Italy

PLOT:
Starring in this bustling summer comedy are Vittorio Gassman (an army captain terrified of falling in love with Gigi, a cabaret transvestite who instead turns out to be a charming girl), Amedeo Nazzari (icon of masculine beauty of our cinema of the 40’s, which lends himself to the irony of this film going into the shoes of a fashion wearer a bit too over the years, trying to win back his girlfriend, and boss, making her jealous by bragging a relationship with a girl, Foschina, much younger than him), Philippe Leroy (nonchalant young Tuscan who teaches swimming to beautiful foreign girls and meanwhile “plays” at being a small entrepreneur in the field of advertising, causing instead lots of trouble and involving poor Luigi into them) and Sandra Milo (buxom and “generous” hot donuts vendor, who ends up taking care of an ill-fated Spanish cyclist, played by Vittorio Congia).Read More »

Through little-seen archive and his characteristically cinematic analysis, Mark Cousins narrates the ascent of fascism in Italy and its fall-out across 1930s Europe. Both essay film and historical document, Cousins contextualises history through the now, holding a mirror to a political landscape of a creeping far right and manipulated media.Read More »

The Son of Black Eagle (Italian: Il figlio di Aquila Nera) is a 1968 Italian historical adventure film directed by Guido Malatesta and starring Mimmo Palmara, Edwige Fenech and Franco Ressel. It was inspired by the historic success of Riccardo Freda’s Black Eagle and Revenge of Black Eagle.

Count Aleksej is a notorious seducer at the Czar court but also the son of local Caucasus hero Black Eagle. When the Russians invade his land Aleksej must decide where to stand while pursuing his passion for Natascia, who detests him.Read More »

Synopsis:
The awkward and often hilarious reunion between a divorced father and his precocious eight-year-old son is beautifully observed in Risi’s tender comedy.
Walter Chiari, a good-for-nothing who dreams of building an empire selling Encyclopedia Brittanicas, embellishes his life to impress his son (effortlessly played by child actor Roberto Cicciolini), only to discover that the boy, whom he hasn’t seen in years, harbors his own share of restless loneliness.Read More »

In this interesting Italian WW II comedy-drama, the residents of a remote Italian village find their lives forever changed when two American GIs break out of a German prison camp and hide out in their town. The fugitives are harbored by a local family. This divides the town into those wanting to protect them and those fearing German retribution. When a young German officer arrives to watch the town, tension mounts. One of the GIs is an African American and one night he gets terribly drunk and stumbles into the officer who is also rip-roaring drunk. The two end up continuing their bender together and no fighting erupts.Read More »

imdb wrote:
In the first nine years of his pontificate, Pope Francis made 37 trips visiting 53 countries, focusing on his most important issues: poverty, migration, the environment, solidarity and war. Intrigued by the fact that two of Francis’s trips – the first to the refugees landing in Lampedusa; the second in 2021 to the Middle East – so closely mirrored the itineraries of his films Fuocoammare (Fire At Sea, 2016) and Notturno (2020), Rosi follows the Pope’s Stations of the Cross. He sees what he sees, hears what he says and creates a dialogue between archival footage of Francis’ travels, images taken by Rosi himself, recent history and the state of the world today.Read More »

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 »

Ermanno Olmi’s PROFESSION OF ARMS adds significantly to the reputation of one of the most distinctive Italian filmmakers of the post-war period. Olmi established his career with a number of beautifully observed studies of ordinary people, culminating in his winning the prestigious Palme d’Or at Cannes for “‘L’albero degli zoccoli’ The Tree of Wooden Clogs” in 1978. His subsequent work focused on historical subjects, leading to this magnificent film, one of the best Italian productions in years.Read More »

Naples, 1959. Renato Caccioppoli, university professor in pure mathematics, is a disillusioned and tormented man who lives the last days of his life. Grandson of Bakunin on his mother’s side, interned in a psychiatric hospital for his anti-fascist acts, abandoned by his wife, and now become estranged from his own Communist Party comrades and his University collaborators, he lives his life with disenchanted detachment until his last act, suicide.Read More »