Italian

To the priest in a small Italian town, the Splendor cinema (now sold for redevelopment) is a ‘dark grotto of sin’; to owner Jordan (Mastroianni), it’s a shrine. But writer/director Scola is more concerned with the grey areas between such views: the patrons who desert cinema in droves when TV offers cheap, undemanding entertainment. Using flashback and clips, he conveys something of the medium’s superiority over the box, at the same time beautifully unravelling a tale of life-long devotion and hard graft from Jordan, his long-term lover/usherette (Vlady), and the projectionist (Troisi). Their temperamental relationships over two decades are conveyed with great affection by the accomplished cast; and the film is full of wonderful moments – such as the homage to Capra at the climax – which manage to be both magical and unsentimental.Read More »

Visconti’s retelling of the Electra story starts with Sandra/Electra (Cardinale) returning to her ancestral home in Italy – and reviving an intimate involvement with her brother (Sorel) which troubles her naive American husband (Craig) – on the eve of an official ceremony commemorating the death of her Jewish father in a Nazi concentration camp. As ever with Visconti, he is ambivalently drawn to the decadent society he is ostensibly criticising; and Armando Nannuzzi’s camera lovingly caresses the creaking old mansion, set in a landscape of crumbling ruins, where the incestuous siblings determine to wreak revenge on the mother (Bell) and stepfather (Ricci) who supposedly denounced their father. Something like a Verdi opera without the music, the result may not quite achieve tragedy, but it looks marvellous. The title, culled from a poem by Leopardi, has been better rendered as ‘Twinkling Stars of the Bear’.Read More »

Aboard a ship late in the 19th-century, a middle-aged Italian tells his story of love to a Russian. In a series of flashbacks filmed almost entirely in creams, whites, and ochers, the clownish and superfluous Romano Patroni leaves his wife’s opulent home to visit a spa where he falls in love with a Russian woman whose marriage is a horror. He pursues her into the Russian heartland and returns to Italy resolved to leave his wife and marry his love.Read More »

It is the story of a romantic relationship, between meetings and separations, passion and pain, illusions and disappointments, from 1982 to 2000, of which twelve moments (“twelve fragments of a discourse eighteen years long love discourse”), represented through as many planes sequence, introduced by short animated sequences, created by Studio Elle from Laura Federici’s drawings. The film closes with the poem A Memory by Umberto Saba.Read More »

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Set in Sicily in the 1930’s, Aurelio Grimaldi’s feature debut chronicles the harsh story of twelve-year-old boy, Aclà, sold into slavery by his destitute parents to work in the underground Floristella sulfur mines. Overworked and underfed, Aclà toils from Monday to Saturday in the steamy, candle-lit labyrinths. Repeatedly beaten and abused by his “owner” and with constant threats of being raped, Aclà plots his escape to the sea…but this leads to dire consequences for the boy and his family.Read More »

The movie is based on a true story. On 16 March 1978 Aldo Moro, the former Italian Prime Minister was kidnapped in Via Fani by the Brigate Rosse (Red Brigades), a militant Communist Italian group. He was the main supporter of the Compromesso Storico (Hystorical Compromise), which had to lead to the first Italian government supported by both the Christian Democrats and the Communists, in a period of social, economic and political crises. During the attack his five escort agents were all killed. Moro’s corpse was found on 9 May 1978 in a car parked in a street between the headquarters of the Christian Democrat Party and the Communist Party. This movie is inspired by this tragic event which traumatize the whole nation. Read More »

The Family traces events in the life of Carlo, from his christening in 1906 to his 80th birthday party. The film principally explores his relationships with younger brother Guilio, his wife Beatrice and her sister Adriana, whom Carlo loved as a young man.Read More »

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Cheese holder Kerr is in turmoil because of a serious decline on his sales. In order to get out of the crisis an electronic brain of the latest generation is acquired: gordon i. The new computer, equipped with free will, comes into conflict with the employees of the company.Read More »

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Threatened by old age and impotence, a count marries a girl loved by his son. When the count notices an affair between the two he reacts strongly.Read More »