I generi della Titanus: modi di produzione, attrazioni e passioni nella commedia e nel melodramma (1949-1963).

Titanus is the longest-living production company in the Italian cinematic panorama. Its more interesting phase dates back to the early 1950s, when Goffredo Lombardo replaced his father Gustavo at the helm of the company. Then Titanus, which was the biggest Italian studio both in terms of industrial facilities and in regard to the width of its film distribution circuit, managed to construct a solid company identity especially through genre films such as melodramas and film comedies, until in 1964 a financial crisis forced it to shut down its productive branch. The aim of my thesis is to outline the company’s profile, by the means of the modes of production theories and of the film genre theories which emerged in the United States in the late 1990s. This theoretical framework was modeled after the Hollywood context, yet I maintain it is suitable also to describe a great Italian company such as Titanus, which in turn was in many ways looking to emulate the American studios model. Moreover, in order to perform my research, I examined the Fondo Titanus preserved in the film archive Cineteca del Comune di Bologna, and also the original production plans of some of the Titanus movies, which are preserved in the Archivio Centrale dello Stato in Rome. After having examined the company profile and its means of production in the first part of the thesis, in the second and in the third one – devoted respectively to the Titanus melodrama and film comedy – I closely analyzed about thirty out of the 120 films produced by Titanus, focusing mostly on the use of what Tom Gunning calls the “cinematic attractions” and the movies pathemic devices, which I examined referring to the greimasian semiotics of passions. I was therefore able to outline the Titanus productive strategies, and also to study how it modeled its company identity through its staple genres.