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Jacqueline Reich. Beyond the Latin Lover: Marcello Mastroianni, Masculinity, and Italian Cinema. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004. Pp. xvi + 225.
The primary merit of Jacqueline Reich's book is that it deals with questions of gender and sexuality in Italian culture that have traditionally received a modest critical attention. More specifically, Reich examines the representation of masculinity, also a relatively uncharted field of inquiry in Italian studies in Italy and abroad, through the analysis of some of the films interpreted by Marcello Mastroianni in his long and distinguished career.
What is "beyond the Latin lover" for which Mastroianni is often remembered? The most convincing answer that emerges from Reich's study is that at the heart of this "mystique" there is a palpable contradiction. As she so eloquently notes in the introduction to her book, "although Mastroianni, as commodity, was often marketed as the quintessential Italian man, his characters betrayed instead a much more conflicting image of Italian masculinity than the category of Latin lover allowed" (xi). The book proceeds to unpack precisely this seeming contradiction by analyzing some of the most remarkable roles played by Mastroianni, in films like Fellini's La dolce vita (1959), 8 1 .2 (1963), Citta delle donne (1980), and Ginger e Fred (1986); Bolognini's Il bell'Antonio (1960); Germi's Divorzio all'italiana (1961); De Sica's Ieri, oggi e domani (1963) and Matrimonio all'italiana (1964); Scola's Una giornata particolare (1977); and Tornatore's Stanno tutti bene (1990), among others. In all of these films, Reich identifies a common thread in the representation of a flawed and inadequate masculinity, albeit for different reasons and circumstances: "underneath the facade of a presumed hypermasculinity is really the anti-hero, the Italian inetto (inept man), a man at odds with and out of place in a rapidly changing political, social, and sexual environment" (xii).
The first chapter, titled "In the Beginning: Mastroianni, Masculinity and Italian Cinema," proceeds to introduce some of the theoretical and critical tools that will enable Reich to anchor her argument. Here Reich also provides a historical framework within which Mastroianni's characters are seen as representatives of unstable and conflicting gender roles in the postwar period. Drawing from a variety of fields ranging from literature and anthropology to film and star studies, the chapter offers an overview...