Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-dnltx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-16T19:35:11.084Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Un Americano a Roma: A 1950s’ Satire of Americanization

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 January 2016

David Ellwood
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Summary

The satirical film, Un americano a Roma is examined as a commentary on the absorption by Italians, and especially Italian youth, of fads and fashions deriving from America during the economic boom. Although no masterpiece, the film is an important reflection on Italian identity at a time of rapid and bewildering change. It reveals that, while America became ‘everyone's second culture’, loyalty to domestic traditions and customs remained strong.

Type
Contexts and Debates
Information
Modern Italy , Volume 1 , Issue 2 , 1996 , pp. 93 - 102
Copyright
Copyright © Association for the study of Modern Italy 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

∗ An earlier version of this article appeared in History Today, May 1996.Google Scholar

1 Full statistics in Italian Affairs, March 1956 (V-2), pp. 1191–1203.Google Scholar

2 Epoca, 16 January 1955.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Brunetta, G.P., Storia del cinema italiano. Vol III Dal neorealismo al miracolo economico 1945–1959, Editori Riuniti, Rome, 1993, pp. 405 ff.Google Scholar

4 See Aprà, A. and Pistagnesi, P., Comedy Italian Style 1950–1980, ERI, Turin, 1986; Giacovelli, E., La commedia all'italiana, Gremese Editore, Rome, 1990.Google Scholar

5 See comment by Goffredo Fofi in Gili, J. A., La comédie italiénne, Henri Veyrier, Paris, 1983, pp. 97–98.Google Scholar

6 Giacovelli, , La commedia, p. 228 Google Scholar

7 The figure of the US Ambassador had already become a national icon of American power in the epoch of the career diplomat James Clement Dunn (1946–52). At the time the film was made, the Ambassador was the flamboyant Claire Booth Luce, former Congresswoman and wife of the proprietor of Time, Henry Luce, a political appointee famous for her militant anti-communism. The film's Ambassador more closely approximated Booth Luce's immediate predecessor, Ellsworth Bunker (1952–3), a traditional career diplomat.Google Scholar

8 Sechi, Lamberto in La Settimana Incom Illustrata, 15 January 1955; cited in Fava, C.G., Alberto Sordi, Gremese Editore, Rome, 1989, p. 75.Google Scholar

9 Cinema nuovo, 52, 10 February 1955.Google Scholar

10 Episode recalled by Gian Luigi Rondi in his introduction to the televised presentation of Un americano a Roma , RAI 2, 13 April 1987.Google Scholar

11 Giacovelli, , La commedia, p. 11.Google Scholar

12 Un giorno in Pretura, directed by Steno, 1954.Google Scholar

13 Interview with Irene Bignardi, in Il sogno americano, RAI 3, 2 October 1982.Google Scholar

14 Interview with Salvatore D'Agata in Firma, June 1994.Google Scholar

15 In fact the reference was to the case of Giancarlo Paretti, the former Umbrian waiter whose meteoric financial rise culminated in a brief period when he was the owner of MGM. His fall soon followed.Google Scholar

16 Interview with Simonetta Robiony in La Stampa, 29 December 1994; Aprà and Pistagnesi, Comedy Italian Style, p. 30.Google Scholar

17 See Ellwood, D., Rebuilding Europe: Western Europe, America and Postwar Reconstruction, Longman, London, 1992, pp. 226–28.Google Scholar

18 Gundle, S., ‘L'americanizzazione del quotidiano. Televisione e consumismo nell'Italia degli anni Cinquanta’, Quaderni storici, 62, 1986, pp. 561–594.Google Scholar

19 Ellwood, , Rebuilding Europe, p. 231; Zamagni, V., ‘The Italian “Economic Miracle” Revisited: New Markets and American Technology’, in Di Nolfo, E. (ed.), Power in Europe II, de Gruyter, Berlin, 1992, pp. 197–226.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20 Gundle, S., I communisti italiani tra Hollywood e Mosca. La sfida della cultura di massa (1943–1991), Giunti, Florence, 1995, pp. 150–151.Google Scholar

21 Cited in ibid., p. 150.Google Scholar

22 New York Times, 21 August 1995, cited in part in Ellwood, Rebuilding Europe , pp. 234–235.Google Scholar

23 Other examples are discussed in Ellwood, D. and Kroes, R. (eds), Hollywood in Europe. Experiences of a Cultural Hegemony, VU University Press, Amsterdam, 1994, Introduction, pp. 14–15.Google Scholar

24 The American sociologist Todd Gitlin, quoted in Kuisel, R., Seducing the French. The Dilemma of Americanization, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1993, pp. 229–230.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

25 Calabrese, Omar, ‘Appunti per una storia dei giovani in Italia’, in Ariès, Phillipe and Duby, Georges (eds), La vita privata. Il Novecento, Laterza, Bari, 1988, pp. 79–106; see also Fink, G. and Minganti, F., ‘La vita privata italian sul modello americano’ in ibid., pp. 351–380.Google Scholar