NEW ITALIAN MIGRANT CINEMA BETWEEN CINEMATIC NOSTALGIA AND TRASH (BELLOCCHIO, MARRA, TORRE) DANIEL WINKLER “In Italia comandano i morti” In 2006, Marco Bellocchio (1939–) presented Il regista di matrimoni (The Wedding Director)—a self-reflective movie about film making in Italy. 1 The film narrates a key period in the life of the successful Roman director Franco Elica (Sergio Castellitto), who is about to prepare a new adaptation of Alessandro Manzoni’s novel I promessi sposi (1840/42). While casting for the heroine, Elica is faced with accusations of rape, the police intrude the offices of the production company, and he escapes to Sicily. On the north coast, in Cefalù, he meets the marriage chronicler (hence the film title) Enzo Baiocco (Bruno Cariello). Thanks to him, Elica makes the acquaintance of the Principe di Gravina (Sami Frey), whose daughter Bona (Donatella Finocchiaro) is about to marry, and he is hired to do the wedding movie. Il regista di matrimoni offers—via place, plot and genre—many intra- medial allusions to the “Golden Age” of Italian cinematographic history (Koebner/Schenk 2008). The place alone makes one think of a number of formative neorealistic Sicilian movies like Pietro Germi’s In nome della legge (In the Name of the Law, 1949), Roberto Rossellini’s Stromboli, terra di dio (Stromboli, 1950), or Luchino Visconti’s La terra trema: Epi- sodio del mare (La Terra Trema, 1948). However, Bellocchio’s movie offers a whole portfolio of allusions that extend even further: The place and wedding motif are reminiscent of Germi’s cult movie Divorzio all’ita- liana (Divorce Italian Style, 1961) and its protagonist, Baron Fernando Cefalù. Elica’s professional failure also pays its respect to Federico Fellini’s 8 ½ (1963) with its sexually obsessed director Guido. Moreover, the musical dramaturgy refers to Pietro Mascagni’s Sicilian-based opera Cavalleria rusticana (1890) after the tale by the same name by Giovanni Verga. Quite specifically, what unfolds is an analogy to Visconti’s film Il