Italian

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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 »

Quote:
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 »

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 »

A psychoanalyst, who is a fervent supporter of the sexological theories by Wilhelm Reich, induces a group of seven couples to retire to a hotel in order to practise partner-swapping with no restraint. Something gets out of hand though and the experiment has no happy end. A boring erotic movie which is mainly interesting for the dramatic evolution of the plot, maybe due to Dario Argento’s contribution to the script. Laura Antonelli, in her full personal appeal, who is already “naked” enough, is worthy of a special mentionRead More »

Review:
The filmmaking team of Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel concoct fictional narratives around the real lives and professions of the nonactors with whom they work. This is an unusual formula but not an entirely novel one. While other examples of this method, or some variant of it, have yielded films that come off as condescending or creepily exploitative, Ms. Covi and Mr. Frimmel’s “Mister Universo” is a disarming and humane picture, an unexpected delight.Read More »

Synopsis
The Tavianis’ adaptation of Goethe’s novel may seem strangely restrained compared to their other fables, but it’s still a work of exquisite elegance and precision. Set in Tuscany during the Napoleonic era, it charts the forces of attraction and repulsion that shape the complex relationships between a happily married baron and his wife (Anglade, Huppert), the baron’s architect friend (Bentivoglio) and the wife’s goddaughter (Gillain). If the story itself (engrossing enough) never seems very much more than an unusually formal period romance, the immaculate performances and the Tavianis’ masterly control of colour, composition and music (a poignant but unexpectedly modernist score from Carlo Crivelli) make for absorbing viewing.Read More »

Synopsis:
Gerardo, an aspiring actor, trying unsuccessfully to cross over from comedy to tragedy, is involved, due to his ability to mimic dialects of Italy, in a scam concocted by Lallo against a rich cloth-merchant.Read More »