and terribly lonely) the director reiterates the refined baroque settings, this time of the Vatican, and places them Scott, Anthony Oliver 2015, Review: Sorrentino’s ‘Youth’: A Euro Buddy Film, article on “The New York Times”. Available online at: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/04/movies/review-sorrentinos-youth-a-eurobuddy-film.html? 49 40 alongside the usual indulgences of an atmosphere that demands constant intellectual labor, never peaceful, always committed to what is hidden in the visual beauty. The adoption of the television vehicle, therefore, does not seem to have resulted in a change of direction inherent in aesthetics and content. Even in the eyes of American critics, who move on the wave of the “beautiful and ridiculous”50. Also unchanged, in fact, is the international scope of the series, the result of the most ambitious co-production in the Italian environment: Italy, France, Spain, UK, USA. HBO, in particular, by supporting the projects, gave The Young Pope the necessary authority to receive, for the first time in the history of such Italian content, two nominations at the Emmy Awards (Outstanding Cinematography for a Limited Series or Movie, Outstanding Production Design for a Narrative Contemporary Program - One Hour or More). All in view of a cast of Hollywood stature that counts within its ranks Jude Law, Diane Keaton, and John Malkovich. The case of the transmedia approach with perspectives not limited to Italy undertaken by Sorrentino to date is not unique, a similar operation will be carried out for example by Guadagnino's We Are Who We Are (2020), however, it remains a first example of a further expansion to the discourse of how an audiovisual means delivers to the American market a declination of narrative factors, exposition and entertainment born in Italy, and then developed on a larger scale. A further element that characterizes this example is what endorses it as one of those products that circulate through the digital universe of higher-quality productions stated by pay TVs and VOD platforms. Sorrentino appears as somebody willing to continue a collaboration of this type, given that the last film he has released, The Hand of God, was made and distributed for and with Netflix. This is a return to a domestic setting, however, Neapolitan, to put it bluntly: the story is biographical, and sees a boy grow up amidst the misfortunes and joys of a life saved, as Sorrentino himself has repeatedly stated (even on stage at the Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles) by his football idol Diego Armando Maradona. An entirely, purely Italian trajectory, with an aptitude more for individual catharsis than for political commentary, but still with strong social relevance to the Italian context, in this case of the 1980s. Above all, a renewed model of distribution, entrusted to the American household, and moreover, apparently not destined to be exhausted: at the moment of writing, the next project to which Sorrentino might dedicate himself seems the direction of Mob Girl, a biopic on Sue Mengers, icon of the female breaching of the world of Hollywood agents, otherwise a Poniewozik, James 2017, Review: ‘The Young Pope’ Is Beautiful and Ridiculous, article on “The New York Times”. Available online at: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/12/arts/television/review-the-young-pope-isbeautiful-and-ridiculous.html?_r=0 50 41 male exclusive. The film could represent a further turning point for the director in Hollywood, since the protagonist of the story will be played by the Oscar-winning Jennifer Lawrence and the production could still be signed Netflix or, more likely, Apple 51. For the moment, the film looks like it would privilege the idea of a Sorrentino employed by the American industry at the service of a story without any narrative or aesthetic instance linked to the director's country of origin, which would determine the shift of Sorrentino within that "adoption model" initially recalled for Muccino or Sollima, but as of now, these would only remain mere inferences. What emerges from the consideration of the two filmographies is that thanks to them, and to the directions they have taken over time, one can also map the other movements of Italian cinema recognized (or at least seen) in the United States. It can be easily realized, then, how Bellocchio's Vincere and The Traitor, plus Francesco Munzi's Black Souls belong by right to the current of cinema on the political and social spectrum of crime (Bellocchio, after all, represents one of the initiators of the genre). In the same way, it is possible to gather The Double Hour, Human Capital, Viaggio sola, Mia madre, The Best Offer under the umbrella of intimate and/or dramatic stories, basically devoid of the strong presence of a characterized Italy, often helped in the circulation by the name of the director (Moretti, Tornatore) and presenting the element psychological or mysterious. Despite the fact that We Have a Pope may refer to a similar model as far as the general tone of the story is concerned, it also wedges itself into the solemn context of religion, introducing, albeit with opposite aesthetic and narrative directions, the same link between the authors' voices and the Italian Catholic soul centered on the Vatican, later explored by Sorrentino in his TV series. Exceptions within this configuration seem to be three films, two by Gianni Di Gregorio and one by Michelangelo Frammartino. The latter, Le Quattro Volte (2010), in reality figures in the lower part of the ranking of 2000’s Italian films seen in the US (only 19730 American admissions, therefore far from any substantial influence on the public), but it represents an atypical case if one considers that it has a documentary-like style at the service of a narration that does not use words but is based on the observation of a shepherd and his flock. And yet, despite the fact that the genre does not follow the canonical models of Italian exportation, or perhaps precisely because of this, in the eyes of American critics the story is innovative and dense with a philosophical-cultural quota capable of providing viewers with an overview not only of the daily exploits of a goat-herder, but of an entire lifestyle linked to nature, landscape, and primordial relationships. Frammartino definitely insists on the D'Alessandro, Anthony and Fleming, Mike Jr 2021, Apple In Advanced Talks To Win Big Auction For Jennifer Lawrence-Sue Mengers Biopic Package, article on “Deadline”. Available online at: https://deadline.com/2021/08/jennifer-lawrence-sue-mengers-biopic-apple-winning-auction-1234814499/ 51 42 universal value of the earthly material Italy gifts men, around which the recent The Hole (2021) also revolves. As far as Di Gregorio is concerned, instead, reference should be made to the element of comedy. Avoid being deceived by the fact that the author also appears among the screenwriters of Gomorrah (even if, it should be said, the point is made by the distributors themselves in the promotion of the first film), Mid-August Lunch and The Salt of Life see the protagonist first in the role of a stressed caretaker of four octogenarian women during the Ferragosto holiday, and then a pensioner who, after many years, awkwardly faces the difficulties in winning female attention. What is most interesting to note here is that the two films are presented abroad with strong references on the one hand to the positive attitude of the critics (various enthusiastic opinions are cited on the posters), and on the other to elements of Italian culture with inevitable stereotypical inherencies (also well-founded, of course). For greater clarity, take the respective American trailers of the films 52: consider for instance the space given to the element of food, of the table manners, of conviviality in Mid-August Lunch, which, moreover, introduces the universe of the kitchen right from the title; think also of the importance given to the relationship of the man, an adult, with his mother, whose events permeate his life in both stories; pay attention to the picturesque context of the city, Rome, in which the protagonist moves. In conclusion, these three exceptions bring into play precise cinematographic paradigms, with reference to rurality, folklore, humor and a proverbial conviviality, in short, an Italian lifestyle that works well in approaching foreign markets and in particular acts as a magnet for American audiences. The following chapter will discover how these very factors may be a key behind the investigation of the work and success of the author who, more than all the others previously mentioned, manages to incorporate such elements to a recognized and legitimized authorial direction. 52 Available online at: https://www.imdb.com/video/vi3390243865?playlistId=tt1277728&ref_=tt_ov_vi; https://www.imdb.com/video/vi1592172825?playlistId=tt1813327&ref_=tt_ov_vi 43 3. Guadagnino on his own 3.1. Unusual success Within the landscape of Italian cinema and Italian directors, the case of Luca Guadagnino asks for particular attention. His works represent valuable examples of a cinema which reaches outside Italy achieving notable success, especially in the United States market. In pursuing such an analysis, the corpus here considered overlooks the first two feature films directed by Guadagnino, The Protagonists (1999) and Melissa P. (2005), in order to concentrate on the actual, exceptional cases of I Am Love (2009), A Bigger Splash (2015), and Call Me by Your Name (2017). In light of its peculiarities in both story and style, Suspiria (2018) will be brought into play in some minor way. Finally, some aspects of the recently published tv mini-series We Are Who We Are (2020) shall be included, as they offer useful contribution in corroborating the claims of the work. With the same purpose, some arguments will make use of references to Guadagnino’s work outside cinema and tv. For one thing, the abnormality of the enlisted productions emerges when data are analyzed. In so much as to what concerns film economics, in fact, movies from this Italian director have achieved uncommon success, at the very least, and have performed very well especially in the United States. While the target market of the first two films was strictly domestic (Melissa P., in particular, was received positively enough, grossing more than seven million dollars in Italy53), I Am Love marked the beginning of an anomalous path: its production formula followed traditional national practices, since it involved Italian production companies (First Sun, Rai Cinema, La Dolce Vita Productions, Pixeldna) and was supported by national institutions (MiBACT, film commissions) 54. What appears to be a first is that the Italian film met a limited success in its home country, for local tickets contributed to 3% of the total gross. This breaks a Here and below, data and percentage will refer to the analyses provided in Scaglioni, Massimo 2020, Cinema Made in Italy. La circolazione internazionale dell'audiovisivo italiano, Carocci and Cucco, Marco 2020 Economia del film, Carocci. Such analyses are achieved through data processing platforms (Cinetel, Lumière, BoxOfficeMojo, ImdbPro, ProCinema.ch, CNC. 54 Data and percentage for this film refer to Garofalo D., IO SONO L’AMORE (L. Guadagnino, 2010). La distribuzione theatrical e post-theatrical, in Scaglioni, M. 2020, Cinema Made in Italy. La circolazione internazionale dell'audiovisivo italiano, Carocci. 53 44 habit of European cinema relying on domestic markets. In sharp contrast, 53% of the earnings resulted from the wide international distribution in Europe: after participating in 24 festivals, starting with the première in Venice (September 2009), the movie was released in 31 foreign countries. A further percentage must then be highlighted, namely that American admissions represented 42% of the overall earnings. The figure is the highest throughout the 21st century if only entirely Italian productions are considered: the movie grossed a little over five million dollars in the US, the biggest earnings of the decade for an Italian film overseas. I Am Love actually received nominations at three of the most recognized prize events: it competed for a Golden Globe in "Best Foreign Language Film," the Oscar for "Best Costume Design" and the BAFTA for "Best Foreign Language Film." The numbers related to A Bigger Splash, released six years away, present similar trends: this time around, the proportional relevance of European and American spectators constituted 63% and 31% of the total audience, respectively. 55 Italian takings, about half of those generated by its predecessor, represented 4% of the total. Surprising, again, since the formula that made this film possible was entirely national, and relied on Italian production companies such as Frenesy Film Company and Cota Film supported by MiBACT as well as the Sicilian Film Commission. It participated in 12 film festivals (it premiered, again, in Venice) and reached a total 34 countries. Both movies evidently stand out in a landscape of European cinema which usually rely on their own country, or European, more broadly as the main profitable market, but they are confirming auteur cinema as the most exportable genre. It must be said that even as to what concerns major critically acclaimed successes (Sorrentino’s 2013 The Great Beauty, for one), the number of Italian viewers was never as marginal as for the two works by Guadagnino. More precisely, the reception of the latter in the United States outnumbered the former’s (by almost three times). One reason behind such unique results has been thoroughly suggested (Fadda, Garofalo 56– Garofalo in Scaglioni) pointing at how international distribution introduced the movies into the American markets. Magnolia Pictures, the company responsible for I Am Love’s release, acted promoting an initial limited supply between two major cities, New York and Los Angeles, and a follow-up second phase of wider distribution. In total, the film was screened in American theatres for 25 weeks. As already underlined, the company managed to achieve the Data for this film refer to Garofalo D., A BIGGER SPLASH (L. Guadagnino, 2015). La distribuzione theatrical e post-theatrical, ivi and Cucco, M. 2020. 56 Fadda, Michele and Garofalo, Damiano 2018, op.cit. 55 45 largest box office taking for an (exclusively) Italian film in the US during the decade: a quarter of the total income grossed by Italian films in the US between 2007 and 2016 was earned by I Am Love. Fox Searchlight’s strategy, moreover, was built on the thoughtful exploitation of renowned Italian films which circulated with a fair success in Europe after their premieres at festivals. Once trusted with the distribution of A Bigger Splash, the American company decided to double the maximum number of copies produced and reduce the number of weeks of release: although it was far from the success gained by I Am Love, the result maintains its place as the fourth largest Italian box office intake throughout the decade considered by Garofalo’s research. Such work, as a matter of fact, does not include the theatrical history of Call Me by Your Name, which calls for even higher attention, starting from the fact that it was actually a co-production in which Italian companies (with the largest share) were joined by French, Brazilian and American. Here too, the distribution model employed by Sony Pictures Classic was focused on availing of the festivals to build and strengthen the reputation of the movie: it was screened and appreciated in various premieres, since within a nine-months span it gradually reached 47 festivals in 28 different countries. When the time of the American release came, in November 2017, its distribution was limited to two cinemas in New York and as many in Los Angeles. The figure, already positive in terms of average box office income on debut weekend (103.233 dollars, the highest in 2017), rose in the following weeks and achieved the significant result of 174 theatres in the eight week, but the plan clearly underwent a breakthrough after the Oscars nominations: the number of theatres screening the film peaked at 815 and the earnings suddenly increased by 95.7%. The wake of prize season determined some other releases as well, for example the Italian one (programmed for two days after the announcement of the nominations), two months after the United States and supported by a specific promotional campaign. As of today, the film testifies the highest international achievement by Guadagnino, both commercially and critically: with a budget valued at 4 million dollars it grossed over 41.8, more than 18 in the US only; it received multiple nominations in some of the most estimated awards (Golden Globes, SAG, AFI), plus James Ivory’s screenplay was recognized a BAFTA and the Oscar for “Best non-original screenplay”. Despite these evidently positive results in both critics and audience, even nourished by a strong promotion centered on the director and the two leading actors, the movie was still received modestly in Italy: the box office registered 4 million dollars, a little more than half compared to what Melissa P. earned at the earlier stages of Guadagnino’s film career. Once again, a striking tension between domestic reception and international welcome characterizes Guadagnino’s work. 46 Within this framework Suspiria affirmed the already established collaboration created throughout the years between the director and major international corporations. The revival of Argento’s cult horror from 1977 was is in fact financed by Amazon Studios with a budget estimated at around 20 million euros. Included in Amazon Prime Video’s catalog, it grossed only about 8 million through theatrical admissions, of which US tickets constituted 31%. As for Italy, (caution is due in this case, since the country was not that involved in the production this time around), statistics appear less harsh: when compared, proceeds from Italian theatrical admissions were half of those in the US. Such figures must also take into account firstly the nature of the film, which is very different from the above-mentioned in terms of language, genre and targeted audience, and secondly the unknown number of spectators who watched the movie on VOD platforms. The last project directed and created by Guadagnino was the mini-series for tv We Are Who We Are. The process of its creation and distribution meant a further step in the relationship that binds the Italian director to important international stakeholders: in this case, the project was carried by HBO and Sky Italia with The Apartment (branch of Wildside founded by Lorenzo Mieli and already involved in My brilliant friend, 2018 and Sorrentino’s The New Pope) and Small Forward. Both critics and home spectators seem to have appreciated the series, and We Are Who We Are was judged positively on several American magazines. Although this data is not completely reliable, one could make a point of the fact that the series achieved good scores also on some of the most popular favor-probing platforms online (7.2 on Imdb, 75% on Rotten Tomatoes, 77 on Metacritic57). As to what concerns present58 availability on VOD platforms useful to grasp the circulation trends of Guadagnino’s works, no streaming services include I Am Love in Italy, while the film is available on Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV (rent only) in the US. A Bigger Splash can be rent on Chili in Italy and on Apple TV in both countries. Call Me by Your Name is included in the streaming catalogue of Netflix and Amazon Prime Video in Italy, while on STARZ and Spectrum On Demand in the US; the film can also be rent and bought on multiple other platforms in both states (Apple TV, Google Play Movies, Amazon Video, etc.). Suspiria is obviously available for streaming on Amazon Prime Video, but also for rent/buy on other platforms. We Are Who We Are can be found in Italy on Now TV, while in the US is available on HBO Max, HBO Now, and DIRECTV. 57 Scores available online at: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9848536/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0 ; https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/we_are_who_we_are; https://www.metacritic.com/tv/we-are-who-we-are 58 Information rely to Justwatch.com, consulted last in September 2021. https://www.justwatch.com 47 3.2. Behind the anomaly. Italian? An attempt of shedding some light over the exceptionality of the case shall necessarily come to terms with one impactful variable inherit to all of Guadagnino’s movies: they portray international characters, they feature international casts and, with the exception of I Am Love, they speak English. At the core of this international capacity is British actress Tilda Swinton, the director's friend and first muse, with whom he has worked since his first feature film The Protagonists, also shot in English, but released only in the domestic market. Over the years, Swinton has continued to boast global fame, and her roles have ranged from fictional characters in blockbusters with budgets of millions (for example 2005's The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, or 2016's Marvel's Doctor Strange) to more sophisticated interpretations, associated with independent production films and arthouse cinema (and this is where her collaboration with Guadagnino falls). In short, the presence of the actress is for a fact among those that are able to move the balances of box office and critics' opinion. If one considers some of the most authoritative film reviews of Guadagnino's films, it is not difficult to trace the importance that the authors attribute to the figure of Swinton. Manola Dargis for "The New York Times" immediately underlines, in her writing, how: Amid all the luxuries on display in the Italian film “I Am Love”, the chandeliers, tapestries and paneled walls, the paintings, statuary and white-gloved servants, nothing holds your gaze as forcefully as Tilda Swinton’s alabaster face. The first time you see that vision, her character, Emma Recchi, is stage-managing the lavish birthday party that opens the film. By the end of this often soaringly beautiful melodrama, which closes with a funeral, Emma’s face will have crumpled into a ruin. But it will also be fully alive, having been granted, like Pygmalion’s statue, the breath of life59. And she is not the only writer who makes the entire review of the film revolve around the actress. Swinton is in fact the pivot of the praise that Melissa Anderson, from "The Village Voice", also gives to the film. The performance is defined as magnificent, delicate and deft, capable of conveying “two states of being—as both a spectral presence who has willed herself Dargis, Manola 2010, From Tapestried Villa to Sylvan Glade, Aristocratic Women in Love, article on “The New York Times”. Available online at: https://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/18/movies/18iamlove.html?ref=movies 59 48 to simply not be, only appear, and as a person of voracious appetites” 60. Around these presences, through this lively acting, the film seems to acquire a more defined and appreciable shape in the eyes of the American critics. At this stage, then, further importance is played by the fact that the English-speaking viewer finds himself observing the work of an actress who "for this role, learned to speak Italian with a Russian accent, but her performance is nothing as trivial as a feat of learning", as Roger Ebert asserted in a similarly enthusiastic opinion in the Chicago Sun-Times61. In the following films, in fact, this international potential increases in a significant way: the cast is almost entirely English-speaking, and moreover of good, if not excellent, reputation. A Bigger Splash opens on the hot Sicilian vacation of an English rock star (again, Tilda Swinton) and her partner (Matthias Schoenaerts). The idyll is disturbed by the arrival of her exlover (Ralph Fiennes) and his daughter (Dakota Johnson), reunited with him only recently. The story, furtherly developed in the wonderful setting of Pantelleria’s reliefs, weaves the plots of an abandoned love, a youthful whim, an itching loneliness and glorious arrogance. Crucially, it does so by associating the stories with well-known faces from the international film scene, placed in an alternative context to the one in which they had been previously seen. The Sicilian Island, symbolic space of the entire country, frames and assists, fascinating, to their unusual presences. As an example, Harry's passionate performance at karaoke, first with Marianne and then with Pen, attracts what appears to be the entire village to a previously unpretentious bar. The crowd cheers the extraordinary event of fancy celebrity tourists singing and dancing to the beat of Metropole’s Miss Manhattan (1981). Again, the presence of rather important names in the panorama of Western cinema must have incisive implications. First of all, the return of Tilda Swinton, this time playing a character that no one in the media who covered the film seems to have easily forgotten, and then Ralph Fiennes, proper excellence of British cinema, whose role is the main driving force behind the film. Two figures of this caliber inevitably attracted the headlines: thus Marianne's character allows Swinton to take on "the bronzed, burnished monumentality of an icon" according to Ann Hornaday, who in "The Washington Post" strongly Anderson, Melissa 2010, Tilda Swinton’s Got to Be Free in I Am Love, article on “The Village Voice”. Available online at: https://www.villagevoice.com/2010/06/15/tilda-swintons-got-to-be-free-in-i-am-love/ 61 Ebert, Roger 2010, The sublime Tilda in lust and love, article on the “Chicago Sun Times”. Available online at: https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/i-am-love-2010 60 49 praises both the film and its muse 62; similarly, "The New Yorker" article signed by Anthony Lane strongly appreciates Fiennes' performance: Because Fiennes is in his element, and his pomp. The hints of deep unhappiness— buckled down or warped into outright malice—that showed in his earlier roles have made way for a broader strain of play and expostulation, although, to one’s amazement, there has been no loss of intensity63. Mark Olsen from “Los Angeles Times”64 dedicates his piece to all the cast - not just the two most recognized on the international scene - so much so that in the article it seems that the film is just an excuse to bring them together in front of a camera. A similar dynamic is repeated, indeed, in the case of Suspiria. In the polarized reflections that are given about the film, several voices comment65, more or less positively, on the work of Tilda Swinton, who in this case plays no less than three roles, and that of Dakota Johnson, at her second experience under Guadagnino's direction. It cannot be said that the same phenomenon, namely the praise for the cast's performance, does not occur in Guadagnino's last film considered here, Call Me by Your Name: the two young lead actors, Armie Hammer and Timothée Chalamet, were both highly appreciated. Alissa Wilkinson for Vox places their chemistry at the foundation of the credibility of the relationship into which the film delves, and predicts what would later come true, namely the fact that their respective roles were "true starmaking turns for both actors" 66. Lane, in particular, also has some important words for Chalamet, who has since become one of the most prominent young actors on the international film scene: Prodigies can be a pain, onscreen and off, and Elio—fevered with boyish uncertainties and thrills, though no longer a boy, and already rich in adult accomplishments, yet Hornaday, Ann 2016, Tilda Swinton is a rock star in ‘A Bigger Splash,’ but you already knew that, article on “The Washington Post”. Available online at: Tilda Swinton is a rock star in ‘A Bigger Splash,’ but you already knew that - The Washington Post 63 Lane, Anthony 2016, ON THE ROCKS, article on “The New Yorker”. Available online at: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/05/09/sex-food-rock-and-roll 64 Olsen, Mark 2010, Tilda Swinton and Ralph Fiennes celebrate ‘sensational cinema’ with ‘A Bigger Splash’, article on the Los Angeles Times”. Available online at: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-camn-ralph-fiennes-tilda-swinton-a-bigger-splash-feature-20160508-story.html 65 Ehrlich, David 2018, ‘Suspiria’ Review: Luca Guadagnino’s Horror Remake Is a Grim and Glorious Work of Madness — Venice, article on “IndieWire”. Available online at: https://www.indiewire.com/2018/09/suspiria2018-review-luca-guadagnino-1201999360/ ; Stewart, Sarah 2018, ‘Suspiria’ is the freaky ballet horror reboot we all deserve, article on “New York Post”. Available online at: ‘https://www.indiewire.com/2018/09/suspiria2018-review-luca-guadagnino-1201999360/ 66 Wilkinson, Alissa, Call Me by Your Name is an erotic film in every sense of the word. It’s also a masterpiece., article on “Vox”. Available online at: https://www.vox.com/2017/11/21/16552862/call-me-by-your-name-reviewtimothee-chalamet-armie-hammer 62 50 barely a man—should be an impossible role. Somehow, as if by magic, Chalamet makes it work, and you can’t imagine how the film could breathe without him 67. All this, in any case, brings back to the initial discourse: Guadagnino's cinematography carries with it a consistent international quota, largely derived and addressed by the presence, within the films, of internationally known performers. The operation in place here is anything but new, if one considers how, over the period of time this whole work is interested in, many directors whose films managed to circulate abroad opted for working with international actors and actresses, just think of Fellini, Antonioni, Bertolucci, Argento; on multiple occasions, the collaboration already became a constant, such as in the case of Sergio Leone with Clint Eastwood; furthermore, often times the names of these artists have pertained to the excellence of Hollywood stardom, and even in recent times, as noticed while dealing with Sorrentino and Garrone, who directed celebrities like Salma Hayek, Vincent Cassel, Sean Penn, Micheal Caine, Harvey Keitel, and others. What represents a real difference, here with Guadagnino, is that the employment of stars is never occasional, but systematic, measured, and not only tied to the evident artistic abilities of the actors, instead often aimed at profiting from the fame their names carry with them on an international level. If, on the one hand, this internationality of the stories, mediated by English-speaking actors and actresses, calls into question a difficulty of the Italian audience towards a sincere sharing of the film's atmosphere, on the other it definitely facilitates the exportation of the films. The presence of recognizable actors and actresses in the cast reassures distributors, their involvement in the projects further facilitates circulation abroad, while the Italian one “pays the price”. In the US, films like Guadagnino’s already pertain to a niche of experimental works, strictly authorial both in style and narrative. Their being profitable, largely deriving from the positive balance between production costs and global income, increases even more when they are shot in English and with well-known actors to mitigate their foreignness. This occurs in A Bigger Splash as it does in later productions, but if the demands of Suspiria recall a non-Italian environment, in any case European and evidently not American, the same cannot be said for Call Me by Your Name and We Are Who We Are, which develop starting from the same premises of travelers – strictly American, in these cases – landed in Italy. These two products also make linguistic reality a relevant factor in their foreign presence on Italian soil, an element already present in the film from 2015. Just as Marianne visibly alters when she discovers that Pen, a totally unaware tourist for the duration Lane, Anthony 2017, “CALL ME BY YOUR NAME”: AN EROTIC TRIUMPH, article on “The New Yorker”. Available online at: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/12/04/call-me-by-your-name-an-erotic-triumph 67 51 of the trip, speaks fluent Italian, many protagonists of the more recent TV series know how to deftly juggle the dialect of Chioggia on multiple occasions (Caitlin at the bar, Craig avoiding fights with locals, Richard apologizing for the behavior of his men, and more). Elio's Italian in Call Me by Your Name is even mastered along with French, a useful and even fascinating skill that could also result in unsuspected implications: in the cases already purposed, a dynamic seems to take shape whereby the nature of the visitors opens up a gap between their attempts more or less actualized - to understand and use the local language and the effectiveness of the hosts that welcome them. As underlined by others, “Elio’s Italian is very good but he doesn’t sound like a native speaker. As comfortable as these cosmopolitan characters are in Italy, the ease with which they inhabit Italian space can only push the film’s Italian characters to the sidelines”68. Guadagnino’s protagonists, by all means, are almost never behaving like locals, their characters are specifically written and shaped not to do so: they are all visitors, at peace with a context they were not born into; even where perfectly comfortable with the culture, though, they are always betrayed by something, whether it is the excessive enthusiasm towards simple things (see the “handmade ricotta” sequence in A Bigger Splash) or the awkward interactions with uncharacterized villagers in Call Me by Your Name and We Are Who We Are (usually those seated at the bar, see Oliver playing cards). On such premises, the phenomenon of tourists vacationing in the wonderful landscapes seen on screen widens their distance to Italian spectators. This argument introduces a necessary and fundamental question that goes to the heart of the national identity represented by Guadagnino's films. It looks like any Italian product that does not speak or talk Italian inevitably undermines its credibility to Italian spectators. If this can justify the lack of popularity in the domestic market of A Bigger Splash, Suspiria and Call Me by Your Name, it cannot justify the lack of popularity of I Am Love, the only one among the films considered here to have Italian as its vehicular language. Inherently, a further hypothesis emerges regarding the characteristics that keep Italian spectators away: the stories that these films tell do not seem to be strictly linked to the Italian reality. Taking account of the dichotomy just seen, one could also venture and suppose that this new hypothesis could, at the same time, bewitch foreign audiences. Guadagnino’s narratives deal with coming-of-age adventures, missed opportunities and eroticism, intimate escapades, familiar and cultural legacies. Not to be overlooked, every film includes elements of tragedy and drama. Ultimately, they all delve into the difficult unrests of self-discovering and self-embracing. A Bigger Splash Galt, Rosalind and Schoonover, Karl 2019, Untimely Desires, Historical Efflorescence, and Italy in Call Me by Your Name, in Italian Culture, 37.1 https://doi.org/10.1080/01614622.2019.1609220 68 52 has already been summarized, and Call Me by Your Name follows a similar path: a country villa in Northern Italy opens to the love story between Elio, a 17-year-old Italian and French boy, and Oliver, 7 years older, an American student landed in Italy to study with Elio’s father, a recognized archeologist. The two gently become fond of each other while exploring peaceful towns and colorful landscapes, but their story is doomed to finish with the summer, with Oliver returning to the US. I Am Love, for its part, introduces the story of Emma, an unfulfilled woman who left Russia to live with her husband in Italy. She’s well integrated in a powerful, aristocratic industrial family and she is the mother of three loving children, but only in Antonio, a young and talented chef, she finds peace and acknowledges her true feelings. Together, the two find in rural Liguria the nest of their love. Such prohibited feelings lead to the tragic death of her older son and her family’s rejection, a price she pays in order to be with her lover. Provocatively, these plots are not necessarily anchored to an Italian point of view or a statement of Italianicity at all. They confront with more of a universal series of themes and topics. As a result, any spectator, even foreign, is legitimized to appreciate the film. And what about Americans, specifically? If production and distribution mechanisms are ignored, one could argue that neither of such movies provides space for an Italian story, but more of an Italian-located one. Italianicity appears to be emerging through setting, style even, rather than narrative. In I Am Love, such expedients act as confirmation of a definite idea of cinema, one which foreign spectators can recognize: the movie not only shows a high-end Milan and the rural wonders of Liguria, it features the distress of an Italian family, above all it speaks the Italian language. A Bigger Splash, instead, trusts Italy to be (“only”) the setting and the excuse to a story that, otherwise, would not have needed Pantelleria’s splendid panoramas. Undoubtedly there are situations in which the universality of the story touches on the cultural roots in which it is set, for instance the abovementioned handmade ricotta sequence, but they seem to remain marginal elements for the purpose of the storyline. In Call Me by Your Name these borders look furtherly separated in “a kind of ‘Stateless’ film, spoken in English, but also featuring Italian, French, even German, […] cultural and industrial hybridity”69. These characteristics, as already seen, favor, indeed allow the story to reach a wider audience in the first place. At the same time, they oblige to strongly limit the strictly Italian scope of the plot. A compromise, this one, that would clearly turn out to be the most profitable model for foreign and, more importantly, American audiences. 69 Fadda, Michele and Garofalo, Damiano 2018, op.cit. 53 3.3. A highly specific kind of Italy 3.3.1. Postcard landscapes The opinion this works aims at introducing is that Guadagnino does not evade the burden of representing Italy in his works, but that he accomplishes such a task by exploiting in a more or less subtle way a showcase of Italian fascinations. While it remains true what has been suggested in the previous pages, that is, that the plots of this director's films are not deeply tied to the cultural roots of Italy, it is this research’s belief that a bind, unequivocal and essential, is present, and a vital one for the movies’ success as discussed here. It is, as a matter of fact, a living stage that Guadagnino seems to seek, not a backdrop. I Am Love opens on a snowy city of Milan, extremely noble, rich and solemn. Corners and contours of the city are investigated under the filter of elegance for the entire duration of the film. The Lombard capital remains in any case a melancholic city, cold if you will, but this is functional to the plot. Each space in which the characters move seems to be associated with a role: in contrast to a romantic but unhealthy and bored Milan, the wild oasis of Antonio's refuge in the hills above Sanremo becomes the fertile ground where the adulterous but happy love between the young chef and Emma can be cultivated. The orderly and claustrophobic exteriors of Milan widen to panoramic views of the seaside town, dark tones light up in the green of the vegetation, the red of the bricks and the pink of the flesh. The third point of reference, emphasized on screen by the title with the name of the city, is London. The English metropolis, with its skyscrapers in blue hues, represents in the film the new technological and entrepreneurial horizons and the viciousness of the challenge to tradition. In a way, London constitutes a reinforcement and a justification for the family rupture the plot revolves around. Emma does not come into contact with it, she already had to "learn to be Italian." With regard to this last line, a central reflection can be made: the protagonist of the film is a foreign woman (Russian, as said) who is a guest in Italy. A distinguished guest, certainly, if one considers the conditions of her entry into the country (as a major businessman’s wife), the standard of living and above all her impressive ability to adapt to the cultural imperatives of her new home. But, in fact, Emma also acknowledges the initial difficulties of fitting in: "Milan was too much", she had to learn to deal with it and forget who she was before. It is a condition, that of the character suddenly alone in an unfamiliar country, which is easily matched to the feelings of a non-Italian viewer of the film: Milan suddenly appears, dressed in its sumptuous architecture, with ostentatious solemnity, people gather at the table, everyone speaks Italian. It is not an international environment, as we can well understand through the sequence set in London, an 54 opposition that makes it clear how different the two experiences are. The landscape of the region of Liguria fits in at this juncture as an erotic escape that is as wild as it is placid. In the eyes of U.S. critics, such dynamics seemed fundamental to the film's reception, for better or worse. Guadagnino's description of the cities, after all, has captivated many critics since the first screenings. Natasha Senjanovic, in the pages of “The Hollywood Reporter”, even notes how "The camera makes Milan look like Moscow"70. Jay Weissberg, for Variety, recognizes the effectiveness of the city's contours in dictating the film's tone and recalls the outdoor love in the Sanremo sequence as a turning point in the plot 71. Anthony Lane, who in “The New Yorker” reserved very positive words about the film, also lingers on the same moment. The critic does not attribute too much value to the love scenes, rather he identifies their stale, a touch obvious nature, but at the same time he does not overlook the scope of the introduction: The place is Milan, clad in a fur of winter fog, with daylight seized in a permanent dusk. […] Behind a wall of snow-burdened pines, the Recchi mansion is a busy hive72 and the accurate execution of the movie’s second act, strictly bonded to the severe and sudden change of location: The central section of the film is a deliberate sloughing off of winter weeds; it begins with our heroine striding out, in a Milanese spring, with the camera snaking and swooping around her in sheer, rejuvenated joie de vivre; and it peaks on a burning day, high in the hills, a couple of hours from town, as she and Antonio at last make love— first in his house, and then outside. Critics working for numerous American publications seem to lean towards the appreciation of Guadagnino's approach to the environments in which the characters act and evolve, even when their judgments are not ecstatic. J.R. Jones for "The Chicago Reader" speaks of "the grand architecture of Milan"73. Joe Williams, writing for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, uses location changes as a keystone for the exposition of his personal - and not too satisfied – opinion: Senjanovic, Natasha 2009, ‘I Am Love’ – Film review, article on The Hollywood Reporter. Available online at: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/i-love-film-review-93471/ 71 Weissberg, Jay 2009, I Am Love, article on Variety. Available online at: https://variety.com/2009/film/markets-festivals/i-am-love-1200476375/ 72 Lane, Anthony 2010, Second Helpings, article on “The New Yorker”. Available online at: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/06/28/second-helpings 73 Jones, J.R. 2010, I Am Love, article on “Chicago Reader”. Available online at: https://chicagoreader.com/film/iam-love/ 70 55 Stretching 700 miles from top to toe, Italy has a north and a south, a winter and a summer, a head and a heart. The forbidden romance "I Am Love" is rooted in the chill of the affluent north, blooms in the warm countryside — then grows insufferably thorny in the place where all love ends. 74 The most interesting opinion on this mechanism, however, remains the one expressed by Holly Brubach in the pages of "The New York Times" in October 2010: the entire intervention neglects the bucolic love affair that took place in Sanremo, but is instead grounded in Guadagnino's representation of the city of Milan. I Am Love, according to the American, presents itself as the first important certificate of identity for Milan in the cinematographic environment: For an international style capital, home to A-list designers who set the trends and dominate the news, Milan gets no respect. … Other cities have testimonials that brand them and broadcast their charm. … With Luca Guadagnino's ''I Am Love,'' Milan has at last come into its own, granting us temporary entry to the private world of haute bourgeois privilege and discreet good taste that lies beyond the steel gates and closed doors. 75 The journalist, in a rather enthusiastic way, acknowledges the director not so much for having designed a reliable and linear environment within the purposes of the plot, but for having allowed the film to become a vehicle of identity (and advertisement) for a city otherwise considered a mystery for any foreigner who would interface with it: The enigma that was Milan emerges from this film transformed and takes up residence in our imaginations. Its charisma lies in a glamour founded on restraint, on the exquisite tension between sensual pleasure and rigorous decorum. << When I moved to Milan, I had to learn how to be Italian,>> says Swinton's character, born in Russia. Specifically, she had to learn how to be Milanese. And so successful were her efforts, so sublime the result, that now she's giving lessons to the rest of us. Williams, Joe 2010, Italian romance 'I Am Love' is unfulfilling, article on the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Available online at: https://www.stltoday.com/entertainment/movies/reviews/article_2a6a4e6a-95e1-5344-ae2d8fccc773a72e.html 75 Brubach, Holly 2010, Remix; Milan in bloom, article on The New York Times. Available online at https://archive.nytimes.com/query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage9A0DE5DA123EF934A25753C1A9669D8B63.html 74 56 The film thus comes to embody the role of promoter of an aspect of Italian cultural and geographical reality. In particular, with this perspective, there is a general preference for the stylish Milanese setting over the wonderful, but all in all already seen, Ligurian landscape. Six years go by and the melodramatic note of I Am Love shifts. A Bigger Splash delivers a story of tensions and jealousies that are as erotic as they are dramatic. This time, however, the nest of these relationships is the island of Pantelleria, a pearl of the Mediterranean Sea suspended between Africa and Europe. The beauty of the place serves as the prime justification for the entire story: Marianne and Paul have chosen it as a destination for light-hearted relaxation in contact with nature, alternating their days between pool sex, romantic road trips and mud baths on the beach alongside the cobalt blue sea; Harry, the troublemaker par excellence, "adores" this magical place, considers it a sort of summer residence and wants to initiate his newly-found daughter Penelope into its discovery. Emblematic, in this sense, is the <<Fantastico! Pantelleria!>> shouted by the producer shortly after disembarking from the plane, when on board the couple's car he begins to give out suggestions on where to eat. For the entire duration of the film, the views of the Sicilian Island frame the affairs of the four protagonists: there is the bright blue of the sea, the clear azure of the sky, the spontaneous green of the farmed hills, the vivid gold of the beaches and the dusty fields, the sunny white of the walls. Relevant to the purposes of this work, however, is the function of these astonishing panoramas, one perhaps not exclusively aesthetic. The viewer is inevitably tied to the credibility of all the events recounted by their being set in a context so familiar to the locals but foreign, even exotic, to those who are normally inclined to perceive an island in the Mediterranean as a peaceful summer vacation spot. It may be useful then to focus on a precise sequence of the film, the one that sees Paul and Pen (short for Penelope) embarking together on an exploration of the island. Just before, Harry has burst out at Marianne in the narrow streets of the old town, finally admitting that, in reality, he hates the island and is only there for her. Through the crowded alleys as well as the paths leading to the lake, it is immediate to notice how the act of moving through the spaces of Pantelleria travels hand in hand with the tension that characterizes the relationships between the characters. Divided into alternating pairs with respect to when they arrived, the four protagonists explore, wander around. At the same pace, the film explores their relationship: if the one between Marianne and Harry is consumed in a final fierce goodbye at the aftermath of a sunset over the sea, the one between Paul and Pen is resolved off-screen at the edge of a lake hidden among the volcanic island's gray rocks. Again, the U.S. reception tends toward the film's promotion. Here, even more than in the previous case of I Am Love, it becomes inevitable to consider, among the interventions, the 57 importance of the location within the visual experience. Ann Hornaday in the same article for “The Washington Post” mentioned ahead marks the film’s incipit as such: Marianne and her lover, Paul (Matthias Schoenaerts), are leading a quietly idyllic existence on the volcanic island of Pantelleria — sunbathing in the nude at their pictureperfect rental, making love in the swimming pool, slathering each other with mud at an isolated beach — when their Eden is invaded by an old friend. And she precedes in affirming the role of the "dazzling setting" in the dreamy and sensual atmosphere of the film. Blake Goble, in his article published by “Consequence” draws attention to the visually stunning immersion that is the film in the eyes of the viewers and recognizes how: A Bigger Splash doesn’t merely adore sunsets and rain, but strives to make itself as alluring as possible in the hope of capturing a perfect memory, lest it spoil or reveal too much truth. 76 As a side note, the author even points out to his readers that a "landscape artist"77 is included in the credits, and makes her work valuable. The final and unequivocal praise for the film's setting, however, still comes from "The New Yorker" critic Anthony Lane. His words applaud more than any other the link between landscape and plot: Pantelleria is volcanic, and it’s been a long while since I’ve seen a movie whose mood is so richly fed by both climate and soil. Many major releases could, you feel, swap locations with no harm done, but the clammy events of “A Bigger Splash” could have struck in no other spot. A balmy wind gusts through it, plucking at the nerves, and, during a mountain walk, a skulking fog appears from nowhere. The characters laze and roast beneath the sun, glowing like peaches in the heat, yet ripeness is not all; it has to contend with harshness, and you wince when a woman lies down near the sea, her bare flesh bedded on the coral-rough rocks. The writer is enthusiast, he highlights the great work the director promoted when he paired characters and nature in such a precisive way. David Ehrlich, writing for “IndieWire” can't help Goble, Blake, Film Review: A Bigger Splash, article on “Consequence”. Available online at: https://consequence.net/2016/05/film-review-a-bigger-splash/ 77 Gaia Chaillet Giusti is credited for Landscape Design. 76 58 but call into question formulations such as "paradise island", "hedonistic slice of heaven", and his affirmative opinion insists on the value of the natural context in consolidating the more exquisitely erotic aspect of the story78. At the same time, the author introduces a commentary on the obvious dichotomy of a lush island tailor-made for celebrity tourists and the abrupt tragedy of migrants dying in the same sea. This matter will be discussed later here, for the moment it seems adequate to report that on this line walks, at the dawn of the film's release in Venice and in a much more critical way, even Deborah Young of “The Hollywood Reporter”: The action is set on the volcanic island of Pantelleria, far south off Italy’s coast and currently the landing point for numerous boat people. […] But the world belongs to the beautiful people. 79 In the same spirit, the article calls into question precisely the sequence mentioned above, and emphasizes its functional importance to a strictly social message: When Paul takes Penny on a long hike to a deserted bay, and the southern wind called the Scirocco rises, one can feel the power of the landscape to blow away lies and hypocrisy. The debate can feature - and with even greater vigor, given the predominantly negative opinion towards the film - the comment proposed by Lee Marshall on “Screendaily”: But in one important sense the primitive majesty of the setting plays against our engagement, making the problems of four over-privileged people seem as insignificant as a salted caper, and far less tasty. 80 The magazine is British and not America, but well fits the purpose: the landscape that frames the events also appears to non-Italians as a negative factor. In this case, all its power is demonstrated in the demerit of overwhelmingly distorting the ultimate result of the film. Curiously, this intervention also dates back to the fall of 2015, shortly after the first screening. In the feedback identified here, at any minimum, all set of commentaries appears forced to come 78 Ehrlich, David 2016, Review: ‘A Bigger Splash’ Is a Gloriously Refreshing Erotic Comedy, article on “IndieWire”. Available online at: https://www.indiewire.com/2016/05/review-a-bigger-splash-is-a-gloriouslyrefreshing-erotic-comedy-291293/ 79 Young, Deborah (Metacritic credits her, the website credits THR staff) 2015, ‘A Bigger Splash’: Venice Review, article on “The Hollywood Reporter”. Available online at : https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/dakota-johnson-tilda-swinton-a-820770/ 80 Marshall, Lee 2015, 'A Bigger Splash': Review, article on “ScreenDaily”. Available online at: https://www.screendaily.com/reviews/a-bigger-splash-review/5092589.article 59 to terms with the film's setting, and yet if at first emphasis was put on how dissonant this gorgeous scenery was to the socio-political subplot, over time they ended up remembering only its mildest and most trivial implications. As noted, many of the main overseas newspapers have acknowledged the first two films of the corpus considered. Not only that, both films were generally received with positive tones. This is not surprising, of course, in light of what was previously illustrated within this research. Therefore, it will come as even less of a surprise that the third film among those taken into consideration, Call Me by Your Name, brings to the top the levels of appreciation and positive reception by the most influential voices in American publishing world. In the same way as on previous occasions, the - legitimately Italian - space that welcomes the love story between Elio and Oliver is called into question in numerous cases. This time, too, it is a pleasant, almost primeval place, foreign to the daily likings of the many viewers who have almost never had anything to do with the countryside of Northern Italy. The fact that this additional oasis for vacationing tourists is located in the north of the Italian peninsula is in fact the only information that is provided on the screen, even if it is inevitable that the countryside of the film can be identified with the area between Crema, Lake Garda and Bergamo, proper locations where the production concentrated shootings of the movie. The coexistence of main characters and environment is once again important for the development of the story: Oliver is on vacation in a country that is in many ways placid and rural, as serene as it is naive to the rest of the world. The American explores it curiously, initially alone and secretly (he goes back and forth unannounced), then accompanied by Elio. Here, too, the couple develops the need to share an exploratory journey, an Italian postcards travel tour. Precisely this atmosphere, serene, ambiguous and tantalizing is what elevates the film to one of the best of the year according to the aforementioned Hornaday: What sets his movie apart are the flavors, feelings and fleeting glimpses of attraction that find as much erotic tension in a volleyball game or alfresco lunch as in sparring over a Bach cantata. The villa where much of “Call Me by Your Name” transpires, with its lush fruit orchards and burnished, offhanded refinement, feels less like a stage set than a summer home seen through a particularly revealing (but circumspect) keyhole. 81 Hornaday, Ann 2017, ‘Call Me By Your Name’ is among the best movies of the year, article on “The Washington Post”. Available online at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/goingoutguide/movies/call-me-byyour-name-a-summer-love-recognizable-in-any-country-in-any-era/2017/12/14/56ddad76-d47b-11e7-a986d0a9770d9a3e_story.html?utm_term=.548417e1ae1a 81 60 Referring to the two previous films, the author reiterates how the fact that the setting, in a film by Guadagnino, plays the role of catalyst of a certain amorous tension and can be “sensuously seductive, drawing viewers into a world that seems simultaneously realistic and dreamlike in its detail and pictorial richness”. Another name already known, and another profound admirer of this film by the Italian director, is Lane, who, again in the pages of "The New Yorker", has silver tongue words for a setting that is "so enchanted, with its bright green gardens, that belongs in a fairy tale". He immediately proceeds to justify the ambiguity of the introductory title, accompanying it with the idea that when one speaks of paradise, the idea is of vagueness, a space that "could exist anywhere but that, once you reach the place, it brims with details so precise in their intensity that you never forget them". Alissa Wilkinson also talks about paradise in her contribution to "Vox". She does so, moreover, proposing an apt parallelism with the two predecessor films: In this film, as in earlier ones like ‘A Bigger Splash’ and ‘I Am Love’, Guadagnino’s sensual attention to the textures and smells and intimate noises of Italian life builds out a cinematic world that encompasses his characters but is much greater than them. […] It’s also pointedly Edenic, capturing a paradise that will inevitably be lost — but how pregnant with weighty joy and fullness the paradise is in the meantime; the inevitable loss seems only to heighten this. In ‘A Bigger Splash’, paradise falls when the snake of jealousy winds its way into the bliss; in ‘Call Me by Your Name’, it’s the simple, inevitable parting mandated by the ways that age and culture and station will keep Elio and Oliver apart. It is precisely in the ability to capture the naturally Italian soul of the film that the author recognizes Guadagnino's authority. This emerges in the contamination of the senses, which make the viewer feel a credible space for a romantic and intense experience. Finally, Rex Reed, in his enthusiastic review of the film ("one of the most gorgeously shot, intelligently written, and sensitively acted and directed films I've ever seen" 82), does nothing less than suggesting the concept behind this entire paragraph. He writes for a British magazine, the “Observer”, but may his English-speaker opinion be considered anyway for this work’s stake. After presenting the film - inaccurately as much as revealing of a rather stereotypical idea of the Italian vacation - Reed, Rex 2017, Four Stars: ‘Call Me By Your Name’ Is a Heartbreaking Masterpiece, article on the “Observer”. Available online at: https://observer.com/2017/11/review-luca-guadagnino-call-me-by-your-nameis-a-heartbreaking-masterpiece/ 82 61 as "set in 1983 in a lush, sunny villa in Tuscany," the critic lets loose in an ironic yet fundamental commentary: During the day, they ride bikes, explore the Italian sights, taste the local customs. For relaxation, they read 16th century French romance novels, swim, enjoy al fresco meals prepared by the family cook enhanced by fresh, ripe apricots from the orchard, and bask in the sun wearing tight shorts and swim trunks. If you have even a slight craving for the Italian summertime, you’ll want to call your travel agent and book a flight before sundown. Reed, therefore, recognizes a sort of advertisement capability in Guadagnino's film, an intrinsic skill in arousing in foreign viewers the desire to somehow make their own the splendid places (far away and uncontaminated) that they witness on screen. An expedient, this one, to which Guadagnino seems to have become fond in the course of his experience as a director. That is until numbers, obviously, prove him right. The model, by now verified, of an Italy that welcomes in its many paradises the personalities of the world (western world, hence American, for Americans) also supports the director's latest effort. We Are Who We Are recounts the existential turmoil and sentimental discoveries of a group of youngsters who ended up following their families in an American military base near Chioggia, in the Veneto region. A real American embassy in Italy, then, this time even declared. The series actually explores the relationships between the protagonists while contrasting their adherence to reality, their ability to relate to the things of the world and come to terms with its most complicated aspects. Fraser and Caitlin are therefore the first interpreters of a story that is built episode by episode on a mechanism of exploration and reaction: from the shy and brash first arrival at the military base to the euphoric run through the porticos of San Luca in Bologna, the son of the new commander elaborates new contexts and new situations, and he does so together with his young coetaneous neighbor. The vocation of the two clearly seems to be that of experimenting, researching, and annotating in order to then make their own arrogant and naive considerations (a description, this one, that can be said to be fitting for almost all adolescences). Guadagnino then finds himself in his habitat, the one suggested in the discourses about the three films: the director can give vent to his ability to graft the Italian place to the story, merging context and sensations. This time he has even more space to do so, considering that the running time of the entire season of the series is 7 hours 42, well beyond the duration of his works directed for cinema. The result is that the places, like the characters, change, space and evolve: the most recurring panorama is that of the Venetian 62 lagoon, vivid in its reeds, beaches and a sea quite different from that of the Sicilian islands; in episode three from here the group moves towards the city of Chioggia, celebrating its historical festival, and gets lost in the picturesque streets of the village; in episode six, Jonathan accompanies Fraser to the Leiten hill near Asiago, a visit that is both scenic (the snow-capped mountains, the grassy pastures) and historical-commemorative (there is also mention of the shrine dedicated to the fallen soldiers in World War I, more ahead in the research); the season ends in an underground Bologna, reached by train, sneakily, by the two protagonists. Guadagnino thus exploits more than one space to narrate an Italy that presents itself as a function of its characters. And he can do so, this time, only with a series of places that are much less touristy in themselves, much less popular in the eyes of overseas observers. This is pointed out by James Poniewozik in "The New York Times", when, after sketching out the plot using three of the most popular adjectives in the international press referring to the Italian director - languid, lusty, sunbaked - he reflects on how: I’m not sure if this is a realistic portrait either of overseas base life or of military family dynamics, but the uncanniness of the setting feels key to the story. The series’ real setting is adolescence. The physical location is simply an otherworldly backdrop for its flirtations and fights to play out against, like an enchanted wood in a Shakespeare comedy. 83 When Poniewozik writes, he's seen four out of six episodes, but the concept suggested seems to tie in nicely with the above: the atmosphere of the series is also the result of a fusion between the scenarios and the characters. Ben Travers, for "IndieWire", in fact, furthers immediately a question that is central to the process of characterizing Fraser within We Are Who We Are: when you’re an American living abroad, laying under the warm Italian sun, floating mere inches from cool water, why spend your time reading poetry? 84 What initially distinguishes the newly arrived New Yorker boy from the youths who have been living in Chioggia for some time is his lack of adherence to the canons of the tourist capable of appreciating the wonderful novelty of an Italian vacation. In this sense he is not Harry, he is not Poniewozik, James 2020, Review: ‘We Are Who We Are’ Captures Not-So-Innocents Abroad, article on “The New York Times”. Available online at: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/13/arts/television/review-we-arewho-we-are.html 84 Travers, Ben 2020, ‘We Are Who We Are’ Review: Luca Guadagnino’s Lyrical HBO Series Is Your End-ofSummer Obsession, article on “IndieWire”. Available online at: https://www.indiewire.com/2020/09/we-arewho-we-are-review-luca-guadagnino-hbo-series-1234586157/ 83 63 Oliver, he is perhaps more of an Emma at her first steps and with no desire to integrate. An interesting aspect, which recalls what was expressed in both of these interventions, is the one raised by Inkoo Kang in "The Hollywood Reporter": The setting of the new HBO series We Are Who We Are — a fictional American army base in northeastern Italy, where nobody feels like they belong — is so steeped in narrative potential that almost any of its characters could make for a compelling protagonist. 85 In the series, the journalist easily finds the ambiguity of the Italy shown by Guadagnino. A mysterious and confusing nature, similar to the one of the characters he hosts. In fact, these are no longer the unrepentant (and aristocratic, even) intellectual professionals from the films, but "mostly working-class Americans and Italians in a half-picturesque, half-industrial town that's grown to embrace, if not love, the base and its exotic residents". A final confirmation in this regard can also be drawn from what Judy Berman wrote in the pages of "Time": Characters are more flexible in their identities than meets the eye. Guadagnino lingers on blurred binaries—straight and gay, Black and white, adolescence and adulthood, love and hate. The base is, itself, a liminal space: a tiny, almost imaginary American dot on the map of Italy. It’s a lovely, if increasingly common, theme—one that is fleshed out in languid scenes of beach trips, street festivals that end in fireworks displays, secretive all-night gatherings. 86 The critic, who, unlike their colleagues, do not lean towards a positive opinion towards the TV series, points out the volatile nature of a non-place that actively contributes to the proposal of the series. In the end, Guadagnino seems to have been focusing, over the years and with his productions, on two different criteria for choosing settings, the first variable being that, as effective as it is dangerous, of the tourist postcard: effective because, as the articles show, it is the adjectives that try to capture the natural charm of the most "cinemagenic" Italy that frame all overseas opinions; dangerous because, inevitably, a director who walks this road always runs the risk of stumbling into stereotyping and generalizations. While Milan and Pantelleria, Kang, Inkoo 2020, ‘We Are Who We Are’: TV Review, article on “The Hollywood Reporter”. Available online at: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-reviews/we-are-who-we-are-tv-review-4053873/ 86 Berman, Judy 2020, Luca Guadagnino's HBO Drama We Are Who We Are Is Heady, Gorgeous—and Strangely Inert, article on “Time”. Available online at: https://time.com/5886755/we-are-who-we-are-reviewhbo/ 85 64 in all likelihood, can be properly accuse of falling down this path, the Liguria of I Am Love and the spaces of Call Me by Your Name and We Are Who We Are suggest that Guadagnino is trying to escape a similar danger. This could be a second and more innovative criterion of choice: a location that emerges from the role of backdrop and background in order to anchor itself to the plot and successfully carry part of the narration. Thus, one finds stories that have a weak link with the nation in which they are shot, yes, weak but not incidental. And with Italy, directors have very strong cards in their hands. 3.3.2. Food excellency – Food authenticity Continuing to shed light on those aspects of Italian culture on which Guadagnino focuses his filmmaking, the element of Italian culinary tradition emerges in an overbearing and evident manner. In the works shot by the director, the presence of scenes - or even entire sequences with a food theme persists throughout. In these episodes, the films refer to a certified practice that in recent decades has established Italy as the original land of authentic and genuine cuisine. This is precisely the direction Guadagnino takes in the development of his films, starting with I Am Love, which probably represents the peak of such tendency: in the opening and closing sequences that frame the story, characters are seated for dinner. This is an important, sumptuous event, with a value that goes beyond the simple meal: it contributes to supporting the centrality of sharing and conviviality in the perception of Italian culture abroad. But as far as I Am Love is concerned, this is only the tip of the iceberg, since the entire love story between Emma and Antonio, in fact, springs up and evolves to the beat of the act of cooking. The female protagonist is an excellent cook to begin with, as repeatedly stated by her son. Indeed, this is the first reason of the woman's interest towards Edoardo Jr's young friend. Antonio is, in fact, a professional cook, moreover a very good one, master of tradition and yet full of innovative strength. And in reality, the guarantee of authenticity that narratives about Italian cuisine have been consolidating for a long time often associates to the valorization of customs and culinary history also the importance of technique and ability, so fine as to differentiate Italian cuisine from a quick and easy mass production and to propose instead the figure of cooks as crafters of their own art. The curiosity that makes the love between the two characters come true is nourished by the moments they spend in contact with the kitchen and its ingredients. The first contact occurs when Antonio brings a cake to Villa Recchi and introduces himself to his mother; sometime later the young chef, in charge of catering for a party at the house, invites Emma to try the kitchen torch to burn a caramelized Russian salad: it is the first real physical contact 65 between the two. When the woman then goes with her mother-in-law and daughter-in-law to have lunch in the restaurant where Antonio works, the apex of this amorous and culinary tension is reached altogether: Emma tries some "Santa Margherita prawns with vegetable caponata and sweet and sour sauce" with which she seems to come into intimate and sensual contact. The scene is at the core of Anthony Lane's aforementioned 2010 intervention: The best sex you will get all year, if that’s what you crave in your moviegoing, is between Tilda Swinton and a prawn. In the middle of “I Am Love,” a succulent new film from the Italian director Luca Guadagnino, Swinton’s character, Emma Recchi, sits down to lunch in a Milanese restaurant. Placed before her is a dish of seafood with ratatouille. She takes a bite, and finds herself deluged with sensation. The rest of the room grows dim, surrounding sounds are muffled, and Emma alone begins to glow. She is already incandescent, with her halo-gold hair, and a dress of flame red, but now illumination seems to fan upward from the plate and possess her. Lane elevates the scene to the topical moment of the film, a passionate key to the entire narrative of a woman moved by conflicting feelings with respect to the life she is living. In the relationship with food, the critic recognizes a tightly sexual viaticum to burst out the story. Such relationship between food and eroticism is based on the conception of food - Italian or not - as a valve for a deeper search, "where individuals express their feelings and emotions freely and food enjoyment is sensual, if not outright sexualized”87. Years later, with Call Me by Your Name, Guadagnino would appeal to the same philosophy in the autoerotism scene involving Elio and a peach. Betsy Sharkey from the “Los Angeles Times” also remarks how the tantalizing figure of Antonio prides itself with the ability of awakening Emma’s “taste for life with his exquisite culinary creations, and then her passion”88. Towards the end of the film, once they have consummated their first love in the Ligurian countryside where the chef grows his own vegetables (here too, of course, an all-too-easy reference to the proverbial simplicity and cure of Italian cuisine), the two will be exposed for having dared too much: when Antonio brings to the table the ukha Russian soup, the very symbol of Edoardo's bond with his mother and the result of a jealously guarded recipe, their relationship becomes clear to her son. The important role that Guadagnino wanted to attribute to food in the film does not escape anyone's Reference here goes to Parasecoli, Fabio 2019, The Invention of Authentic Italian Food: Narratives, Rhetoric, and Media in: Sassatelli, R. (eds) Italians and Food. Consumption and Public Life. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15681-7_2 88 Sharkey, Betsy 2010, Movie revie: ‘I Am Love’, article on the “Los Angeles Times”. Available online at: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2010-jun-18-la-et-i-am-love-20100618-story.html 87 66 notice, even those who are extraneous to the dynamics of the movie's conception and production. However, the importance of this choice is amplified when we learn that the director has entrusted the realization of the dishes that appear in the film to the Michelin-starred chef Carlo Cracco, a prominent personality in the panorama of Italian cuisine and especially in the Milanese scene. Guadagnino's objective becomes even more comprehensible, since he wanted to strive for a precise excellence, a unique particularity. In an article from "The Wall Street Journal” the director himself specifies his decision explaining how: (Cracco) is a genius, a creator—he is always on the cutting edge. Just like all the costumes were designed for the movie, I asked him to create food that is new: That is why, for the first time ever, I think, the name of the chef follows that of the set designer in the film credits. 89 A concept of ideal cuisine, therefore, belonging to a well-defined tradition that tends not so much to promote Italian food as to satisfy the global demand for an Italian cuisine that is the representative and advocate of a proper lifestyle, often tied to the idea of excellence food created with genius by legends of creativity, but more often declined in the aspects of simplicity and rigor, as dictated by customs. A Bigger Splash serves this purpose perfectly. The stay of the four protagonists finds vent several times in the pleasures of food, especially thanks to the exuberance of the character played by Ralph Fiennes. Even before looking for accommodation for the night, Harry takes everyone eating in a secret restaurant, hidden in the hills of Pantelleria. The place is very simple yet incredibly exclusive, so much so that they manage to find a table only thanks to the kindness of some guests who, having recognized Marianne, the rock star, get up to make them dine. The dishes of Sicilian cuisine immediately acquire a special, unrepeatable, demanded value. In a brief parenthesis, Harry also demonstrates his skills as a cook, stirring a dough and cleaning a fresh fish. In doing so, he bypasses the true mistress of the small kitchen at home, Clara, the maid. She usually takes care of serving at the table, playing, as it seems, the role of a jealous guardian (Harry gives her the nickname of thundercat) of the raw ingredients that occasionally appear as contextualizing shots (the bread in the oven, the fish of the day). A more representative sequence, in this sense, is clearly the one in which Marianne is accompanied by her former boyfriend to the home of a couple of elderly locals. The visit is as out of context for the viewer (the two characters have just stopped arguing in the streets of the town) as it is for the hosts, Giuseppe and Rosa, who greet the couple in a hushed Negri, Piero 2011, Food of love, article on “The Wall Street Journal”. Available online at: https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704495004576265253509336660 89 67 but confidential manner. The evident awkwardness of both parties is confirmed in the line that Harry addresses in a broken and still passionate Italian to Rosa: << Posso vedere...ricotta? >>. The lady, casually about to embark on the artisanal production of cheese, invites her new celebrity friend to attend the process under the dreamy eyes of the rest of the family. The figure of Rosa belongs to a real mechanism of international export of the original Italian cuisine, the truest and most inimitable because it is an ideal fusion of ingredients and skills. At the center of this mechanism are the grandmothers, in Italian nonne (pl. for nonna). In many ways, grandmothers are acknowledged as the best interpreters of the defense of the true flavors of tradition, almost as if the cooks of that generation were guarantees of the authenticity of the food they prepare. As food studies recall, grandmothers came overtime to represent that matriarchal line of housewives who carry on the creation of those recipes that are handed down from one generation to another, and bear them with "a special significance in terms of authenticity, as they represent social identity, cultural pride, comfort, community, and emotional connections with families" 90. According to Parasecoli, it is reasonable to affirm that for the new generations or for those who are unfamiliar with a foreign type of cuisine, yet accustomed to taking advantage of online tutorials or TV shows in order to discover and recover forgotten recipes, grandmothers constitute a solid link with a past perceived as holding the precious secrets of food with a true taste, pure and often even better because traditional. The same value, from this point of view, is willingly assumed by all the other figures who, with their craftsmanship, contribute even in small part to the supply chain: artisans and know-how experts, farmers, fishermen and so on, constitute proper defenders of Italian roots. Fast forward to Call Me by Your Name, it is not a difficult task to trace within the film some of the roles just suggested. Elio's family, in fact, is surrounded by people helping with household duties, grocery and cooking included. If one leaves out the lady who, halfway through the film, interrupts the clean-up of the fava beans to offer the two protagonists a glass of water, then consider the example of Mafalda, the housekeeper who addresses the owners calling them signori and scolds their son when he tells her late that he is going out for dinner. In fact, the housekeeper is responsible for looking after the house (she brings the ironed linen to the room) and for taking care of the meals. As thoughtful as abrupt, she is the one who provides Oliver with another soft-boiled egg when the American guy throws himself on the first one with too much enthusiasm, breaking it with his spoon. The entire scene, however, is based on the pleasure with which the latter inaugurates his Italian summer and on the effect that this 90 Parasecoli, Fabio 2019, op. cit. 68 provokes in Elio, that is, just as much curious pleasure, although masked under an ostentatious indifference. Mafalda's counterpart is Anchise, an elderly local who takes care of all the needs outside the house with seemingly infinite serenity: he acts as a chauffeur, fixes the bicycles, but above all he goes down to the river and returns with a nice fresh fish (still gasping) that he promptly delivers to Mafalda for the next meal. Once again, the spectator deals with the immediacy between nature, food and pleasure that emerges from situations like these. If one then focuses more closely on the occasions in which the characters gather around the table to share meals, it is inevitable to note, in this film as in the previous one, how Guadagnino takes advantage of every opportunity to bring up the amount of generosity, abundance and celebration inherent to every occasion associated with food. In a meal shared with family or friends, many of the typical behaviors attributed to the Italian people in decades of cultural exchange are brought back in a symbolic way. It is quite easy to notice this in the agitated confusion of the couple of friends hosted by the Perlmans, so dedicated to pitching their opinions about Craxi's government and Buñuel's death. Oliver's stance is explanatory: he watches them from the outside, estranged and amused, fidgeting around the table as they smoke their cigarettes. It is an ambivalent position, that of the American, towards the phenomenonfood, a reflection of material culture and practices in Italy as an expression of desires and nostalgia in the observers themselves, regardless of their nationality. In fact, the relationship of thousands of foreigners around the globe with the Italian culinary tradition remains one of allure and excitement, and encourages a type of fascination tied to the search for the most authentic flavors, sometimes to the point of traveling to Italy to taste the original. Like much of Italy, and like most American films set in the Belpaese (see Under the Tuscan sun, Letters to Juliet, To Rome with love, Eat, Pray and Love), Guadagnino in his films promises an operation supportive of this attitude, and promotes feelings of pride and attachment to the values of good food and quiet life. 3.3.3. Italian contemporaneity, present history It is now clear how easily the identity profile of Guadagnino's cinematography does not necessarily refer to the history of the nation where the director lives and works, and therefore to the place where the films are set; however, a deeper analysis must necessarily take into account even all those clues, references, indications and allusions which, instead, within the characterization of events and characters, suggest, when not explicitly declare, their solely Italian nature. It is fair to say, for example, that I Am Love tells the story of the gradual 69 disruption of an aristocratic family and, at the same time, the outbreak of an adulterous and liberating passion; it is equally fair to emphasize that such a plot would take root even if seen by an international audience. It must be considered, however, that the fortune on which the Recchi family is grounded originates from the large business that has been the leader of the Italian textile industry for over half a century. It is necessary to do so when the director inserts such precise and evident indications in the film. At the dinner for the birthday of the elderly head of the family, Edoardo Recchi, he lectures all diners about the value behind his longlasting wealth: the fortune on which the family's success is built resides in the factory, its workers and the tools it has employed in the textile industry before and after the (second) world war. It's a solemn speech, his, that pins the Recchi family as one of those glorious households that ruled the world of Italian entrepreneurship throughout the second half of the 20th century. Edoardo's unexpected choice to entrust the fate of the company to his son and grandson together will be the source of the rifts between the two. Guadagnino presents this narrative line by intervening several times with sudden cuts on machinery and materials in the Recchi's own fabric business. When the patriarch dies, Edoardo Jr. feels the duty to respect tradition, maintain the good practices established by his grandfather and enforce the company's name. Tancredi, on the other hand, the most quoted successor, argues the need to break away from the legacy of an outdated past and sell the firm. These are two opposing visions that hint at a political subplot. In light of the entire film, Guadagnino happily lets loose commentary on it: a little later in the film, Gianluca turns on his brother Edoardo Jr., who is far too idealistic, when he invokes his moral duty to help name, traditions and values and workers in the name of their grandfather's will. Gianluca reminds him, instead: <<don't be a hypocrite, you know very well that it's not like that. Grandfather had no qualms about doing business with the regime in order to increase production, except that at the end of the war he pretended it was nothing. And in the meantime, we exploited Jewish workers. This is who we are. These are the Recchi family>>. In the failure to acknowledge the family's relationship with the Fascist government, Guadagnino lays bare a mentality, that of Edoardo Jr., that continues to characterize Italian society since Rome, Open City: the tendency not to reckon with the past, and especially not to acknowledge the mistakes made. It is the rhetoric, to all intents and purposes, of Italiani brava gente. Outside of the fictitious world of the film, Villa Necchi Campiglio itself, which the protagonists live in, and its decorative styles, belong to the Fascist ventennio period and refer to that space, irremediably, even if perhaps indirectly. Therefore, it is not surprising that the director's aesthetic research is also nourished by significant passages on a political level, and above all it does not escape the 70 fact that such references chain the film to real facts of Italian political and social life. 91 Their presence, however, remains inconstant, at times only hinted at. This could be an expedient that Guadagnino uses in order not to inevitably tie the film to its actual reality. This, in fact, would obligatorily require a viewer who is aware of certain dynamics. Proceeding by hints, however, the director makes the underlying concept immediate even for those who are not familiar with the events. With the same quality, annoying and not incisive, the subplot of migrants enters in A Bigger Splash. The subject is introduced by Sylvie's character as a topic of conversation bordering on gossip. The subject is not mentioned, but it is clear that the French girl is talking about illegal landings from Africa and directed, <<of course>>, to France, where many have families. At the time of the film's release, five years ago now, the issue of migrant landings was, but still remains, a highly sensitive topic of Italy's internal and external politics. The media continue to deal with it, and even cinema has talked about it in recent years (think of Fire at Sea, by Rosi, released a year after Guadagnino's film). With regard to how the subject is perceived in A Bigger Splash, the words of Ehrlich, who in the same IndieWire article cited above notes the marginality of the presence of migrants, can be useful: They are celebrities and amateurs and personal friends of Björk's, and they spend the entire movie flirting and fucking and fighting amongst themselves while remaining willfully oblivious to the migrant crisis happening just off shore. Further, he also notes that the tragedy of the Mediterranean occupies a space of indifference within the film: he gives the example of when the drowning of seven people not far from the coast is reduced to the muttering of the TV news. He refers to the aforementioned handmade ricotta scene, an event that appears in the foreground to the very detriment of the subplot in focus. The film's finale, then, devotes a few more passages to the issue, but does so nonetheless with a sinister lightness, according to the critic functional to the narrative: Later, one of the survivors accidentally knocks a ball over the fence of the police station where he's being held. Pen, walking by at the time, thoughtlessly tosses it back. By the time she steps inside, it's all a distant memory. Out of sight, out of mind. The world only exists as far as she can feel it. 91 More on the relationship between the film and the subtle sociopolitical critique in: Bauman, Rebecca 2013, ‘You don’t exist’: “I Am Love” as political melodrama, in Studies in European Cinema, 10(2), p.103-117, Intellect Ltd Article. English language. DOI: 10.1386/seci.10.2-3.103_1 71 Young, at “The Hollywood Reporter”, on the other hand, is not so accepting when she harshly criticizes Guadagnino's work, unable to develop the potential of a narrative such as that of desperate migrants who serve as scapegoats for the rich and careless, and downgrades it to "glimpsed in passing, confined to mesh cages in front of the police station or hiding amid the island's dark rocks". Another of these episodes, in fact, sees Paul and Pen run into four migrants with their luggage locked in plastic bags. In short, where the film should be powerful and marking, it remains only seductive and ineffective. It is more or less the same concept expressed in Marshall's article, who goes so far as to comment that perhaps it would have been better to avoid the migrants' parenthesis altogether (besides, he emphasizes, more related to the nearby island of Lampedusa than to Pantelleria) in order not to treat it in such a superficial and partial way: One wishes, too, that the film had left the Mediterranean migrant crisis (more pressing on Pantelleria’s neigbouring island Lampedusa) out of the film; the brief nods the script make to it seem at best dutiful, at worst exploitative. In fact, from this point of view, the entire exchange between Marianne and the Carabinieri Marshal during the interrogation can seem rather forced: the policeman refers to the migrants' situation as a real tragedy (<<And then, unfortunately, madam, if I may say so, there are other drownings that I have to deal with. Only yesterday 7 died at sea. And those who survive are taken to detention centers on the mainland>>) and the woman has no choice but to follow the lead and accuse one of them in order to let all suspicions against her partner drop. Guadagnino's approach, according to many, resolves a much more varied dilemma with too much simplicity and not enough screen time. For the purposes of this research, however, what matters is the presence, as we have seen, of a formula that tends to insert historical and contemporary instances within the film. This seems to be the path favored by Guadagnino, albeit on a much smaller scale, in Call Me by Your Name as well. Elements of Italian history emerge on several occasions; a first one, recalling what was said about fascism in I Am Love, features the elderly lady who offers Elio and Oliver glasses of water. The two of them cannot help but notice, above the doorframe of the woman's house, a giant poster of Benito Mussolini, whom they promptly recognize (<< Ah, il Duce! >>) and imitate in his well-known intonation << Popolo italiano! >>. It is the summer of 1983 and a young American scholar is able to recognize in a flash the figure of the Fascist dictator, central to the Italian politics of the last century. What is even more striking is the very presence of the painting almost twenty years after the fall of Fascism, a fact emblematic of a 72 sense of nostalgia and affection, especially in environments tied to the conservative right but also willingly employed commercially (accessories with the face of Mussolini are being sold in many Italian cities to this day), towards a dark past never properly confronted and therefore never forgotten. Elio sanctions it with a very calm << This is Italy >>. Late, the two guests who lunch at the Pearlman's house also talk about contemporary politics: the new Craxi government (in office since August 4, 1983) and the compromesso storico - historic compromise (the work of rapprochement of two of the main Italian political forces, Christian Democracy and Communist Party) become the object of the agitated conversation of the Italians at the table. As already mentioned above, there is talk of straightforward politics, strong opinions overlapping with heartfelt responses. Indicating, again, that Italian political and social life is not primary in Guadagnino's stories, but fully enters among the range of experiences of those who are protagonists. Boyd Van Hoeij at “The Hollywood Reporter” is among the few who care to notice such references, and, despite briefly, he supports them: “References to political life in Italy, entirely absent from the novel, are also convincing and add texture”92. A slightly more precise experiment, formally linked to the characterization of an Elio who seems to be actually the one "who knows more than anybody else around", is the very brief history lesson that the boy gives to Oliver when the two find themselves in front of the monument dedicated to the fallen of the Battle of Piave. Elio explains in a brief but firm back and forth the tragic episode of the First World War: OLIVER - So, World War II, ah? ELIO - Oh, no, this is World War I…you have to be at least 80 years old to have known any of them – OLIVER - Oh…I’ve never even heard of the Battle of Piave – ELIO - Battle of Piave is one of the most lethal battles in World War I. 170 thousand people died. OLIVER Van Hoeil, Boyd, ‘Call Me by Your Name’: Film Review | Sundance 2017, article on “The Hollywood Reporter”. Available online at: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/call-me-by-your-name-review967150/ 92 73 - Is there anything you don’t know? – Although briefly, Elio starts Oliver on an important chapter of Italian history from the twentieth century. The monument, located in the village of Pandino (Cremona, Lombardy), in Vittorio Emanuele III square, is in fact dedicated to the soldiers who perished in the blood-soaked conflict opposing Italian and Austro-Hungarian troops in June 1918. The closing act of the battle was fought near the river Piave, hence the name. The same dynamics of this passage are repeated with different cards but in an almost identical way in the sixth episode of We Are Who We Are, precisely on the occasion of the trip that Jonathan and Fraser make together near Asiago. The soldier surprises the young New Yorker with a visit to a location that is unexpected to say the least, for what the latter considers a date: the two of them walk, in fact, up to the Leiten hill, a battlefield of numerous First World War violent clashes that have seen thousands of young people die. The citation to Call Me by Your Name is almost declared, there is one of the two who mistakenly speaks of World War II, there is always the other who corrects him and improvises a clarification. Only the reference to the shrine sticks directly to the plot: "one of the biggest Club 27 in the world. There's about fifty thousand dead men in there. And about thirty thousand are militi ignoti", unknown soldiers. The two, in the previous episode, had exchanged reading suggestions, one of which was Club 27 themed. 3.3.4. Italian cinema A fundamental step, especially for the purposes of this research, is the one that focuses on Guadagnino's use of classic Italian cinema as a vehicle of attraction for the American public. This is a clearly intentional process that achieves success in two ways: on the one hand, some of the quotations are so explicit that it is difficult for any audience with a good knowledge of cinema not to notice them. In this regard, it should be noted that Guadagnino's cinephile and citationist dimension does not only touch on Italian cinema, but also embraces exponents of European cinema all around (think of the relationship between Hitchcock's Vertigo, 1958 and the first Sanremo sequence of I Am Love). On the other hand, some references are less direct but more complete, they concern atmospheres, sensations, in part themes, and reserve for the American public a "quality", or rather a tone, that leads back to Europe and Italy. An excellent example of this can be taken from I Am Love, a film for which critics are profuse in their references to Luchino Visconti. Again, Rex Reed for the Observer (still a British magazine, but nevertheless a useful point to make at this stage) identifies them in the splendid sets, the 74 sumptuous lifestyle and also in the story, which witness the disintegration of a prominent family whose fate is decided in its relations with the regime. To the film critic, therefore, it comes naturally to call into question The Damned (1969), an ideal term of comparison for the fact that "I Am Love fuses the past with the changing future in a marvelous traditional narrative without a shred of the sloppy trends of contemporary filmmaking". 93 Not only does Guadagnino recall classic Italian cinema, but he seems to be able to do it better than anyone else, despite the fact that it "lacks", of course, "the substance of such Visconti sagas as The Leopard and Conversation Piece, and none of the decadence and grand opera perfected in The Damned. No, director Luca Guadagnino is very much an artist with his own unique vision". For "The New Yorker" it always falls upon Lane to recognize the relationship between the two authors. Lane, however, takes a slightly different path: If there are traces of Visconti here, they refer not to “The Damned,” which belabored a grand and screwed-up family as it slid into the clutches of Nazism, but to an earlier, more pitying film like “Rocco and His Brothers,” in which lust chewed up another family in a doomy Milan. In the same spirit, Guadagnino stays at Emma’s side as she tumbles from grace, refusing to heckle or deride. And, frankly, given the tumble, you see his point. Contrary to Reed's vision, therefore, here the love parable is considered more significant than the socio-political one inherent in the plot. At the same time, he shall not forget the city of Milan, that frames the events occurred to both families. Another suggestion is the one made by Ebert, who prefers remembering how impossible it feels not to tie the soul of I Am Love to that of The Leopard (1963): not simply because they both involve Italian aristocrats, but because they involve matters of succession, and the way that love and lust can breach the walls aristocrats live behind. Guadagnino makes the connection inescapable by the use of the name Tancredi; in “The Leopard,” Alain Delon pays the Salina nephew of that name. These seem to be the three roads preferred by the American critics, who generally tend to attach, next to adjectives like lust, lush, grand and sumptuous, also the names of Douglas Sirk and, precisely, Luchino Visconti. At the end of these considerations, it is useful to notice how the Reed, Rex 2010, The Italian Job, article on the “Observer”. Available online at: https://observer.com/2010/06/the-italian-job/ 93 75 figure of Visconti, or better his production, is able to offer models on all sides. The bond that ties him to Guadagnino is not bound to a single film, but to a melodramatic, socio-political and erotic identity. For the United States, probably an Italian identity as well. Guadagnino comes off as an expert wielder and proposer of his country's cinematic material. He remains so, albeit in much smaller proportion, even in the case of A Bigger Splash. This time around, however, the illustrious reference is to the cinematography of Roberto Rossellini, author of Journey to Italy (1954). Young raises it in the previously cited article: […] one can feel the power of the landscape to blow away lies and hypocrisy, much like the elements in Roberto Rossellini’s classic study of a married couple, ‘Journey to Italy’. In fact, Guadagnino's admiration for the director is no secret. He himself states it on several occasions, and just as many times he insists on being a fan of the '54 film in particular. It is enough to mention what he says about it in the Academy's Guide to Movies: (Voyage to Italy) may be one of my favorite films ever—of all places, of all time. I feel like this is one of the greatest portraits of what it really means to have a relationship with another. I found the way in which Rossellini gathered together the concept of love and lust and the concept of a landscape astonishing—in this particular case, the landscape of the souls of two characters reflecting the landscape of Napoli and, in general, the South of Italy.94 It is precisely the elements that the director says he loves the most that return, anchored no longer to Naples and Campania but to Pantelleria and Sicily, in the revisitation of another trip to Italy, Marianne & Co.'s. Love and lust, combined with the landscape in a very effective way, if we examine the opinions noted above, now belong, in the eyes of the U.S. market, also among the talents of Guadagnino. Call Me by Your Name, even from this point of view, does not constitute a great exception: if Italian and European critics have no trouble tracing in the 2017 film the discovered traces of Bernardo Bertolucci's influence - Reed says that "the direction by Luca Guadagnino is reminiscent of Bertolucci's sensitivity at its best" - American media amplify its scope. Articles like Variety's, written by Nick Vivarelli, stress the same relationship with the master of Italian cinema, especially in Stealing Beauty (1996), a film that already revolved around summer loves Guadagnino, L., Luca Guadagnino’s favourite Italian Films, web article on A.Frame. Available online at: https://aframe.oscars.org/what-to-watch/post/luca-guadagninos-favorite-italian-films 94 76 and Italian idylls. A review like the one by Ned Beauman for "The Wall Street Journal", instead, broadens the horizons even more, and ties the soul of Guadagnino's film not only to Bertolucci, but also to the earlier Visconti and Rossellini: When asked what rules he is breaking, Guadagnino suggests that his films are too operatic for Italy. Which might sound rather paradoxical to non-Italians, but as Guadagnino sees it, the melodramatic spirit of Rossellini, Bertolucci and Antonioni was nearly stamped out by the conservative turn Italian culture took in the 1980s. In his films, he does what he can to keep that spirit alive (Beauman 2017). 95 In this sense, Guadagnino definitely plays the role of defending champion of a cinema that, first of all, he personally loves, and then he is able to restore by re-actualizing it. What follows is that the success and glory of those names of Italian authors and films are also tied to the director's production, favoring its circulation, appreciation and curiosity. One can then also cite the case of the remake of Suspiria, Dario Argento's acclaimed horror film Guadagnino decided to revisit in 2018: the quote this time is overt, and as such meets with a greater number of reactions. The first, unsurprisingly, is that of the director of the original, who pronounces an ambiguous opinion towards Guadagnino's interpretation: "Io ho fatto un film feroce raccontando le cose terribili che avevo dentro. Lui ha fatto un film più delicato, meno horror. Non rispecchia il film originale" conclude Argento, "ha diritto di raccontare una storia che riflette i suoi pensieri ma che è diversa dalla mia versione dei fatti"96 Two different films, in essence. And in fact, this point polarizes the opinion of the US press towards Guadagnino's. The cast and crew are almost entirely international, plus it's a story set in Berlin in the 1970s, so it doesn't come as much as a surprise that the only reference to the Italian nature of the film is its relationship to the first version of the story. Furthermore, it deals Vivarelli, Nick 2018, Bernardo Bertolucci on Fellow Italian Nonconformist Luca Guadagnino, article on “Variety”. Available online at: https://variety.com/2018/film/global/bernardo-bertolucci-luca-guadagnino1202711089/ 96 “I made a ferocious film telling the terrible things I had inside. He made a more delicate film, less horror. It doesn't reflect the original film," Argento concludes, "he has the right to tell a story that reflects his thoughts but is different from my version of the facts.” Celi, Rita 2018, Dario Argento sul film di Guadagnino: "Il mio 'Suspiria' era più feroce", article on “La Repubblica”. Available online at: https://www.repubblica.it/dossier/spettacoli/venezia2018/2018/09/01/news/dario_argento_sul_film_di_guadagni no-205397616/ 95 77 with the differences between a master director and the author of I Am Love and Call Me by Your Name. Reviews of the remake strongly emphasize the distinctions between the two films, and for the most part reaffirm its inferiority to Argento's work: some find it in a frivolous and superficial way of saying that: “has nothing to say about women’s history, feminist politics, civil violence, the Holocaust, the Cold War, or German culture. Instead, Guadagnino thrusts some thusly labelled trinkets at viewers and suggests that they try to assemble them”97. And those who acknowledge that: the new Suspiria remains distancing, often borderline inert, not to mention only marginally more coherent than the original version, which showed as little sustained attention to narrative drive as it did to nuanced performance. Guadagnino has made an ambitious homage, but it doesn’t really benefit from its more intellectualized gaze, instead draining the stomach-churning thrills of great horror98. It is undeniable to note, however, in the light of any criticism, how the whole affair fits perfectly into the image that the figure of Guadagnino carries with him from his previous cinematic experiences: an Italian director who recalls, if not reinterprets, his illustrious predecessors. A director, then, who can move opinions. In this approach, the director's sudden decision to take on the writing and production of a TV series after an ongoing brilliant career on the big screen does not escape the attention of the American press in particular. "Time" magazine quickly makes a comparison with those in the Italian film industry who have already taken this step. According to Berman in the article already cited, the result of We Are Who We Are does not touch the stylistic identity mediated from one screen to another by Paolo Sorrentino with The Young Pope first and then The New Pope, but the idea of Guadagnino as an author now endowed with an Italian voice with global influence remains: The distinction between film and TV has been whittled down to near non-existence, now that the pandemic has made almost all video into home video. Auteurs from David Lynch Brody, Richard 2018, Review: Luca Guadagnino’s “Suspiria” Is the Cinematic Equivalent of a Designer Che T-Shirt, article on “The New Yorker”. Available online at: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-frontrow/review-luca-guadagninos-suspiria-is-the-cinematic-equivalent-of-a-designer-che-t-shirt 98 Rooney, David 2018, ‘Suspiria’: Film Review | Venice 2018, article on “The Hollywood Reporter”. Available online at: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/suspiria-review-venice-2018-1137594/#! 97 78 to Paolo Sorrentino to Jane Campion have adapted their signature styles to a serialized format. But that doesn’t mean every transition to serialized storytelling will be seamless. Guadagnino, for one, might have to settle for being a master filmmaker. 3.3.5. Festivals In the same spirit, Guadagnino exploits on more than one occasion another well-known Italian tradition, that of historical-religious festivals. There are countless festivals of this kind in Italy, but it is nonetheless emblematic that in both A Bigger Splash and We Are Who We Are the characters happen to be in town precisely on the days when they are held. As for the first case, Harry and Pen land on the island just before the festival of San Gaetano, a celebration that welcomes locals and guests in a day of religious ceremonies followed by music and folk dances. The group of tourists curiously oversees the procession of the patron saint's statue (a proper tòpos in the representation of rural Italy abroad, consistently employed by major blockbusters up to the recently released Bond movie No Time to Die, 2021), then Marianne and Harry leave. As evening falls, they sling themselves on the dance floor and move to the notes of a traditional waltz, remembering the last time they were on a situation such as this together. Here, with the couple in the center of the square, the whole context evokes an atmosphere of joy and delight very often associated with the soul of the Italian people in the idea that is perceived abroad. It is, indeed, part of the Italian idyll that hosts the foreigner on vacation. Frequently, this model also refers to the warm and welcoming nature of Italians towards foreigners, and in A Bigger Splash Guadagnino behaves no different: it turns out that the man who got up from the table to give up his seat to the music legend is a Carabiniere, and he, along with the rest of the crowd gathered in the village for the party, watches in admiration as the two of them (and Pen, when she arrives) perform karaoke. The bar where the scene takes place is soon filled with people who have come to enjoy the show. At the same time, it's also worth noting that not everyone keeps up the behavior of an Italian summer promotional video: when father and daughter dance and sing together (Nat King Cole's Unforgettable), an off-screen voice professes a cheap, vulgar demand that clings to the ambiguity of the relationship between the two. Perhaps it is a passage exclusively functional to the plot - shortly thereafter Marianne will openly question Harry's treating of Penelope - but it may also work, in a minor way, to debase precisely that otherwise untainted idea of a country warm, joyful, full of desire to party and have fun. This is the same thing that happens in We Are Who We Are, in the third episode, when a fight breaks out between the American troops and some locals, all of whom are sitting at the outside tables of a pizzeria. 79 It's summertime and the residents of the military base have moved to the center of the town of Chioggia for the typical festival that takes place once a year. It is, here too, a real celebration, that of the Palio della Marciliana, an occurrence in which the streets of the center wear their most picturesque medieval clothes. The event recalls the magic of a long-gone era with the historical re-enactment of a 1379 war against Genoa, defeated in an epic battle after 10 months of siege. Locals and tourists would find themselves surrounded by musicians, banquets and taverns, while five districts would compete in an historic crossbow competition. The whole city offers song performances, dances and re-enactments of combat and ancient craftsmanship. Within the tv series, the American protagonists, on their side, participate in a tug-of-war competition, which in the end sees them losing and will be the reason for the aforementioned clash. This happening, by all means, can only give a certain tone to Guadagnino's work. The experience of his protagonists is colored and enlivened by the color, the history, the culture of the place where they are and so foreign to what they are used to. 3.3.6. Luca Guadagnino, the image The last confirmation of the liminal nature on which Guadagnino's films move, halfway between a decisive Italian character and a fundamental international vocation, comes once one checks on the image that Guadagnino offers of himself on covers and newspaper articles: the Italian director actually reflects both these natures also in the way he presents himself and tells his story to the press. This is not necessarily a facade, it is likely to think that Luca Guadagnino, born in Palermo to an Algerian mother and lived the earliest years of his life in Ethiopia, where his father would teach Italian, really feels, and consequently acts, as someone exposed to several cultural influences, but certainly his authority as a creative and creator, as it emerges even in public occasions such as international interviews or promotional tours, is able to represent an Italy of unpaired elegance that tends to export excellent Italianicity to foreign countries. Guadagnino's public image is first and foremost linked to the worlds of luxury, elegance and glamour. In 2012 the director shot the commercial One Plus One, an enchanted chase on foot in the alleys of Cremona with the sole purpose of showing Giorgio Armani's newest springsummer collection. In the same year, Guadagnino tied his name to another (French, not Italian) luxury brand, Cartier, for which he directed Destinée, a completely romantic love story sealed with a precious golden ring. The following year, he realized Walking Stories (2013), a short film for the fashion house Ferragamo that engages two protagonists in the search for true love. In more recent years, he directed The Staggering Girl (2019), inspired by the latest Valentino 80 collection and starring Julianne Moore as an Italian American writer returned to Italy to assist her mother, and finally Salvatore - Shoemaker of Dreams (2020), a documentary focused on the life of the founder of the homonymous company. This operation, it must be underlined, is not entirely unconventional, since both Sorrentino and Garrone have embraced similar projects over the last years: the former, for example, worked on advertisements for Campari, Yamamay, and Fiat; the latter directed commercials for Dior and Dolce&Gabbana. Side operations such as these contribute to promote a decidedly Italian, yes, but at the same time strongly global, perception of the directors. Moreover, this concept is furtherly established when one takes into account how fashion is inherently part of the films as well, just think of the Oscar-nominated costumes in I Am Love, result of a collaboration with Fendi and Jil Sanders, or Christian Dior in the case of A Bigger Splash. It is this nature, along with all the elements mentioned above, that newspapers and journalists rely on when they find themselves in the situation of communicating Guadagnino's image to their readers. In an example such as Dana Thomas's interview for "The New York Times Style Magazine", everything contributes to building the solid architecture (another among Guadagnino's passions) of a sophisticated, stylish, meticulous artist capable of combining a strongly Italian and innovative soul with a global appeal. 81 Closing remarks The work that ends with these pages has investigated the cinematographic tradition through which Italy has made its way into the United States market. The path of reference focused on the different shapes that this tradition has taken over the course of time, starting after World War II up to the most recent and contemporary instances. In this way, it was possible to note how the attitudes of American industry continued to respond to certain aesthetic and expressive inferences that Italy has exported with greater or lesser continuity. At the end of the world conflict, overseas spectators discovered the Italian soul within the cinema of the rubble, animated by the adherence to a grey and pitiless reality, proudly faced by a tenacious people, even when exhausted and humiliated by poverty or violence. It is now clear how this nucleus of narration constitutes an inevitable term of comparison for critics and authors who still deal with Italian cinema today: the ruthlessness of reality, the cruelty of events, the banal perdition into which people fall, every element seems to belong to a timeless model of Italy for abroad. Two annexes have been escorting this model, equally responding to past and at the same time present needs: the first is that of the director, understood as the author and first representative of the poetics privileged in his films; the second instead concerns the actors who are most persistently starred in interpreting these stories. The identity of Italian cinema has thus been accompanied by its great names’, celebrated at the most important film festivals and widely acclaimed by critics. The same authorities, throughout their production, have witnessed and interpreted the gradual change of both styles and needs that the big screen has pursued, as a response to the ever-changing world. Different paths have therefore been taken, the results of which have contributed, when not necessarily to media prestige, at least to the economic support of the film industry. The effect of this multiplicity of influences has mutated over time the factors characterizing the public image of Italy, still willingly tied to a serious, social, political and aesthetic cinema, but also rooted in a flourishing natural context, a friendly and thriving social environment, a deep-rooted historical space respectful of the values of originality, solidarity and authenticity. It was pointed out that more contemporary norms are acting on these directions, albeit with less force than in the past. Despite the fact that present voices speak within the terms of the natural progression of technical and narrative tools, it has been remarked 82 how their identity promoted and perceived in the United States continues to respond to a strong bind to the Italy referenced in the cinema of the past. Finally, the path that this dissertation has followed focused on the analysis of the specific case of Luca Guadagnino: also through the systematic comparison with the opinions of American critics, it has shown how much the most recent filmography of the Italian director constitutes an anomaly in the national panorama. The original contribution of the work has hopefully helped achieving a better understanding of the textual engagements, inherent to Guadagnino's films, that best allow to discover the reasons behind their success with American critics and audiences. The perspective of this work, culmination of an academic path in Italian Studies, has been turned towards the investigation of the ways in which the most effective Italian film model overseas decides to propose Italy to foreign American viewers. In this sense, the opinion of the writer is that Guadagnino functions as the smart interpreter of a well-established tradition in the (cinematographic) relationships between Italy and the United States; a tradition that combines with the peninsula, in an undoubtedly stereotypical way, the paradigmatic traits of a wonderful country, baked by the sun and bathed by the sea, of authentic food and original relationships, of heavy historical roots and a glorious cinematographic past. At the same time, Guadagnino's presence as an author and as a public figure also grasps and exploits the more strictly creative and artistic inferences while telling universal stories of a complex and multiform contemporaneity, melancholic as romantic. Within the trajectory of Italian cinema as a diplomatic vector, Guadagnino's role has now taken on vital importance for Italy's image in the United States, if we consider the reach that the director has the ability to achieve. It will undoubtedly be interesting to see if the systematic solutions he has adopted so far will be subject to renewal or further evolution, and also if, and how, they will be welcomed and implemented by other contemporary and future directors. 83 References “Variety”, 2000, All-time foreign language films to 1973. Anderson, Melissa 2010, Tilda Swinton’s Got to Be Free in I Am Love, article on “The Village Voice”. Available online at: https://www.villagevoice.com/2010/06/15/tildaswintons-got-to-be-free-in-i-am-love/ Bahr, Lindsey 2020, Review: Italian ‘Pinocchio’ takes the puppet to its roots, article on “Associated Press”. 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Available online at: https://variety.com/2018/film/global/bernardo-bertolucci-luca-guadagnino1202711089/ Weissberg, Jay 2008, Il Divo, article on “Variety”. Available online at: https://variety.com/2008/scene/markets-festivals/il-divo-1200522096/ Weissberg, Jay 2009, I Am Love, article on Variety. Available online at: https://variety.com/2009/film/markets-festivals/i-am-love-1200476375/ Weissberg, Jay 2008, Gomorrah, article on “Variety”. Available online at: https://variety.com/2008/film/markets-festivals/gomorrah-1200522327/ Wilkinson, Alissa, Call Me by Your Name is an erotic film in every sense of the word. It’s also a masterpiece., article on “Vox”. Available online at: https://www.vox.com/2017/11/21/16552862/call-me-by-your-name-review-timotheechalamet-armie-hammer Williams, Joe 2010, Italian romance 'I Am Love' is unfulfilling, article on the “St. Louis Post-Dispatch”. Available online at: https://www.stltoday.com/entertainment/movies/reviews/article_2a6a4e6a-95e1-5344ae2d-8fccc773a72e.html 91 Young Deborah 2018, ‘Dogman’: Film Review | Cannes 2018, article on “The Hollywood Reporter”. Available online at: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/dogman-1112738/ . Young, Deborah (Metacritic credits her, the website credits THR staff) 2015, ‘A Bigger Splash’: Venice Review, article on “The Hollywood Reporter”. Available online at : https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/dakotajohnson-tilda-swinton-a-820770/ 92 Index of film titles 8 ½ (1963) A Bigger Splash (Luca Guadagnino, 2015) A fistful of dollars [Per un pugno di dollari] (Sergio Leone, 1964) A special day [Una giornata particolare] (Ettore Scola, 1977) Amarcord (Federico Fellini,1973) Avatar (James Cameron, 2009) Bicycle Thieves [Ladri di biciclette] (Vittorio De Sica, 1948) Black Souls [Anime nere] (Francesco Munzi, 2014) Black Sunday [La Maschera del demonio] (Mario Bava, 1960) Call Me by Your Name (Luca Guadagnino, 2017) Cinema Paradiso [Nuovo Cinema Paradiso] (Giuseppe Tornatore, 1988) Conversation Piece [Gruppo di famiglia in un interno] (Luchino Visconti 1974) Destinée (commercial, Luca Guadagnino, 2012) Divorce Italian Style [Divorzio all’italiana] (Pietro Germi,1961) Django (Sergio Corbucci,1966) Django: Unchained (Quentin Tarantino, 2012) Doctor Strange (Scott Derrickson, 2016) Dogman (Matteo Garrone, 2018) Eat, Pray and Love (Ryan Murphy, 2010) Europe '51 [Europa ‘51] (Roberto Rossellini,1952) Fathers & Daughters (Gabriele Muccino, 2015) Fire at Sea [Fuocoammare] (Francesco Rosi, 2016) For a few dollars more [Per qualche dollaro in più] (Sergio Leone, 1965) Germany, Year Zero [Germania anno zero] (Roberto Rossellini, 1948) 93 Gomorrah [Gomorra: La Serie] (tv series, 2014 – running) Gomorrah [Gomorra] (Matteo Garrone, 2008) Hercules (Pietro Francisci, 1958) Human Capital [Il capitale umano] (Paolo Virzì, 2013) I Am Love [Io sono l’amore] (Luca Guadagnino, 2009) Il Divo (Paolo Sorrentino, 2008) Il Marchese del Grillo (Mario Monicelli, 1981) Il postino: The Postman [Il postino] (Micheal Radford and Massimo Troisi, 1994) Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion [Indagine su un cittadino al di sopra di ogni sospetto] (Elio Petri, 1970) Journey to Italy [Viaggio in Italia] (Roberto Rossellini, 1954) L’avventura (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1960) La dolce vita (Federico Fellini, 1960) La strada (Federico Fellini, 1954) Le Quattro Volte (Michelangelo Frammartino, 2010) Letters to Juliet (Gary Winick, 2010) Life is Beautiful [La vita è bella] (Roberto Benigni, 1997) Loro (Paolo Sorrentino, 2018) Marriage Italian Style [Matrimonio all’italiana] (Vittorio De Sica, 1964) Mediterraneo (Gabriele Salvatores, 1991) Melissa P. (Luca Guadagnino, 2005) Mid-August Lunch [Pranzo di ferragosto] (Gianni Di Gregorio, 2008) Mob Girl (Paolo Sorrentino, release date yet to be confirmed) Mondo cane (Paolo Cavara, Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco Prosperi, 1962) My brilliant friend [L’amica geniale] (tv series, Saverio Costanzo, 2018) My Mother [Mia madre] (Nanni Moretti, 2015) My Voyage to Italy (Martin Scorsese, 1999) No Time to Die (Cary Joji Fukunaga, 2021) Non ci resta che piangere (Massimo Troisi and Roberto Benigni, 1984) 94 Novecento (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1976) Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino, 2019) One Man Up [L’uomo in più] (Paolo Sorrentino, 2001) One Plus One (commercial, Luca Guadagnino, 2012) Paisan [Paisà] (Roberto Rossellini, 1946) Pinocchio (Roberto Benigni, 2002) Pinocchio (Matteo Garrone, 2019) Playing for Keeps (Gabriele Muccino, 2012) Quo vado? (Gennaro Nunziante, 2016) Rabid dogs [Cani arrabbiati] (Mario Bava, 1974) Reality (Matteo Garrone, 2012) Romanzo criminale (tv series, Stefano Sollima, 2008-2010) Rome, Open City [Roma città aperta] (Roberto Rossellini, 1945) Salvatore - Shoemaker of Dreams (Luca Guadagnino, 2020) Scarface (Brian De Palma, 1983) Seven Beauties [Pasqualino sette bellezze] (Lina Wertmüller1975) Seven Pounds (Gabriele Muccino, 2008) Shoeshine [Sciuscià] (Vittorio De Sica, 1946) Soldado (Stefano Sollima, 2018) Stealing Beauty (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1996) Suburra (Stefano Sollima, 2015) Suspiria (Dario Argento, 1977) Suspiria (Luca Guadagnino, 2018) Tale of Tales [Il racconto dei racconti – Tale of Tales] (Matteo Garrone, 2015) The Best Offer (Giuseppe Tornatore, 2013) The Bird with the Crystal Plumage [L’uccello dale piume di cristallo] (Dario Argento, 1970) The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (Andrew Adamson, 2005) The Consequences of Love [Le conseguenze dell’amore] (Paolo Sorrentino, 2004) 95 The Damned [La caduta degli dei (Götterdämmerung)] (Luchino Visconti, 1969) The Double Hour [La doppia ora] (Giuseppe Capotondi, 2009) The Family [La famiglia] (Ettore Scola, 1987) The Garden of the Finzi-Continis [Il giardino dei Finzi-Contini] (Vittorio De Sica, 1970) The Girl with a Pistol [La ragazza con la pistola] (Mario Monicelli, 1968) The Good, The Bad and The Ugly [Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo] (Sergio Leone, 1966) The Great Beauty [La grande bellezza] (Paolo Sorrentino, 2013) The Hand of God [È stata la mano di Dio] (Paolo Sorrentino, 2021) The Hole [Il buco] (Michelangelo Frammartino, 2021) The Last Emperor (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1987) The Leopard [Il Gattopardo] (Luchino Visconti, 1963) The Little World of Don Camillo [Don Camillo] (Julien Duvivier, 1952) The New Pope (tv series, Paolo Sorrentino, 2019) The Protagonists (Luca Guadagnino, 1999) The Pursuit of Happyness (Gabriele Muccino, 2006) The Salt of Life [Gianni e le donne] (Gianni Di Gregorio, 2011) The Staggering Girl (short film, Luca Guadagnino, 2019) The Traitor [Il traditore] (Marco Bellocchio, 2019) The Young Pope (tv series, Paolo Sorrentino, 2016) This Must Be The Place (Paolo Sorrentino, 2011) To Rome with love (Woody Allen, 2012) Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow [Ieri, oggi e domani] (Vittorio De Sica, 1963) Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man [La tragedia di un uomo ridicolo] (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1981) Two women [La ciociara] (Vittorio De Sica, 1960) Ubalda, All Naked and Warm [Quel gran pezzo della Ubalda tutta nuda e tutta calda] (Mariano Laurenti, 1972) Umberto D. (Vittorio De Sica, 1952) Under the Tuscan sun (Audrey Wells, 2003) 96 Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958) Viaggio sola (Maria Sole Tognazzi, 2013) Vincere (Marco Bellocchio, 2009) Walking Stories (commercial, Luca Guadagnino, 2013) We Are Who We Are (tv series, Luca Guadagnino, 2020) We Have a Pope [Habemus Papam] (Nanni Moretti, 2011) Without Remorse (Stefano Sollima, 2021) Youth [Youth – La giovinezza] (Paolo Sorrentino, 2015) 97

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