This research seminar is anchored to the broad-shouldered frame of Amedeo Nazzari (1907-1979), one of the first true leading men to materialize in the Italian film industry. As Giuseppe Gubitosi noted, examining this figure means interrogating Italian identity at large, as the tall, elegant, dark-haired and moustachioed Sardinian was “a product of the history of Italian cinema, of its constant efforts to signify and represent the Italian nation” (1998:15). In fact, over the course of his long career, the prolific actor created an on-screen character who was heroic but human, exceptional yet flawed, sensitive to the seductions of material wealth but ultimately following the straight and narrow path to moral and spiritual fortitude: as Masolino d’Amico argued, “Nazzari was clamorously, ostentatiously but also calmly, a positive character,” with whom Italians continued to identify for decades (in Colasanti and Nicosia 2007:11).
This research seminar presented by Alberto Zambenedetti, Assistant Professor in the Department of Italian Studies and the Cinema Studies Institute at the University of Toronto, will examine a selection of films from 1938 to 1943 featuring Nazzari in a leading or supporting role in relation to human im/mobility (physical, social, and mediated), revealing how the roots of Nazzari’s on-screen persona are firmly planted in his Fascist-era work, and how his early career choices reverberated throughout his distinguished filmography.
Click here for the full schedule of the 2018-19 Italian Research Seminar.
Sponsored by the Center for Italian Studies.
Originally published at italianstudies.nd.edu.