Vespa, Lambretta e Geghegé. Beat e Mods all'italiana

Urlatori alla sbarra (Lucio Fulci, 1960) and La battaglia dei Mods (Franco Montemurro, 1966) are two examples of Italian musical films made during the 1960s, which show the increasing impact of the youth subcultures during the boom years. By analyzing these films, we can find a kind of evolution throughout the “musicarelli” genre. The main motifs focus on references addressed to rock and pop music, parties, and dance. Moreover, these films include many insights on the goods and products of the Italian economic miracle of the 1960s, such as the jukeboxes, the famous made-in-Italy scooters, the clothes, and fashion. The youth that acts as protagonist in these films was inspired by a contaminated Anglo-American culture; at the same time, the Italian answer to the strong influence of the US and UK music was a hybrid cultural entity that combined the stylish mods and yé-yé girls choreographies to the revolution of the new cultural habits of a transnational society.