Abstract
In the published screenplay of The Tiger and the Snow (2005), the two authors, Roberto Benigni and Vincenzo Cerami, call our attention to their film's literary background by indicating the dozens of Italian and world poets they have quoted or directly drawn upon. In so doing, they close a narrow technico-philological problem, and open up for discussion a space beyond it with much broader intellectual, cultural and political implications.
The article broaches a general assessment of such complex issues in the light that The Tiger and the Snow casts on them; then, focusing more closely on the litcrature-and-film question, debates just what kind of literature — specifically, what kind of poetry — seems to be most in favor with today's mainstream Italian intelligentsiia; and it closes by proposing some thoughts about the reasons why, despite embodying to perfection the prevalent literary canon just alluded to, The Tiger and the Snow has been received outside Italy with considerably less enthusiasm than the two author's previous Academy Award winner, Life is Beautiful.
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