This collection of carefully-researched essays forms a multifaceted, functional, and up-to-date reference volume that should be on the shelf of every cinephile and student of Italian cinema.
Federico Pacchioni, Associate Professor of World Languages and Cultures, Chapman University, USA
The writers assembled here by Joseph Luzzi - some of them well-known scholars at the top of their game, ... Read moreothers new voices emerging with power and flair - engage us at all stages of this rich new volume on Italian cinema. Here is a reference work that makes good its title promise - to cover an entire history, from the age of silent screen to digital images of more than a century later. The various chapters weave pathways into existing knowledge, extending lines of inquiry in a variety of enticing directions. Individual film critics here take different approaches, but in all cases the writing styles are cogent, intriguing, and a challenge both to other scholars and to the general reader. A clear overall chronology by Mattia Acetoso leads the volume. Each further chapter has a comprehensive bibliography and filmography of the particular aspect of Italian cinema under consideration. In all respects the contributors prove worthy of the volume’s dedicatee, Millicent Marcus, whose pioneering work in the field has for decades drawn others magnetically to it, and whose own contribution here is one of many pieces of exemplary exploration. Those readers who are well acquainted with aspects of Italian cinema will find their senses of it revitalised, discovering unknown films to watch and old favourites to consider in new ways. Those by contrast who so far know relatively little will receive guidance here, and stimulation to commence their own exploration with fascination and in bold individual ways. Here is a volume that will enhance love of and expertise about Italian cinema - and indeed Italian culture more generally, since all the contributions are richly contextualised - for many years to come.
Jonathan White, Professor Emeritus in Literature, University of Essex, UK
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