Marco Bellocchio

The Cinematic I in the Political Sphere

By Clodagh Brook
Categories: Art & Performance Studies, Film Studies
Publisher: University of Toronto Press, Scholarly Publishing Division
Paperback : 9780802096517, 272 pages, April 2010
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Table of contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Table of Contents

Note on the Text

Acknowledgements

Chapter One. Auteur and Autobiograpy
Constructing an Auteur
Collaboration and Production
The Zigzagging Path
Bobbio and My Mother's Smile: Autobiography in Bellocchio's Cinema
Conclusion

Chapter Two. Bellocchio's Political Cinema in the Sixties and Seventies
The Problems of Impegno in the Era of Postmodernism
The Nature of Bellocchio's Impegno
La Cina è vicina, "Discutiamo, discutiamo", and Pre-Contestation Impegno
The Militant Documentaries, Nel nome del padre, Marcia trionfale: Contestation, Impegno, Collectivity
Conclusion

Chapter Three. The Dreaming "I": Interiority and Massimo Fagioli's "Model" of the Unconscious
Massimo Fagioli and Group Therapy
Massimo Fagioli's "Model" of the Unconscious
The Calm Sea and Inner Child: Salto nel vuoto and Il sogno della farfalla
Sex, Women, and Irrationality: La visione del Sabba and La condanna
Screening the "I": Styles of Interiority
The Oneiric and States of Hesitation
Space and the Unconscious, or the House as Psyche: Salto nel vuoto and Diavolo in corpo
Temporality and the Unconscious: Enrico IV and the Chronotrap
Conclusion

Chapter Four. Bellocchio's Political Cinema from the Eighties to the Present
Italian Terrorism: Buongiorno, notte

Chapter Five. The Rebel "I": Patriarchy and Parents
The Woman as Rebel: Politics and Patriarchy
Rebellion in the Name of the Father and Family: I pugni in tasca, Il Principe di Homburg, L'ora di religione
Conclusion

Chapter Six. Tradition and its Discontents
Adaptations and Citations: Pirandello, Manzoni, and the Overturning of the Father-Text
Conclusions. Private Cinema in a Public Sphere

Bibliography
Index

Description

Marco Bellocchio is one of Italy's most important and prolific directors, with a career spanning five decades. In this book, Clodagh J. Brook explores the boundaries between the public and the private, the political and the personal, and the collective and the individual as they appear in Bellocchio's films. Including work on psychoanalysis, politics, film production, autobiography, and the relationship between film tradition and contemporary culture, Marco Bellocchio touches on fundamental issues in film analysis.

Brook's study interrogates what it means to make personal or anti-institutional art in a medium dominated by a late-capitalist industrial model of production. Her readings of Bellocchio's often enigmatic and perplexing work suggest new ways to answer questions about subjectivity, objectivity, and political commentary in modes of filmmaking. Relating the art of a private director to a public medium, Clodagh J. Brook's work is an important contribution to our understanding of film.