After the international firestorm of Last Tango in Paris, Bernardo Bertolucci went on to create one of the grandest and most legendary epics in modern cinema. A stunning five-hour saga following the intertwined fates of two childhood friends born on the same day in 1901 at opposite ends of the social scale through five decades of class struggle.Read More »
Alida Valli is one of the most famous and beloved actresses of the 20th-century, a true legend, and a national treasure. Mimmo Verdesca tells her the extraordinary life through the words of her letters and diaries, read by Giovanna Mezzogiorno, and exclusive testimonies of eminent protagonists of Italian and international cinema and theatre.
‘Alida’ is a gem for many reasons: and the director proves his ability as a storyteller. He takes you on a fascinating journey that allows you to get to know the artist and the woman as well. And the latter is a captivating discovery.Read More »
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Bernardo Bertolucci’s “The Dreamers” is set in Paris in the spring of 1968, a tumultuous time of sexual experimentation and political revolt. The people have taken to the streets, but for attractive, enigmatic twins Isabelle and Theo and their American friend Matthew, the riotous events that will define their lives transpire inside–in the bath tub and on the hard kitchen floor, in bed and beneath the altar of a black and white pin-up of Marilyn Monroe tacked on to Theo’s bedroom wall.
The story of three young cinephiles and sexual neophytes coming of age in Paris is captivating material. Based on the novel by Gilbert Adair, Bertolucci tells the story through the eyes of the outsider. Matthew (Michael Pitt), first meets the twins at the locked gates of the Cinematheque Français, where Isabelle (Eva Green) strikes the pose of a movie star while Bertolucci adds documentary footage of Jean-Pierre Léaud with a bull-horn and François Truffaut protesting the forced resignation of Henri Langois.Read More »
This story opens in 1938 in Rome, where Marcello has just taken a job working for Mussollini and is courting a beautiful young woman who will make him even more of a conformist. Marcello is going to Paris on his honeymoon and his bosses have an assignment for him there. Look up an old professor who fled Italy when the fascists came into power. At the border of Italy and France, where Marcello and his bride have to change trains, his bosses give him a gun with a silencer. In a flashback to 1917, we learn why sex and violence are linked in Marcello’s mind.Read More »
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An introverted teenager tells his parents he is going on a ski trip, but instead spends his time alone in a basement.Read More »
This story opens in 1938 in Rome, where Marcello has just taken a job working for Mussollini and is courting a beautiful young woman who will make him even more of a conformist. Marcello is going to Paris on his honeymoon and his bosses have an assignment for him there. Look up an old professor who fled Italy when the fascists came into power. At the border of Italy and France, where Marcello and his bride have to change trains, his bosses give him a gun with a silencer. In a flashback to 1917, we learn why sex and violence are linked in Marcello’s mind. (IMDb)Read 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 »
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Bernardo Bertolucci’s infamous Oedipal tale about a self-absorbed opera diva and the incestuous love she exhibits towards her deeply troubled teenage son was panned by critics upon its release, with Vincent Canby of the New York Times referring to it as “one of the most sublimely foolish movies ever made by a director of Mr. Bertolucci’s acknowledged talents”, and Roger Ebert unabashedly proclaiming that “Bertolucci has sprung his gourd this time.” Nowadays, Luna is considered an undiscovered masterpiece Read More »
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Bernardo Bertolucci’s vast historical melodrama used the massive popular, critical, and financial success of its predecessor, the scandalous LAST TANGO IN PARIS, to mount a production of epic scale. Cut down to four hours for its American release, the film utilizes an all-star Hollywood…
Bernardo Bertolucci’s vast historical melodrama used the massive popular, critical, and financial success of its predecessor, the scandalous LAST TANGO IN PARIS, to mount a production of epic scale. Cut down to four hours for its American release, the film utilizes an all-star Hollywood cast to tell its heavily Marxist tale of Italian peasants during the twentieth century. Two boys born on the same day are destined for divergent paths; Olmo (played by Gerard Depardeiu as an adult) is born to peasant parents and will become a passionate socialist, while Alfredo’s (Robert De Niro as an adult) bourgeois, landowning origins will lead him to ultimately embrace fascism. Driven by a sincere hope for and belief in political change, Bertolucci’s film is nonetheless made up of very humane individual stories; it concentrates on highly personal experiences of a politically-charged time, which color the little dramas of love, sex, family, and community. It is at once an epic poem and a political manifesto, and it is the product of a director who was unabashedly communist in his youth, contrasting markedly with later works like 2003’s THE DREAMERS.Read More »