Holdaway, Dom (2013) A return to cinema d'impegno? Cinematic engagements with organized crime in Italy, 1950-2010. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

This thesis seeks to interrogate the mutual relationship between representations of
organized crime and commitment in Italian film (cinema d’impegno). Since the
Second World War, images of bandits, mafiosi and criminal rackets have been
central to some of the most important political films released, including In nome
della legge (Pietro Germi, 1949), Salvatore Giuliano (Francesco Rosi, 1961) and
A ciascuno il suo (Elio Petri, 1967). The ‘mafia film’ in Italy thus has a rich
heritage of powerfully engaged cinema that remains a far cry from its glamourized
international counterpart. Yet this ‘filone’, like cinema d’impegno widely, has
suffered from the endemic political apathy that accompanied advance of
postmodernity.
Drawing on recent scholarship on postmodern impegno, as well as on some of the
most important contemporary mafia films that have led critics to announce a
‘return’ to this heritage of engaged cinema, this thesis will interrogate the image
of organized crime today and its problematic mimicry of this past. It will employ
a historically comparative approach, beginning with an analysis of the important
waves of committed cinema in the post-War years. It then turns to the social role
of the cinema since the 1990s, when, despite the disintegration of political ‘grand
narratives’, the constant renewal of the trauma of organized crime has continued
to produce boldly political cinematic denunciations.
A secondary aim of the thesis is to bring into question the very notion of impegno.
As the discourses that are analysed in the first half show, the Marxist core of
many of the political mafia films has led to a narrow understanding of the
organized crime imagery. Building on Marxist theorists, from Lukács to Jameson,
and extending a better critical appreciation of the spectator, this discussion seeks
to bring into focus the importance of genre cinema in the dialectical creation of a
political mafia image.

Item Type:	Thesis or Dissertation (PhD)
Subjects:	D History General and Old World > DG Italy P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN1993 Motion Pictures
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Gangster films -- Italy -- History and criticism, Mafia in motion pictures
Official Date:	April 2013
Dates:	Date Event April 2013 Submitted
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Department of Italian
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor:	Burns, Jennifer
Sponsors:	Arts & Humanities Research Council (Great Britain) (AHRC); British School at Rome; University of Warwick
Extent:	366 leaves : illustrations.
Language:	eng

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