Many of Italy's current problems can be traced back to the years 1948-1958, one of the most interesting but least-studied periods of recent Italian history. This was a decade in which the main cultural and political parameters of contemporary Italy were laid down. It was a time of enormous intellectual and artistic vitality, and a period in which the tensions generated by the Cold War affected the country to a greater degree than in any other western nation.
This first general survey of the period provides an overview of the political and economic position of Italy during the Cold War as well as an assessment of the affect of the Cold War on intellectual, cultural and artistic life. Distinguished scholars from a range of disciplines present case-histories on subjects as diverse as:
- the state's attitude towards the evolution of the family;
- the American presence in the Italian economy; and
- the place of the Italian film in world cinema.
- Italy's attitude towards the EEC and its relationship with NATO
Students and specialists who wish to enhance their understanding of Italian current affairs will find this interdisciplinary approach to the period invaluable.
"an important addition to scholarship on Italian history, politics and social anthropology, as well as a contribution to our understanding of the Italian concept of regionalism from different perspectives. ...] From an anthropological point of view, this reader may represent a landmark for future case studies on the ways in which the ideologies of the autonomist movements are received and interpreted by the people involved." --Journal of Cambridge Anthropology
"an interesting book which will be appreciated by political scientists and political sociologists in search of longitudinal perspectives, and by all readers who believe in interdisciplinary work." --South European Society and Politics
Christopher Duggan Reader in Italian History and Director of the Centre for the Advanced Study of Italian, University of Reading Christopher Wagstaff Christopher Wagstaff, Senior Lecturer in Italian Studies, University of Reading

The end of the Second World War saw the emergence of neorealist film in Italy. In Italian Neorealist Cinema, Christopher Wagstaff analyses three neorealist films that have had significant influence on filmmakers around the world. Wagstaff treats these films as assemblies of sounds and images rather than as representations of historical reality. If Roberto Rossellini's Roma citt aperta and Pais , and Vittorio De Sica's Ladri di biciclette are still, half a century after they were made, among the most highly valued artefacts in the history of cinema, Wagstaff suggests that this could be due to the aesthetic and rhetorical qualities of their assembled narratives, performances, locations, lighting, sound, mise en sc ne, and montage. This volume begins by situating neorealist cinema in its historical, industrial, commercial and cultural context, and makes available for the first time a large amount of data on post-war Italian cinema. Wagstaff offers a theoretical discussion of what it means to treat realist films as aesthetic artefacts before moving on to the core of the book, which consists of three studies of the films under discussion. Italian Neorealist Cinema not only offers readers in Film Studies and Italian Studies a radically new perspective on neorealist cinema and the Italian art cinema that followed it, but theorises and applies a method of close analysis of film texts for those interested in aesthetics and rhetoric, as well as cinema in general.