Stardom, Italian Style: Screen Performance and Personality in Italian Cinema by Marcia Landy (review)

Marcia Landy begins Stardom, Italian Style by noting that “the fascination of the star invites far-reaching explorations into social history, culture, economics, and various art-forms to gain a sense of its power and persistence” (x). Despite the huge amount of academic interest in star studies, and the prominence of famous actors in Italian cinema histories, Stardom, Italian Style is, to my knowledge, the first book in either Italian or English to examine the evolution of cinematic stardom in Italy from the silent period to the present. As a star-focused history, Landy’s book certainly fills a gap in Italian film studies. However, it also sits somewhat uncomfortably between the bulky, detailed Italian film histories of Peter Bondanella and Gian Piero Brunetta, and recent books examining stars and stardom in particular epochs, including Angela Dalle Vacche’s Diva: Defiance and Passion in Early Italian Cinema (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2008), Landy’s excellent The Folklore of Consensus: Theatricality in the Italian Cinema, 1930-1943 (Albany: State of New York University Press, 1998), and volumes on Marcello Mastroianni and Sophia Loren by Jacqueline Reich and Pauline Small, respectively.

The first chapter of Stardom, Italian Style covers the golden years of the silent period, examining a selection of its most famous divas, including Lyda Borelli, Pina Menichelli, Francesca Bertini and Eleonora Duse, as well as the Maciste serials of the muscle-man Bartolomeo Pagano and the newsreels of Mussolini. The second chapter explores the sound films of the Fascist Era, focusing on major stars such as Isa Miranda, Vittorio De Sica and Fosco Giachetti. The third chapter covers Neorealism and the fifties, examining stars like Anna Magnani, Silvana Mangano, Marcello Mastroianni and Sophia Loren. The large fourth chapter is devoted to Italian popular cinema from the fifties onwards. Beginning with a look at the Amadeo Nazzari-Yvonne Sanson pairing that dominated post-war melodramas, the chapter then considers the stars of the commedia all’italiana, including Alberto Sordi, Totò and Vittorio Gassman. Stardom in Italian cinema’s most prominent generic cycles, including peplum epics, the Spaghetti Western and horror, is then treated, followed by recent stars like Monica Bellucci, Carlo Verdone and Valeria Golino. The fifth chapter examines Italy’s legendary auteur directors as stars in their own right, as well as their use of stardom in their work and connections to particular stars. Almost all of the canonised directors of Italian art cinema are featured: Fellini, Visconti, Rossellini, Antonioni and Pasolini. A consideration of stardom and slightly more recent directors (Lina Wertmüller, Dario Argento and Roberto Benigni) completes the chapter. The conclusion of the volume comes in a six-page epilogue and postscript, which briefly discuss the problematic nature of stardom from the 1980s onwards and the political stardom of Silvio Berlusconi.

Stardom, Italian Style attempts to cover a huge topic in just over three hundred pages and, almost inevitably, there are some shortcomings and organisational challenges. In fairness, the balance of the text and its purpose are clearly signposted throughout, and any critique of its limitations says a lot about one’s own critical view of Italian film history. Stardom, Italian Style is clearly focused on the golden years of the silent era and the period 1930-1980. It offers what Landy admits is only a “tentative discussion of the character and future of current stardom” (xiii), split between two chapters and two epilogues. The division is understandable, given that Silvio Berlusconi’s political position seemed assured at the time of writing (2008, just after his third electoral victory) and integrating commentary about him into the main text could have undermined it at a later date. However, perhaps the period 1980-present would have been better served by a single chapter examining the changes in cinematic stardom in a society dominated by televisual media. This would also make Chapter Four more tightly focused on popular cinema in the period 1950-1980.

Landy...