Someone Writes About Cinema. The Reader's Columns on the Communist Magazines Vie Nuove, Il Calendario del Popolo and Rinascita from 1945 to 1960

Abstract

In 1953 Aldo D’Alfonso edited the volume Mille domande a Vie Nuove. Mille risposte a Vie Nuove, the first collection of letters published in the Communist magazine Vie Nuove concerning the column dedicated to the correspondence, that so called Corrispondenza con i lettori. Taking this seminal work as a starting point, I will focus on studying the correspondence within the Communist periodicals in the second post-war period. In order to achieve this purpose in a more extensive and complete way, I will also examine the letters published in two other periodicals of the same period – Rinascita and Il Calendario del Popolo – taking into account those letters specifically dedicated – in various ways – to cinema. In particular, I will analyze the topics of these letters dealing with the relationship between cinema and readers in non-film specific cultural magazines, with the aim to provide a picture of how people experienced and perceived cinema and, analyzing the geographical origin and the age of the letters writers, to trace out a profile of the readers.

Keywords

• Italian Communist Party
• readers
• magazines, Il Calendario del Popolo
• Rinascita
• Vie Nuove