Commedia all’Italiana

Two 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 »

Synopsis:
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 »

Quote:
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 »

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 »

Five 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 »

Synopsis
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 »

This two hour film contains no less than twenty different vignettes. Traffic jams, a father passing on to his son the deceitful ways to survive everyday life, punch drunk ex-fighters, exploitation of a blind man are among the many stories. Vittorio Gassmann and Ugo Tognazzi lead the cast of actors in this film directed by Dino Risi.
from AllmovieRead More »

Synopsis:
In “The Scientific Cardplayer” (Lo scopone scientifico), Bette Davis played an eccentric millionaire, addicted to playing cards and winning from players who could not afford to gamble. Every year, she visits Rome with her secretary and ex-lover, George (Joseph Cotton), to play with Peppino (Alberto Sordi), the ragman, and Antonia (Silvana Mangano), a cleaning lady who lived in a slum near her villa with their five children.Read More »

This well-acted though conventional comedy-drama by director Luigi Comencini features comic Nino Manfredi in the title role of Giacinto, a father and husband who has been driven to steal in order to survive. His ineptitude lands him in jail where he meets up with slightly more hardened criminals, like Tagliabue (Mario Aldorf), a killer, and Il Sorcio (Raymond Bussieres), an experienced thief. Giacinto is anxious to escape and get back to his family but Tagliabue and the thief also want out as soon as possible. And even if Giacinto escapes, the challenges that wait for him on the other side of the bars may be more than he can handle.
~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie GuideRead More »