ITA 375 Italian Film Adaptation: From the Page to the Screen
The course introduces the student to the development of Italian cinema through close study of the relationship between Italian literature and film adaptation. The selected books and films will offer a unique opportunity to analyze and discuss crucial issues related to the historical, political, and cultural evolution of Italy from its Unification to the present. Among the adaptations we will be looking at will be: Antonio Fogazzaro's Malombra as interpreted by Carmine Gallone (1917) and Mario Soldati (1942), Luchino Visconti's 1963 rendering of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's The Leopard, Vittorio De Sica's 1970 adaptation of Giorgio Bassani's The Garden of the Finzi-Contini, Alberto Moravia's The Conformist, as adapted by Bernardo Bertolucci (1970), Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron, adapted by Pier Paolo Pasolini (1971).