Italy

  • Pier Paolo Pasolini – Appunti per un’Orestiade africana aka Notes towards an African Orestes (1970)

    Documentary1961-1970ItalyPier Paolo Pasolini

    Quote:
    The director presents takes and scenes filmed on location in Africa for a film-that-never-was, a black Oresteia.Read More »

  • Dario Argento – 4 mosche di velluto grigio AKA Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1971)

    1971-1980Dario ArgentoGialloItalyThriller

    Roberto, a drummer in a rock band, keeps receiving weird phone calls and being followed by a mysterious man. One night he manages to catch up with his persecutor and tries to get him to talk but in the ensuing struggle he accidentally stabs him. He runs away, but he understands his troubles have just begun when the following day he receives an envelope with photos of him killing the man. Someone is killing all his friends and trying to frame him for the murders…Read More »

  • Luigi Cozzi – Blood on Méliès’ Moon (2016)

    2011-2020FantasyHorrorItalyLuigi Cozzi

    For his first narrative feature in 27 years, the legendary Luigi Cozzi (PAGANINI HORROR, THE BLACK CAT) wrote, directed and stars as himself in this insane supernatural sci-fi splatter mystery: When an obsessive fan’s visit triggers a brutal murder in Luigi’s Profondo Rosso store/museum, Cozzi’s phantasmagoric freakout will include vanished inventors, alternate dimensions, cursed books, lost films, bizarre pajamas and his own reputation as ‘the Italian Ed Wood’, with appearances by Lamberto Bava, Barbara Magnolfi (SUSPIRIA), screenwriter Antonio Tentori (CAT IN THE BRAIN), best-selling author Giulio Leoni and Dario Argento.Read More »

  • Silvio Soldini – Cosa voglio di più AKA Come Undone (2010)

    2011-2020DramaItalySilvio Soldini

    Quote:
    Like a slow-building avalanche of interior conflict, Silvio Soldini’s meticulously paced Come Undone collapses the façade of emotional connection by highlighting the small erosive moments of deception rather than grandiose melodramatic tirades. A casual glance, an innocent smile, a fleeting flirtation carry all the weight of a wrecking ball, pummeling expectations of happiness until there’s nothing left but romantic uncertainty. These subtle cues of torment organically mix into daily routines and rhythms, revealing the undercurrent of doubt plaguing each couple. Even more staggering, life’s traditionally important benchmarks (the birth of a child, a retirement party, and a promotion) are minimal afterthoughts to the narrative, while the seemingly arbitrary crossroads of everyday life are given an unmatched immediacy and impact. It’s this focus on the mundane elements that makes the film’s sudden sex scenes and the continuous betrayals so striking, and the downfall of each person’s inability to trust so believable.Read More »

  • Lucio Fulci – Quella villa accanto al cimitero AKA The House by the Cemetery [Blue Underground 4K] (1981)

    1981-1990Cannibal and Zombie moviesCultHorrorItalyLucio Fulci

    A young family moves from their cramped New York City apartment to a spacious new home in New England. But this is no ordinary house in the country: the previous owner was the deranged Dr. Freudstein, whose monstrous human experiments have left a legacy of bloody mayhem. Now, someone – or something – is alive in the basement, and home sweet home is about to become a horrific hell on earth.Read More »

  • Mauro Bolognini – Un bellissimo novembre AKA That Splendid November (1969)

    1961-1970DramaItalyMauro Bolognini

    Quote:
    The story is set in a manor farm on the slopes of Etna near Catania, at the beginning of November, during some days of vacation that are the occasion for a family of the Sicilian bourgeoisie to come together.
    Nino is a restless teenager of seventeen, who harbors an unbridled love passion for Cettina, the sister of his mother. The woman, who is married and mature, partly reciprocates the attention of his nephew Nino, but at the same time is interested in an associate of her husband, Sasà, young and handsome. The husband seems to push her toward the partner for the sake of convenience.Read More »

  • Alfonso Brescia – L’adolescente (1976)

    1971-1980Alfonso BresciaComedyEroticaItaly

    A Sicilian couple struggles with the wife’s refusal to consummate the marriage and the husband’s repeated schemes for infidelity.Read More »

  • Raffaello Matarazzo – Joe il rosso (1936)

    Comedy1931-1940ItalyRaffaello Matarazzo

    Quote:
    The action takes place on the French Riviera. Joe Mark, known as The Red, arrives in flight from the USA. He is an old gangster who improvises as a detective to find out who stole a precious painting by Murillo from a castle belonging to his relatives – a copy, actually – and brings to light a hotbed of hypocrisy, dishonesty, cheating under the arrogant good manners of the aristocratic family.
    Entrusted to the congeniality of the brilliant leading actor Falconi, it is a satirical comedy on the passion for foreign styles, American particularly, trendy at the time and opposed by the fascist regime, and in particular on gangsterism whose Italian-mafia component is sought to erase.
    MorandiniRead More »

  • Giovanni Pastrone – Il fuoco (la favilla – la vampa – la cenere) AKA The Fire (1916)

    1911-1920ArthouseGiovanni PastroneItalySilent

    Quote:
    A poor painter, never artistically recognized, meets on the riverside a wealthy young lady. They are both attracted to each other and she invites him to come over to her castle. There they begin an illegal affair (the woman is married to an old grand duke who is absent at that moment). Even when she warns him that their love will be as a big fire, that will be extinguished too quickly, the painter, blinded by passion, accepts. He paints a daring and somewhat manneristic portrait of the woman and sends it to town. At the moment when they read in the newspaper that due to the portrait the painter is finally recognized and praised, the duchess receives a message her husband is returning. Secretly she puts a sleeping powder in the painter’s wine. When he awakes, she is gone and has left him only the money for the painting, that she clearly has bought. Desperately he leaves the castle and wanders around, in search for his beloved. But when he finally encounters her, in company of her husband, she pretends not to know him.Read More »

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