William Dieterle famously referred to Anna Magnani as “the last of the great shameless emotionalists”. Dieterle’s remark exemplifies the peculiar appeal of Magnani to US film culture, one predicated on the perceived anachronism of her acting and on a set of supernatural and sub-human figurations (the volcano, the tempest, the tiger, the animal…). Drawing on US press and publicity materials released between 1945 and 1955, this lecture examines the rise and development of Magnani’s star image in the US, focusing on how her star image evolved during the years prior to her first Hollywood film, The Rose Tattoo (1955) and on how Paramount negotiated this image for her Hollywood debut.
14/03/2019 ore 15 - Aula A, Via dei Volsci 122 Roma
The lecture explores the ethnic connotations of her star image in the US by assessing repeated references to the heightened emotionality of Magnani’s acting (her “frightening energy” as one commentator calls it). The lecture reads these ethnic connotations – and the process of “taming” Magnani’s body which The Rose Tattoo and Wild is The Wind (1957) appear primarily concerned with – alongside concurrent tensions underlying the process of assimilation of the Italian-American body and specific developments in Hollywood during the 1950s.