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Spring 2007

Italian 470
Italian Auteurs: Fellini, Antonioni, Visconti
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Robert Rushing
Mondays 2-5 PM
Wednesdays 2-4 PM
In G48 FLB
CRNs: G 40002/UG 43714

From the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s, a series of brilliant Italian filmmakers defined much of international, art-house cinema. This semester we will focus on three:   Fellini, Antonioni and Visconti.  Each of these directors has a look, a style, even a series of repeated images (obsessions) that defines him, making him an "auteur," a filmmaker with a signature style.   A surreal blend of fantasy and reality set in a circus?  Probably Fellini.  A bored young woman playing silent tennis with mimes for 45 minutes, and no soundtrack?   Antonioni.  An opulent world of artificial decadence?  Could be Visconti (but possibly not; he is perhaps the least auteurist of our auteurs, and we will want to know why).

We have a substantial volume of film criticism to read on each of these three figures, as well as a collection of theoretical essays on auteur theory.   In other words, while we will be discussing the films individually and the directors more generally, the course is ultimately aimed at exploring the question of film authorship.   How do the films of a given director acquire a "style" or a "look"?   How do we identify a Fellini film as a Fellini film?  Does a Visconti film have a "Visconti look" in the same way that a Fellini film has a "Fellini look"?  Or is this, as some have claimed, merely the "author function"—because we organize books, music, films and other manifestations of culture around an author, we tend to ascribe a stylistic and intellectual coherence and similarity to the works of an author that may not actually be there.

The reading list includes:

Henry Bacon, Visconti: Explorations of Beauty and Decay.

Peter Bondanella, The Cinema of Federico Fellini .

Sam Rohdie, Antonioni.

Virginia Wright Wexman, Film and Authorship .

Plus additional articles on film theory for graduate students.  Films to be screened are:

Fellini

The White Sheik (1952, 90 m.)

La strada (1954, 110 m.)

La dolce vita (1960, 180 m.)

8½ (1963, 140 m.)

Amarcord (1973, 130 m.)

Antonioni

Il grido (1957, 116 m.)

L'avventura (1960, 145 m.)

Blowup (1966, 111 m.)

The Passenger (1975, 126 m.)

Visconti

Ossessione (1943, 140 m.)

Rocco & His Brothers (1960, 177 m.)

The Leopard (1963,  m.)

The Damned (1969, 150 m.)

Death in Venice (1971, 130 m.)

For more information, visit: www.complit.uiuc.edu/rrushing/470.