Breaking Bread: The Filmic Foodscape of Postwar Italy

About the book:
Italy is celebrated around the world for its cuisine: simple, rustic, and tasteful. Likewise, Italy’s cinema is of continuously great acclaim. Yet, the history behind their food – and the ways it has been treated in media – is decidedly more complicated. In Breaking Bread: The Filmic Foodscape of Postwar Italy, the worlds of anthropology, economics, gender studies, history, biochemistry, and cultural and literary studies collide on one plate. Food and film are Niki Kiviat’s guiding pillars as she explores great transformations in Italy’s consumption in the decades following the Second World War: years in which austerity morphs into radical gluttony.
Historians argue that Italy’s eating habits changed relatively little in this period, but as these films posit, the transition from hunger to excess – and from starvation to supermarkets – is not only apparent but enormous. Through its analyses of mise en scène, employment of influential stars, and theories and retrospectives by key directors, Breaking Bread reveals both the progression and devolution of Italy’s filmic foodscape from 1954 to 1973. Across these two decades, the anxieties surrounding food begin as a light-hearted, comedic nostalgia, but later transition to fatalistic panic.

Ticket price includes admission to the Museum's current exhibitions, "Totò and his Naples: An exhibition celebrating the life of Italy’s most prolific comedic actors in celebration of the 2,500th Anniversary of the founding of the city of Naples, Italy", "Sicilian Theater in Little Italy: The Return of the Manteo Puppets" and "Goodnight, Maria: A Tribute to all the women who worked tirelessly in the garment industry to live the American dream".