Tag Archives: italian

Le stagioni del nostro amore / Seasons of Our Love (1965) Florestano Vancini, Enrico Maria Salerno, Anouk Aimée, Jacqueline Sassard, Drama

Le stagioni del nostro amore (1965)
Vittorio (Enrico M. Salerno) is a 40-year-old journalist who reaches a mid-life crisis. His wife nags him constantly for ignoring her and their child. After his mistress dumps him, Vittorio returns to the town where he spent his childhood to reflect on the state of his life. Flashbacks are used to tell of Vittorio’s relationship with his parents as a child and the effects World War II had on his development.
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La macchina ammazzacattivi / The Machine That Kills Bad People (1952) Roberto Rossellini, Gennaro Pisano, Marilyn Buferd, William Tubbs, Comedy, Fantasy

La macchina ammazzacattivi AKA The Machine That Kills Bad People (1952)
A demon bestows on a self-righteous working photographer’s camera the power to smite from the Earth “evil-doers”. Naturally, the indignant photographer turns his new weapon on, one by one, his entire village, beginning with the wealthy or illustrious. Soon, the poor he is so supposedly so enamored of become his victims too, so rife with impatience and contempt is he, that the slightest flaw is cause for smiting. Inevitably, he embarks on a task to destroy everyone.
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L’Uomo, l’Orgoglio, la Vendetta / L’Homme, l’Orgueil et la Vengeance (1968) Luigi Bazzoni, Franco Nero, Tina Aumont, Klaus Kinski, Action, Drama, Romance

L'Uomo, l'Orgoglio, la Vendetta
The film tells the story of a Spanish soldier, who falls in love with a gypsy only to end up deserting the army and being chased into the border lands, where he joins the gypsy smugglers to rob money for a journey to America. But it turns out his love has a husband and is only using him again and again….
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L’Ora di Religione / Le Sourire de ma Mère (2002) Marco Bellocchio, Sergio Castellitto, Jacqueline Lustig, Chiara Conti, Drama

L'Ora di Religione 2002
Marco Bellocchio’s My Mother’s Smile was deemed blasphemous by the Roman Catholic Church for what the Church referred to as Bellocchio’s “systematic destruction of family and religious values.” Contrary to the Church’s presumptions about Bellocchio, My Mother’s Smile is a fascinating portrait of a man (Sergio Castellitto as Ernesto) who is forced to reconcile with his own atheism after receiving a shocking appeal from the Church requesting his participation in the canonization of his “saintly” mother.
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Scipione detto anche l’africano / Scipio the African (1971) Luigi Magni, Marcello Mastroianni, Silvana Mangano, Vittorio Gassman, Comedy, History

Scipione detto anche l'africano aka Scipio the African (1971)
During the Second Punic War, the commander Scipio Africanus (Marcello Mastroianni) is in a crisis because the Roman army can not defeat the many Carthaginian legions of Hannibal Barca. Teaming with his brother Scipio Asiaticus (Ruggero Mastroianni), Africanus manages to destroy the troops of Hannibal at Zama and to win the war. When he returns triumphant to Rome, he realizes that he has been manipulated like a puppet by the consul Marcus Porcius Cato, called “the Censor” (Vittorio Gassman). Scipio, disgusted by the poor Roman politics, withdraws from his rank of general, while Cato plans to destroy with a third war the cursed city of Carthage.
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All Ladies Do It / Così fan tutte (1992) Tinto Brass, Claudia Koll, Paolo Lanza, Franco Branciaroli, Comedy, Drama, Erotic

All Ladies Do It (1992)
Diana is happily married to Paolo but due to her wild passion for sex, she regularly winds up in short lived erotic adventures, which she doesn’t keep hidden from Paolo. On the contrary: by telling him, their sexual relationship is fueled with fresh impulses. When Diana experiences a stormy affair with the poet Alphonse, Paolo gets jealous after all and rejects Diana, who then goes head first in to a wild orgy of sexual excess with her sister and some friends.
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Mamma mia, che impressione! (1951) Roberto Savarese, Alberto Sordi, Giovanna Pala, Carlo Giustini, Comedy

Mamma mia, che impressione! (1951)
Timido, goffo e petulante, Alberto cerca in ogni modo di fare colpo su Margherita. Con la speranza di vincere il primo premio, partecipa a una corsa. Da un soggetto di Sordi sceneggiato dall’attore con Cesare Zavattini e Vittorio De Sica (che si dice abbia diretto gran parte del film), un filmetto un po’ melenso ma interessante come specchio della Roma postbellica. Nel suo primo film da protagonista Sordi ha voluto portare sullo schermo i temi, i modi e l’umorismo di un suo popolare programma radiofonico.
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La grande bellezza / The Great Beauty (2013) Paolo Sorrentino, Toni Servillo, Carlo Verdone, Sabrina Ferilli, Drama

La grande bellezza AKA The Great Beauty (2013)
Journalist Jep Gambardella has charmed and seduced his way through the lavish nightlife of Rome for decades. Since the legendary success of his one and only novel, he has been a permanent fixture in the city’s literary and social circles, but when his sixty-fifth birthday coincides with a shock from the past, Jep finds himself unexpectedly taking stock of his life, turning his cutting wit on himself and his contemporaries, and looking past the extravagant nightclubs, parties, and cafés to find Rome in all its glory: a timeless landscape of absurd, exquisite beauty.
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Le amiche (1955) Michelangelo Antonioni, Eleonora Rossi Drago, Gabriele Ferzetti, Franco Fabrizi

Le amiche (1955)
Clelia comes from Rome to her native Turin, to set up a new fashion salon. On her first night, the woman in the next room of her hotel takes an overdose of pills. Clelia becomes involved with this woman, Rosetta, and three of her rich women friends, Momina, Nene, and Mariella. Momina is older than the others, and lives apart from her husband. Her current lover is Cesare, the architect of Clelia’s salon. Nene is a talented ceramics artist, and lives with her fiance, the painter Lorenzo. Mariella is a flighty woman only interested in having a good time. Clelia becomes attached to Carlo, the architect’s assistant, but the other women look down on him as he comes from a working class background. Momina, with the help of Clelia, discovers that Rosetta fell in love with Lorenzo as he was painting her portrait. Momina then encourages Rosetta to go after Lorenzo, even though he and Nene were supposed to marry soon.
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Infanzia, vocazione e prime esperienze di Giacomo Casanova, veneziano / Giacomo Casanova: Childhood and Adolescence (1969) Luigi Comencini, Leonard Whiting, Maria Grazia Buccella, Lionel Stander, Drama, Romance, History

Giacomo Casanova Childhood and Adolescence (1969)
Through the childhood and the adolescence of Giacomo Casanova (from his memoirs), this is a description of how people live in the Venice of the 18th century: customs, habits, medicine, religion and most of all – the omnipresence of hypocrisy.
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Sister Emanuelle (1977) Giuseppe Vari, Laura Gemser, Mónica Zanchi, Gabriele Tinti, Drama, Erotic

sister_emanuelle
Renouncing her “sinful” past, Emanuelle has entered a convent and has dedicated herself to a life of service. Enter Monika, the free-spirited, free-loving daughter of a wealthy Baron. Emanuelle is charged with keeping Monika in line, but when the young girl’s wild ways bring back memories of her own sensual past, Emanuelle begins questioning her own religious and sexual identity. Advances from an escaped killer who is hiding in the convent serve to complicate matters further.
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Segreti di stato / Secrets of the State (2003) Paolo Benvenuti, Antonio Catania, David Coco, Sergio Graziani, Drama

Segreti di stato (2003)
On the first of May 1947, the bandit Salvatore Giuliano conducted a raid to the mountain pass Portella della Ginestra, with a view to capturing Sicily’s most prominent communist, Giacomo Licausi. What actually happened was a regular massacre, leaving fourteen people dead and more than thirty wounded. In 1951, about a year after Giulano’s violent death, his men are tried in Viterbo. Unconvinced by the official version, Gaspare Pasciotta’s lawyer, decides to travel to Sicily and starts investigating the facts.
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