Italy

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A massive natural disaster nearly destroys a city in Italy, while corruption and political double-dealing may well finish the job in this documentary from filmmaker Sabina Guzzanti. In April 2009, the city of L’Aquila in Central Italy was hit by an earthquake measuring 6.3 on the MMS scale; over three hundred people lost their lives, nearly 1,500 were injured and approximately 65,000 lost their homes, while many of the city’s most historic buildings and artwork were turned to rubble in the disaster. Swift and decisive action was needed from the Italian government, and Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, hoping to win back the good will of the people following a number of embarrassing scandals, used the L’Aquila earthquake as an opportunity to burnish his reputation. Read More »

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Following the gorgeous, seemingly liberated Adriana (Divorce Italian Style’s Stefania Sandrelli) as she chases her dreams in the Rome of La dolce vita, I Knew Her Well is at once a delightful immersion in the popular music and style of Italy in the sixties and a biting critique of its sexual politics and the culture of celebrity. Over a series of intimate episodes, just about every one featuring a different man, a new hairstyle, and an outfit to match, the unsung Italian master Antonio Pietrangeli, working from a script he cowrote with Ettore Scola, composes a deft, seriocomic character study that never strays from its complicated central figure. I Knew Her Well is a thrilling rediscovery, by turns funny, tragic, and altogether jaw-dropping.Read More »

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Made immediately following the end of the war, Blasetti’s Un giorno nella vita follows
the trend of many other Italian films from this moment in history, and investigates the
situation of Italian people locked in mortal conflicts on native soil. In this case, the setting is
a secluded Convent of Nuns, the inhabitants of which appear to have lived through the war
years relatively oblivious and unaffected by the events of the outside world. However, the
peace of the Convent is upset, when a group of Italian partisans led by Amedeo Nazzari
takes shelter on the grounds of the convent. The Germans are in close pursuit, and one of
the partisans is in dire need of medical attention. Elisa Cegani and Mariella Lotti are
featured in the cast of nuns, who decide to aid the wounded partisan, and slowly also come
to sympathize with the battle weary men.Read More »

“Only for those abnormal” (an IMDB review by RodrigAndrisani)

The music for this film is composed by the greatest composer of film music of all time, Ennio Morricone. But it’s almost nonexistent and as little as it is, it’s not great. Deliberately maybe, because the subject itself, with capital M, is Madness, The Madness of Humanity. Place of the action: the crazy world we live in, a world where those who do not kill, do not use drugs, etc., are abnormal. Here’s what the director Elio Petri himself says, in his book “The adventurous history of Italian cinema”: “It’s a film about the société du spectacle. In the society of the spectacle it’s not the spectacle of life, there is only the show that gives you the impression that you live, while you don’t live from long time ago.Read More »

From awarded director Franco Zefirelli has been brought to screen this wonderful depiction of the greatest story ever to be told: the life of Jesus Of Nazareth, God became man. The One who came to earth to feed our faith; from the annunciation of archangel Gabriel to holy Mary, until the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, this narration reminds us of the greatness of a men who changed the world and granted light to mankind, light that presently lights up all of its pathways.Read More »

An English soldier returns home from the Zulu war with the daughter of a tribal king as his slave (a gift that he was given for “saving” the kings life). While he was away, his wife had been having an affair with the female housekeeper. Not at all pleased with being a slave, the Ebony princess notices the mistress of the house engaging in a quick bit of foreplay with the housekeeper and plots her revenge starting with the seduction of the mistress. Jealousy spreads like wildfire and before you know it, she has turned the household into a lustful frenzy of sex and hatred.Read More »

20 years after the monumental “I mostri” which was a great example of Italian sketch comedy, 3 of the greatest Italian directors ever (Risi, Monicelli, Scola), the best Italian writers ever (Age, Scarpelli), the best Italian actors ever (Tognazzi, Gassmann, Sordi) and one of the most beautiful woman in the world (Ornella Muti) participate to this great tribute. The last sketch (a funeral) is symbolic : the death of the Italian comedy, which made Italy the second country in the world for cinematographic productions during 50’s and 60’s.Read More »

An elegy of exile and an epic immersion in the world of rural Italy during the regime of Benito Mussolini, Francesco Rosi’s sublime adaptation of the memoirs of the painter, physician, and political activist Carlo Levi brings a monument of twentieth-century autobiography to the screen with quiet grace and solemn beauty. Banished to a desolate southern town for his anti-Fascist views, Levi (Gian Maria Volontè) discovers an Italy he never knew existed, a place where ancient folkways and superstitions still hold sway, and that gradually transforms his understanding of both himself and his country. Presented for the first time on home video in its original full-length, four-part version, Christ Stopped at Eboli ruminates profoundly on the political and philosophical rifts within Italian society—between North and South, tradition and modernity, Fascism and freedom—and the essential humanity that transcends all.Read More »

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Just like the Russian poet of the film 1983 ‘Nosthalgia’, who, accompanied by his Italian guide and translator, traveled through Italy researching the life of an 18th century Russian composer, Andrey Tarkovskiy, accompanied by his Italian scriptwriter, Tonino Guerra, travels through Italy in order to find the locations for their common filmed effort. During this journey, Guerra constantly induces Tarkovskyi to reflect on his work and on his past as a filmmaker and a poet. The result will be ‘Nostalghia’, a masterpieceRead More »