scholarly journals On the Seriousness of Things: Pirandello’s Ma non è una cosa seria from Page to Screen

2019 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 35-60
Author(s):  
Michael Syrimis
Keyword(s):  
Legal Status ◽  
Film Industry ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Traditional Values ◽  
Romantic Comedy ◽  
Literary Adaptation ◽  
Mise En Scene ◽  
Thematic Layer ◽  
Classical Hollywood Cinema ◽  
Classical Hollywood

A study of Mario Camerini’s Ma non è una cosa seria (But It’s Nothing Serious [1936]), a film based on Luigi Pirandello’s eponymous 1918 play and typical of the 1930s Italian romantic comedy genre, elucidates the transformations that a literary conception undergoes when adapted for the screen, especially as those reflect the historical context of the film’s making. The challenge for the filmmaker when working on a literary adaptation for popular consumption is to identify the cinematic strategies most suitable to render a psychologically and philosophically nuanced discourse, such as Pirandello’s, appealing to a mass audience in search of diversion. Camerini’s film also exemplifies that unique moment in Italian culture when the Fascist government took decisive measures to strengthen the film industry, promoting the expansion of popular genres in the style of classical Hollywood cinema. Camerini, therefore, works on three fronts: to convey literariness, to apply a sophisticated system of popular filmic representation, and to sustain, if subtly, some Fascist cultural ideals. A reading of the 1918 play with respect to Pirandello’s theory of umorismo questions the seriousness of the legal status of marriage, which in Pirandellian terms we may describe as an ideal construct or “fiction.” While this notion informs also the film’s fundamental thematic layer, Camerini modifies parts of the plot and deftly applies the techniques of classical cinema to convey Pirandellian humour specifically through cinematic means, placing emphasis on the identity of the male protagonist, which here takes the form of a visually vibrant array of diverse identity constructs. At the same time, through a graceful coordination of camera work and mise-en-scène, Camerini communicates the Fascist ideal of Italy as a modern and affluent nation but also one that preserves its traditional values.

What a Woman Wants? Nancy Meyers’s The Intern

2018 ◽  
pp. 209-253
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Paszkiewicz
Keyword(s):  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
Mass Culture ◽  
Sense Of Belonging ◽  
Film Industry ◽  
Reading Strategy ◽  
Women Directors ◽  
Central Importance ◽  
Romantic Comedy ◽  
Mise En Scene ◽  
Female Authorship

This chapter focalises on Nancy Meyers, arguably the most successful woman filmmaker of all time. It shows how Meyers’s carefully composed mise-en-scène and the portrayal of privileged women protagonists contribute to a critical alignment between the director and her films, and at the same time how they are used to demonstrate Meyers’s lack of credibility as an auteur (a reading strategy which often impacts other women directors, such as Sofia Coppola, as analysed in Ch. 5). This analysis is framed within the broader discussions of auteurism, the generic conventions of the romcom and the so-called feminisation of mass culture (Husseyn 1986, Hollows 2005), as well as the cultural, critical and industrial gendering of genres. The remainder of the chapter offers an examination of The Intern (2015). The film has been dubbed as ‘a romantic comedy without the romance’, and it indeed draws on several of its generic conventions: romance’s narrative stages, the presence of the ‘wrong partner’, the sense of ‘belonging together’, and bromantic elements which allow for a rethinking of the gendering of genres. The detailed analysis of the film reveals Meyers’s self-reflexive strategies – rich discursive histories engendered by the presence of stars Robert De Niro and Anne Hathaway, among others – that invoke issues of central importance in this book: the question of female authorship in a male-dominated film industry, and the heritage and evolution of genre in the Hollywood context.

An Aesthetics of Aggression: German Fascist vs. Classical Hollywood Melodrama

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Heins
Keyword(s):  
Third Reich ◽  
Hollywood Cinema ◽  
Aggressive Form ◽  
Mise En Scene ◽  
The Face ◽  
Classical Hollywood Cinema ◽  
Classical Hollywood

This chapter attempts to delineate the generic and aesthetic differences between film melodrama in Third Reich and classical Hollywood cinema, and to a lesser extent, between German and Italian Fascist film. Hollywood cinema's greater emphasis on the communicative codes of mise-en-scène, dynamic editing, and camera movement was countered in Nazi cinema with a greater stress on bodily displays and a theatrical acting style that subordinated the intimacy of the face in close-up to the authority of the actor's voice and scripted dialogue. Subtle formal and narrative differences in the Nazi melodrama also encouraged a more aggressive form of voyeurism than was common in the Hollywood melodrama. Instead of the masochistic aesthetic of many Hollywood melodramas, therefore, the Nazi melodrama distinguished itself by its formally encoded appeals to spectatorial sadism and by the masculinity of its pathos.

scholarly journals Remains of the Body in the Classical Hollywood Musical

2011 ◽  
Vol 7 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 151-165
Author(s):  
Vicente J. Benet
Keyword(s):  
Human Body ◽  
The Body ◽  
Hollywood Cinema ◽  
Musical Genre ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Mise En Scene ◽  
Classical Hollywood Cinema ◽  
Classical Hollywood

The human body, its role and configuration in Classical Hollywood cinema, offers a condensed view of the tension to be observed between narrative and spectacle in film. With the revival of the musical genre in the mid-1930s as our starting point, this paper proposes to analyze the human body as it relates to narration, montage and mise en scène. Observations are based on examples from various scenes in the film The Gay Divorcee (Mark Sandrich, 1934).

Rewriting Ibsen for the big screen

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-193 ◽  
Author(s):  
Audun Engelstad
Keyword(s):  
Silent Film ◽  
Film Adaptations ◽  
Henrik Ibsen ◽  
Hollywood Cinema ◽  
Contemporary Cinema ◽  
Classical Hollywood Cinema ◽  
Classical Hollywood

Henrik Ibsen is regarded as the champion of realist theatre. In the early days of cinema, there were several silent film adaptations of Ibsen’s plays. One would think, given his standing as a playwright, that there would be a continuous interest in Ibsen’s work after the conversion to sound. This article examines how the realist theatre – heralded by Ibsen – relates to classical (Hollywood) cinema and how Ibsen in various ways has been rewritten and has recently re-emerged within contemporary cinema.

An Argument for the Continued Validity of Woman-to-Woman Marriages in Post-2010 Kenya

2019 ◽  
Vol 63 (3) ◽  
pp. 303-328
Author(s):  
Monicah Kareithi ◽  
Frans Viljoen
Keyword(s):  
Legal Status ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Cultural Practice ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Opposite Sex ◽  
The Right

AbstractWoman-to-woman marriage is a form of customary marriage between two women, predominantly found in Africa. These customary marriages have been and to some extent still are conducted by various communities across Africa, including in Kenya. Communities such as the Kamba, Kisii, Nandi, Kikuyu and Kuria practise woman-to-woman marriages for a variety of reasons. The legal status of woman-to-woman marriages in Kenya is uncertain due to the provisions of article 45(2) of Kenya's Constitution of 2010 and section 3(1) of the Marriage Act of 2014, which stipulate that adults only have the right to marry persons of the opposite sex. However, a holistic and purposive reading of the constitution, taking into consideration its recognition of culture and the protection of children as important values in Kenyan society, and considering the historical context within which the provisions concerning same-sex marriages were included, leads to the conclusion that these provisions were not intended to proscribe the cultural practice of woman-to-woman marriage in Kenya. The constitutional validity of woman-to-woman marriage opens the door to a more expansive and fluid understanding of “family” in Kenya.

To Protect and Preserve: Echoes of Traditional Jewish Burial Culture in the Exhumation of Holocaust Mass Graves in Postwar Belarus and Ukraine

AJS Review ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-98
Author(s):  
Sarah Garibova
Keyword(s):  
Legal Status ◽  
Human Remains ◽  
Jewish Tradition ◽  
Traditional Values ◽  
Physical Security ◽  
Mass Graves ◽  
Religious Texts ◽  
Soviet Jews ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Face

As Soviet Jews returned to their hometowns after the Holocaust, they encountered a catastrophic landscape of mass graves that defied Jewish traditions of dignified, secure burial. Throughout the postwar decades, survivors strove to bring their relatives “to a Jewish grave”—in other words, to provide them a burial consistent with Jewish burial norms. These norms included the desire to bury children beside their parents, concern for the physical security and legal status of grave plots, a reluctance to disturb the dead, and a fear of exposing human remains to public view. Given the chaotic circumstances under which these graves had been created, it was impossible to uphold all four principles. Thus, some survivors chose to transfer mass graves to the local Jewish cemetery immediately after the war. Other communities chose to mark and preserve the graves at their original locations, only opting for exhumation in the face of a direct threat such as erosion. Although grave exhumation is generally prohibited in Jewish tradition, Soviet Jews did not embrace exhumation out of religious ignorance, but instead performed them out of a desire to approximate traditional Jewish burial norms under novel, catastrophic circumstances. Thus, these exhumations illustrate how traditional values and practices can continue to linger and evolve, even in the absence of religious texts, institutions, and clergy.

The Carabao and the Encounter of the Law in Nineteenth-Century Philippines

2019 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 307-326
Author(s):  
Nicolo Paolo P. Ludovice
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Water Buffalo ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Legal Research ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
Philippine History

AbstractThe place of the non-human animal in the legal world has been questioned. Animals’ legal status as property has been probed on how to best protect their welfare. While this is significant for animals who are not on the farm, it might not be effective when considering animals raised for food. The case of the carabao, or the water buffalo, in the Philippines is seen as a hybrid. This article traces the development of the carabao in Philippine history during the nineteenth century. Through historical, archival, and legal research on animals, the carabao is situated as private property. Colonial instruments of control were introduced to protect the carabao from criminals. In its proper historical context, the classification of carabaos as property indeed highlighted the animal’s status as legally owned, which did not necessarily demean the animal’s relationship with the human peasant nor the carabao’s quality as an animal.

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