Athos Magnani, a young researcher, returns to Tara, where his father was killed before his birth, at the request of Draifa. The father, also named Athos Magnani and looking exactly like the son, was killed by a fascist in 1936 — or so says Draifa (his mistress), the town statue, and everyone in town. As the son untangles the web of lies this story is constructed from, he finds himself ensnared in the same web.Read More »
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All Delia has ever wanted was to be a wife and mother. She lives in Rome in the late 1940s – a city divided between the positive thrust of liberation and the miseries of the war that has just ended – with her husband, Ivano, and their three children. Ivano may be a harsh master; his father even more…Read More »
In the wake of the ferocious repression by the Bourbon reign of the 1828 uprisings, three Southern Italian young people whose families are involved decide to join Giuseppe Mazzini’s Young Italy movement. In the course of four episodes, each corresponding to a little-known page from the history of Italian unification, the lives of Domenico, Angelo and Salvatore are tragically marked by their mission as conspirators and revolutionaries, leading to an existence suspended between moral rigour and murderous instinct, spirit of sacrifice and fear. (~europeanfilmawards.eu)Read More »
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An assistant director working in Iraq finds himself caught up in the attack on the Nassiriya army barracks.Read More »
Summer Night is Lina Wertmu ller s outrageous, and outrageously funny, response to her own Swept Away, updated with the politics and conspicuous consumption of the 1980s. Mariangela Melato (Swept Away) stars as Signora Bolk, a self-made tycoon interested in ecological preservation. She is fed up with the terrorists who poach Italy s rich beauty, and as part of a crazy retaliation scheme she hires a former CIA agent to abduct the number one violator, Giuseppe Beppe Catania (Michele Placido). Catania is taken to her villa on a private island where he insists that as a man, he cannot go without sex. She relents and hires two prostitutes to pleasure him. Blindfolded and chained, Beppe realizes that the third woman is none other than the woman who kidnapped him and agrees to pay the $100 million but only with a twist.Read More »
Based on the true story of the Canaro of Rome.
Marcello, a small and gentle dog groomer, finds himself involved in a dangerous relationship of subjugation with Simone, a former violent boxer who terrorizes the entire neighborhood. In an effort to reaffirm his dignity, Marcello will submit to an unexpected act of vengeance.Read More »
Inspired by Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud and Jean-Luc Godard Bernardo Bertolucci’s third feature is the schizophrenic parable of Jacob, a would-be revolutionary whose lonely existence is shattered by the appearance of his exact double at the moment he contemplates suicide. While his doppelganger urges Jacob towards a greater commitment to protest against the Vietnam War, the young teacher falls in love with the daughter of his academic predecessor, forging a romance that defies the revolutionary ideals of his alter-ego.Read More »
Originally released in 1942, Four Steps in the Clouds (Quattro Passi fra le Nuvole) was a major stepping stone in the starring career of Gino Cervi. The story begins as young unwed mother-to-be Maria (Adriana Benetti) desperately casts about for a means of avoiding disgrace. Making the acquaintance of good-natured Paolo Bianchi (Cervi), Maria persuades him to pose as her husband and meet her family.
Immediately ingratiating himself with Maria’s parents, Paolo plays his part so well that only a completely unforeseen disaster could spoil the charade. And when that disaster inevitably arrives, it is Paolo who comes to the rescue…Read More »
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The concluding part of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s “Trilogy Of Life”, following The Decameron and The Canterbury Tales, Arabian Nights corrects many of the mistakes found in the latter, noticeably its ramshackle, uneven approach, and returns to the charming territory of the former. Indeed, the film is as good as The Decameron, if not better, and is generally considered to be the trilogies crowning moment and one of Pasolini’s finest films (critic Tony Rayns recently included it amongst his choices for Sight and Sound’s 2002 Top Ten Critics’ Poll).Read More »