Mafia movies Renga, Dana
Mafia movies,
2019, 2014, 2011, 2011-04-16
eBook
"The mafia has always fascinated filmmakers and television producers. Al Capone, Salvatore Giuliano, Lucky Luciano, Ciro Di Marzio, Roberto Saviano, Don Vito and Michael Corleone, and Tony Soprano ...are some of the historical and fictional figures that contribute to the myth of the Italian and Italian-American mafias perpetuated onscreen. This collection looks at mafia movies and television over time and across cultures, from the early classics to the Godfather trilogy and contemporary Italian films and television series. The only comprehensive collection of its type, Mafia Movies treats over fifty films and TV shows created since 1906, while introducing Italian and Italian-American mafia history and culture. The second edition includes new original essays on essential films and TV shows that have emerged since the publication of the first edition, such as Boardwalk Empire and Mob Wives, as well as a new roundtable section on Italy's "other" mafias in film and television, written as a collaborative essay by more than ten scholars. The edition also introduces a new section called "Double Takes" that elaborates on some of the most popular mafia films and TV shows (e.g. The Godfather and The Sopranos) organized around themes such as adaptation, gender and politics, urban spaces, and performance and stardom."--
Using the The HBO/Rai co-production My Brilliant Friend as a case study, this essay addresses the understudied arena of casting, particularly in relation to the creation of the “authentic stardom” of ...the child and adolescent nonprofessional performers. Drawing from personal interviews with Laura Muccino and Sara Casani, two of Italian television’s most important casting directors, excerpts of which are included throughout the essay, I consider the gendered practices of casting in relation to Muccino and Casani’s epic search for the four nonprofessional child and adolescent girl performers who made the characters from the novel come to life. I focus on the casting and reception of the child and adolescent female actors in the series. In particular, this essay engages with performances of adolescence as these performances relate to the productions’ desire to represent an authentic experience of youth in postwar Italy that is exported to transnational audiences.
This study offers a clear, concise introduction to the Fascist-era
practice, know as confino , of exiling antifascist
dissidents to parts of Italy far from the dissidents' homes, often
on islands or ...in tiny inland villages. The book is organised in two
sections. Part one provides a case study of the political colony on
the island of Lipari and a historical overview of internal exile.
Part two focuses on representations of confinement in literature
and film. It examines the varieties of self-expression (e.g.
memoirs, letters and literature) used by prisoners to describe
their experiences, investigates how filmmakers interpret these
events, places and people, and explores how film portrays the
repression of homosexuality. A timely examination of the birthplace
of European federalism, the book also contributes to our
understanding of the legacy of confinement from both national and
European perspectives.
This short piece briefly addresses the casting of Ciro Di Marzio and Gennaro Savastano in Gomorra. La serie, paying particular attention to casting directors Sara Casani and Laura Muccino. The essay ...is based upon a personal interview with them, and investigates the hidden labour of casting directors in the Italian context who are more often than not women. It also pays special attention to the intricate process of casting two of the series' focal villains, both of whom underwent profound bodily transformations before and during season one.
This essay investigates fascinations surrounding glamorized criminals by looking at how recent Italian history and queer bodies are represented, negotiated, and received in Italy’s first ...made-for-Netflix series Suburra. La serie (2017 - ). In many ways, the series is a distinctly Italian production, especially in terms of the popular mafia-corruption plot that is based upon real life events. However, Suburra. La serie is a transnational production that engages viewers outside of Italy. This essay pays attention to the series’ interesting marketing strategy that flagrantly draws attention to fictional/historical consistencies, before addressing the physical allure and charisma of criminal antiheroes who appear trapped in a perpetual adolescence. Most importantly, I address how Suburra. La serie’s singularity as a transnational co-production allows for a unique representation of gender and sexuality on Italian small screens, as it marks an opening up of a mainstream space on the small screen to tell stories from the perspective of a non-normative sexual orientation. Suburra. La serie engages in a representation of queer masculinity that is distinctive in relation to Italian serial drama as a whole and especially in relation to serial dramas that depend upon sympathetic perpetrators to create relationships with viewers. As I argue, Suburra. La serie is a queer text with an address to viewers spanning continents, cultures, and languages.
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