Italy

A group of folks is celebrating at the dinner table, with each man recounting a peculiar sexual experience he has had.Read More »

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Some effort was made by us folks in KG’s Little Italy to honor Mario Monicelli after his death at the end of November last year, but as usual we didn’t reach very far beyond the usual group of converts. Most of you may have read that Monicelli committed suicide at age 95 by jumping off the hospital where he had just been diagnosed with cancer. This ended a career stretching 60 years, of which Un eroe dei nostri tempi is an early gem.

Alberto Sordi, who would join forces with Monicelli in films like La grande guerra and Un borghese piccolo piccolo, shines in this comedy, which must have been decisive when it came to establishing his less-than-heroic movie persona.Read More »

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Two brothers are divided by matters of love and politics in this feature by a former actor and assistant director for Nanni Moretti.
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A bachelor attorney with a roving eye for beautiful women stets his sights on a 17-year-old student for his next amorous conquest. He meets with her parents, an economically troubled couple who soon give their consent for the couple to date. Using an engagement ring as an enticing lure to initiate sex, the lawyer gets more than he bargained for with the wily female who is wise far beyond her years. The tables are turned on the lawyer as she withholds her affections, feigns a pregnancy and ends up holding all the cards in the relationship with the older, “more experienced” attorney.Read More »

In 1951, two years after the “scandal” of the Fiamma che non si spegne, Cottafavi got the opportunity to work on a film with a small production company, Novissima Film. With little means, a number of technical and financial problems and working Sundays with the pieces of film given to him bit by bit, Cottafavi shot Una donna ha ucciso, a minor film that marked his comeback to directing. Followed by Traviata ’53 (1953), In amore si pecca in due (1953), Nel gorgo del peccato (1954) and Una donna libera (1954), Una donna ha ucciso was also the first of a pentalogy of melodramatic movies about the condition of women in contemporary society and the moral and social problems related to it. The film is based on a real crime story that took place immediately after the war. An Italian woman killed her English wartime lover for the sake of love. The story was reformulated by Cottafavi with the help of Siro Angeli and Giorgio Capitani. It was the producer who had the idea to make it a film; in fact, he had just gotten the rights to the autobiography of this woman who had been recently pardoned and released from jail. They planned to exploit the melodramatic and passionate elements of the story at a time when, for example, Raffaello Matarazzo’s films were enjoying enormous success. Gianni RondolinoRead More »

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The study of a youth on the edge of adulthood and his aunt, ten years older. Fabrizio is passionate, idealistic, influenced by Cesare, a teacher and Marxist, engaged to the lovely but bourgeois Clelia, and stung by the drowning of his mercurial friend Agostino, a possible suicide. Gina is herself a bundle of nervous energy, alternately sweet, seductive, poetic, distracted, and unhinged. They begin a love affair after Agostino’s funeral, then Gina confuses Fabrizio by sleeping with a stranger. Their visits to Cesare and then to Puck, one of Gina’s older friends, a landowner losing his land, dramatize contrasting images of Italy’s future. Their own futures are bleak.Read More »

Michele is a mathematics professor who just started a new job in a school with some peculiar teaching methods. After a woman in his neighborhood is murdered, Michele meets beautiful colleague Bianca, and a relationship begins between the two. Where is this relationship heading, and will Michele be able to help the police catch the murderer?Read More »

Jean-Marie Straub’s first film after the death of Danièlle Huillet is a love poem to her. Le Genou d’Artémide is based on Cesare Pavese’s “Dialogues of Leuco”, which had already been adapted by Straub et Huillet as Ces Rencontres Avec Eux (2006).Read More »

An early Garrone documentary in 3 episodes: “Silhouette”, “Euglen & Gertian” and “Self Service”.
In three plainly told segments, the bleak lives of Third World immigrants are examined as they try to establish themselves in their new home in Italy. In true neorealistic style, the stars themselves are immigrants reenacting real-life situations. The first segment examines the activities and circumstances of three Nigerian prostitutes; the second segment looks at the life of an Albanian boy laborer, and the third, of an Egyptian gas-station attendant.Read More »