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author: Lorenza Di Francesco (Dipartimento di Comunicazione ed Economia, Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia (IT))

Enunciative strategies in the European film sector of the Fifties

language: italian

abstract: This essay, taken from my doctoral dissertation entitled "Dal documentario al film di famiglia: spazialità, enunciazione e valori dal Free Cinema inglese alle nuove pratiche di riuso filmico" (From documentaries to home movies: spatiality, enunciation and values from British Free Cinema to cinematographic re-use practices) discusses several articles by film critics that appeared in the most authoritative British and French journals during the second half of the Fifties. Bearing in mind that these were the years in which tension towards rebuilding a national identity was strong, the essay concentrates on the aggressive and strategic discursive dimension employed by two director-critics, Lindsay Anderson and Jean-Luc Godard, to highlight the film-making movements to which they belonged, i.e. British Free Cinema and French Nouvelle Vague, within the European film-making industry. Our opinion is that, by axiologizing presumed value-based diversities and an astute construction of the relationship between author and reader, the reviews in question were used to enhance one movement to the detriment of the other within a closed system oppressed in those years by competition from the big Hollywood film companies and the latest innovation, television. They succeeded in their intention because within a short while, Anderson and Godard acquired acclaim on the European film-making scene and were therefore able, thanks to economic support from institutions, film studios and film distributors, to explore and develop subjects and themes that Free Cinema and Nouvelle Vague had introduced.

citation information: Lorenza Di Francesco, Strategie enunciative nel discorso cinematografico europeo degli anni Cinquanta, "Ocula", vol.13, November 2012. DOI: 10.12977/ocula58

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