Male Anxiety and Psychopathology in Film: Comedy Italian Style

The most popular film genre during the golden years of Italian cinema, the Comedy Italian Style emerged after the fall of the Facist regime, narrating the identity crisis of many Italian men. Exploring the birth, growth, and decline of this genre, Bini shows this notable style was the search for a new role in the shattered postwar middle class.

Male Anxiety and Psychopathology in Film: Comedy Italian Style explores the birth, growth, and decline of the most popular film genre during the golden years of Italian cinema. Emerging after the successive fall of the Fascist regime, the end of monarchy, and the struggles of a fragile, new democracy, commedia all'italiana, or comedy Italian style, appeared as a post-oedipal genre that narrated the identity crisis of Italian men and their desperate search for a new role in the postwar middle class. Andrea Bini argues that these men reacted to these traumatic historical experiences by embracing the myth of consumerist culture during the Italian economic boom of the late 1950s and early 60s. Grounded in Lacanian theory, this study demonstrates how commedia all'italiana represents Italy as a social space lacking strong symbolic agency in which the male actors fall prey to a series of incurable psychopathologies.