What Is Neorealism?

A Critical English-Language Bibliography of Italian Cinematic Neorealism by Bert Cardullo Review by: Marsha Kinder Film Quarterly, Vol. 46, No. 1 (Autumn, 1992), p. 55 Published by: University of California Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1213049 . Accessed: 22/04/2014 21:28
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Book

Notes

Contributorsto book notes: Leo Braudy, Brian Henderson, Albert Johnson, Marsha Kinder, and Linda Williams are members of FQ' s editorial board; David Desser teaches at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign;John Fell is the authorof Film and theNarrative Tradition;Sidney Gottlieb teaches at Sacred HeartUniversity in Fairfield, CT; David James teaches at USC; James L. Neibaur is a film historian; Mark A. Reid teaches at the University of FloridaGainesville; Gregg Rickman is working on a book about Philip K. Dick; Yuri Tsivian is Senior Research Fellow at the Academy of Sciences of Latvia in Riga and the author of Silent Witnesses: Russian Films 1908-1919.

one-volume general texts (like ArthurKnight's TheLiveliest Art and my own Close-up, cowritten with Beverle Houston). Yet it omits (even from the exhaustive biblio) Robert Kolker's The Altering Eye, which argues that neorealism represents a crucial "pivot" in film history. Similarly, although it includes an assortment of articles and interviews on individual film-makers and films, it omits PeterBrunette'sRobertoRossellini, which contributes important new ideas on the movement. Nor does Cardullo explain why his chronology excludes pre-1956 neorealist works by Fellini and Antonioni, or why it privileges origins and precursors over subsequent influences at home and abroad (including latter-day Italian neorealists like Rosi, Olmi, and the Taviani brothers). It may well be this pervasive influence thatmade the movement so important. MARSHA KINDER

Austin, Bruce A. (ed.). CurrentResearch in Film: Audiences, Economics, and Law, Volume V. Norwood: Ablex Publishing Corporation,1991. N.p. Turningto the editor's introduction, one does not find it! Thus there is no discussion of audience, economics, or law, or of why the pieces were included, or how they work together to explore these topics. The audience essays (five) are the worst-unconvincing uses of social science statistics to define the film audience. The economics essays (four) are mixed: an essay on "high concept" and product differentiation flounders due to the vagueness of the term;Guback (on capital, labor power, and the identity of film) and Jarvie (on the Canadian film market as part of the U.S. domestic market between the wars) are valuable. So are the law essays (two)-on government classification of foreign political films and on state functions and the
British film industry.
BRIAN HENDERSON

Cardullo, Bert. What is Neorealism? A Critical EnglishLanguageBibliography of talian CinematicNeorealism. Lanham,MD: University Press of America, 1991. $29.50. Bert Cardullo's WhatIs Neorealism? is a useful reference work divided into three sections: a critical bibliography, which includes 26 "representative"entries with detailed annotations;an "exhaustive, up-to-date"bibliography of English-language sources on Italian neorealist cinema, which includes 257 nonannotatedentries; and a chronological list of Italian neorealist films (with credits) which goes up to 1956 and which includes precursorsdating as far back as 1914. The reader might wonder how the 26 entries were selected-for the list includes not only recent books on the movement (such as those by Millicent Marcus, Mira Liehm, and Peter Bondanella) and historically influential works (e.g., by Bazin and Leprohon), but also outdated

Denisoff, R. Serge, and William D. Romanowski. Risky Business: Rock in Film. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1991. $49.95. With almost 800 pages, this is the most ambitious book on rock-and-rolland film so far published. It is valuable in two ways. First, as a work of reference, it provides for each of 150 films the history of its production, a plot summary,an overview of reviews, and an account of the financial returnof both the film and the records associated with it-all in very great detail. Second, as a guidebook throughthe corridorsof the culture industries, it traces the history of the ways the media have become totally integrated as industries, beginning from the halting first steps at accommodation in the late 1950s and maturing in the late 1970s in the "synergy" (an industry term) by which the music, film, and eventually video divisions of entertainmentcorporations have subsequently fed off each other. It is relatively unconcerned with formal, theoretical, or ideological matters. Perhaps inevitably, some genres are slighted: rockumentaries(concert documentaries)are bundledinto an inadequateepilogue, as areblaxploitation films; Presley's entire 1960s work is ignored, and his one great film, King Creole, is never mentioned. The book's more than occasional typos and minor errors are annoying, and while for some its Variety-apingstyle will come as a welcome relief from the aridity of scholarly prose, others will be irritatedby it. But this is a small price to pay for what is a veritable treasure trove of information that will be indispensable for the foreseeable future.
DAVID JAMES

Denzin, Norman K. Hollywood Shot by Shot: Alcoholism inAmericanCinema.Hawthorne,N.Y.: Aldine de Gruyter, 1991. $39.95 cloth; $22.95 paper. Commencing with the A Star Is Born series (its genesis was What Price Hollywood? in 1932) a sociologist examines alcoholism films, spotting markersthat define audience perceptions, locat55

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