Mario Monicelli

20 years after the monumental “I mostri” which was a great example of Italian sketch comedy, 3 of the greatest Italian directors ever (Risi, Monicelli, Scola), the best Italian writers ever (Age, Scarpelli), the best Italian actors ever (Tognazzi, Gassmann, Sordi) and one of the most beautiful woman in the world (Ornella Muti) participate to this great tribute. The last sketch (a funeral) is symbolic : the death of the Italian comedy, which made Italy the second country in the world for cinematographic productions during 50’s and 60’s.Read More »

A sanitary battalion of Italian Army is sent to Sorman oasis in Lybia during the Africa campaign in 1940. Soon an Italian missionary, living nearby, succeed to transform the occupation by Italian Army in a kind of humanitarian mission. In fact all the battalion is involved to help the local population. The war anyway goes on with no regards to human feelings. The “glorious” Fascist campaign is going to became a fast retreat.Read More »

Don Paolo, a young parson troubled by his love for Agnese, tries to make peace in a little village in Sardinia where two families are at war.

Don Paolo, Sardinian priest, returns home as a pastor in his native town, torn by hatred and revenge. He tries to restore peace and confidence in the law and deter Agnes, in love with him. He succeeds, but it’s hard.
In the film’s figurative and narrative scheme, in his vague westerns impression, fostered by the intense beauty of the landscape, the character of Nazzari, compared to the somewhat fuzzy others, has coherence and vitality.Read More »

An industrialist has his wife tailed because he secretly hopes she is betraying him so that he can ask for a divorce and marry the model he’s fallen in love with. This leads to a series of thefts, blackmail and a suicide as well.Read More »

Girl with a Pistol, directed in 1968 by Mario Monicelli and starring Monica Vitti, Stanley Baker and Carlo Giuffrè, is one of the most successful Italian comedies. Monica Vitti is Assunta, a Sicilian girl seduced and abandoned by Vincenzo (Carlo Giuffrè) who then escapes to London in order to avoid a shotgun wedding. Assunta’s only chance to restore her lost honour is to find and kill her seducer.Read More »

In turn-of-the-twentieth-century Turin, an accident in a textile factory incites workers to stage a walkout. But it’s not until they receive unexpected aid from a traveling professor (Marcello Mastroianni) that they find their voice, unite, and stand up for themselves. This historical drama by Mario Monicelli, brimming with humor and honesty, is a beautiful and moving ode to the power of the people, and features engaging, naturalistic performances; cinematography by the great Giuseppe Rotunno; and a multilayered, Oscar-nominated screenplay by Monicelli, Agenore Incrocci, and Furio Scarpelli.Read More »

Synopsis:
Tragicomedy telling of the trials and tribulations of a troupe of variety show artists.Read More »

Michael is the younger son of a middle-class family, a strong-willed and free-thinking fellow, who is off in some distant country fighting for a revolutionary cause. Everyone in the family writes to him, describing the events of their lives, as they drift into a kind of conventionality which would perhaps have horrified them earlier. Only Michael’s girlfriend Mara (Mariangela Melato), the mother of his child, retains her independence, even though it is through the help of Michael’s increasingly conventional friends and family that she survives. (allmovie)Read More »

PLOT:
This family drama by Monicelli features an impressive international cast: Liv Ullmann, Catherine Deneuve, Philippe Noiret, Stefania Sandrelli and Bernard Blier, and it won a series of prestigeous film awards upon its release. It is a less comedic film, than most of Monicelli’s oeuvre up to this point, although the folly of the Italian male is still a central theme, as it had been in so many of his films from the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s.
In this case, a group of several generations of women are pulled together, when an accident strikes the padre familias (Noiret) that they all in various ways are, or have been, involved with. Thus, the second half of the film focusses on this group of very different women, and how they manage to relate to each other and get along, when they are faced with a series of serious challenges.Read More »