Tag Archives: Italy

La rupture / The Breach (1970) Claude Chabrol, Stéphane Audran, Jean-Pierre Cassel, Michel Bouquet, Thriller, Drama

La Rupture
Hélène Régnier walks out on her drug-addicted husband Charles after he brutally attacks their infant son. She stays in a run-down hotel whilst her son convalesces in hospital and she files for divorce. Charles’s wealthy bourgeois father is adamant that Hélène will lose custody of her child and, to that end, he engages a former business associate of Charles, Paul Thomas, to discredit her. When Paul fails to uncover any incriminating evidence against Hélène he concocts a scheme that will destroy her reputation. Things do not go quite as planned…
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MADO (1976) Claude Sautet, Michel Piccoli, Ottavia Piccolo, Jacques Dutronc, Drama

MADO (1976)
Middle-aged businessman Simon Léotard finds his future in jeopardy when his partner Julien commits suicide after having accumulated a mass of debts. Simon’s unscrupulous business rival Lépidon offers to save him from bankruptcy by buying his company, at a discount rate. Reluctant to fall into Lépidon’s trap, Simon decides to resolve the crisis himself. A prostitute, Mado, provides him with the solution to his problems…
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Docteur Popaul / Scoundrel in White (1972) Claude Chabrol, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Mia Farrow, Laura Antonelli, Comedy

Scoundrel in White (1972)
Dr Paul Simay is a lady’s man who claims to prefer ugly women. He makes his point by winning a bet that he can sleep with the most ugly women in a year. He therefore has no qualms about marrying Christine, a paraplegic with buck-teeth, especially when her father is a wealthy doctor who can advance his career. His views change when he meets Christine’s beautiful sister, Martine. When she realises that Paul has been cheating on her and has given her sister a child, Christine decides to extract a cruel revenge…
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Beat the Devil (1953) John Huston, Humphrey Bogart, Jennifer Jones, Gina Lollobrigida, Action, Adventure, Comedy

Beat the Devil (1953)
A quartet of international crooks – Peterson, O’Hara, Ross and Ravello – is stranded in Italy while their steamer is being repaired. With them are the Dannreuthers. The six are headed for Africa, presumably to sell vacuum cleaners but actually to buy land supposedly loaded with uranium. They are joined by others who apparently have similar designs.
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Les Biches / Bad Girls (1968) Claude Chabrol, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Jacqueline Sassard, Stéphane Audran, Drama

Les Biches (1968)
Frédérique is a rich and beautiful woman who picks up a female street artist called “Why”. It is December and they go to her villa in Saint Tropez, which is inhabited by a couple of odd gay men. Both women fall for the local architect Paul Thomas. However Why says that she is not interested in him, so Frédérique invites him to move into the villa.
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Requiescant (1967) Carlo Lizzani, Lou Castel, Mark Damon, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Western

Requiescant (1967)
In the post-Civil War West, a young boy is rescued from a massacre by Protestants who instill the value of pacifism in the young boy. But it’s only when he chases after his missing step-sister that he discovers a skill for gunslinging, takes on the name Requiscant, and re-enters the world of violence denied to him as a child. This spaghetti Western also includes a cameo from director Pier Paolo Pasolini as a renegade priest.
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Era notte a Roma / It Was Night in Rome (1960) Roberto Rossellini, Leo Genn, Giovanna Ralli, Sergey Bondarchuk, Drama, War

Era notte a roma (1960)
During WW2, in Rome , a trio of escaped Allied POWs find themselves in limbo as they try to avoid re-capture and reach their dispersed units. Michael Pemberton is a British Major, Fyodor Aleksandrovic Nazukov is a Soviet Sergeant and Peter Bradley is an American Lieutenant. A beautiful young Italian woman, Esperia Belli, agrees to give them shelter. She knows that despite Italy’s efforts to break with Nazi Germany and join the Allies there are some Italians who are Fascist sympathizers and would gladly denounce Esperia to the German authorities. Hiding enemy soldiers or escaped POWs is punishable by death. Esperia hopes to get in contact with the Italian anti-Fascist resistance which could help the three escaped Allied POWs rejoin their respective armies. Until then, the fugitives are stuck in Esperia’s attic.
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When Love Is Lust / Quando l’amore è sensualità (1973) Vittorio De Sisti, Agostina Belli, Gianni Macchia, Ewa Aulin, Drama, Erotic

When-Love-Is-Lust
A young girl marries a handsome and successful but brutish local butcher at the behest of her contessa stepmother. The new wife turns out to be frigid on their wedding night, and the couple have a big fight. The wife goes out of town to stay with her older, married sister and gets involved with her sister’s jaded swinger friends. The husband consoles himself by picking up prostitutes and carrying on with a sexy, voluptuous neighbor right in his new mother-in-law’s villa. For some reason the mother-in-law considers this a turn-on and becomes sexually drawn to her loutish son-in-law.
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