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Decelerating the Boom: Valerio Zurlini's La Ragazza con la Valigia (1961)

2010; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 28; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1179/016146210x12626054653171

1559-0909

Anita Angelone,

Cinema and Media Studies

Often overlooked in histories of Italian cinema, when director Valerio Zurlini's work is mentioned by critics it most often analyzed aesthetically, isolated from the social and industrial context in which it was made. The following article places Zurlini's 1961 film, La ragazza con la valigia, squarely within 1960s boom culture by tracing out the ways in which it depicts the new symbols of mass benessere that began to dominate the screen during this time — in particular the car and the portable record player — in relation to other films released over the course of the boom. While most treat these objects as indicative of the new mobility (economic, spatial and social) of the era, Zurlini's work slows these objects down, giving us the opportunity to gauge their effects on Italian conceptions of culture itself. The ragazza of the title, too, is a sign of the changing (cultural) times, and her status as "other" to culture, yet the ground on which it is founded, will be treated.