Gino Cervi

  • Vittorio Cottafavi – Una Donna Libera AKA A Free Woman (1954)

    Vittorio Cottafavi1951-1960ClassicsDramaItaly
    Una Donna Libera (1954)
    Una Donna Libera (1954)

    Liana, a young architecture student from a wealthy family, is about to get married to an engineer. Everything in her life seems well until she is confronted with the idea she is sacrificing the rest of her life for a man she barely knows and a mediocre lifestyle. So begins a series of romantic encounters in which Liana tries to find her freedom and happiness, but which will ultimately lead her to a tragic fate.

    Selected as one of the “100 Italian Films To Be Saved”Read More »

  • Carmine Gallone – Don Camillo monsignore… ma non troppo AKA Don Camillo: Monsignor (1961)

    Carmine Gallone1961-1970ClassicsComedyFrance

    With both Don Camillo and his communist archenemy Peppone away in Rome, the little Italian village of Brescello is at last a haven of peace. But this happy state of affairs doesn’t last long… The news that the villagers plan to demolish an ancient chapel and build a House of the People in its place soon reaches the ears of Don Camillo, now comfortably ensconced in the Vatican. Appalled by this proposed act of desecration, the priest hurries back to his former village and is soon caught up in yet another blood-and-guts tussle with the troublesome Peppone.Read More »

  • Augusto Genina – Frou-Frou (1955)

    1951-1960Augusto GeninaComedyItalyRomance

    Four prominent men take under their wing a young Parisian flower girl.
    With the help of her Pygmalions she becomes a famous cabaret singer. She falls in love with a charming gambler, Henri, who becomes her first lover. Abandoned by him, and after years spent in Russia with Prince Vladimir, Frou-Frou returns to France, where she has to rebuild her own life by singing in second-order theaters.
    She then meets and has a relationship with a painter, Michel, by whom she has a daughter. After Michel’s suicide she devotes herself to her.Read More »

  • Alessandro Blasetti – Ettore Fieramosca (1938)

    1931-1940AdventureAlessandro BlasettiEpicItaly

    Freely excerpted from Wikipedia:
    In 1503, the French and the Spanish fight over the region surrounding the Sicilian castle of Morreale. Giovanna, the beautiful castellan, yearns to free herself from the foreign yoke and for this she wants to marry a brave knight. Graiano d’Asti deceives her by letting Ettore Fieramosca fight in his place and then bragging with Giovanna about the feat, thus managing to convince her to marry him.Read More »

  • Alessandro Blasetti – Amore e chiacchiere (Salviamo il panorama) (1958)

    1951-1960Alessandro BlasettiComedyItalyRomance

    PLOT:
    Maria and Paolo are in love, but they are very young, and most importantly Maria is the daughter of the municipal sweeper while Paolo is the son of lawyer Bonelli, deputy mayor and leader of the opposition.
    To complicate matters there is the reconstruction of a hospice destroyed during the war. The reconstruction would obstruct the panorama enjoyable from the villa of Paseroni, big industrialist and political wheeler-dealer.
    Bonelli, great speaker, becomes mayor for the death of his predecessor, and gets bribed by Paseroni, while refusing the love of Paolo and Maria for the social differences, and because Paolo should go after Paseroni’s daughter.
    At this point, Paolo and Maria flee to kill themselves, just as Bonelli is about to give a speech on the radio for the inauguration of the villa of Paseroni…Read More »

  • Luigi Zampa – Gli anni ruggenti AKA Roaring Years (1962)

    1961-1970ComedyCommedia all'ItalianaItalyLuigi ZampaPolitics

    Synopsis:
    In the thirties, during the Fascist Dictatorship, an insurance broker, Omero Battifiori, reaches a small country town from Rome seeking for new customers. The main authorities, expecting an incognito inspection from the Fascist Party of the capital, suspect him to be the inspector and a very important member of the Party. The misunderstanding leads to a number of equivocals until Omero reveals his identity.Read More »

  • Michelangelo Antonioni – La signora senza camelie AKA The Lady Without Camelias (1953)

    1951-1960ArthouseDramaItalyMichelangelo Antonioni

    The third feature film by cinema master Michelangelo Antonioni, La signora senza camelie [The Lady Without Camelias], expanded the expressive palette of contemporary Italian movies, demonstrating that a personal vision could take an explicitly poetic tack; that “seriousness = neo-realism” was perhaps already turning into something of a truism; and that Antonioni would answer to no-one but himself.Read More »

  • Julien Duvivier – Le Petit monde de Don Camillo aka The Little World of Don Camillo (1952)

    1951-1960ComedyFranceJulien DuvivierPolitics

    Plot summary :
    In a village of the Po valley where the earth is hard and life miserly, the priest and the communist mayor are always fighting to be the head of the community. If in secret, they admired and liked each other, politics still divided them as it is dividing the country. And when the mayor wants his “People’s House”; the priest wants his “Garden City” for the poor. Division exist between the richest and the poorest, the pious and the atheists and even between lovers. But if the people are hard as the country, they are good in the bottom of there heart.Read More »

  • Alessandro Blasetti – Aldebaran (1936)

    1931-1940Alessandro BlasettiDramaItalian Cinema under FascismItalyRomance

    Quote:
    Aldebaran is in some places erroneously reported as a “lost” film, but here it is! After
    a couple of projects had either been postponed or fallen through for Blasetti, it was
    suggested that he should make a film about the navy in peacetime. The result is this
    strange film, which at the outset plays like a propaganda piece for the might of the Italian
    navy, only to veer off into high melodrama, as it zeroes in on Commander Corrado Valeri
    (Gino Cervi), and his conflict between duty and the jealousy of his wife. There are comedic
    asides, a visit to a North African club, affording Blasetti to contribute the first scenes of
    nudity in Italian film, and there are moments of heroics, including a mission to rescue the
    doomed crew of a wrecked submarine. As if all of that was not more than enough, the film
    features a star studded cast including Evi Maltagliati, Gianfranco Giachetti, Doris Duranti,
    Elisa Cegani (in her debut), and even a brief cameo by Blasetti himself.Read More »

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