From The Spectator - reviews of two books on post-war era Italy:
Dolce Vita Confidential: Fellini, Loren, Pucci, Paparazzi and the Swinging High Life of 1950s Rome by Shawn Levy
Shawn Levy .... turns his attention to the regeneration of post-war Rome. It starts in 1953 with a half-naked female corpse washed up on a beach outside Rome. The drowning was put down to misadventure, though why Wilma Montesi should have been missing her stockings and suspender belt was never satisfactorily explained. Levy chronicles the investigation, the rumours and the scandal but, like others before him, fails to draw meaningful conclusions.
Cinecittà , the home of Italy’s film industry, was the third largest employer in Rome after the Church and the government. These were the years of Hollywood sul Tevere. Day after day they filed into the city, the actors, extras, troupes of dancers and make-up girls. Cinecittà welcomed them all — the foreigners with hard currency, the fly-by-nights, the star-struck suburbanite wanting her moment in the sun.
Italian Cinema: Arthouse to Exploitation by Barry Forshaw
In Barry Forshaw’s history of Italy’s cinematic traditions, he sees sex and individualism as key motivating factors. He explores the spaghetti sesterns and gialli (thrillers) and the video nasties, or horror flicks, pioneered by Dario Argento. (Sexualised female corpses feature heavily and controversially.)
Read entire article by Lilian Pizzichini here @ The Spectator
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