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.
Clodagh J. Brook is associate professor and Head of Italian at Trinity College, Dublin.
TABLE OF CONTENTSTable of ContentsNote on the TextAcknowledgements Chapter One. Auteur and AutobiograpyConstructing an Auteur Collaboration and ProductionThe Zigzagging PathBobbio and My Mother's Smile: Autobiography in Bellocchio's Cinema ConclusionChapter Two. Bellocchio's Political Cinema in the Sixties and SeventiesThe Problems of Impegno in the Era of PostmodernismThe Nature of Bellocchio's ImpegnoLa Cina è vicina, "Discutiamo, discutiamo", and Pre-Contestation ImpegnoThe Militant Documentaries, Nel nome del padre, Marcia trionfale: Contestation, Impegno, CollectivityConclusion Chapter Three. The Dreaming "I": Interiority and Massimo Fagioli's "Model" of the UnconsciousMassimo Fagioli and Group TherapyMassimo Fagioli's "Model" of the UnconsciousThe Calm Sea and Inner Child: Salto nel vuoto and Il sogno della farfallaSex, Women, and Irrationality: La visione del Sabba and La condannaScreening the "I": Styles of InteriorityThe Oneiric and States of HesitationSpace and the Unconscious, or the House as Psyche: Salto nel vuoto and Diavolo in corpoTemporality and the Unconscious: Enrico IV and the ChronotrapConclusionChapter Four. Bellocchio's Political Cinema from the Eighties to the PresentItalian Terrorism: Buongiorno, notteChapter Five. The Rebel "I": Patriarchy and ParentsThe Woman as Rebel: Politics and PatriarchyRebellion in the Name of the Father and Family: I pugni in tasca, Il Principe di Homburg, L'ora di religioneConclusionChapter Six. Tradition and its DiscontentsAdaptations and Citations: Pirandello, Manzoni, and the Overturning of the Father-TextConclusions. Private Cinema in a Public SphereBibliographyIndex