The Non-Professional Actor in the Reception of Italian Cinema Abroad

Abstract

This article will examine the overlooked centrality of the non-professional actor in the circulation of Italian films outside the country. It analyses the importance of the legitimating label of neorealism in critical and festival discourse, and its relation to a weak Italian national star system, and to the Italian state system of film funding. It also places attention on the cultural representation of the non-professional who becomes a kind of “star attraction” on the festival circuit, an object of curiosity and a marker of authenticity for a cinephile audience, due to their “out-of-placeness” in the paracinematic activities of festival promotion. It argues that the non-professional actor is part of the branding of Italian cinema internationally, along with the figure of the auteur.