Cesare Zavattini: Selected Writings

Book excerpt: Volume 1 makes available for the first time in English thirty-nine scenarios and two treatments. Each text is preceded by an introduction, providing an essential frame of reference to make these writings entirely accessible to the reader. While nearly all these texts belong to the post-war period, including the stories for major post-war classics, there are also seven pre-war raccontini, the narrative source of Zavattini's Modernist magical realism, several fictional interviews and faux reportage, tinged with irony aimed at Hollywood, complemented by several pre-war scenarios. The book also features scenarios for Luchino Visconti's Bellissima, Alessandro Blasetti's First Communion, De Sica's The Roof and texts encompassing Zavattini's ethnographic vision, from the redactions of Italia mia, interviews for Un paese, illustrated with Paul Strand's photographs, to the scenarios for investigative documentaries, including Why?, The Mysteries of Rome, The Guinea Pig, the Free Newsreel Revolution, and the lucid Before, During After, tackling Aldo Moro's assassination by the Red Brigades. The book includes Zavattini's last word on cinema and society, the testamentary satire La veritàaaa (1982), written, directed and acted by Zavattini himself. Each text is preceded by an introduction, providing an essential frame of reference to make these writings entirely accessible to the reader. Volume 2 brings to the fore Zavattini's ever-evolving internal dialogue between diary writer, screenwriter, narrative writer, and political activist. Essential to trace the origin of Zavattini's ideas on cinema and understand his theorization of Neo-realism is the inclusion of a selection of the filmmaker's pre-war writings. Most of the book provides a substantial anthology of texts translated from Neorealismo ecc. (1979), comprising Zavattini's major essays, conference papers, unpublished production papers, interviews, and vital excerpts from his correspondence and published cinematic diary. Through translation and detailed cultural and contextual commentary, translator and editor David Brancaleone traces not only Zavattini's theory of the screen, but also his experimentation in new film practices, including the flash-film (film lampo), the inquiry film (film inchiesta), cinema as encounter (cinema d'incontro), the diary film (film diario), the confessional film (film-confessione), and the grass-roots community film (cinema insieme or cinema di tanti per tanti). Each text is preceded by an introduction, providing an essential frame of reference to make these writings entirely accessible to the reader.