Degli-Esposti, Cristina

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DEGLI-ESPOSTI, Cristina

PERSONAL: Female. Education: University of Indiana, Ph.D., 1991.

ADDRESSES: Agent—c/o Author Mail, Berghahn Books, 150 Broadway, Suite 812, New York, NY 10038.

CAREER: Author, editor, and educator. Kent State University, Kent, OH, associate professor of Italian.

WRITINGS:

(Editor, with Peter Bondanella) Perspectives on Federico Fellini, Maxwell Macmillan International (New York, NY), 1993.

(Editor) Postmodernism in the Cinema, Berghahn Books (Providence, RI), 1998.

SIDELIGHTS: Cristina Degli-Esposti received her Ph.D. in 1991 from the University of Indiana, where she studied under Professor Peter Bondanella, who teaches courses on the Italian cinema. It is with her former mentor that she coedited her first book, Perspectives on Federico Fellini. The anthology compiles significant articles about the filmmaker written since 1978 and includes an introduction by Degli-Esposti and Bondanella. Ted Perry and Melissa McClure, writing for the Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television, commented that "the choice of materials in this anthology . . . is excellent. Not only are the articles insightful and useful in their own right but they are selected in such a way as to provide a clear overview of the major critical issues that are pertinent to any understanding of Fellini and to the ongoing discussion of his films. As such they are essential reading for anyone who wants to understand Fellini's work."

Degli-Esposti and Bondanella have collected a diverse selection of essays for the volume, the stellar list of contributors including such names as Italio Cavino, Gianfranco Angelucci, and Umberto Eco and their works drawn from French, Italian, American, English, and Canadian cinematic criticism. The works are divided into four sections: "Artistic Origins and the Evolution beyond Neorealism," "The Mateur Auteur," "Feminism and the Image of Women," and "Fellini and Contemporary Film Theory." The feminist essays address a traditional criticism of the way Fellini depicts women in his films, and include works by Teresa De Laurentis and Germaine Greer. New Republic contributor Stanley Kauffmann wrote that "Greer scrupulously includes every compliment that Fellini paid her on her various charms, and we can see that, more than mere egotism on her part, it is the record of a kind of seduction. . . . We can see that he has, so to speak, been making a film with her: directing scenes. And she has collaborated." John C. Stubbs, reviewing for Film Quarterly, noted that "the most impressive essay in this section is Gaetana Marrone's 'Memory in Fellini's City of Women.' [Marrone] . . . reads the movie in terms of Jung's three stages of ego-memory from The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, but the essay is more Jungian that feminist and so does not particularly aid the . . . feminist project."

Stubbs found the first and last sections of the book to be the strongest, addressing both Fellini's early career and then the whole from the standpoint of contemporary theory. As he wrote, "Perspectives on Federico Fellini is, in the final analysis, an encouraging book. It demonstrates two new areas—postmodernism and feminism—where important work on the Fellini films needs to be done, and . . . provides excellent examples for more traditional kinds of studies."

Degli-Esposti also edited Postmodernism in the Cinema and wrote the introduction. Times Literary Supplement contributor Will Brooker questioned the necessity of another book on postmodernism in film, observing that "too often, postmodernism is dealt with in a blithe paragraph and set aside, while the writer engages with his or her own pet research project." He went on to note that in Postmodernism in the Cinema there is some valuable material included that touches on the political aspects of the cinema and how it can relate to analysis of style and aesthetics.