Francesco Rosi

Enrico Mattei had been a powerful and charismatic public figure in Italy in the immediate postwar era. Appointed to wind up the Italian Petroleum Agency, he had instead expanded it and used the new company, ENI, to both explore new sources of energy for Italy and to create a personal power base within the Italian political scene. Machiavellian and idealistic at the same time, Mattei openly used the company’s funds to bribe politicians of all persuasions to support its ventures. An energetic and astute entrepreneur, Mattei resented the big American companies’ control over oil prices and so initiated direct discussions with Russia and with a number of Arab countries in order to procure cheaper oil for Italy and, in the process, a better deal for the producing countries.Read More »

Primo Levi’s modern day odyssey from the concentration camp to his home in Italy. The Truce is a film about homecoming.

The horror and the suffering of the concentration camps has been well documented. What interested the director, Francesco Rosi, was to bring to the screen what Levi succeeded in doing so extraordinarily well in his book: recounting, through the tales of his remarkable adventures, the process of reawakening, of coming back to life, and of the re-acquisition of hope, through the experience of daily events, small and large, natural and joyous, the cumulative effect of which is to constantly affirm the superiority of love over death.Read More »

Quote:
In the sporting world, bullfighting remains the epitome of contradiction, where grace begets gore and patience rewards ego. Such unsettling dichotomies haunt Francesco Rosi’s The Moment of Truth, a dangerously alive film that jumps down from the stands and into the ring where Spanish toreros dance a prolonged tango with beasts whose one instinct is to gorge whatever body part they can. In an attempt to grasp a sense of immediacy from convention, Rosi leans heavily on a gripping hand-held aesthetic, seemingly pinning his fluid camera to the flamboyant garb of his strutting protagonists as they tempt fate on a daily basis. While much of The Moment of Truth can be surmised within a very generic sports-genre arc (rise and fall, temptation of riches), this is most definitely a film that lives and breathes in the details of experience, and it’s hard not to admire its unabashed dedication to controlled chaos and incompleteness despite the difficult subject matter.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 »

Synopsis
In 1950, 28-year-old outlaw Salvatore Giuliano is found gunned down in a Sicilian courtyard. Little is as it seems. The film moves back and forth between the late 1940s, when Giuliano and other reprobates were recruited by separatist politicians to do their fighting, and the days leading up to and following Giuliano’s death. After Sicily’s self-rule is declared, will the outlaws be pardoned as promised? And why does Giuliano order his gang to fire on a peaceful May Day rally? Police, Carabinieri, and Mafia have their uses for him. There’s a trial after his death: will the truth come out or does the code of silence help protect those in power? (IMDB)Read More »

Plot (minor spoilers):
The film starts with the murder of Investigating Judge Vargas in Palermo, amongst a climate of demonstrations, strikes and political tension between the Left and the Christian Democratic government. The subsequent investigation failing, the police assign to the case Inspector Rogas (Lino Ventura), who has firm faith in the integrity of the judiciary. While he is starting his investigation, two further judges are killed. All victims turn out to have worked together on several cases. After Rogas discovers evidence of corruption surrounding the three government officials, he is encouraged by superiors nonetheless to trail the “crazy lunatic” who is murdering the judges. Rogas seeks three men who had been wrongfully convicted by the murdered judges. He is joined by a journalist friend working for a far-left newspaper.Read More »

Synopsis
Edmund Kean is a popular and flamboyant British actor of the nineteenth century, addicted however to vices and in debt. He argues with the Prince of Wales, his companion in intemperance, the wife of the Danish ambassador, but eventually falls in love with Anna, a young but promising beginning actress.Read More »

On the Italian/Austrian front during World War I, a disastrous Italian attack upon the Austrian positions leads to a mutiny among the decimated Italian troops. (IMDb)Read More »

Based on Primo’s account of his liberation from Auschwitz and long journey home through a Europe caught between war and peace. The truce is not only an account of hardship and the rediscovering of humanity but of the relief, exuberance and comedy in a momentous journey after the most gruesome period of modern history.Read More »