Tag Archives: italian

Accattone (1961) Pier Paolo Pasolini, Franco Citti, Franca Pasut, Silvana Corsini, Drama

accattone-1961
In a seedy section of Rome, Vittorio Cataldi – “Accattone” (“beggar” in Italian) to those that know him – lives off the avails of prostitution, Maddalena being his one and only girl. He is married to Ascenza with who he has one young son named Iaio, but he does not live with them – they who live with her father and brother – provide for them, or play any important part of their lives. He generally hangs out with his similarly slack life friends playing cards and drinking. His source of income is threatened when Maddalena is injured being hit by a motorcyclist, then beaten by rivals of his, which leads to her being arrested and jailed for a year. Largely because of Iaio, Accattone contemplates going straight and getting a real job. Then he meets Stella, a young innocent woman who has had a hard life, but who is not as naive to the ways of the world as she first appears. Accattone falls in love with her, but as the thought of working a steady job now becomes abhorrent, contemplates …
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Oedipus orca (1977) Eriprando Visconti, Rena Niehaus, Gabriele Ferzetti, Carmen Scarpitta, Crime, Drama, Thriller, Erotic

oedipus-orca-1977

Alice is brought back to her family after she is rescued from the men that kidnap her, but her nightmare is far from over since she continues to have constant flashbacks of her ordeal. She resents her parents because she believes they wouldn’t pay for her ransom, since that is what she heard her captors say through a wall when she was kidnapped. Coming back to normal life is not easy for her because she has to deal with her parents, her boyfriend, and mix feelings she had for one of the captors that she had sex with in order to survive.
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I magliari / The Magliari (1959) Francesco Rosi, Alberto Sordi, Belinda Lee, Renato Salvatori, Drama, Romance

I magliari (1959)
Mario is in Hannover to work as a miner but after loosing his job he decides to go back to Italy. When Totonno steals his passport to avoid the police and later on he offers him a new job as “magliaro” (cloth seller), Mario changes his mind and decides to follow Totonno to Hamburg. In Hamburg, Totonno and his friends have to sell Mayer’s cloth but they meet with the hostility of a Polish gang and Mario falls in love with Paula Mayer.
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Gli sbandati / Abandoned / The Disbanded (1955) Francesco Maselli, Lucia Bosé, Isa Miranda, Jean-Pierre Mocky, Drama

Gli sbandati AKA The Disbanded (1955)
Set during WWII, the film is a drama of the Italian resistance, with all the usual clichéd characters in attendance. The central character, a bombed-out gamine who falls in love with an Italian partisan, is played by Lucia Bose, who earned a great deal of praise for her performance. Most of the film deals with the culture-clash between the citified resistance fighters and their rural hosts.
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La cugina / The Cousin (1974) Aldo Lado, Massimo Ranieri, Dayle Haddon, Conchita Airoldi, Comedy, Drama, Erotic

La cugina (1974)
A strong plot and mutual physical attraction binds the sensual Enzo since adolescence and her cousin Agata: the two are happy with amusement tricks erotic equivocally poised between innocence and malice instinctive. In the years after Enzo neglects the university where it is written and prefers the abundant pleasures of the “Sicilian beef. Agata instead, circumventing the court of his cousin, the Baron prefers the flaccid Ninì from whose desires marriage license, money and comfort. Achieved this goal, the crafty and malicious woman reconciles with Enzo and it is given …
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Treno popolare / Medium-Class Train (1933) Raffaello Matarazzo, Marcello Spada, Lina Gennari, Carlo Petrangeli, Drama, Romance

treno-popolare-1933
A summertime daytrip along the railway line Rome-Orvieto on a special-fare train, a group of diverse and lively characters. Families, old couples, an unfaithful husband and his jealous wife, a forlorn girl, a nerdy white-collar worker and his flirtatious date, and a handsome, eagerly wholesome young man. Their stories merge and intersect in the beautiful scenery of a Medieval small town in central Italy.
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Vecchia guardia / Old Guard (1934) Alessandro Blasetti, Gianfranco Giachetti, Mino Doro, Franco Brambilla, Drama

vecchia-guardia-1934
There were very few commercial feature films made during the Italian fascist era that were as openly propagandistic as this famous (notorious?) dramatic paean to the Blackshirts. The story takes place in a small village in Italy in October of 1922, on the eve of the fascist “March on Rome”, in which King Victor Emanuel III was persuaded to consign power to Benito Mussolini. Gianfranco Giachetti is Dr. Cardini, a doctor at the local psychiatric hospital, where a strike has been called by the local socialists. Cardini turns to the fascists to help avert the strike. His son Roberto (Mino Doro) rounds up fascist friends to fight those aligned with the strikers and the town’s socialists.
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La pattuglia sperduta (1954) Piero Nelli, Annibale Biglione, Óscar Navarro, Filippo Posca, Drama, War

la-pattuglia-sperduta-1954
Nel marzo 1849, Carlo Alberto è in procinto di riprendere la guerra contro gli Austriaci. Da tutta Italia arrivano in Piemonte volontari decisi a combattere per l’indipendenza dall’Austria. La mattina del 20 marzo una pattuglia rimane tagliata fuori in territorio nemico, mentre sta per avere inizio la battaglia di Novara: una pericolosa avventura che dura tre giorni.
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