Landscape and Memory in Post-Fascist Italian Film

Giuliana Minghelli is Associate Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures at Harvard University, USA.

• 1. 1943 Visconti: The Haunted Frames of Ossessione 2. 1946 Rossellini: Landscape as Burial Ground 3. 1948 De Sica and Zavattini: Memory in Shadow and Stone 4. 1950 Antonioni: Cronaca di un Amore’s Landscapes of Remorse 5.: Epilogue as Prologue—Zavattini/Celati: Documentaristic Visions from Un Paese to Mondonuovo

Landscape and Memory in Post-Fascist Italian Film's thesis is original, groundbreaking, and inescapable. The notion of the present as what-comes-afterward – the repressed history of an unbearable and persistent past revealed in the neorealist landscape – is so perceptive that the reader has the feeling of understanding the post-war historical moment for the first time. At the core of the book is the question of our responsibility, the responsibility of not remaining passive. The book is so entrancing it will easily appeal to non-specialized readers. -Silvestra Mariniello, Université de Montréal, CanadaWhat appeals to me in Landscape and Memory in Post-Fascist Italian Film, and what makes it a contribution to the scholarship on neorealism, is the book’s powerful ethical charge. I was often moved and reminded why I am so drawn to this body of films. The writing is extremely limpid; the illustrations are effective supports to the arguments and of great visual interest. I can envision this book as part of the reading list of both undergraduate and graduate level courses.-Millicent Marcus, Yale University, USA