Italy in Early American Cinema

Giorgio Bertellini traces the origins of American cinema's century-long fascination with Italy and Italian immigrants to the popularity of the pre-photographic aesthetic-the picturesque. Once associated with landscape painting in northern Europe, the picturesque came to symbolize Mediterranean Europe through comforting views of distant landscapes and exotic characters. Taking its cue from a picturesque stage backdrop from The Godfather Part II, Italy in Early American Cinema shows how this aesthetic was transferred from 19th-century American painters to early 20th-century American filmmakers. Italy in Early American Cinema offers readings of early films that pay close attention to how landscape representations that were related to narrative settings and filmmaking locations conveyed distinct ideas about racial difference and national destiny.

Winner of Finalist, 2010 Lora Romero Book Prize (American Studies Association)Finalist, 2010 Modernist Studies Association Book PrizeWinner, 2010 American Assoc.
Winner of Finalist, 2010 Lora Romero Book Prize (American Studies Association)Finalist, 2010 Modernist Studies Association Book PrizeWinner, 2010 American Assoc.

“To read Bertellini's superb book is to enter into an intense, rich, and intricately layered experience of Italian immigrant culture in the New York of the 1900's and 1910's.--Millicent Marcus, Yale University”

"Bertellini's persuasive thesis that identity-formation works, among other things, through the picturesque, provides a further explanation for our persistent need for a local aura of realist "authenticity" in our idea of what Italian cinema should give us." Robert Gordon writing for the Times Literary Supplement

Giorgio Bertellini is Assistant Professor of Screen Arts and Cultures and of Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Michigan. He is author of Emir Kusturica. His edited and co-edited volumes include The Cinema of Italy and (with Richard Abel and Rob King) Early Cinema and the "National."

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