Si gira...: the notebooks of an operator in the age of mechanical reproduction

Abstract

It is observed, in Luigi Pirandello’s novel Si gira..., the presence of evidences which document and question the irruption of cinema in the pantheon of the arts in the early twentieth century. By pointing similarities between Pirandello’s and Benjamin’s conceptions about the mechanical reproduction of art, the conservative point of view of Pirandello is outlined, and he laments the end of the traditional means of aesthetic production and reception.