Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-94fs2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T17:07:49.590Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Cuore and the cinema: reframing the Risorgimento for the First World War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 March 2019

Amy Boylan
Amy Boylan*
Affiliation:
Department of Classics, Humanities and Italian Studies, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH, USA
*
*Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

During the years leading up to and during the First World War, patriotic films featuring self-sacrificing child protagonists formed an important sub-genre of Italian film production. This article looks at Film Artistica Gloria’s Cuore series (1915–1916), adapted from De Amicis’ novel, with particular attention given to the two war-themed films, Il tamburino sardo (UK: The Sardinian Drummer Boy, 1915) and La piccola vedetta lombarda (The Little Lookout from Lombardy, 1915). An examination of the way in which advertising, reviews, and promotional materials worked to reframe these Risorgimento stories within a new historical context shows how the transmedial relationship between the novel, films and paracinematic texts helped to transform De Amicis’s civically-minded patriotic tales into an endorsement of Italy’s intervention in the First World War.

Italian summary

In questo articolo offro una lettura di due film della seria Cuore (1915–1916), adatti dall’opera deamicisiana dalla Film Artistica Gloria, nel contesto dell’interventismo e dell’intervento dell’Italia nella Prima Guerra Mondiale. Mi concentro in particolare sulla questione del ruolo del quotidiano Corriere della Sera, delle riviste cinematografiche dell’epoca, e dei materiali pubblicitari nel ricontestualizzare il tema e i simboli del Risorgimento per un pubblico alla vigilia di una nuova guerra.

Keywords

silent filmFirst World WarRisorgimentoCuoreDe Amicis
Type
Research Articles
Information
Modern Italy , Volume 24 , Issue 3 , August 2019 , pp. 281 - 294
Copyright
Copyright © 2019 Association for the Study of Modern Italy 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Banti, A.M. 2011. Sublime madre nostra. La nazione italiana dal Risorgimento al fascismo. Rome-Bari: Laterza.Google Scholar
Ben-Ghiat, R. 2015. Italian Fascism’s Empire Cinema. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press.Google Scholar
Bernardini, A., Cherchi Usai, P., Sopocy, M., Noble, W. and Koszarski, R.. 1989. ‘An Industry in Recession: The Italian Film Industry 1908-1909’. In Film History 3(4): 341–368.Google Scholar
Bertellini, G., ed. 2013. Italian Silent Cinema: A Reader. East Barnet: John Libbey Publishing.Google Scholar
Bertellini, G. 2016. ‘Quando la realtà cammina più rapida della realtà: Italian Cinema and World War I’. In Italy and the Cultural Politics of World War I, edited by G. Parati, 68–88. Madison, N.J.: Farleigh Dickinson University Press.Google Scholar
Boero, P. and Genovesi, G.. 2009. Cuore. De Amicis tra critica e utopia. Milan: FrancoAngeli.Google Scholar
Brunetta, G.P. 2008. Il cinema muto italiano. Rome-Bari: Laterza.Google Scholar
da Castello, P. 1915. ‘Il tamburino sardo’. La vita cinematografica IV (11): 62.Google Scholar
De Amicis, E. 1994. Cuore. Milan: Einaudi. http://www.letteraturaitaliana.net/pdf/Volume_9/t241.pdf Google Scholar
Fabri, G. 1915. ‘Nostre corrispondenze’. Il Maggese cinematografico III (6): 5.Google Scholar
Gentile, E. 2009. La Grande Italia: The Myth of the Nation in the 20th Century. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Gibelli, A. 2005. Il popolo bambino. Infanzia e nazione dalla Grande Guerra a Salò. Milan: Einaudi.Google Scholar
Isnenghi, M. 1989, 2007. Il mito della Grande Guerra. Bologna: il Mulino.Google Scholar
Kardec, A. 1915. ‘Il tamburino sardo’. La cinematografia italiana ed estera IX (6): 40.Google Scholar
Lasi, G. 2006. ‘La ripresa di Roma’. In 1905. La presa di Roma. Alle origini del cinema italiano/Beginnings of Italian Cinema , edited by M. Canosa, 41–114. Genoa: Le Mani.Google Scholar
Lasi, G. 2011. ‘Garibaldi e l’epopea garibaldina nel cinema muto italiano. Dalle origini alla prima Guerra mondiale’. Storicamente 7. https://storicamente.org./lasi_garibaldi_film Google Scholar
Lasi, G. 2013. ‘La presa di Roma e Il piccolo garibaldino: the Risorgimento and national identity in early Italian cinema’. Journal of Modern Italian Studies Vol. 18 (2): 244–255.Google Scholar
Lotti, D. 2014. ‘Maciste a Quarto: Propaganda interventista nei film di ambientazione risorgimentale (1915)’. In A fuoco l’obiettivo: Il cinema e la fotografia raccontano la Grande Guerra, edited by A. Faccioli and A. Scandola, 32–45. Bologna: Persiani.Google Scholar
Lottini, I. 2014. ‘From Pinocchio to Cuore: Children in Early Italian Cinema.’ In New Visions of the Child in Italian Cinema , edited by D. Hipkins and R. Pitt, 151–168. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Martinelli, V. 1992. Il cinema muto italiano 1915: I film della Grande Guerra. Turin: Nuova-ERA Edizioni RAI.Google Scholar
Menini, A. 1916. ‘Film in Giro – da Torino. Al Cinema Vittoria La piccola vedetta lombarda ’. Film III (24): 9.Google Scholar
Moroni, A. 2015. ‘Il “Corriere della Sera” alla guerra: Propaganda e informazioni tra il 1914 e il 1918’. In Narrare il conflitto. Propaganda e cultura nella Grande Guerra (1915–1918) , edited by S. Lucchini and A. Santagata, 113–126. Milan: Fondazione Corriere della Sera.Google Scholar
Muscio, G. 2013. ‘In Hoc Signo Vinces: Historical Films’. In Italian Silent Cinema, A Reader, edited by G. Bertellini, 161–170. East Barnet: John Libbey Publishing.Google Scholar
Orestano, F. 2016. ‘On the Italian Front: Salvatore Gotta’s Piccolo Alpino (1926)’. In Children’s Literature and Culture of the First World War, edited by L. Paul, R. Johnston and R. Short, 48–59. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Redi, R. 1992. Cinema scritto: Il catalogo delle riviste italiane di cinema 1907–1944. Rome: Associazione italiana per le ricerche di storia del cinema.Google Scholar
Reich, J. 2015. The Maciste Films of Italian Silent Cinema. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Rhodes, J.D. 2013. ‘“Our Beautiful and Glorious Art Lives”: The Rhetoric of Nationalism in Early Italian Film Periodicals’. In Italian Silent Cinema, A Reader, edited. by G. Bertellini, 263–274. East Barnet: John Libbey Publishing.Google Scholar
Sorlin, Pierre. 1996. Italian National Cinema. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Tortora, M. 2006. Primi schermi di Cuore. Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino Editore.Google Scholar