The Celluloid Atlantic - Hollywood, Cinecittà, and the Making of the Cinema of the West, 1943–1973

Offers a fresh look at American and Italian cinema in the postwar period.
The Celluloid Atlantic changes the way we look at American and Italian cinema in the postwar period. In the thirty years following World War II, American and Italian film industries came to be an integrated, transnational unit rather than two separate, nation-based entities. Written in jargon-free prose and based on previously unexplored archival sources, this book revisits the history of Neorealism, World War II combat cinema, the "Western all'Italiana," and the career of John Kitzmiller, the African American star who made Italy his home and was the first person of color to win the Best Actor Award at the Cannes Film Festival. The Celluloid Atlantic makes the trailblazing argument that culturally hybrid genres like the so-called spaghetti Western were less the exceptions than the norm. Giovacchini argues that the waning of the Celluloid Atlantic in the early 1970s was due to the economic policies of the first Nixon administration, specifically its important, but largely neglected, Revenue Act of 1971, as well as to the ideological debates between Europeans and Americans that intensified during the American intervention in Vietnam.

About the author

Saverio Giovacchini is Associate Professor of History at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is the author of Hollywood Modernism, Film and Politics in the Age of the New Deal and the coeditor, with Robert Sklar, of Global Neorealism: The Transnational History of a Film Style.

Product details

• Authors: Giovacchini Saverio
• Publisher: Ingram Publishers Services
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Release: 09.07.2025
• EAN: 9798855800579
• ISBN: 979-8-8558-0057-9
• No. of pages: 392
• Illustrations: 26 b&w photos, schwarz-weiss Illustrationen
• Series: SUNY series, Horizons of Cinema
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Art > Theatre, ballet; USA, European History, 20th Century, 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000, HISTORY / United States / 20th Century, HISTORY / Europe / Italy, PERFORMING ARTS / Film / Genres / Westerns, Italy, 20th century, c 1900 to c 1999, Film, TV & radio, United States of America, USA, PERFORMING ARTS / Film / History & Criticism, History of the Americas, Film: styles & genres, The Cold War, Film Theory & Criticism, Film: styles and genres, Cold wars and proxy conflicts, Film history, theory or criticism, HISTORY / Modern / 20th Century / Cold War