"In Masters of Two Arts, Carlo Testa demonstrates that pairings of famous directors and writers are commonplace in modern Italian cinema. Surprisingly, the study of the interrelation between Italian cinema and European literature has been almost completely neglected in film scholarship. Testa addresses and attempts to correct this oversight with nine in-depth analyses of the connection between an Italian filmmaker and a distinguished modern European author.

Looking at combinations such as Pasolini and Sade, Rossellini and Stendhal, Fellini and Kafka, and Visconti and Mann, Testa uses theoretical as well as historical methods, showing how the respective text undergoes not 'adaptation' but full 'recreation' (as defined by Eizenshtein) in a different art form and, even more significantly, in a new cultural context."--BOOK JACKET.