Books by Mauro Giori
UTET, 2021
The essays collected in this book focus on unusual relations and marginal objects, with the purpo... more The essays collected in this book focus on unusual relations and marginal objects, with the purpose to draw a portrait of Luchino Visconti less fossilized than that resulting from canonical authorial perspectives, and more vividly connected to both ideological clashes and the secular interests of cultural industry. These ten essays (five of which previously unpublished) cover neglected aspects (and the reasons of their removal) surfacing in sometimes extravagant aesthetic contrasts (between Hollywood and Thomas Mann, Greek theater and avant-garde, political commitment and popular cinema); in harmonies and dissonances in the collaborations with Marcello Mastroianni, Nino Rota and Helmut Berger; in the often gross comments of the extreme right-wing press; in the hostility of the Venice Film Festival; in the distortions produced by the lens of popular culture through political or even porn parodies, post-1968 ironies, and unexpected affinities with popular genres. What come out are new readings of films such as "White Nights", "Rocco and His Brothers", “Sandra", “Ludwig" and "Conversation Piece", but also a general revision of Visconti’s career.
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UTET, Torino, 2019
This book is the first to establish the relevance of same-sex desires, pleasures and anxieties in... more This book is the first to establish the relevance of same-sex desires, pleasures and anxieties in the cinema of post-war Italy. It explores cinematic representations of homosexuality and their significance in a wider cultural struggle in Italy involving society, cinema, and sexuality between the 1940s and 1970s. Besides tracing the evolution of representations through both art and popular films, this book also analyses connections with consumer culture, film criticism and politics. It uncovers how complicated negotiations between challenges to and valorization of dominant forms of knowledge of homosexuality shaped representations and argues that they were not always the outcome of hatred but also sought to convey unmentionable pleasures and complicities. Through archival research and a survey of more than 600 films, the author enriches our understanding of thirty years of Italian film and cultural history.
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Palgrave MacMillan, London, 2017
This book is the first to establish the relevance of same-sex desires, pleasures and anxieties in... more This book is the first to establish the relevance of same-sex desires, pleasures and anxieties in the cinema of post-war Italy. It explores cinematic representations of homosexuality and their significance in a wider cultural struggle in Italy involving society, cinema, and sexuality between the 1940s and 1970s. Besides tracing the evolution of representations through both art and popular films, this book also analyses connections with consumer culture, film criticism and politics. Giori uncovers how complicated negotiations between challenges to and valorization of dominant forms of knowledge of homosexuality shaped representations and argues that they were not always the outcome of hatred but also sought to convey unmentionable pleasures and complicities. Through archival research and a survey of more than 600 films, the author enriches our understanding of thirty years of Italian film and cultural history.
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ETS, Pisa, 2015
This book is devoted to study how the breakthrough representation of the connection between sexua... more This book is devoted to study how the breakthrough representation of the connection between sexuality, criminality and sickness of Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho” (1960) has been being reworked for 50 years, according to changing cultural contexts and different personal and political agendas. The analysis focuses on eight case studies selected from the enormous number of works more or less closely inspired by “Psycho”: William Castle’s “Homicidal” (1961); Hitchcock’s “Frenzy” (1972); Brian De Palma’s “Sisters” (1973) and “Dressed to Kill” (1980); slasher horror movies from the 1970s and 1908s; Robert Bloch’s novel “Psycho II”; the three cinematic sequels produced in the 1980s; Gus Van Sant’s remake (1999); and Gary Orona’s pornographic version “Official Psycho Parody” (2010).
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LED Edizioni Universitarie, Milano, 2012
In the 60s and 70s, Visconti consistently continues his transgressive work, mostly through the re... more In the 60s and 70s, Visconti consistently continues his transgressive work, mostly through the representation of alternative sexualities and masculinities. Nonetheless, the fast transformation of society, culture and politics, not to mention cinema itself, provokes a radical change in the discourses surrounding his works from "Il Gattopardo" ("The Leopard", 1963) to ‘"L'innocente" ("The Innocent", 1976). This book puts in context the films directed by Visconti in these years thanks to an extensive archival research and a philological analysis of Visconti's papers.
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Libraccio, Milano, 2011; 2nd ed., revised and augmented, 2018
Since its beginnings, Luchino Visconti’s career was characterized by scandals, controversies, cen... more Since its beginnings, Luchino Visconti’s career was characterized by scandals, controversies, censures and even seizures, as a consequence of a particularly reactionary context but also of a transgressive intention which found its main expression in the representation of alternative sexualities and masculinities. Through a large amount of unpublished documents preserved in various archives and among Visconti’s papers, this book aims to study this largely overlooked aspect of Visconti’s work in relation to its cultural context, focusing on five case studies: the staging of Marcel Achard’s “Adamo” (1945) and Giovanni Testori’s “L’Arialda” (1961), and the films “Ossessione” (1943), “Senso” (1954) and “Rocco e i suoi fratelli” (1960).
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UTET, Torino, 2021
In the shadow of the transgressive heritage of Fellini's "La dolce vita", in 1960 "Rocco e i suoi... more In the shadow of the transgressive heritage of Fellini's "La dolce vita", in 1960 "Rocco e i suoi fratelli” ("Rocco and His Brothers") provoked an institutional uproar, in unprecedented forms, in months of delicate political transition. The scandal involved the press, censorship, politics and even the magistracy. Thanks to new unpublished documents and a refining of its philological analysis, this new edition of the book (originally published in 2011) further develop its ideas about the production, the literary sources (particularly Giovanni Testori’s short stories), the reception, and the cultural context of Visconti’s most controversial, complex and admired film.
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Lindau, Torino, 2009
This book offers a close analysis of Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho” (1960) focusing among other thin... more This book offers a close analysis of Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho” (1960) focusing among other things on its literary source, Robert Bloch’s novel, which has been largely disregarded by previous scholars.
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Edited books and journal issues by Mauro Giori
Introduzione a Parker Tyler, "Allucinazione Hollywood", traduzione e note di M. Giori, Temi, Trento, 2017
This essay serves as introduction to my Italian translation of Parker Tyler's "The Hollywood Hall... more This essay serves as introduction to my Italian translation of Parker Tyler's "The Hollywood Hallucination" (1944).
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Book Chapters by Mauro Giori
In Luchino Visconti oggi: il valore di un’eredità artistica, 2020
This essay addresses Visconti’s critical reception by the four ultraconservative magazines “Candi... more This essay addresses Visconti’s critical reception by the four ultraconservative magazines “Candido”, “Meridiano d’Italia”, “Il Borghese” and “lo Specchio”. Always neglected by scholars, this press is not only relevant to get a wider picture of the director’s critical fortune, but also essential to the understanding of his public image and relevance throughout thirty years of Italian culture and society. Reviews and political articles, comments on current affairs and events, society pieces and gossips, no matter how rough and gross, all contribuite to fill the voids of the leftist press which respectfully (that is, also with an embarrassed and opportunistic discretion) supported Visconti from his debut until his late years. What comes forward is a totally different public image of the director, one which uninhibitedly intertwines his private life with his works, and whose changes are incomprehensible without putting them against the background of the major shifts in the attitudes toward homosexuality occurred in the Italian society between the 1940s and the 1970s.
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in G. Albert, G. Carluccio, G. Muggeo, A. Pizzo (eds / a cura di), Ciao Maschio. Politiche di rappresentazione del corpo maschile nel Novecento, Rosenberg & Sellier, Torino, pp. 135-154., 2019
Silent peplum notoriously offered a model of masculinity in which Fascism was able to recognize i... more Silent peplum notoriously offered a model of masculinity in which Fascism was able to recognize itself. Instead, the connection between the peplum of the 1950s and 1960s and the fall of Fascism has never been addressed. This essay examines how, and with which strategies and meanings, the new peplum was received by ultraconservative magazines which guarded the relics of fascist imagery. Recognition was then replaced by disavowal, and a no more hegemonic masculinity was blamed for carrying unacceptable values and homoerotic undercurrents. This article explains how what used to be synonym for strength, sexual potency and a binary conception of gender was now accused to be instead a cover for fragility, impotency and ambiguity, and the meaning of certain consonance between the rightist and the leftist reception of peplum. It considers also how Forza e salute (later renamed Ercole) – one of the first Italian bodybuilding magazines – answered back promoting a positive image of muscle-bound men, exploiting again the peplum and insisting on sexuality through no less conservative discourses.
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In Maddalena Mazzocut-Mis (ed.), Estetica della fruizione. Sentimento, giudizio di gusto e piacere estetico, 2008
After a brief survey of the first controversies caused by what was considered pornographic in the... more After a brief survey of the first controversies caused by what was considered pornographic in the first Italian film magazines (1907-1918), this essay approaches pornographic films as examples of what Tom Gunning has labeled “cinema of attractions”. In order to reconsider the peculiar relationship they constructed with their spectators since their origin, the essay focuses on three common features of pornographic films which have been often misunderstood: the marginality of the narrative impulse, the look at the camera by actors and the use of extreme close up.
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Luciano Curreri, Michel Delville (a cura di), Il grande «incubo che mi son scelto». Prove di avvicinamento a 'Profondo rosso' (1975-2015), pp. 41-50., 2015
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In Cristina Formenti (a cura di), Mariangela Melato. Tra cinema, teatro e televisione, pp. 139-15, 2016
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In Raffaele De Berti (ed.), Sophisticated comedy e cinema déco, pp. 173-199, 2007
This essay analyses Alfred Hitchcock’s “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” (1941) as a very personal reworking o... more This essay analyses Alfred Hitchcock’s “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” (1941) as a very personal reworking of what Stanley Cavell called “comedy of remarriage”, resulting from negotiations between author’s idiosyncrasies and Hollywood standards.
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In Raffaele De Berti (ed.), "Federico Fellini", pp. 75-101., 2006
In the light of the debate surrounding the publication of Umberto Eco’s seminal book “The Open Wo... more In the light of the debate surrounding the publication of Umberto Eco’s seminal book “The Open Work”, and of Italian critics’ emerging interest in psychoanalysis, this essay puts Federico Fellini’s “8 ½” in its cultural context, offering a close analysis of the film and investigating its criticism, split between the almost surprisingly acclaim of catholic reviewers and the derisory condemnation of left wing ones.
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in M. Mainetti (ed.), Anatomical Waxes. La Specola di Firenze. David Cronenberg, Fondazione Prada, Milano, pp. 338-354., 2023
This article focuses on David Cronenberg’s representation of monstrosity as a form of knowledge, ... more This article focuses on David Cronenberg’s representation of monstrosity as a form of knowledge, particularly when connected with sexuality. After a discussion of Robin Wood’s harsh criticism of Cronenberg’s works on this respect, the essay elects “The Fly” as a case study, analyzing its development from Kurt Neumann’s 1958 version to Cronenberg’s one, passing through Pogues’ first screenplay.
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In T. Subini (ed.), Maria, Clarissa e le altre: le figure femminili nei tre Heimat, 2007
This essay reconsiders Edgard Reitz’s “Heimat” and “Die zweite Heimat” female characters and thei... more This essay reconsiders Edgard Reitz’s “Heimat” and “Die zweite Heimat” female characters and their development against the background of about forty years of German history.
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In Elena Dagrada, Elena Mosconi, Silvia Paoli (eds.), "Moltiplicare l’istante. Beltrami, Comerio e Pacchioni tra fotografia e cinema" (“Quaderni Fondazione Cineteca Italiana”, 12), pp. 125-138, 2007
This paper analyses how photography is involved in the discussions surrounding early cinema on th... more This paper analyses how photography is involved in the discussions surrounding early cinema on the first Italian film magazines (from their appearance in 1907 to the end of the First World War), both on aesthetic and technical ground, as a model to relay on for acceptance and to compete with for advancing in spheres as diverse as medicine, military, teaching, and, of course, art and fiction.
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Books by Mauro Giori
The downloadable file includes the front matters and the introduction.
The download includes the introduction and the table of contents.
Edited books and journal issues by Mauro Giori
Book Chapters by Mauro Giori
The downloadable file includes the front matters and the introduction.
The download includes the introduction and the table of contents.