Italian cinema currently finds itself in a transitional phase after a highly successful period
in which it was associated with the work of directors such as Rossellini Visconti Fellini
and Pasolini and with innovative styles of film-making principally neorealism. This book
explores the evolution of Italian cinema over the last twenty years with particular reference
to modern masterpieces such as Tornatore's Oscar-winning Nuovo Cinema Paradiso. The volume
focuses on the work of some of the most prominent directors of recent times combining an
auteurist perspective with an incisive overview of the most important thematic and stylistic
developments in modern Italian film-making. A broad range of theoretical approaches has been
selected embracing cognitive aesthetic psychoanalytical and sociological perspectives. This
approach has been adopted with a view to providing the most illuminating analyses of the
radically diverse work of different directors rather than attempting to impose a single
critical perspective or theme upon films that range from social realism to horror.
Significantly these different approaches are complemented by detailed discussions of the
technical arrangements of given film sequences since another of the volume's aims is to
encourage a greater familiarity with the effects of mise-en-scène montage sound and camera
movement.
