Amelia and Pippo are reunited after several decades to perform their old music-hall act (imitating Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers) on a TV variety show. It’s both a touchingly nostalgic journey into the past, and a viciously satirical attack on television in general and Italian TV in particular, portraying it as a mindless freakshow aimed at morons.Read More »
Synopsis:
In this slow-starting but effective drama, comedian Alberto Sordi changes hats to play Silvio Magnozzi, a man so dedicated to his high moral standards that he loses out on most of the things he wants in life -including his wife. He watches while others march up the ladder of success way ahead of him, sometimes by hypocritically licking the boots of their superiors or doing just anything at all to attain advancement. After his death grip on his principles causes his wife to walk out, Silvio relents and starts to live like others. Now he is supposedly happily residing on Easy Street, his wife is back — and so what is bugging him?
~ Eleanor MannikkaRead More »
Camilla, a middle-aged Venetian widow, arrives in Rome to take up service as a maid with the Rossetti family, made up of Mario, a doctor, his wife Giovanna and their children Andrea and Cristina. The economic conditions of the Rossetti are not flourishing and this causes tensions and disagreements.Read More »
Quote:
Five men walk arm-in-arm through a sleepy Adriatic town, their lockstep a gentle echo of Italy’s Fascistic past. Such posses are quite common in Italy, where close male friendships, equal parts sensuality and ritual, are second only to the family in importance. I Vitelloni (the best sense of it is “the idlers”), Fellini’s third film, includes some of his most subtle filmmaking and most personal material. Loosely structured and oddly narrated, I Vitelloni is like a sketch for both La Dolce Vita and Amarcord. Paradoxically, I Vitelloni is also an insightful and accurate representation of Italy in the immediate postwar period, full of references to the massive social changes underway. Fifty years after its release, I Vitelloni can finally be seen as a seminal film in Italian cinema, one of the first to detail the effects of technology, celebrity, and mobility on Italian life.Read More »
This South American adventure drama finds Charles (Charles Aznavour), a youthful
Frenchman traveling to Paraguay to start a new life. Seeking out a rich uncle, the
idealistic nephew is rejected by his miserly relation, and he goes on to get involved with
a shady woman and a band of gun runners who supply arms for the revolution of the
week. Charles and his new girlfriend head for the border after a shootout with federal
troops, and a kindly railroad worker hides the couple in an abandoned copper mine.
Charles is later thrown in prison while the girl becomes a concubine, but her violator is
killed when Charles escapes to rescue her and exact revenge. A pretty harrowing
composition could be written by the young couple on “How I Spent My Summer
Vacation.” ~ Dan Pavlides, RoviRead More »