Lea Massari

  • Paolo Taviani & Vittorio Taviani – Allonsanfan (1974)

    1971-1980ArthouseDramaItalyPaolo TavianiVittorio Taviani
    Allonsanfan (1974)
    Allonsanfan (1974)

    After the fall of Napoleon, the Restoration begins. Fulvio (Marcello Mastroianni, La dolce vita), an aristocrat who has dedicated his life to the revolution has become disillusioned and his cowardice keeps him from joining his comrades. As he struggles to manage his evasion and lies he gets swept up in a suicidal uprising in Southern Italy. Stunningly photographed with lush period detail and featuring the Taviani brothers’ trademark magic realism and absurdist irony, Allonsanfàn has Mastroianni on top form as the reluctant insurgent and one of Ennio Morricone’s finest scores.Read More »

  • Michelangelo Antonioni – L’Avventura aka The Adventure (1960)

    1951-1960ArthouseDramaItalyMichelangelo Antonioni
    L'avventura (1960)
    L’avventura (1960)

    Quote:
    This ground-breaking film won a Special Jury Prize at the 1960 Cannes Film Festival and established its director, Michelangelo Antonioni, as a major international talent. The plot concerns a yachting trip by a small group of jaded socialites, including Sandro (Gabriele Ferzetti), an aging architect who sold out for easy money long ago, his mistress Anna (Lea Massari), and her friend Claudia (Monica Vitti), who doesn’t fit in with the wealthy jet-setters’ dissolute ethics. When Anna disappears during a tour of a volcanic island, Claudia initially blames Sandro’s emotionally barren behavior toward her. As they search the island, however, Claudia and Sandro grow closer and — when it is apparent that Anna is gone forever — become lovers. Unfortunately, Sandro cannot find anything decent inside himself and betrays Claudia with a local prostitute. Caught in the act, Sandro has a heartrending breakdown on a desolate beach, but Claudia silently forgives him. L’avventura caught many audiences who were expecting a mystery by surprise; as in La notte (1961), The Eclipse (1962), and Red Desert (1964), Antonioni is interested less in developing a logical story than in exploring states of feeling and breakdowns in human connection.Read More »

  • Dino Risi – Una Vita difficile AKA A Difficult Life (1961)

    1961-1970ComedyDino RisiDramaItaly

    Synopsis:
    In this slow-starting but effective drama, comedian Alberto Sordi changes hats to play Silvio Magnozzi, a man so dedicated to his high moral standards that he loses out on most of the things he wants in life -including his wife. He watches while others march up the ladder of success way ahead of him, sometimes by hypocritically licking the boots of their superiors or doing just anything at all to attain advancement. After his death grip on his principles causes his wife to walk out, Silvio relents and starts to live like others. Now he is supposedly happily residing on Easy Street, his wife is back — and so what is bugging him?
    ~ Eleanor MannikkaRead More »

  • Louis Malle – Le Souffle Au Coeur AKA Murmur of the Heart (1971)

    1971-1980ComedyDramaFranceLouis Malle

    As France is nearing the end of the first Indochina War, an open-minded teenage boy finds himself torn between a rebellious urge to discover love, and the ever-present, almost dominating affection of his beloved mother.Read More »

  • Mario Monicelli – Proibito (1954)

    1951-1960DramaItalyMario Monicelli

    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 »

  • Pierre Granier-Deferre – Le fils (1973)

    1971-1980DramaFrancePierre Granier-Deferre

    Synopsis:
    Ange leaves New York to fly to his native Corsica. His mother is dying and Ange, who was not present when his father died, wishes to be present at her death. In Corsica Ange finds his brother Baptiste who married Maria, the woman he loved. He finds out that his father was killed, but nobody wants to tell him the name of the killer. And finally he finds two killers expecting him.Read More »

  • Louis Malle – Le souffle au coeur AKA Murmur of the Heart (1971)

    1971-1980ArthouseDramaFranceLouis Malle

    Synopsis:
    Laurent Chevalier, a 14-year-old boy, saw his mother as the closest friend. The two of them went to a mountain resort. Clara Chevalier flirted with one of the hotel guests, her son met girls of the same age. However, on the holiday and Laurent, and his mother were left without companions …Read More »

  • Paolo Taviani & Vittorio Taviani – Allonsanfan (1973)

    1971-1980DramaItalyPaolo Taviani and Vittorio TavianiPolitics

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    Allonsanfàn
    Against the backdrop of the Bourbon Restoration, Lombard aristocrat Fulvio Imbriani, a former political extremist who once served under Napoleon, is finally released from an Austrian jail, after a lengthy sentence for his part in the secret Sublime Brotherhood. He strives to resume normal family life, but his Hungarian lover, Charlotte, together with his ex-comrades, succeeds in convincing him to take part in a revolutionary cause in the south. In fact, Fulvio considers the effort futile and fails to stop his sister Esther from reporting the conspirators. But the trap fails to catch the intended prey and, evading arrest, the comrades meet and bury Charlotte, who was killed in an exchange of fire with the gendarmerie.
    Read More »

  • Michelangelo Antonioni – L’Avventura (1960)

    Drama1951-1960ArthouseItalyMichelangelo Antonioni

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader wrote:

    The controversial, highly charged 1960 masterpiece that put Michelangelo Antonioni’s name on the international map. It’s a work that requires some patience–a 145-minute mystery that strategically elides any conventional denouement–but more than amply repays the effort. The ambiguous title adventure begins on a luxury pleasure cruise. The disconsolate girlfriend (Lea Massari) of a successful architect (Gabriele Ferzetti) mysteriously disappears on a remote volcanic island, and the architect and the woman’s best friend (Monica Vitti) set out across Italy looking for her, becoming involved with each other along the way. In the course of their epic travels, Antonioni paints a complex portrait of a crisis in contemporary values and relationships. His stunning compositions and choreographic mise en scene, punctuated by eerie silences and shots that linger expectantly over landscapes, made him a key Italian modernist director of the 50s and 60s, perhaps rivaled only by Rossellini. This haunting work–the first in a loose trilogy completed by La notte and Eclipse–shows him at the summit of his powers.Read More »

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