“Ma ti ricordi come ci scrivevamo a lungo, da costa a costa?”. Il cinema nelle lettere private di Lorenzo Pellizzari e Guido Fink tra anni Sessanta e Settanta

This essay is aimed at providing a first overview and analysis of Lorenzo Pellizzari’s network and personal relationships, unravelling several elements within Italian film criticism that have remained untapped thus far. Amongst the hundreds of private letters preserved by Pellizzari and which span across fifty years of activity, valuable details about the critic’s activity and his social networks emerge. In particular, the essay focuses on the correspondence between the Milanese critic and Guido Fink, which is particularly intense between the 1960s and 1970s. An intimate epistolary relationship was born and consolidated between the two critics. The study of this mail exchange allows to gain insights into the personal and professional spheres of the two critics, including their friendship, their work in film journals (e.g. Cinema Nuovo and Cinema & Cinema), and their evaluations of films recently released in U.S. and Italian theaters. Indeed, these are years in which Fink collaborates with several Italian journals, and also works as a lecturer at Princeton University and University of California – Los Angeles (UCLA). The essay analyses 1) the private correspondence preserved by Pellizzari and Fink; 2) film criticism in the Pellizzari-Fink correspondence; and 3) film evaluations. Through that, in addition to reconstructing a part of the history of Italian film criticism, the essay will unearth a form of “by letter” criticism that exists at the margin of journals’ editorial policies and is of critical relevance to film historiography.