Antonio Pietrangeli, The Director of Women

This book re-examines the films of Antonio Pietrangeli, one of the founding fathers of neorealism in the postwar period in Italy, from a feminist perspective. Of the ten full-length films completed by Antonio Pietrangeli, eight featured a female protagonist. This attention to the female subject is noteworthy today, much less in the 1950s and 1960s.

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One of the founding fathers of neorealism in the postwar period in Italy, Antonio Pietrangeli went on to focus his lens upon the female subject. Eight of his ten full-length films feature female protagonists. This study seeks to better understand both his achievements and his failings as a feminist auteur as well as analyse his films by applying new critical and theoretical approaches. Pietrangeli’s representations of women struggling with questions of identity was a revolutionary act in the 1950s and 1960s. The book makes a case why we should recuperate these films today since the standards for representing women in film continue to fall behind the reality of women’s lives off-screen.