Mastroianni plays Major Andrea Rossi-Colombotti, an Italian officer on secondment to NATO, and the film follows his picaresque and increasingly desperate attempts to triumph over his idiosyncratic libido that renders him impotent with women unless his life is in danger. Adventures which lead him from Paris to the Swiss Alps, and along the length of Italy, from the cage of a lion tamer, to posing as doctor to verify the virginity, for which read seducing, of a Sicilian bride to be, with her family just the other side of the door, to climbing into ever higher bedroom windows, culminating in his being tried for the murder of the jealous husband of one of his potential conquests. Conquests who all gather in the court and who are played by a fabulous line-up of Italian actresses including Virna Lisi, Marisa Mell, Michèle Mercier, and Liana Orfei.Read More »
Commedia all’Italiana
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Mario Monicelli – Casanova 70 (1965)
1961-1970ComedyCommedia all'ItalianaItalyMario Monicelli -
Mauro Bolognini, Mario Monicelli, Antonio Pietrangeli, Luciano Salce – Le fate aka The Queens (1966)
Mauro Bolognini1961-1970Antonio PietrangeliComedyCommedia all'ItalianaItalyLuciano SalceMario MonicelliQuote:
The Four Queenly Virtues are Constancy, Fidelity, Chastity and Honor.Four unrelated short comedies by four different directors. “Queen Sabina”chronicles the sexual misadventures of a teenage girl on the road home. “Queen Armenia” centers on a self-serving opportunistic gypsy babysitter who uses her employer’s kids for her own gain. The third episode, “Queen Elena” centers on a husband who learns a lesson about the perils of infidelity after he succumbs to the wiles of the seductive wife next door. The last vignette, “Queen Marta” centers on a wealthy woman who, when drunk, uses her butler as an outlet for her lust.Read More »
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Nanni Loy – Made in Italy (1965)
1961-1970ComedyCommedia all'ItalianaItalyNanni LoyThe ’60s for Italian cinema were the decade of the film a episodi, with 3-4 segments that may almost reach the feature-film length and were directed by celebrated directors such as Fellini, Visconti, Pasolini, Monicelli.
Nanni Loy’s Made in Italy is composed instead by many microepisodes, which give him way to depict several facets of Italian society and, not unimportantly, to cast several stars: Manfredi, Sordi, Spaak, Chiari, Fabrizi, Magnani, Lisi, Koscina, P. de Filippo…Read More »
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Damiano Damiani – La rimpatriata AKA The Reunion (1963)
1961-1970ComedyCommedia all'ItalianaDamiano DamianiDramaItalyTwo members of a former group of friends find themselves after many years by chance through the streets of Milan; after a moment, memories of the past resurface.Read More »
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Luigi Comencini – L’ingorgo – Una storia impossibile AKA Traffic Jam (1979)
1971-1980ComedyCommedia all'ItalianaDramaItalyLuigi ComenciniSynopsis:
A tremendous congestion hits the Rome highway ring. The biggest traffic jam ever seen lasts more than 36 hours. At the beginning the people blocked in their cars react normally. But as more time passes, the more we witness personal dramas, hysteric reactions and other grotesque situations. All the episodes are linked as if in a single plot. Cars and their hosts are a microcosm of stories part of a larger universe: the congestion.Read More » -
Antonio Pietrangeli – Io la conoscevo bene AKA I Knew Her Well (1965)
1961-1970Antonio PietrangeliClassicsCommedia all'ItalianaDramaItalyQuote:
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 » -
Dino Risi – Il mattatore AKA Love and Larceny (1960)
1951-1960ClassicsComedyCommedia all'ItalianaDino RisiItalySynopsis:
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 » -
Mario Camerini – Crimen aka …And Suddenly It’s Murder! (1960)
1951-19601961-1970ComedyCommedia all'ItalianaCrimeHorrorItalyMario CameriniMysteryTerence FisherUnited KingdomFive people, all united by the fact of being on a train to Monte Carlo, will find themselves being involved in the murder of an elderly millionaire of Dutch origin, a regular guest of the glamorous Riviera location….Read More »
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Antonio Pietrangeli – La Parmigiana AKA The Girl from Parma [+Extras] (1963)
1961-1970Antonio PietrangeliComedyCommedia all'ItalianaDramaItalySynopsis
Forced to leave her village because of a scandalous love affair with a seminarian, Dora looks for work and refuge in Parma, where she becomes involved with a petty criminal. Another of Pietrangeli’s bitter comedies of deracination, reflecting the sudden urbanization of Italy during the industrial boom years of the 1950s and 1960s.Read More »