In this accomplished and altogether brilliant study, Carlorosi offers persuasive and detailed readings of a group of key films from Italian cinema history—Federico Fellini’s La voce della luna, Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Accatone and Mamma Roma, Michelangelo Antonioni’s Red Desert and Blow-Up, and more recently Franco Piavoli’s Il pianeta azzurro and Nostos, and Matteo Garrone’s Primo amore and Gomorra. The author explores the philosophy of each of these gifted filmmakers as revealed in their films, and she does so in a manner that elides traditional taxonomic theory and pursues a much more humanist and aesthetic path. Carlorosi’s passionate and erudite analysis of these films and their creators opens up a new path for film interpretation, which is in keeping with one of the aims of the series in which the book appears, 'Cineesthetics: New Directions in Film and Philosophy.' With these generous, perceptive, and deeply informed readings, Carlorosi makes the films come alive for a new generation of viewers. The book closes with illuminating interviews with directors Piavoli and Garrone. This is an original and vibrant book. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals.

Choice Reviews

Leopardi's “Silvia” leads us to find poetry in life and life in poetry. Silvia Carlorosi, adapting Leopardi's poetics, leads us to look for poetry in cinema and to engage in the process of poiesis or creation that poetic cinema requires of the viewer, not only to understand the reality represented on the screen, but to appreciate and enrich our own lives as well.

Sante Matteo, Miami University

Presented in a clear and engaging style and supported by detailed analysis of selected films by both canonical auteurs and newer filmmakers, Carlorosi’s book offers important and original insights for the understanding of the ‘cinema of poetry.’ The meanings of a ‘poetic camera’ will be less obscure after reading this study.

Roberta Tabanelli, University of Missouri-Columbia

In this rigorous and impassioned study, Silvia Carlorosi develops a critical methodology based on Pier Paolo Pasolini’s seminal “Cinema of Poetry” essay, amplified by extensive research in the field of image theory. The result is a series of case studies which investigate the irrational, disruptive, and multidimensional workings of the image in examples from the filmographies of Pasolini, Fellini, Antonioni, Garrone, and Piavoli. This is a powerful new tool for the analysis of films which defy the codified norms of cinematic convention and instead propose a liberated, open-ended, and visionary approach to the world of lived experience.

Millicent Marcus, Yale