Tag Archives: Italy

Catherine, an out-spoken Parisian laundress follows Napoleon’s army to the battlefront to be near her Sergeant Lefevre. The couple perform a deed of heroism which abets Napoleon’s victory, so that after the war the grateful Emperor bestows on the now married couple the title of Duke and Duchess. Catherine squabbles with Napoleon’s haughty sisters, scandalizes the nobility with her lack of courtly manners, flirts with the men – and consistently creates havoc as she remains true to her earthy background.
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Niccolò Vivaldi is a cello player and he plays in Arena di Verona Orchestra. But he is not the first and neither the second cello. He is frustrated. Nobody can remember his face, nor his name. Niccolò is married to Costanza, who is really beautiful and he takes some pictures of her naked. Later he shows the pictures to a friend and so he feels better. He starts to write a comic opera called “Il merlo maschio” only to discover later he had written Rossini’s “La gazza ladra”. To maintain his self-esteem he can only show his wife…
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Stefano Pasetto’s finely balanced tale of two women from different generations and very different sensibilities provides a surprising answer. Frustrated in each of their relationships, the two women get together and leave town, boldly striking out on their own and forming an indelible bond despite their many differences. This is only the beginning of a wonderfully liberating experience that defies narrative expectations.
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Self-declared aspiring writer Hank Chinaski has neither qualifications, ambition nor ethics. Any dead-end job he lands is soon lost through laziness or mischief. His relationship with fellow deadbeat Jan gets strained to crisis through her insecurity, so he even gives up betting on horses which brought in easy money.
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As a twelve-year-old boy, Nicola de Leo already knew she wanted to become a woman. Today, the now forty-year-old transsexual lives in Venice and has changed her name to Nicole. She has undergone a hormone treatment and grown breasts, but she still lives inside the body of a middle-aged man, including a penis, a beard and a substantial Adam’s apple. This is why Nicole is applying for a sex change through official channels. ‘I never thought it would be so hard. I thought making the decision was enough,’ she says. During five tense years, Nicole fights her emotional and physical struggle in the presence of director Alberto Vendemmiati’s camera. Working as an actress, a seller of carnival masks and a prostitute, she finances her cosmetic treatments and looks forward to the subsidised sex change operation. Meanwhile, she turns to her elderly mother for support, who has a hard time accepting that her son will soon be a daughter.
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It’s the late 1940s in Italy. WWII is over, but society the world over still bears its scars. In a remote countryside, one family of four occupies a big villa: a young boy, his older sister and their parents. Ju (Sven Valsecchi) is a cute and innocent boy – curious like most kids his age about such things as love, kisses, women’s breasts and generally the difference between sexes. When his cousin, a 14-year-old orphaned girl, moves in with the family, Ju discovers an opportunity to satisfy his increasing curiosity about the female sex. But it all comes at a price…
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The Spanish priest played by Dirk Bogarde is troubled by his church’s lack of concern for the poor; he decides to leave the church. By chance, the same day the Republicans call on the people to attack the churches and the priests, so though in plainclothes he is liable to arrest and execution. A beautiful cabaret singer (Ava Gardner) hides him for awhile but both are eventually made prisoner. The plot revolves around a relic taken from his erstwhile church by another priest that all sides are convinced would assure them victory…
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Hello, my name is Anna and I am nine years old. I wish you had known me before – I mean before my aunt Marga and my cousin Pilar came to my parents’house -, I was such a happy little girl. Before their coming life was a bed of roses. Of course my little brother could be a pain in the neck – little brothers always are, aren’t they? – but there was that wonderful big house, there was my Cuban-born nanny who cooked so well, there was the bath before dinner, not to mention this wonderful catechism class at the catholic school. But they did come, those Spanish intruders. And now never heard before names like “Franco”, “Allende”, “Women’s Lib”, “abortion”, the lot, have got into my life. Daddy and Mummy have suddenly become “communists”, although this a term that Bon Papa and Bonne Maman (my grandparents from Bordeaux, in fact) just hate. Because of the intruders not only did we move to a tiny apartment but the place is invaded day and night by “barbudos” (bearded men). No more bath before …
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Luchino Visconti’s last film based on a novella by Gabrielle d’Annunzio is a haunting account of aristocratic chauvinism and sexual double standards in turn of the century Italy. Giannini as the psichotic husband whose lust cannot be satisfied. Antonelli as his sensitive and tormented wife and O’Neil as cunning possesive mistress.
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Retired professor of American origin lives solitary life in luxurious palazzo in Rome He is confronted by vulgar Italian marchesa and her companions: her lover, her daughter and daughter’s boyfriend and forced to rent to them an apartment on upper floor of his palazzo. From this point his quiet routine is turned into chaos by his tenants’ machinations, and everybody’s life is taking unexpected but inevitable turn.
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“Pleasure (and its little inconveniences)” In Europe today, as chance, deceits and desires run their course, the army conscript meets the nurse, the nurse gets back together with the comedian, the comedian meets the married woman, the married woman gets back together with the VIP, the VIP meets the mad dog, the mad dog gets back together with his old friend Loulou and Loulou, naturally, meets Jack the Ripper…
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A psychic who can read minds picks up the thoughts of a murderer in the audience and soon becomes a victim. An English pianist gets involved in solving the murders, but finds many of his avenues of inquiry cut off by new murders, and he begins to wonder how the murderer can track his movements so closely.
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The ageing warden of a convent is berated by the Mother Superior for his bad language. To cure him of his affliction, the Bishop, an old friend of his, gives him a copy of the Bible and asks him to learn the Ten Commandments by heart. As the warden begins his task, the Devil leaps from the pages of the book in the form of a serpent and relishes in watching as one by one the Commandments are broken…
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Four war pilots that have been fighting together go seperate ways and meet up again years later.
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A woman is tormented by strange dreams of astronauts on the moon. She visits a deserted seaside town whose inhabitants know her even though she does not know them.
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