Setting the Tone of the Southern Question
Music and/as Fatalism in Italian Cinema of the Economic Miracle
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/jfm.37319Keywords:
Italy’s questione meridionale (Southern Question), orientalism in one country, fatalism, Italian film music, topic theoryAbstract
This article explores film music’s role in shaping the discourse of Italy’s questione meridionale (“Southern Question”) during the long 1960s. Part of its main argument is that music, working as a subliminal agent in film dramaturgies, impacted the perception of the Italian south on an affective, non-verbal level. It focuses on the trope of fatalism, which has often been attached to southern-ness, and examines how it was musically fleshed out in film narratives. Each of the article’s three sections tackles one specific nuance of fatalism (“sublime,” “grotesque,” and “cynical”) as it is elicited by the combination of music and the moving image. It unpacks film music’s agency by referencing topic theory and leitmotif theory, discussing film composers’ backgrounds and production practice, and tracking the historical-cultural timeliness of specific musicodramatic configurations, with reference to the Italian economic “miracle.”
References
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Dickie, John. 1999. Darkest Italy: The nation and stereotypes of the Mezzogiorno, 1860–1900. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
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London, Justin. 2000. Leitmotifs and musical reference in the classical film score. In Music and Cinema, 85-98, ed. James Buhler, Caryl Flinn, and David Neumeyer. Hanover, CT: Wesleyan University Press.
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———. 2011. Modernity, Mafia style: Alberto Lattuada’s “Il Mafioso.” In Mafia movies: A reader, 219-25, ed. Dana Renga. Toronto/Buffalo/London: University of Toronto Press.
———. 2002. The view from Vesuvius: Italian culture and the southern question. Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press.
Niceforo, Alfredo. 1898. L’Italia barbara contemporanea: Studi ed appunti. Milan/Palermo: Sandron.
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Rosi, Francesco. 1975. The audience should not be just passive spectators: An interview with Francesco Rosi. Cinéaste 7, no. 1: 2-8.
Ruberti, Giorgio. 2016. Forme e stili della canzone napoletana classica. Quaderni del Centro Studi Canzone Napoletana 6. Lucca: Libreria Musicale Italiana.
Said, Edward W. 1978. Orientalism. New York: Random House.
Scheurer, Timothy E. 2007. Music and mythmaking in film: Genre and the role of the composer. Jefferson, NC/London: McFarland.
Schneider, Jane. 1998. Introduction: The dynamics of neo-Orientalism in Italy. In Italy’s “Southern Question”: Orientalism in one country, 1-23, ed. Jane Schneider. Oxford/New York: Berg.
Sciascia, Leonardo. 1963. La Sicilia nel cinema. In Film 1963, 11-34, ed. Vittorio Spinazzola. Milan: Feltrinelli.
———. 2014 [1961]. The day of the owl. Trans. Archibald Colquhoun and Arthur Oliver. London: Granta Books [first English tranlsation 1963].
Tagg, Philip. 1998. Tritonal crime and “music as music.” In Norme con ironie. Scritti per i Settant’anni di Ennio Morricone, 273-312, ed. Sergio Miceli. Milan: Suvini Zerboni.
Termine, Liborio. 2001. Le Sicilie e la “sicilianitudine.” In Storia del cinema italiano, Vol. 10, 238-9, ed. Giorgio De Vincenti. Venice: Marsilio.
Tiby, Ottavio. 1957. Il canto popolare siciliano” In Corpus di musiche popolari siciliane, by Alberto Favara, ed. Ottavio Tiby, Vol. 1. Palermo: Accademia di Scienze Lettere e Arti.
Wittmann, Laura. 2011. The visible, unexposed: Francesco Rosi’s “Salvatore Giuliano.” In Mafia movies: A reader, 211-18, ed. Dana Renga. Toronto/Buffalo/London: University of Toronto Press.
Basile, Giuseppe Domenico. 2017. Said nonostante Said. Il dibattito sull’ “orientalism in one country.” In Identità, migrazioni e postcolonialismo in Italia: A partire da Edward Said, 94-110, ed. Bruno Brunetti and Roberto Derobertis. Bari: Progedit.
Biancorosso, Giorgio. 2013. Memory and the leitmotif in cinema. In Representation in Western Music, 203-23, ed. Joshua S. Walden. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bondanella, Peter E. 2009. A history of Italian cinema. New York: Bloomsbury.
Cecchi, Alessandro. 2014. Creative titles: Audiovisual experimentation and self-reflexivity in Italian industrial films of the Economic Miracle and after. Music, Sound and the Moving Image 8, no. 2: 179-94.
Ciment, Michel. 2008. Dossier Rosi. Trans. Lorenzo Codelli. Expanded Italian Edition. Turin, Milan: Museo Nazionale del Cinema, Il Castoro.
Corbella, Maurizio. 2017. Musica e suono ne “I mille di Garibaldi”: Prassi, tecnica e ideologia nella riscrittura sonora di “1860” di Alessandro Blasetti. Quaderni del Centro Studi Cinema Italiano 13: 209-14.
———. 2015. Piccioni, Piero. Dizionario biografico degli italiani. Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana. http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/piccioni-piero_%28Dizionario-Biografico%29
Cosci, Marco. 2017. Vancini, Macchi and the Voices for the (Hi)Story of Bronte. Archival Notes 2: 65-81. http://onlinepublishing.cini.it/index.php/arno/article/view/63/188
Del Bravo, Francesco. 2015. The enchanting island: Alberto Favara transcribing Sicily. Mousikos Logos 2 (January): 18-37.
Dickie, John. 1999. Darkest Italy: The nation and stereotypes of the Mezzogiorno, 1860–1900. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
Fara, Giulio. 1920. L’anima musicale d’Italia: La canzone del popolo. Rome: Ausonia.
Gesù, Sebastiano. 2008. Banditi, briganti. In La Sicilia tra schermo e storia, 95-117, ed. Sebastiano Gesù. Catania: Giuseppe Aimone Editore.
Gieri, Manuela. 1992. Character and discourse from Pirandello to Fellini: Defining countertradition in an Italian context. Quaderni d’Italianistica 13, no. 1: 43-55.
Ginsborg, Paul. 2003. A history of contemporary Italy: Society and politics, 1943–1988. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Gribaudi, Gabriella. 1996. Images of the South. In Italian cultural studies: An introduction, 72-87, ed. David Forgacs and Robert Lumley. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
London, Justin. 2000. Leitmotifs and musical reference in the classical film score. In Music and Cinema, 85-98, ed. James Buhler, Caryl Flinn, and David Neumeyer. Hanover, CT: Wesleyan University Press.
Lumley, Robert and Jonathan Morris, eds. 1997. The new history of the Italian South: The Mezzogiorno revisited. Reed Hall: University of Exeter Press.
Moe, Nelson J. 1992. “Altro che Italia!”: Il Sud dei piemontesi (1860–61). Meridiana: Rivista di storia e scienze sociali, no. 15: 53-89.
———. 2011. Modernity, Mafia style: Alberto Lattuada’s “Il Mafioso.” In Mafia movies: A reader, 219-25, ed. Dana Renga. Toronto/Buffalo/London: University of Toronto Press.
———. 2002. The view from Vesuvius: Italian culture and the southern question. Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press.
Niceforo, Alfredo. 1898. L’Italia barbara contemporanea: Studi ed appunti. Milan/Palermo: Sandron.
Petraccone, Claudia. 2005. Le “due Italie”: La questione meridionale tra realtà e rappresentazione. Bari/Rome: Laterza.
Pirandello, Luigi. 1965. The art of humor (1908). Trans. John Patrick Pattinson. The Massachusetts Review 6, no. 3 (Spring–Summer): 515-20.
Romagnoli, Ettore. 1959. I canti popolari siciliani e la musica greca (1920). In Favara, Alberto: Scritti sulla musica popolare siciliana, 130-49, ed. Teresa Samonà Favara. Rome: De Santis.
Rosengarten, Frank. 1998. Homo Siculus: Essentialism in the writing of Giovanni Verga, Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa, and Leonardo Sciascia. In Italy’s “Southern Question”: Orientalism in one country, 117-31, ed. Jane Schneider. Oxford/New York: Berg.
Rosi, Francesco. 1975. The audience should not be just passive spectators: An interview with Francesco Rosi. Cinéaste 7, no. 1: 2-8.
Ruberti, Giorgio. 2016. Forme e stili della canzone napoletana classica. Quaderni del Centro Studi Canzone Napoletana 6. Lucca: Libreria Musicale Italiana.
Said, Edward W. 1978. Orientalism. New York: Random House.
Scheurer, Timothy E. 2007. Music and mythmaking in film: Genre and the role of the composer. Jefferson, NC/London: McFarland.
Schneider, Jane. 1998. Introduction: The dynamics of neo-Orientalism in Italy. In Italy’s “Southern Question”: Orientalism in one country, 1-23, ed. Jane Schneider. Oxford/New York: Berg.
Sciascia, Leonardo. 1963. La Sicilia nel cinema. In Film 1963, 11-34, ed. Vittorio Spinazzola. Milan: Feltrinelli.
———. 2014 [1961]. The day of the owl. Trans. Archibald Colquhoun and Arthur Oliver. London: Granta Books [first English tranlsation 1963].
Tagg, Philip. 1998. Tritonal crime and “music as music.” In Norme con ironie. Scritti per i Settant’anni di Ennio Morricone, 273-312, ed. Sergio Miceli. Milan: Suvini Zerboni.
Termine, Liborio. 2001. Le Sicilie e la “sicilianitudine.” In Storia del cinema italiano, Vol. 10, 238-9, ed. Giorgio De Vincenti. Venice: Marsilio.
Tiby, Ottavio. 1957. Il canto popolare siciliano” In Corpus di musiche popolari siciliane, by Alberto Favara, ed. Ottavio Tiby, Vol. 1. Palermo: Accademia di Scienze Lettere e Arti.
Wittmann, Laura. 2011. The visible, unexposed: Francesco Rosi’s “Salvatore Giuliano.” In Mafia movies: A reader, 211-18, ed. Dana Renga. Toronto/Buffalo/London: University of Toronto Press.
Published
2019-09-09
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Corbella, M. (2019). Setting the Tone of the Southern Question: Music and/as Fatalism in Italian Cinema of the Economic Miracle. Journal of Film Music, 8(1-2), 32-50. https://doi.org/10.1558/jfm.37319
