The Cinema of Ettore Scola

"Unfairly, Scola's work is less well-known outside of Italy than is the work of many of his contemporaries. This important edited collection, with its broad array of approaches and methods, makes Scola intelligible for readers and viewers only coming to know his films, but it also refreshes and reframes our understanding of this powerful, curious, and curiously political body of filmmaking."—John David Rhodes, Director, Centre for Film and Screen, University of Cambridge

"The first book-length study in English of director and screenwriter Ettore Scola (1931-2016), The Cinema of Ettore Scola is a handsome selection of essays by international authors, full of stimulating pathways toward expanding one's understanding of this humanist Italian political director with his roots in the commedia all'italiana. Covering a long career that included directing twenty-seven feature films in addition to documentaries, short films, and omnibus episodes, it is a collection of academic texts that thankfully make do with only a thin veneer of academy speak. Edited by Rémi Lanzoni of Wake Forest University and Edward Bowen at the University of Kansas, it should resuscitate interest in one of modern Italy's most important—and entertaining cultural figures."—Deborah Young, Cineaste

"This brilliantly researched volume by rising and seasoned scholars on Scola's legacy captures his meta-cinematic style from film to digital image; his inventiveness in the use of different narrative forms; interactions with other filmmakers, including Pietrangeli, Pasolini, and Fellini; and powerful uses of space, place, and time in philosophic explorations of history, memory, and politics."—Marcia Landy, Distinguished Professor Emerita of English, Film and Media Studies, French, and Italian, University of Pittsburgh

"Lanzoni and Bowen have assembled and skillfully guided a stellar cast of scholars to produce a coherent, wide-ranging, and illuminating study. This intelligent volume finally mines the complexity of Ettore Scola's work as writer and director, and will become essential reading for anyone interested in the history of Italian cinema."—Giacomo Lichtner, Author of Fascism in Italian Cinema Since 1945: the Politics and Aesthetics of Memory

"In this volume, leading experts offer brilliant assessments of the themes of comedy, exile, and nostalgia in Scola's work, as well as of his oeuvre as a whole and his activities as a screenwriter and as a public figure. The only volume in English to be entirely dedicated to this important filmmaker, this superb collection is destined to become an indispensable resource for anyone interested in postwar Italian cinema."—Stephen Gundle, Professor of Film and Television Studies, University of Warwick