The Spectacle of the Unseen
Marco Bellocchio and Lure of the Catholic Church
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 16475202 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Clodagh Brook (0000-0001-8399-401X, University of Birmingham, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2013 |
| Volume | 68 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 399-410 |
| Publication date | 2013-11-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Italian Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0075-1634 • E-ISSN: 1748-6181 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1179/0075163413z.00000000050 |
| OpenAlex | W1987193191 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 3 |
What is intriguing about Bellocchio's films is not so much their manifest attack on Catholicism across five decades of filmmaking but — reading against the surface of the films — the peculiar and continuing lure of the church. Focusing on Bellocchio's recent cinema (L'ora di religione and Il regista di matrimoni, especially), the article explores the transcending of the real, through the unseen and unsaid, at one end of the spectrum, and spectacle at the other. Following Baudrillard, spectacle is interpreted as a phenomenon which deals 'with the human in inhuman ways'. Bellocchio is read, here, as joining an artistic heritage which roots creativity in a mysterious divine source. Catholicism's iconography provides Bellocchio's cinema with a set of images without which his camera would lose its object. His films hint that Catholicism may remain deeply attractive in Italy's cinema, even where this is firmly disavowed
Aesthetics · Ambivalence · Art · Art history · Epistemology · Filmmaking · Iconography · Literature · Movie theater · Object (grammar · Phenomenon · Political science · Psychoanalysis · Spectacle · Italian Fascism and Post-war Society · Law · Philosophy · Photography and Visual Culture · Psychology · Visual Culture and Art Theory
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0.13 |
| Citation span | 2018 - 2018 (1) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |