Italy

Plot: The freshly graduated psychiatrist David shall deliver an opinion about young Maddalena, who’s on trial for murdering a hunter. She claims she’s a witch and acted on behalf of the devil. The public health officer tells David, he’s got reason to believe her, that she’d been searching for a man who suits her needs for 300 years. Already after his first meeting with Maddalena, David begins to change: He ignores his beautiful young wife Cristina and loses himself in daydreams and hallucinations in which he participates in Inquisition questioning and erotic witches’ circles.Read More »

Quote:
Italian film’s early master of the historical spectacle, Enrico Guazzoni, was responsible for the second of (at least) three film adaptations of Nicholas Patrick Wiseman’s classic novel about Christianity’s rise in ancient Rome. Aside from the usual great production values of these silent epics, what surprises here is perhaps the rather graphic violence. And, the film is further notable for being Elena Sangro’s debut (when she was still going by the name Maria Antonietta Bartoli-Avveduti) in the title role no less.Read More »

“La Rabbia” employs documentary footage (from the 1950s) and accompanying commentary to attempt to answer the existential question, Why are our lives characterized by discontent, anguish, and fear? The film is in two completely separate parts, and the directors of these respective sections, left-wing Pier Paolo Pasolini and conservative Giovanni Guareschi, offer the viewer contrasting analyses of and prescriptions for modern society. Part I, by Pasolini, is a denunciation of the offenses of Western culture, particularly those against colonized Africa. It is at the same time a chronicle of the liberation and independence of the former African colonies, portraying these peoples as the new protagonists of the world stage, holding up Marxism as their “salvation,” and suggesting that their “innocent ferocity” will be the new religion of the era. Guareschi’s part, by contrast, constitutes a defense of Western civilization and a word of hope, couched in traditional Christian terms, for man’s…Read More »

Based loosely on fact, La Presidentress stars Silvana Pampanini as a sexy nightclub singer with loftier aspirations. Posing as the wife of a judge, the singer manages to bed a high-ranking government official (Carlo Dapporto). As a result, the nonplused judge (Luigi Pavese) is given all sorts of promotions and special perks. When he finds out about the girl’s subterfuge, his first reaction is stark, raw terror: Wait till his real wife (Ave Ninchi) discovers what’s going on! When the judge’s former mistress (Marilyn Buferd) joins the fray, the fur really begins to fly.Read More »

It was once said of Ingrid Bergman that she’d played Joan of Arc so often that she wouldn’t be satisfied until she was burned at the stake. Actually, nobody ever said that, but someone should have. Directed by Bergman’s then-husband Roberto Rossellini, Joan at the Stake is a nonmusical adaptation of the oratorio by Paul Claudel and Arthur Honegger. Essentially a glorified monologue, the film makes no bones about its theatricality. Bergman is impressive as always, far more so than the presentation. While not nearly as bad as its reputation suggests, Joan at the Stake was a box-office flop, principally because the torrid Bergman-Rossellini romance was old news by 1954.Read More »

Synopsis:
Cinecitta, the huge movie studio outside Rome, is 50 years old and Fellini is interviewed by a Japanese TV crew about the films he has made there over the years as he begins production on his latest film. A young actor portrays Fellini arriving at Cinecitta the first time by trolley to interview a star. Marcello Mastroianni dressed as Mandrake the Magician floats by a window and Fellini followed by TV crew takes him to Anita Ekberg’s villa where the Trevi fountain scene from Dolce vita, La (1960) is shown on a sheet that appears and disappears as if by magic.Read More »

AMG: Cristiano Bortone’s inspirational Italian-language drama Red Like the Sky recounts the incredible true story of the early life of blind sound editor Mirco Mencacci. The victim of a freak childhood accident in 1970 that robbed him permanently of his sight, Mencacci is shipped off to a Genoan boarding school for Catholic boys, per the stipulations of the Italian government. Not one to be daunted or repressed, Mirco forges a heartwarming friendship with the daughter of the school gatekeeper; the two abscond together, via her bicycle, on a series of secret trips to the closest cinema. Meanwhile, at the school, Mirco also begins recording his own sound dramas with the school’s tape recorder and the use of audio books in the institution’s library. In time, the innovative young man invites other students to participate, who eagerly accept, and Mirco uses the activity to help each fellow student identify his own innate gifts and pursue his dreams. But when he leads a cadre of boys on a covert expedition to the cinema, the school administrators take swift and decisive action.Read More »

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In the province of Salerno in Campania, a village is attracting more and more pilgrims, sometimes several hundred a day. Arriving by bus, car and even on foot, they pray to Saint Antony to protect them from demons and disasters. They do this through the intermediary of a certain Giuseppina who embodies the dead soul of young Alberto, the grandson of the former seminarian who died accidentally some ten years earlier. Extraordinary behaviour (hysterical screaming, frenzied possession), discreetly tolerated by the Catholic authorities – better a lost sheep than a Communist unbeliever – occurs under a deluge of religious injunctions…Read More »

Italy today. Two young brothers, Cosimo and Elia, fanciful construction workers, travel from Rome to a remote town on the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines to renovate the Villa of the area’s only wealthy man, popular singer Fausto Mieli. The conflict that arises upon the “foreigners’” arrival will have terrible and unexpected consequences on all the inhabitants of the town
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