Browsing by Subject "Stefania Sandrelli"

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Beyond the casting couch : a feminist recovery of female stars' experience in Italy
(2022-07-28) Fanelli, Vanessa; Bonifazio, Paola, 1976-; Bini, Daniela; Hipkins, Danielle; Sturm, Circe
In this dissertation, I study Italian female film stardom through an interdisciplinary approach which aims to focus on gender representation and production practices of the 1960s. This decade is relevant to the investigation of postwar rhetoric in the national effort to promote modernization and progress. In fact, it is precisely in the 1960s that the social fabric began to unravel, laying the foundations to the legislative changes of the 70s which would grant essential women’s rights, such as laws on divorce, abortion, and reproductive rights. Among my primary concern is the investigation of female stars as a vehicle for social change as they offered unconventional lifestyles that promoted, in newspapers and magazines, discourses on gender-power dynamics which focused on women’s inequality in terms of work harassment, rape, marriage, and motherhood. In addition to establishing the historical significance of the phenomenon of female stardom in Italy this dissertation also tackles the crucial question of why traditional historical narratives focusing primarily on the corporeality of female stars have paid little to no attention to their everyday, gendered lives. With the analyses of the three case studies of Jennifer Jones, Marisa Solinas, and Stefania Sandrelli, I seek to construct a coherent narrative of female stardom which focuses on the opportunity for self-representation and self-determination these actresses had in the film industry. Finally, this dissertation argues that, contrary to the prevailing belief that there was no star system in Italy and that female stars thus exercised no control over their careers, there were indeed complex and widely varying degrees and modes of control through which women could resist the process of their commodification.