The history of cinema, and notably that of postwar Italian cinema, can be adequately understood only in the context of other contiguous cultural disciplines. World literature, including that of France, Germany, and Russia, played a key role in the development of postwar Italian film and the cinematic technique it has come to embody. Moving away from the usual modes of defining this period--a trajectory that begins with neorealism and ends with Bertolucci--author Carlo Testa offers proof that coming to terms with literary texts is an essential step toward understanding the motion pictures they influenced.