Abstract

The essay analyzes a wide selection of scripts and stories never filmed by Renato Castellani, preserved in the Archives of the Museum of Cinema of Turin and here thoroughly studied for the first time. In particular, the essay analyzes these materials in relation to three main issues of Castellani's directing career: the transition from screenwriter to director and his relationship with neorealism; the development, from the mid-forties onwards, of a popular and youthful universe which coincides with his major works; and the «crisis» of the sixties and the seventies, in parallel to the director's successful transition to television.