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This book examines the figure of the “mother-diva” as a central yet understudied configuration in Italian cinema and media culture. Challenging the traditional opposition between stardom and maternity, it argues that motherhood is not a marginal interruption in the diva’s trajectory, but a constitutive dimension of her screen persona, cultural authority, and public legacy.
Through close textual analysis, archival research, and engagement with both Italian and Anglophone scholarship, the study traces how actresses such as Sophia Loren, Anna Magnani, Claudia Cardinale and other iconic figures negotiated the tensions between erotic capital, national identity, celebrity culture, and maternal symbolism across postwar Italian modernity. In doing so, the book reveals how the maternal body became a site of ideological projection: associated simultaneously with authenticity, sacrifice, moral authority, desire, excess, and unruliness.
Placing film texts in dialogue with publicity materials, magazines, and popular discourse, Maria Elena D’Amelio reconstructs the industrial and cultural mechanisms that shaped these star images while situating them within broader debates surrounding gender, celebrity, media culture, and national identity. The concept of the “mother-diva” emerges not only as a distinctive contribution to Italian cinema studies, but also as a powerful framework for understanding the intersections of femininity, stardom, and cultural modernity more broadly.
Combining rigorous scholarship with an engaging and accessible style, the book offers an original contribution to film studies, star studies, feminist media scholarship, and celebrity culture, while opening new perspectives on the relationship between motherhood, performance, and public identity in twentieth-century media culture.
Maria Elena D’Amelio is an Associate Professor of Film, Photography, Radio, Television, and Digital Media in the Department of Humanities at the University of the Republic of San Marino. Her main research interests include film and media history from a cultural studies perspective, stardom studies, gender studies and feminist media theory, television seriality, digital media, and European policies in higher education and gender equality. She is Delegate of the Rector for International Relations and President of the University Committee on Inclusion and Gender Equality.
Introduction: Mother Divas and Motherhood Taboos
Chapter One: Stardom, Sexuality, and Motherhood: The Production and Intersection of Meaning
Introduction
The Modern Mother
Women’s Rights Movements and Maternalism
From the Post-War Period to the 1960s: The Journey from ‘Mammismo’ to the Rise of Feminism
Conclusion: Stardom, Scandal, and Motherhood Taboos
Chapter Two: Anna Magnani, the ‘Hysterical Mother’
Introduction
The Magnani-Alessandrini Ruling
Hysteria and Acting
Anna Magnani, From Neorealism to Melodrama
Anna Magnani: Performing Hysteria
Conclusion
Chapter Three: Scandalous Mothers: The Cases of Ingrid Bergman and Sophia Loren
Introduction
Ingrid Bergman: A Transnational Scandal
Ingrid Bergman and Scandalous Motherhood
Sophia Loren: From International Stardom to Bigamy Allegations
Conclusion
Chapter Four: Claudia Cardinale and Stefania Sandrelli, the ‘Mothers Without Husbands’
Modern, Single Mothers
The Debate on Single Motherhood and Adultery
New Bodies, New Divas
The Fading Perception of Marriage as the Ultimate ‘Happy Ending’
Claudia Cardinale
Stefania Sandrelli
Conclusion
Conclusion: New Diva Mothers and Performative Motherhood
Bibliography