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The
Maciste Films of Italian Silent Cinema

By Jacqueline Reich

BRIEF NOTES

The Maciste Films of Italian Silent Cinema
By Jacqueline Reich

Indiana University Press : Bloomington, Indiana : 19 October 2015
Hardcover Edition : ISBN 978-0253017406 : 432 pages
    $85.00
Trade Paperback Edition : ISBN 978-0253017451 : 432 pages
    $30.00
eBook Edition : ISBN 978-0253017482
    $9.99

Italian film star Bartolomeo Pagano’s ‘Maciste’ played a key role in his nation’s narratives of identity during World War I and after. Jacqueline Reich traces the racial, class, and national transformations undergone by this Italian strongman from African slave in Cabiria (1914), his first film, to bourgeois gentleman, to Alpine soldier of the Great War, to colonial officer in Italy’s African adventures. Reich reveals Maciste as a figure who both reflected classical ideals of masculine beauty and virility (later taken up by Mussolini and used for political purposes) and embodied the model Italian citizen. The 12 films at the center of the book, recently restored and newly accessible to a wider public, together with relevant extra-cinematic materials, provide a rich resource for understanding the spread of discourses on masculinity, and national and racial identities during a turbulent period in Italian history.

The volume includes an illustrated appendix documenting the restoration and preservation of these cinematic treasures.

This book is available directly from . . .

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