From comic-style photo novels to film: new cross-media connections between photo novels and cinema

Abstract

This article traces an unusual – and in a sense ‘reverse’ – trajectory of intermedial exchanges between cinema and the photoromance, highlighting the bidirectional nature of their relationship. Far from being a mere derivative of the cinematic medium, the photoromance emerges as a space where popular culture and auteur cinema intersect. Through the case studies of three prominent Italian filmmakers – Michelangelo Antonioni, Federico Fellini, and Cesare Zavattini – the article demonstrates how illustrated romance magazines, such as «Grand Hotel», «Sogno», and «Bolero Film», originally shaped by cinematic aesthetics and atmospheres, came to inspire certain auteur films in turn. Each of these directors recognized the fotoromanzo as a medium capable of capturing everyday desires and postwar social transformations. By reconsidering the fotoromanzo not as a mere appendix of cinematic paratexts but as a dialogic interlocutor, the article proposes a reassessment of its relationship with cinema as well as its cultural significance within the history of Italian visual storytelling.