‘I Grandi Magazzini’: a film screening at CIMA
February 28, 2023, 6:00 PM
General admission: $15. Members and Students: Free
In conjunction with CIMA’s current exhibition From Depero to Rotella: Italian commercial posters between advertising and art, we are hosting an in-person screening of Italian director Mario Camerini’s 1939 film I Grandi Magazzini.
Victoria de Grazia, Moore Collegiate Professor Emerita of History at Columbia University, will introduce the screening.
A light sentimental comedy, typical of the Italian cinema of the 1930s and 1940s, the plot revolves around a lavish department store, depicting an environment in which consumption starts to pervade the Italian lifestyle.
Synopsis (via Wikipedia): Some thefts take place in the Department Stores. The personnel manager, who has his eyes on a salesgirl, accuses her and blackmails her. However, the girl, engaged to a chauffeur, is innocent. Who is behind the thefts?
In Italian with English subtitles. (1hr 25min).
Victoria de Grazia, Moore Collegiate Professor Emerita of History at Columbia University, was educated at Smith College, University of Florence, and Columbia University where she received her Ph.D. in history with distinction in 1976. Before joining the Columbia faculty in 1994, she taught at Rutgers University. Her research interests lie in contemporary history, with longstanding commitments to studying western Europe and Italy from a gendered perspective and to developing a global perspective on commercial revolutions. Her publications include: Irresistible Empire: America’s Advance Through Twentieth Century Europe (2005); The Sex of Things: Gender and Consumption in Historical Perspective (ed., 1996); How Fascism Ruled Women: Italy, 1922-1945 (1992); The Culture of Consent: Mass Organization of Leisure in Fascist Italy (1981). She is currently writing a book about intimacy and power in Fascist Italy.
