Giorgio Bertellini - University of Michigan

Giorgio Bertellini - University of Michigan
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Giorgio Bertellini
University of Michigan
Department of Film, Television, and Media
Faculty Member
University of Michigan
Romance Languages and Literatures
Faculty Member
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I am a historian interested in film aesthetics in the context of the dense artistic and cultural exchanges across the Atlantic. In my first book in English, "Italy in Early American Cinema: Race, Landscape, and the Picturesque" (2010), I followed the historical and geographic journeys of an aesthetic form, the picturesque, from 17th century paintings and 18th century prints to turn-of-the-20th-century films, and from the Italian to the North American racial culture. In the process, I also followed the picturesque’s original subjects, Southern Italians, as both protagonists and consumers of picturesque works. In the end, my research sought to recast established time-centered notions of cinematic modernity by mobilizing equally pressingly modern notions of geographic variance, racial difference, and migration. In 2010, the volume received two book awards, from the American Association of Italian Studies and the Canadian Association of American Studies, as well as recognitions from the American Studies Association and the Modernist Studies Association.
My second monograph was a study of Bosnian film director Emir Kusturica, published in Italian for the series Il Castoro Cinema (Milan: Editrice Il Castoro, 2011) and in English in the Contemporary Film Directors Series of the University of Illinois Press (2014). Both versions revised and substantially expanded an earlier study, published in 1996, which included a limited number of Kusturica films.
In my last project, "The Divo and the Duce: Promoting Film Stardom and Political Leadership in 1920s America," I am focusing on the 1920s American popularity of Hollywood star Rudolph Valentino and dictator Benito Mussolini. Based again on a wide variety of sources and documents, "Divo/Duce" seeks to unearth the historical convergences of celebrity culture, charismatic leadership and national sovereignty and in the process identify the affinities between star studies and political theory. While the bulk of the research relates to the North American scene, for comparative purposes some portion will also be devoted to the repercussions of the Divo/Duce’s transnational fame in Italy and Argentina—two Latin, predominantly Catholic, cultural settings.
Over the years, I have published essays in a dozen scholarly journals and three dozens anthologies. I have also edited volumes for both pedagogical and scholarly use, from "Emir Kusturica" (Rome, 1995), "The Cinema of Italy" (London: 2004; 2007), and "Early Cinema and the National" (London, 2008; with Richard Abel and Rob King) to the newly released "Italian Silent Cinema: A Reader" (London-Bloomington, 2013), published with the support of Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (Pordenone).  The Reader was a Finalist for the 2013 Richard Wall Memorial Award, Theatre Library Association (New York) and the Kraszna-Krausz Foundation’s Best Moving Image Book Award (London, 2014). An "Outstanding Academic Title of 2014" (Choice), it was the winner of the Southwest Popular and American Culture Association’s 2015 Peter C. Rollins Book Award/Film and Television.
"The Divo and the Duce" won book awards from the American Association of Italian Studies and the Italian American Studies Association, and was a finalist for the LIMINA Award for Best International Film Studies Book. The research for the book began while at Cambridge as a Radcliffe Fellow.
For my next project, "The Poverty of Others: New Deal to Neorealism (and back)," I was honored to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship.
I am an Associate Editor for the Journal of Italian Cinema and Media Studies and a co-editor of a book series, "Cinema Cultures in Contact," for the University of California Press. My essays and reviews have appeared in The Washington Post, Il Foglio (Rome) and La Lettura/Corriere della Sera (Milan).
Phone:
ph. (734) 763 1144 (o.)
Department of Film, Television, and Media
University of Michigan
6435 North Quad
105 South State Street
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1285

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Reviews of THE DIVO AND THE DUCE
Translations
Book Reviews
CALL for PAPERS
Reviews of ITALY IN EARLY AMERICAN CINEMA (2010)
Reviews of ITALIAN SILENT CINEMA: A READER
20
Papers
Reviews of EMIR KUSTURICA (any edition)
Books by Giorgio Bertellini
Emir Kusturica (Persian Edition, 2021)
The Cinema of Emir Kusturica
, 2021
The Persian translation of the American edition of my book on Emir Kusturica.
Il Divo e il Duce. Fama, politica e pubblicità nell'America degli anni Venti
Firenze: Le Monnier/Mondadori Education
, 2022
Indice / Table of Contents
The Divo and the Duce: Promoting Film Stardom and Political Leadership in 1920s America
University of California Press
, 2019
In the post–World War I American climate of isolationism, nativism, democratic expansion of civic...
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In the post–World War I American climate of isolationism, nativism, democratic expansion of civic rights, and consumerism, Italian-born star Rodolfo Valentino and Italy’s dictator Benito Mussolini became surprising paragons of authoritarian male power and mass appeal. Drawing on extensive archival research in the United States and Italy, Giorgio Bertellini’s work shows how their popularity, both political and erotic, largely depended on the efforts of public opinion managers, including publicists, journalists, and even ambassadors. Beyond the democratic celebrations of the Jazz Age, the promotion of their charismatic masculinity through spectacle and press coverage inaugurated the now-familiar convergence of popular celebrity and political authority.
Emir Kusturica (English edition) - 2015
The Contemporary Film Directors series provides concise, well-written introductions to directors ...
more
The Contemporary Film Directors series provides concise, well-written introductions to directors from around the world and from every level of the film industry. Its chief
Italian Silent Cinema: A Reader - 2013
Italy in Early American Cinema: Race, Landscape, and the Picturesque - 2010
Bertellini traces the origins of American cinema's century-long fascination with Italy and Italia...
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Bertellini traces the origins of American cinema's century-long fascination with Italy and Italian immigrants to the popularity of the pre-photographic aesthetic—the picturesque. Once associated with landscape painting in northern Europe, the picturesque came to symbolize Mediterranean Europe through comforting views of distant landscapes and exotic characters. Taking its cue from a picturesque stage backdrop from The Godfather Part II, Italy in Early American Cinema shows how this aesthetic was transferred from 19th-century American painters to early 20th-century American filmmakers. Italy in Early American Cinema offers readings of early films that pay close attention to how landscape representations that were related to narrative settings and filmmaking locations conveyed distinct ideas about racial difference and national destiny.
Early Cinema and the "National" - 2008
The Cinema of Italy - 2004; 2nd ed. 2007
Essays / Chapters by Giorgio Bertellini
“Cultural Cross Glances: Zavattini and the United States”
Alberto Ferraboschi ed., Zavattini Beyond Borders
, 2020
“Cultural Cross Glances: Zavattini and the United States” in Alberto Ferraboschi ed., Zavattini ...
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“Cultural Cross Glances: Zavattini and the United States” in Alberto Ferraboschi ed., Zavattini  Beyond Borders (Reggio Emilia: Biblioteca Panizzi, 2020), 97-114.
Also available in Italian:
“Strabismi culturali: Zavattini e gli Stati Uniti,” in Alberto Ferraboschi ed., Zavattini oltre i confini: reti, pratiche, ricezione (Reggio Emilia: Biblioteca Panizzi, 2020), 97-114.
Bertellini "AFTERWARD" to ITALY in EARLY AMERICAN CINEMA
ITALY in EARLY AMERICAN CINEMA
, 2010
We have been trained to regard the notion of "modernity" is a time-centered concept. There is a l...
more
We have been trained to regard the notion of "modernity" is a time-centered concept. There is a lot to gain AND to lose in this framing. In this 2010 book's conclusion, I develop a space-centered approach that ought to address some of the issues linked to the emphasis on time.
"Going Silent on Modernity" from The Oxford Handbook of Silent Cinema
Going Silent on Modernity: Periodization, Geopolitics, and Public Opinion,” in Rob King and Charles Keil eds., Oxford Handbook of Silent Cinema, New York: Oxford University Press
, 2024
Long-established narratives of early cinema's modernity, with their emphasis on instrumental rati...
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Long-established narratives of early cinema's modernity, with their emphasis on instrumental rationality, have relied on the alleged similarity of the European and North American contexts and on a periodization opposing the pre-1914 period to the 1920s. In between these two time periods and regularly ignored by scholars is World War I and its aftermath.
‘Italian Media Studies. Una diagnosi un po’ azzardata e un paio di proposte’
La Valle dell'Eden
, 2021
Registrazione presso il Tribunale di Torino n. 5179 del 04/08/1998 Editore Lexis Compagnia Editor...
more
Registrazione presso il Tribunale di Torino n. 5179 del 04/08/1998 Editore Lexis Compagnia Editoriale in Torino via Carlo Alberto 55-10123 Torino è un marchio registrato utilizzato per concessione della società Traumann s.s.
“Italian Media Studies: una diagnosi un po’ azzardata e un paio di proposte,”
La Valle dell’Eden
, 2021
La Valle dell’Eden (Turin, Italy) 37/2021, pp. 165-169: Special Issue on “Journey to Italy. St...
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La Valle dell’Eden (Turin, Italy)  37/2021, pp. 165-169:  Special Issue on “Journey to Italy. Studiare il cinema e i media"
INTRODUCTION to "The Divo and the Duce"
"The Divo and the Duce: Film Stardom and Political Leadership in 1920s America"
, 2019
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The meeting between Hollywood celebrities and Mussolini showcased a convergence of celebrity culture and authoritarianism, shaping perceptions of authority in the 1920s.
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Manipulation and Authenticity: The Unassimilable Valentino in 1920s
Argentina
Was Valentino, Hollywood's preferred tango dancer, popular in Argentina? Was his style of dancing...
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Was Valentino, Hollywood's preferred tango dancer, popular in Argentina? Was his style of dancing considered correct and appropriate? The essay provides some answers to these and other questions pertaining to international film circulation and reception.
. “L’algebra di nuovi argomenti,” in Ruggero Eugeni and Mariagrazia Fanchi eds., La galassia Casetti: Lettere di amicizia, stima e provocazione (Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 2017), 28-31
G. Bertellini & J. Reich (2015) "Smuggling Iconoclasm" (on SCORSESE)
“‘Italian Cinema and World War I,” in Graziella Parati ed., Italy and the Cultural Politics of World War I (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield/Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 2016), 67-85.
"Restoration, genealogy and palimpsests. On some historiographical questions" [on Fritz Lang's Metropolis, restoration philosophy, and film history]
Film History (1995) reprinted in 2001
, 1995
You Can Go Home Again (and Again): Santa Lucia Luntana (1931), the Film
“You Can Go Home Again (and Again): Santa Lucia Luntana (1931), the Film,” in Goffredo Plastino a...
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“You Can Go Home Again (and Again): Santa Lucia Luntana (1931), the Film,” in Goffredo Plastino and Joseph Sciorra eds., Neapolitan Postcards: The Canzone Napoletana as Transnational Subject (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2016), 97-113.
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