Contents:
Introduction: The New Italian Republic I Context 1. Explaining Italy's Crisis 2. Electoral Reform and Political Change in Italy 1991-94 II The Old Party System 1. Political Catholicism and the Strange Death of the Christian Democrats 2. Italian Communism in the First Republic 3. The Rise and fall of Craxi's Socialist Party 4. The Fate of the Secular Centre: The Liberals, Republicans and the Social Democrats III The "New Parties" 7. The Northern League from Regional Party to Party of Government 8. Forza Italia: The New Politics and Old Values of a Changing Italy 9. towards a Modern Right: Alleanza Nazionale and the "Italian Revolution" 10. The Great Failure? The PDs in Italy's Transition 11. The "Left Oppossition" and the crisis: Rifondazione Comunista and La Rete IV Politics and Society 12. A Legal Revolution? The Judges and the Tagentopoli 13. The Mass media and the Political Crisis 14. The System of Corrupt Exchange in Local Government 15. The Resistable Rise of the New Neopolitan Camorra 16. The Changing Mezzogiorno: Between Representations and Reality V Economic Aspects of the Crisis 17. The Economic Elites and the Political System 18. Excesses anf Limits of the Public Sector in the Italian Economy 19. Industrial Relations and the Labour Movement VI Conclusion 20 Italian Political Reform in Comparative Perspective

Recent Italian political life has been transformed by the demise of the Italian Communist Party, the growth of the federalist Northern Leagues and the collapse of the Christian Democrats, the Socialists and their government allies in the wake of the Tangentopoli (Kickback City) scandals. This study charts the breakdown of the old party system and examines the changed political climate that allowed Silvio Berlusconi and his allies to emerge as the political masters of Italy. The sections of the book are organized in such a way as to combine up to date information with reflection on longer term trends and problems. This book should be of interest to both students and scholars of west European politics, comparative politics and Italian studies as well as the general reader who wishes to make sense of the contemporary Italian political landscape.

The intersection between film stardom and politics is an understudied phenomenon of Fascist Italy, despite the fact that the Mussolini regime deemed stardom important enough to warrant sustained attention and interference. Focused on the period from the start of sound cinema to the final end of Fascism in 1945, this book examines the development of an Italian star system and evaluates its place in film production and distribution. The performances and careers of several major stars, including Isa Miranda, Vittorio De Sica, Amedeo Nazzari, and Alida Valli, are closely analyzed in terms of their relationships to the political sphere and broader commercial culture, with consideration of their fates in the aftermath of Fascism. A final chapter explores the place of the stars in popular memory and representations of the Fascist film world in postwar cinema.

The intersection between film stardom and politics is an understudied phenomenon of Fascist Italy, despite the fact that the Mussolini regime deemed stardom important enough to warrant sustained attention and interference. Focused on the period from the start of sound cinema to the final end of Fascism in 1945, this book examines the development of an Italian star system and evaluates its place in film production and distribution. The performances and careers of several major stars, including Isa Miranda, Vittorio De Sica, Amedeo Nazzari, and Alida Valli, are closely analyzed in terms of their relationships to the political sphere and broader commercial culture, with consideration of their fates in the aftermath of Fascism. A final chapter explores the place of the stars in popular memory and representations of the Fascist film world in postwar cinema.

The cult of the Duce is the first book to explore systematically the personality cult of Benito Mussolini. It examines practices that began before Mussolini's rise to power and which multiplied as Fascism consolidated its support among the Italian population. By approaching the subject from many different angles, including those of the visual arts and the media as well as social and political history, this book makes a decisive contribution to the understanding of Fascism and modern leadership. The conviction that Mussolini was an exceptional individual first became dogma among Fascists and then was communicated to the people at large. Intellectuals and artists helped fashion the idea of the Duce as a new Caesar while the modern media of press, photography, cinema and radio aggrandised his every public act. Mussolini's image was ubiquitous and varied; he adopted the guises of bourgeois politician, man of culture, sportsman, family man and warrior as he appealed to different audiences. The book explores in detail many manifestations of the cult and the way in which Italians experienced it. It also considers its controversial resonances in the postwar period. The founder of Fascism was the prototype dictator of the twentieth century. As such his cult is a crucial topic in the study of a century that produced many examples of dictators, some of them explicitly modelling themselves on Mussolini. Academics and students with interests in Italian and European history and politics will find the volume indispensable to an understanding of the modern era. Among the contributions is an Afterword by Mussolini's leading biographer, R.J.B. Bosworth.

This true story of the 1950s murder scandal that rocked Italy portrays the Rome of romance, luxury, and glamour--as well as a city of carnal crimes, sex, drugs, corruption, and cover-ups

On April 9, 1953, an attractive 21-year-old woman went missing from her family home in Rome. Thirty-six hours later her body was found washed up on a neglected beach at Torvaianica, 40 kilometers from the Italian capital. Some said it was suicide, others, a tragic accident. But could the mysterious death of this quiet, conservative girl be linked to a drug-fueled orgy involving some of the richest men in Italy? The short life and tragic death of Wilma Montesi was played out against a fascinating backdrop. By the 1950s Italy, in the wake of Mussolini's brutal Fascist government, was in the process of reinventing itself, and with the help of Hollywood stars such as Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck, it seemed to be succeeding. Suddenly Italy, and Rome in particular, was the most glamorous place on earth. But the murder of Wilma Montesi exposed a darker side of Roman life--a life of corruption, cover-ups, and carnal pleasures.

Italian cinema gave rise to a number of the best-known films of the postwar years, from Rome Open City to Bicycle Thieves. Although some neorealist film-makers would have preferred to abolish stars altogether, the public adored them and producers needed their help in relaunching the national film industry. This book explores the many conflicts that arose in Italy between 1945 and 1953 over stars and stardom, offering intimate studies of the careers of both well-known and less familiar figures, shedding new light on the close relationship forged between cinema and society during a time of political transition and shifting national identities.

The 1930s to the 1950s in Italy witnessed large increases in film-going, radio-listening, and the sale of music and weekly magazines. The industries that made and sold commercial, cultural products were transformed by the new technologies of reproduction and new approaches to marketing and distribution.

Yet historians tend to place the "real" genesis of mass culture in the 1960s, or to generalize about the harnessing of mass culture to the Fascist political project, without considering what kind of mass culture existed at the time and whether this harnessing was successful. This book draws on extensive new evidence, including oral histories and archival material, to explore possible continuities between the uses of mass culture before and after World War II.

Glamour is one of the most tantalizing and bewitching aspects of contemporary culture - but also one of the most elusive. The aura of celebrity, the style of the fashion world, the vanity of the rich and beautiful, and the publicity-driven rites of cafe society are all imbued with its irresistible magnetism. But what exactly is glamour? Where does it come from? How old is it? And can anyone quite capture its magic? Stephen Gundle answers all these questions and more in this first ever history of the phenomenon, from Paris in the tumultuous final decades of the eighteenth century through to Hollywood, New York, and Monte Carlo in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, from Napoleon to Marlene Dietrich and Marilyn Monroe, from Beau Brummell to Gianni Versace. Throughout, the book captures the excitement and sex appeal of glamour while exposing its mechanisms and exploring its sleazy and sometimes tragic underside. As Gundle shows, while glamour is exciting and magnetic, its promise is ultimately an illusion that can only ever be partially fulfilled.

In the postwar years, Italy underwent a far-reaching process of industrialization that transformed the country into a leading industrial power. Throughout most of this period, the Italian Communist Party (PCI) remained a powerful force in local government and civil society. However, as Stephen Gundle observes, the PCI was increasingly faced with challenges posed by modernization, particularly by mass communication, commercial cultural industries, and consumerism. "Between Hollywood and Moscow" is an analysis of the PCI's attempts to cope with these problems in an effort to maintain its organization and subculture.
Gundle focuses on the theme of cultural policy, examining how the PCI's political strategies incorporated cultural policies and activities that were intended to respond to the Americanization of daily life in Italy. In formulating this policy, Gundle contends, the Italian Communists were torn between loyalty to the alternative values generated by the Communist tradition and adaptation to the dominant influences of Italian modernization. This equilibrium eventually faltered because the attractive aspects of Americanization and pop culture proved more influential than the PCI's intellectual and political traditions.
The first analysis in English of the cultural policies and activities of the PCI, this book will appeal to readers with an interest in modern Italy, the European left, political science, and media studies.

Feminine beauty has been more discussed, appreciated, represented in art and associated with national, cultural identity in Italy than in any other country. From the time of Dante and Petrarch, ideals of beauty have informed the works of artists, including Botticelli, Leonardo and Titian. The modern connection between the country and beauty dates from the Grand Tour. In the early nineteenth century, the Romantics developed the stereotype of the dark, passionate, natural woman, which was subsequently appropriated as a symbol by Italian nationalists. Over the following century and a half, Radicals, monarchists, Catholics, Fascists, Communists and others all championed specific ideas about female beauty, seeking to use them to condition the national culture. This intriguing study investigates the debates and conflicts the issue provoked. Gundle examines the role of peasant beauty in symbolising the failed hopes of the Risorgimento, and the annexation of this by the establishment in the late nineteenth century; Fascism's failure to mould the ideal modern Italian woman; the politicization of beauty pageants after the Second World War; the symbolic role of film and television stars; and the controversy over the election of the first non-white Miss Italy in 1996. Although the public discussion of feminine beauty was largely a male affair, the women who were caught up in it, and who were seen, on account of their beauty, to embody the nation, were never passive objects. Indeed, they often used or manipulated the tradition of beauty for their own ends. This book explores these issues through the careers and public images of numerous prominent women including Queen Margherita of Savoy, the opera singer Lina Cavalieri, and the film stars Gina Lollobrigida, Sophia Loren, Claudia Cardinale and Monica Bellucci. Stephen Gundle is Professor of Film and Television Studies at Warwick University. He is the author of 'Between Hollywood and Moscow: The Italian Communists and the Challenge of Mass Culture, 1943-91' and co-author of 'The Glamour System' and 'Mass Culture and Italian Society from Fascism to the Cold War'.

In recent years, Europe has had to constantly rethink and redefine its attitude toward new flows of immigrations. Issues of boundaries and identity have been integral to this reflection. Through a magnificent collection of essays, Migrant Cartographies examines both sites and conflicts and the way in which forms of belonging and identity have been reinvented. With careful analysis and exceptional insight, this volume explores the most recent literature on migration as seen from different European viewpoints. This book fills a conspicuous void in migration literature, as there are no comprehensive books on migrant literatures in Europe that address the full range of complexities of colonial legacies and linguistic productions.

In recent years, Europe has had to constantly rethink and redefine its attitude toward new flows of immigrations. Issues of boundaries and identity have been integral to this reflection. Through a magnificent collection of essays, Migrant Cartographies examines both sites and conflicts and the way in which forms of belonging and identity have been reinvented. With careful analysis and exceptional insight, this volume explores the most recent literature on migration as seen from different European viewpoints. This book fills a conspicuous void in migration literature, as there are no comprehensive books on migrant literatures in Europe that address the full range of complexities of colonial legacies and linguistic productions.