Introduzione. Stelle di mezzo secolo: divismo e rappresentazione della sessualità nel cinema italiano (1948-1978)

The present issue of *Schermi*—developed within the framework of the PRIN research project *Comizi d’amore. Cinema and Sexuality in Italy (1948–1978)* and inaugurating a series of four thematic special issues—sets out to examine the relationship between film stardom and sexuality in Italy between 1948 and 1978. These conventional dates refer, respectively, to the establishment of the Republican political order under Christian Democratic hegemony and to the emergence in Italy of the first cinemas devoted to the screening of adult films. Italian star images were all affected by the broader sexualization of the media system, just as, from another perspective, actors’ private lives were shaped by the wider transformation of social and sexual mores in the country. In order to develop sufficiently robust overarching accounts, it is therefore necessary to investigate systematically, on the one hand, how the forms through which the Italian actor’s sexual body and sexuality were made visible changed over time and, on the other, how discourses surrounding stars and sexuality circulated through widely read popular magazines, in their interdependence with the cultural arena and the political and institutional context.