Peter Bondanella (1943-2017)

Monday 29 May, 2017, one of the most prolific scholars about Italian Cinema, Professor Peter Bondanella passed away. He was a distinguished Professor Emeritus of Italian, Comparative Literature, and Film Studies at Indiana University. Having befriended a number of Italian directors, among whom he counted Federico Fellini, Bondanella distinguished himself for his ability to write about cinema in a clear and accessible prose. We met Peter and his wife Julia during a Fellini conference in Jeruzalem a few years ago and he then gave us his magnificent book A History of Italian Cinema. Peter loved the masterpieces of Fellini and Visconti, but he also saw the beauty of genres as the Peplum and the Giallo. In memory of Peter Bondanella 15 postcards of Italian films he described in his book.


Dutch postcard by Centrafilm, Dordrecht. Photo: Silvana Mangano in Riso amaro/Bitter Rice (Giuseppe de Santis, 1949). Collection: Geoffrey Donaldson Instituut.


French postcard by E.D.U.G., no. 55. Publicity still for Pane, amore e fantasia (Luigi Comencini, 1953) with Gina Lollobrigida.


Dutch postcard by Uitg. Takken, Utrecht, no. 3381. Photo: N.V. Standaardfilms. Publicity still for La strada (1954) with Giulietta Masina.


Dutch postcard by Takken, Utrecht, no. 1683. Photo: publicity still for Senso (Luchino Visconti, 1954) with Alida Valli.


East-German postcard by VEB Progress Film-Vertrieb, Berlin, no. 1356, 1961. Retail price: 0,20 DM. Photo: Progress. Publicity still for Poveri ma belli/Poor But Beautiful (Dino Risi, 1957) with Renato Salvatori, Marisa Allasio and Maurizio Arena.


East-German postcard by VEB Progress Film-Vertrieb, Berlin, 1967. retail price: 0,20 MDN. Photo: publicity still for Rocco e i suoi fratelli/Rocco and his brothers (Luchino Visconti, 1960) with Alain Delon.


German postcard by Kolibri/Friedrich W. Sander-Verlag, Minden/Westf., no. 2322. Photo: Gloria Film. Publicity still for Maciste contro il vampiro/Maciste Vs. the Vampire (Giacomo Gentilomo, 1961) with Gordon Scott.


Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin. Photo: publicity still for L'eclisse/The Eclypse (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1962) with Monica Vitti and Alain Delon.


East-German postcard by VEB Progress FilmVertrieb, Berlin, no. 2391, 1965. Photo: publicity still for Boccaccio '70 (Federico Fellini, 1962) with Anita Ekberg.


German postcard by Filmbilder-Vertrieb Ernst Freihoff, EssenParis, no. 5096. Photo: publicity still for Boccaccio '70 (Vittorio De Sica, 1962) with Sophia Loren.


French postcard by Edition La Malibran, Paris, no. MC 38, 1990. Photo: Claude Schwartz. Publicity still for Otto e Mezzo/8½ (Federico Fellini, 1963) with Marcello Mastroianni and Claudia Cardinale.


Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin. Photo: Publicity still of Franco Nero in Texas, Adios/Goodbye, Texas (Ferdinando Baldi, 1967). In Germany the film was presented as Django 2 or Django, der Rächer, though it was not a sequel to the box office hit Django (1966).


Italian postcard by Cineteca Bologna for the exhibition Un Altro West (2008). Photo: A. Novi. Sergio Leone and Claudia Cardinale at the set of C'era una volta il West/Once Upon a Time in the West (Sergio Leone, 1968).


German postcard by pwe Verlag, München (Munich). Photo: publicity still for La moglie del prete/The Priest's Wife (Dino Risi, 1970) with Marcello Mastroianni and Sophia Loren.


Italian postcard. Photo: Rai / Vides Cinematografica. Publicity still for Cristo si è fermato a Eboli/Christ stopped at Eboli (Francesco Rosi, 1979) with Gian Maria Volonté.

Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.