Italian Cinema, Popular?

Abstract

Two things interest me in this chapter: one is the problematic nature of the adjectives ‘popular’ and ‘Italian’ the other is the way in which aspirations to the popular have emerged, as it were, throughout the history of Italian cinema. I want to ask whether there is some restrictive, useful meaning we can give to ‘the people’ who are covered by the adjective ‘popular’ (i.e., other than just ‘lots of them’), and I plan to start by pursuing the interrogative mode of the title and posing a number of questions, to some of which are attached more detailed reflections (an indication in parentheses at the end of a question directs the reader to a reflection placed later in the chapter). The questions are intended to develop the issue of ‘popular Italian cinema’ progressively from smaller, circumscribed issues to broader, theoretical issues. Direct questions can unfortunately often be perceived as having a polemical intent (‘Answer that, if you can!’), but it would be a mistaken perception in this instance, because what the questions are striving to do is carve out a useful, rigorous and meaningful sense in which we might distinguish popular Italian cinema from other kinds of cinema, Italian or not.