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Place, Setting, Perspective

Narrative Space in the Films of Nanni Moretti

Eleanor Andrews

Place, Setting, Perspective examines the films of the Italian filmmaker, Nanni Moretti, from a fresh viewpoint, employing the increasingly significant research area of space within a filmic text. The book is conceived with the awareness that space cannot be studied only in aesthetic or narrative terms: social, political, and cultural aspects of narrated spaces are equally important if a thorough appraisal is to be achieved of an oeuvre such as Moretti’s, which is profoundly associated with socio-political commentary and analysis. After an exploration of various existing frameworks of narrative space in film, the book offers a particular definition of the term based on the notions of Place, Setting, and Perspective. Place relates to the physical aspect of narrative space and specifically involves cityscapes, landscapes, interiors, and exteriors in the real world. Setting concerns genre characteristics of narrative space, notably its differentiated use in melodrama, detective stories, fantasy narratives, and gender based scenarios. Perspective encompasses the point of view taken optically by the camera which supports the standpoint of Moretti’s personal philosophy expressed through the aesthetic aspects which he employs to create narrative space. The study is based on a close textual analysis of Moretti’s eleven major feature films to date, using the formal film language of mise-en-scène, cinematography, editing, and sound. The aim is to show how Moretti selects, organizes, constructs, assembles, and manipulates the many elements of narrative space into an entire work of art, to enable meanings and pleasures for the spectator.

University Press Copublishing Division / Fairleigh Dickinson University Press

Pages: 226 • Trim: 6 x 9

978-1-61147-690-3 • Hardback • September 2014 • $96.00 • (£74.00)

978-1-61147-763-4 • Paperback • June 2016 • $45.99 • (£35.00)

978-1-61147-691-0 • eBook • September 2014 • $43.50 • (£33.00)

Subjects: Performing Arts / Film / History & Criticism, Literary Criticism / European / Italian, Performing Arts / Film / General, Social Science / Sociology / General

Place, Setting, Perspective

Narrative Space in the Films of Nanni Moretti

Hardback

Paperback

eBook

Summary

Place, Setting, Perspective examines the films of the Italian filmmaker, Nanni Moretti, from a fresh viewpoint, employing the increasingly significant research area of space within a filmic text. The book is conceived with the awareness that space cannot be studied only in aesthetic or narrative terms: social, political, and cultural aspects of narrated spaces are equally important if a thorough appraisal is to be achieved of an oeuvre such as Moretti’s, which is profoundly associated with socio-political commentary and analysis. After an exploration of various existing frameworks of narrative space in film, the book offers a particular definition of the term based on the notions of Place, Setting, and Perspective. Place relates to the physical aspect of narrative space and specifically involves cityscapes, landscapes, interiors, and exteriors in the real world. Setting concerns genre characteristics of narrative space, notably its differentiated use in melodrama, detective stories, fantasy narratives, and gender based scenarios. Perspective encompasses the point of view taken optically by the camera which supports the standpoint of Moretti’s personal philosophy expressed through the aesthetic aspects which he employs to create narrative space. The study is based on a close textual analysis of Moretti’s eleven major feature films to date, using the formal film language of mise-en-scène, cinematography, editing, and sound. The aim is to show how Moretti selects, organizes, constructs, assembles, and manipulates the many elements of narrative space into an entire work of art, to enable meanings and pleasures for the spectator.

Details

University Press Copublishing Division / Fairleigh Dickinson University Press

Pages: 226 • Trim: 6 x 9

978-1-61147-690-3 • Hardback • September 2014 • $96.00 • (£74.00)

978-1-61147-763-4 • Paperback • June 2016 • $45.99 • (£35.00)

978-1-61147-691-0 • eBook • September 2014 • $43.50 • (£33.00)

Subjects: Performing Arts / Film / History & Criticism, Literary Criticism / European / Italian, Performing Arts / Film / General, Social Science / Sociology / General

Author

Eleanor Andrews is Senior Lecturer in Italian and Course Leader for Film Studies at the University of Wolverhampton, UK.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Clarifications
List of Figures
Chapter One: Introduction
Part One: Place
Chapter Two: Nearly All Roads Lead To Rome
Chapter Three: Battling With Nature
Chapter Four: Inside
Chapter Five: Outside
Part Two: Setting
Chapter Six: Laughter and Tears
Chapter Seven: The Scene of the Crime
Chapter Eight: Sweet Dreams?
Chapter Nine: Whose Space Is It Anyway?
Part Three: Perspective
Chapter Ten: Inside and Outside the Frame
Chapter Eleven: A Certain Point of View
Chapter Twelve: An Artist at Work
Filmography
Bibliography

Reviews

Nanni Moretti’s films are not as well known in the US as they should be. His is an important body of work that follows in the footsteps of the great Italian neorealists and French New Wave filmmaker Eric Rohmer. Moretti (b. 1953) is much better known and acclaimed in his native Italy and across Europe, but this study by Andrews should bring more American viewers to his work. Andrews’s book, which grew from her dissertation, is only the second on Moretti available in English—after Ewa Mazierska and Laura Rascaroli's The Cinema of Nanni Moretti(CH, Dec'04, 42-2112)—and it does much to advance the scholarship on this director. As the title indicates, Andrews focuses on the significance of spaces in Moretti’s films. . . .Andrews organized her discussion around the different kinds of spaces—interior, exterior, thresholds, domestic, and so on—in the films and the relationships between spaces and themes and characters. Particularly strong are the chapters on Moretti's cinematic narrators as connected to perspective and on Moretti’s use of different settings and their connections to film genre. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty, professionals.
— Choice

Place, Setting, Perspective

Narrative Space in the Films of Nanni Moretti

Eleanor Andrews

Place, Setting, Perspective

Narrative Space in the Films of Nanni Moretti

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