Gian Maria Volontè

  • Vittorio Cottafavi – Il taglio del bosco AKA Woodcutting (1963)

    1961-1970DramaItalyTVVittorio Cottafavi

    Quote:
    Il taglio del bosco is a film for television of 1963 , directed by Vittorio Cottafavi , taken from eponymous book by Carlo Cassola .

    The film, produced by RAI, was broadcast on September 19, 1963 during the cycle of nine films entitled Tales of Italy today .

    The film sees the participation of Gian Maria Volonté as the only professional actor, while all the other characters are played by the inhabitants of Tirli , the village of the Grosseto hills where the film is shot and set.

    Gianni Rondolino defines the work “a phenomenological film that manages to introduce a disturbing moral dimension into the objectivity of the realistic vision”Read More »

  • Carlo Lizzani – L’amante di Gramigna AKA The Bandit (1969)

    1961-1970Carlo LizzaniDramaItaly

    Sinopsis

    Gramigna and his father are robbed of their field by Baron Nardò. The Baron let the field to Assunta and Gemma that is secretly beloved of Gramigna. Gemma succeeded to escape with Gramigna the day of her marriage with Ramarro. Love, violence, murder, revenge will follow all the protagonists till the desperate end of their existences.
    – Written by 1felcoRead More »

  • Elio Petri – Indagine su un cittadino al di sopra di ogni sospetto AKA AKA Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (1970)

    1961-1970ArthouseElio PetriItalyPolitics

    Quote:
    A paranoid police procedural, a perverse parable about the corrupting elements of power, and a candidate for the greatest predated Patriot Act movie ever, Elio Petri’s stunning thriller makes no attempt to hide the culprit behind the film’s grisly murder: It wants you to know that Gian Maria Volonté’s dapper killer is responsible for the beautiful corpse splayed out on those black silk bedsheets. The shocks here are (a) that the spaghetti-Western stalwart isn’t wearing a cowboy hat for once, and (b) that Volonté is not just the criminal, he’s also the homicide detective heading up the investigation. Deliberately hiding some clues while planting others in plain sight—bloody footprints, a strand of his tie purposefully inserted under her fingernails—the rising-up-the-precinct-ladder cop plays a game of cat-versus-other-dumber-cats, all while ordering copious wiretaps and amassing blackmail fodder against radical agitators. Is he toying with his fellow officers to demonstrate his sociopathic superiority? Or is he trying to take down a rotten system from the inside, debunking the notion that any citizen is above suspicion?Read More »

  • Elio Petri – Todo modo (1976)

    1971-1980ArthouseDramaElio PetriItaly

    Description
    Set at an indeterminate time in the near future, this routine, well-acted drama by Elio Petri tackles favorite Italian topics: religion and politics. A bit of macabre fantasy is added to the mix, but the end product remains somewhat muddled. Don Gaetano (Marcello Mastroianni) is a priest who is supervising a group of Christian Democrats on a religious retreat. The objective is to help these politicians purify their past wrongdoings, no matter how large or small, and live closer to God. The retreat takes place in a concrete bunker with plenty of small rooms for contemplation and icons set here and there to offer inspiration. Once the retreat begins, the politicos alarmingly begin to die off one by one. Don Gaetano wants them to get closer to God but did he mean that close?Read More »

  • Francesco Maselli – Il sospetto AKA The Suspect (1975)

    1971-1980DramaFrancesco MaselliItalyPolitics

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    Quote:
    Following his passionate involvement in the 1968 demonstrations (Maselli was one of the supporters of the protest at the 1969 Venice Biennial), he made two explicitly “political” films, Lettera aperta ad un giornale della sera (1970) and Il sospetto di Francesco Maselli (1975). In Lettera ad un giornale della sera, which prompted fierce discussion about the idea of “political commitment” amongst left-wing intellectuals, Maselli played one of the characters, thereby openly involving himself in the debate, together with Nanni Loy and other politically active colleagues and friends.
    For this film, Maselli used a style which in many ways was similar to certain paradigms of “cinema-verité”: the film was shot in 16 mm with heavy use of the zoom, the hand-held camera and out-of-sync sound.
    Maselli returned to a more relaxed cinematic language and a more concise structure with Il sospetto. Dubbed “one of the best political films of all time”, it was set in the year of the “turning-point” (1934), one of the most important moments in the evolution of the Communist party.
    Gian Maria Volonté gave a splendid performance in the role of Emilio, the protagonist, a militant Communist who has emigrated to France, embroiled in an affair so fraught that it turns into a thriller.Read More »

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