Book Review: Maurizio Isabella: Southern Europe in the Age of Revolutions

Abstract

American entertainment machine, set it apart from the slow trickle of studies and books coming out on Portuguese Cinema in English. The data it presents, including the two appendices, can be of much use to other scholars who can draw on it in further studies. It reads well and its argument is consistent throughout. A few minor things might have made the book even more appealing. For one, it surprises that a book devoted to cinema, especially a cinema that can freely be considered as semi-peripheral, does not include any stills from the various films discussed. Indeed, photographs of the various elements of production would have been a great asset and could have easily contributed to draw more interest to Portuguese cinema as a whole and in relation to specific films. The photo of a filming crew that adorns the book’s cover is the lone exception that proverbially proves the rule. Another, the fact that although it does not ignore the power of ideology, it attempts a form of impartiality that can never prevail. Given the book’s detailed and complex attention to material conditions of production, one could have benefitted from a brief consideration of the events from a materialist perspective. All in all, however, a most welcome contribution to Portuguese studies and to Film studies.