This is the third part of the “Critical Made in Italy” series, designed by the Inserra Chair in Italian and Italian American Studies in 2016 and inspired by a collection of essays edited by Daniele Balicco – Made in Italy and Culture.

This episode looks at what can be considered the quintessential Made in Italy product: the Italian language. The specific lens adopted is cinema given the fundamental role it plays in the diffusion of the Italian language abroad, or rather the Italian languages since Italian cinema agilely records regional dialects, foreign language interferences, as well as parlances used in specific job sectors or social circles. Most interestingly, the Italian language circulates on international screens through the voices of Italian actors thanks to the practice of subtitling, which ensures that dialogues are conveyed in their original forms in terms of pronunciation and inflection, while being enriched by the body language of the actors. A non-Italian-speaking audience is thus exposed to the complexity of the Italian linguistic palette through a medium that in mirroring the country’s contemporary reality literally functions as a “sounding board” for the Italian language in ways that are more incisive than, for instance, opera whose Italian is less linked to today’s Italian, or theater which can be brought to foreign audiences much less frequently.

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