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Cuore and the cinema: reframing the Risorgimento for the First World War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 March 2019

Amy Boylan
Amy Boylan*
Affiliation:
Department of Classics, Humanities and Italian Studies, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH, USA
*
*Email: amy.boylan@unh.edu
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Abstract

During the years leading up to and during the First World War, patriotic films featuring self-sacrificing child protagonists formed an important sub-genre of Italian film production. This article looks at Film Artistica Gloria’s Cuore series (1915–1916), adapted from De Amicis’ novel, with particular attention given to the two war-themed films, Il tamburino sardo (UK: The Sardinian Drummer Boy, 1915) and La piccola vedetta lombarda (The Little Lookout from Lombardy, 1915). An examination of the way in which advertising, reviews, and promotional materials worked to reframe these Risorgimento stories within a new historical context shows how the transmedial relationship between the novel, films and paracinematic texts helped to transform De Amicis’s civically-minded patriotic tales into an endorsement of Italy’s intervention in the First World War.

Italian summary

In questo articolo offro una lettura di due film della seria Cuore (1915–1916), adatti dall’opera deamicisiana dalla Film Artistica Gloria, nel contesto dell’interventismo e dell’intervento dell’Italia nella Prima Guerra Mondiale. Mi concentro in particolare sulla questione del ruolo del quotidiano Corriere della Sera, delle riviste cinematografiche dell’epoca, e dei materiali pubblicitari nel ricontestualizzare il tema e i simboli del Risorgimento per un pubblico alla vigilia di una nuova guerra.

Keywords

silent filmFirst World WarRisorgimentoCuoreDe Amicis
Type
Research Articles
Information
Modern Italy , Volume 24 , Issue 3 , August 2019 , pp. 281 - 294
Copyright
Copyright © 2019 Association for the Study of Modern Italy 

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