For observers of the European film scene, Federico Fellini’s death in 1993 came to stand for the demise of Italian cinema as a whole. Exploring an eclectic sampling of works from the new millennium,
Italian Film in the Present Tens
e confronts this narrative of decline with strong evidence to the contrary.
Millicent Marcus highlights Italian cinema’s new sources of industrial strength, its re-placement of the Rome-centred studio system with regional film commissions, its contemporary breakthroughs on the aesthetic front, and its vital engagement with the changing economic and socio-political circumstances in twenty-first-century Italian life. Examining works that stand out for their formal brilliance and their moral urgency, the book presents a series of fourteen case studies, featuring analyses of such renowned films as
Il Divo, Gomorrah, The Great Beauty, We Have a Pope, The Mafia Only Kills in the Summer,
and
Fire at Sea
, along with lesser-known works deserving of serious critical scrutiny. In doing so,
Italian Film in the Present Tense
contests the widely held perception of a medium languishing in its "post-Fellini" moment, and instead acknowledges the ethical persistence and forward-looking currents of Italian cinema in the present tense.