The American Film Musical in Italy

Abstract After the climax of the Golden Age of the American film musical at the beginning of the 1950s, Hollywood musicals quickly reached Italy and were screened and broadcast frequently over the years. Italian distributors were eager to exploit the success these productions had achieved in their country of origin, as the magical and utopian worlds evoked by these films were equally appealing to Italian audiences. Yet the genre was received rather unevenly in Italy. This article examines the factors that influenced this reception and attempts to establish whether the unsystematic and partial translation strategies employed played a role in this process. It first offers a brief overview of the genre’s evolution and of its unique and multifaceted ‘language’. It then analyzes the context of production and release of the Italian versions of fifteen popular American film musicals produced between the 1950s and late 1970s, before describing the translation strategies employed. Finally, some examples from macro- and micro-level translational decisions are presented.