Books by Paolino Nappi
by Paula Hernández, Carlos Píriz, Veronica Gijón Jimenez, Raúl Moreno Almendral, Agustina Manograsso, David Serrano Lozano, José Julián Soto Lara, Verónica del Río Canedo, Paolino Nappi, Jorge Ballesteros Marín, Oria Ferreiro, Joaquim Costa, Daniel Aquillué Domínguez, Alfonso Bermudez, Iker Itoiz Ciáurriz, and Javier Rodrigo Las Violencias y la Historia, 2016
Journal articles by Paolino Nappi
The aim of this article is to trace the development of the theme of the Holocaust in Italian comi... more The aim of this article is to trace the development of the theme of the Holocaust in Italian comic books, attempting to frame it in the more general national memory culture. I look at both educational publications, aimed at adolescents, and those that speak to much wider social and political attempts at constructing a collective image of the Shoah. First, I explore three biographical comic books from the 1980s that focus on non-Italian historical figures, namely Maximilian Kolbe and Anne Frank, which are linked by the notion of sacrifice, in both a Catholic and universal sense. I then move on to works from the 1990s, which reveal more freedom in the way the topic is portrayed, not only at a thematic but also at an aesthetic level. Finally, I discuss several graphic novels that were published in the last few years which fit in well with the contemporary trend of rediscovering the past and constructing the collective memory around specific sites of memory, such as the concentration camp of Risiera di San Sabba in Trieste. As I show here, many of these narratives reiterate the common image of the Holocaust as a foreign (mostly German and Polish) event. This silences and underplays the Italian involvement in the atrocity. Nonetheless, more recent works demonstrate that the Shoah is slowly being adopted into the Italian historical consciousness as an important tragedy of the twentieth century.
Studio degli adattamenti cinematografici delle tre narrazioni di Giorgio Bassani che nel giro di ... more Studio degli adattamenti cinematografici delle tre narrazioni di Giorgio Bassani che nel giro di un trentennio hanno raggiunto il pubblico delle sale commerciali: La lunga notte del ’43 (1960), Il giardino dei Finzi Contini (1970), Gli occhiali d’oro (1987). Nell’analisi condotta, si bada principalmente ai rispettivi registi (Florestano Vancini, Vittorio De Sica, Giuliano Montaldo), alle sceneggiature, agli interpreti, alla tecnica dell’immagine, alla partitura musicale ma soprattutto al confronto fra i film e le opere letterarie, anche sulla base delle testimonianze e dei giudizi dello stesso Bassani. Sono tre casi ben diversi. Si sottolineano i tratti più caratteristici di ogni film, intesi come opere artisticamente autonome, al di là dei punti letterari di partenza. Si tenta insomma di comprendere il senso delle tre diverse operazioni di adattamento e di stabilire fino a che punto esse costituiscano o meno interpretazioni o letture apprezzabili delle opere di partenza.
This article seeks to explore the cinematographic portrayal of Naples in the 1950s, just after th... more This article seeks to explore the cinematographic portrayal of Naples in the 1950s, just after the so-called year zero, in the period following World War II, when the city witnessed important social changes. We will focus on the representation of three types of characters that would later become typical for the cinematic portrayals of Naples: the member of the Camorra, the guappo and the smuggler. The 1950s saw a revival of the character of the guappo as well as a return of a discursive tradition similar to that which had idealized the old camorra, as seen in titles such as Carosello napoletano, L'oro di Napoli and a lesser-known film, Napoli terra d'amore. The period also brought an explosion of popular cinema, including that of Roberto Amoroso. We also discuss films that depart from this general tendency, including Luigi Zampa’s Processo alla città which deals with the old camorra and moves away from the theatrical stereotyping of the guapparia. By the end of the decade, thanks to the young filmmaker Francesco Rosi, a new and powerful image of contemporary Naples, emerges, as shown in La sfida, which focuses on the so-called boom years. Here Rosi describes the mechanisms of power, the opening of the city, particularly to the rural environment, as well as the emerging consumer culture.
Gillo Pontecorvo’s feature breakthrough is the adaptation of Franco Solinas’ short novel Squarciò... more Gillo Pontecorvo’s feature breakthrough is the adaptation of Franco Solinas’ short novel Squarciò, focused on the life of a lonely fisherman who uses bombs as wells as fishnets, endangering his life every day. After the first approach with Giovanna, the relationship between the director and his customary screenwriter sharpens. Some casting issue: the actors do not satisfy Pontecorvo, because their physiognomy doesn’t match with those of the characters. The importance of sea landscape into the mise-en-scene’s building. The expressive use of sound. The political meaning: individualism against work’s collectivization.
In questo articolo si considerano due esponenti di spicco della letteratura napoletana della prim... more In questo articolo si considerano due esponenti di spicco della letteratura napoletana della prima metà del Novecento, il poeta e scrittore Ferdinando Russo e il drammaturgo Raffaele Viviani, mettendo a confronto la rappresentazione mitica del guappo-camorrista del primo con la smitizzazione ironica del guappo che caratterizza invece alcune commedie del secondo. Si analizzeranno queste immagini contrapposte, insistendo in particolare sulla nozione di “maschera” applicabile, in maniera diversamente specifica, alle modalità rappresentative scelte dai due autori.
This article provides a comparative analysis of two European graphic novels of the past decade th... more This article provides a comparative analysis of two European graphic novels of the past decade that focus on the theme of female economic migration, namely Sara Colaone’s Ciao ciao bambina (2010) and Agata Wawryniuk’s Rozmówki polsko-angielskie (2012). By exploring these two distinctive immigrant stories, which depict the Italian migration to Switzerland in the 1950s and the contemporary Polish migration to Britain, respectively, this article illustrates the shifting experiences of mobility in Europe across decades. While the Italian narrative presents the stay abroad as a chance to achieve independence and personal fulfilment, the Polish comic views it as a mere financial opportunity. This article argues that, despite these differences and the distinct social, cultural and historical contexts, the two works belie the stereotypical representations of migration as a predominantly male phenomenon and show the ability of female workers to execute agency as both jobseekers and independent individuals who are undeterred by the challenges of their immigrant lives.
Book chapters by Paolino Nappi
This article deals with a key period in the history of Neapolitan mafia, the camorra, between the... more This article deals with a key period in the history of Neapolitan mafia, the camorra, between the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, just when the so called Cuocolo trial (1906-1912) took place in Viterbo. This event has been pointed out, by a part of the historiography and, above all, by the vulgata, as the moment in which the validity of the original camorra came to an end. The aversion to a “devalued” delinquency contributed to convert into myths the old camorrists, whose great feats became similar to those of the medieval knights or the Spanish bandits. With this mystification and these images began the representative tradition known as guapparia. In the article, some texts published in the years of the trial, which had an important role in the establishment of this tradition, are considered: a group of three articles published in June 1807 by Matilde Serao in his own newspaper Il giorno; the book La camorra. Origini, usi, costumi e riti dell’“annorata soggietà”, written by Ernesto Serao and the writer Ferdinando Russo; and the conference La leggenda della camorra, written by Arturo Labriola, a politician linked to the revolutionary syndicalism.
Papers by Paolino Nappi
Zibaldone: Estudios Italianos, 2016
Gillo Pontecorvo’s feature breakthrough is the adaptation of Franco Solinas’ short novel Squarcio... more Gillo Pontecorvo’s feature breakthrough is the adaptation of Franco Solinas’ short novel Squarcio , focused on the life of a lonely fisherman who uses bombs as wells as fishnets, endangering his life every day. After the first approach with Giovanna, the relationship between the director and his customary screenwriter sharpens. Some casting issue: the actors do not satisfy Pontecorvo, because their physiognomy doesn’t match with those of the characters. The importance of sea landscape into the mise-en-scene’s building. The expressive use of sound. The political meaning: individualism against work’s collectivization
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Books by Paolino Nappi
Journal articles by Paolino Nappi
Book chapters by Paolino Nappi
Papers by Paolino Nappi