Italian Film: Hidden Agendas from Cinecitta

Course Number: 82-268

Mussolini declared, "Cinematography is the most powerful weapon." Accordingly, the films in this course explore the political and societal cultures of Italy, and their subsequent interrelationships and effects on Italian film. Students will follow a cinematic journey that begins with silent cinema, leads to the historical narrative of WWII and the resistance fighters of neorealism, then to the political analysis of the migrant crisis of la questione meridionale (the problem with the south) and finally takes on a more comical vein with la commedia allitaliana(Italian comedy) finishing with a unique solution to the problem of unemployed graduates. Outcomes include analyses of the formal aspects of Italian cinema, the crumbling of post WWII political parties, the emergence of new political figures, and the precari generation of college graduates forced to work for meager wages and no rights while their peers leave the country to find work causing the so-called brain drain of Italy. Films can be viewed in the Modern Language Resource Center or streamed online through CMU's Kanopy.

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Units: 9
Prerequisite(s): None