Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Preface: The Poly-Expressive Symphony of Futurist Cinema
- Section 1 Joyful Deformation Of The Universe
- 1 Introduction: The Poetics of Futurist Cinema
- 2 Speed and Dynamism: Futurism and the Soviet Cinematographic Avant-garde
- 3 Futurism and Film Theories: Manifesto of Futurist Cinema and Theories in Italy in the 1910-1920s
- 4 Film Aesthetics Without Films
- 5 Marinetti’s Tattilismo Revisited: Hand Travels, Tactile Screens, and Touch Cinema in the 21st Century
- 6 Dance and Futurism in Italian Silent Cinema
- 7 Futurism and cinema in the 1910s: A Reinterpretation Starting from McLuhan
- 8 The Human in the Fetish of the Human: Cuteness in Futurist Cinema, Literature, and Visual Arts
- Section 2 Daily Filmed Exercises Designed To Free Us From Logic
- 9 Yambo on the moon of Verne and Méliès: From La Colonia Lunare to UN MATRIMONIO INTERPLANETARIO
- 10 An Avant-Garde Heritage: VITA FUTURISTA
- 11 Thaïs: A Different Challenge to the Stars
- 12 VELOCITÀ, a Screenplay by F.T. Marinetti: From Futurist Simultaneity to Live Streaming Media
- 13 Velocità/Vitesse: Filmed Dramas of Objects and ‘avant-garde integrale’
- 14 From Science to the Marvellous: The Illusion of Movement, Between Chronophotography and Contemporary Cinema
- Section 3 Shop Windows Of Filmed Ideas, Events, Types, Objects
- Chronology: Fernando Maramai
- Filmography
- Index
- Film Culture in Transition
7 - Futurism and cinema in the 1910s: A Reinterpretation Starting from McLuhan
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 December 2020
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Preface: The Poly-Expressive Symphony of Futurist Cinema
- Section 1 Joyful Deformation Of The Universe
- 1 Introduction: The Poetics of Futurist Cinema
- 2 Speed and Dynamism: Futurism and the Soviet Cinematographic Avant-garde
- 3 Futurism and Film Theories: Manifesto of Futurist Cinema and Theories in Italy in the 1910-1920s
- 4 Film Aesthetics Without Films
- 5 Marinetti’s Tattilismo Revisited: Hand Travels, Tactile Screens, and Touch Cinema in the 21st Century
- 6 Dance and Futurism in Italian Silent Cinema
- 7 Futurism and cinema in the 1910s: A Reinterpretation Starting from McLuhan
- 8 The Human in the Fetish of the Human: Cuteness in Futurist Cinema, Literature, and Visual Arts
- Section 2 Daily Filmed Exercises Designed To Free Us From Logic
- 9 Yambo on the moon of Verne and Méliès: From La Colonia Lunare to UN MATRIMONIO INTERPLANETARIO
- 10 An Avant-Garde Heritage: VITA FUTURISTA
- 11 Thaïs: A Different Challenge to the Stars
- 12 VELOCITÀ, a Screenplay by F.T. Marinetti: From Futurist Simultaneity to Live Streaming Media
- 13 Velocità/Vitesse: Filmed Dramas of Objects and ‘avant-garde integrale’
- 14 From Science to the Marvellous: The Illusion of Movement, Between Chronophotography and Contemporary Cinema
- Section 3 Shop Windows Of Filmed Ideas, Events, Types, Objects
- Chronology: Fernando Maramai
- Filmography
- Index
- Film Culture in Transition
Summary
Abstract
The analysis of manifestos, articles and essays written in the 1910s by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and Umberto Boccioni, the two leading theorists of the Futurist movement, shows a strong influence of the film language on their sensitivity and their imagination. However, the Futurists approached film-making late and with circumspection. An interpretation of this ambivalent attitude can be provided by the theories developed by Marshall McLuhan half a century later.
This study rises from the consideration that any attempt to explain Futurists’ ideas and behaviours with regard to cinema will be doomed to failure if it remains closed within the disciplinary debate. It is necessary, instead, to frame these ideas and behaviours in a global media system. In this essay, then, I will examine a number of texts written by the Futurists and explain how they anticipated some ideas later developed by McLuhan.
Keywords: Futurist Manifestos, Marinetti, Boccioni, McLuhan, Media Theory
The cinema in the Futurist imaginary
Marinetti's early manifestos do not include any reference to movies. This is not surprising because, in this first phase of theoretical elaboration, the exaltation of dynamism and speed is entrusted to the new means of transport, in particular the automobile and the airplane,neglecting the media of information and communication (telegraph, gramophone, telephone, and cinema).
Futurists show little interest in film. In L’incendiario by Aldo Palazzeschi, a collection of poems published in 1910 in Milan by Futurist Press “Poesia”, cinema is never mentioned. In the anthology The Futurist Poets, published in 1912 by Futurist Press “Poesia”, about 80 lyrics by thirteen authors are included. It is significant that, more than three years after the rise of the movement, in a volume of Futurist poetry of over 400 pages, cinema is mentioned only three times and by a single author: Libero Altomare. To the other major Futurists included in the collection (Palazzeschi, Buzzi, Govoni, Folgore, and Cavacchioli), film does not offer any interesting poetical cues.
The founder of Futurism mentions cinema only in the Technical Manifesto of Futurist Literature, dated 11 May 1912:
Film offers us the dance of an object that disintegrates and recomposes itself without human intervention. It offers us the backward sweep of a diver whose feet fly out the sea and bounce violently back on the springboard.
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- Information
- Futurist CinemaStudies on Italian Avant-garde Film, pp. 103 - 114Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2017