Pamela Villoresi Movies

Directed by Giuseppe Ferrara, the political thriller I Banchieri Di Dio (God's Bankers) is based on the true-crime saga of the corrupted Banco Ambrosiano and the unsolved murder of bank president Roberto Calvi in 1982. Co-written by Ferrara and Armenia Balducci, the complex story involves the discovery of a trillion lire deficiet in the bank accounts. Calvi (Omero Antonutti) is blamed and thrown in prison. With the help of his wife (Pamela Villoresi), Calvi goes between the corrupt system of political and religious leaders who can get him out of jail. Rutger Hauer appears as Cardianle Marcinkus, the head of the Vatican bank. In March of 2002, an Italian businessman tried to ban Gods Bankers, claiming ~ Andrea LeVasseur, Rovi

Andrea (Leonardo Trame) has always loved his eccentric old aunt Gianna (Pamela Villoresi). After she suffers the loss of her husband, she asks his parents if he could stay with her in her Rome apartment over December, undoubtedly to help her through the difficulties of the holiday period. They agree to this arrangement. She is a delightful companion for the boy, sharing his love of movies and fairy tales. The situation becomes more difficult when she confides to him that she feels sure she is being followed and observed. What could have been the fantasy of a slightly demented older woman is shown to have been real, and the boy does yoeman service in rescuing her from (and capturing) a burglar. This drama is told entirely from the point of view of the young boy, and he can only partly understand the events which unfold around him. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

Benvenuto Cellini was a gifted metalworker who created gorgeous objects for the rich, a rogue, a warrior and a sensitive man. In short, he was an archetypical product of his period in Renaissance Italy, a lusty antihero par excellence. This movie is based on selections from his famous autobiography, and chronicles the life of this egotistical fabricator of beautiful objects as he battles, murders, has love affairs, rapes, connives, copes with imprisonment and near madness and generally thrives amid the worst that his tumultuous times can throw at him. Not for the weak of stomach, this film graphically depicts the violence of the period, as well as the unpleasantnesses of the plague. His truly was A Violent Life. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

The celebration of and homage to the language of cinema unites not only the three central characters of this film, but is the character of the film itself. This is the story of a man whose entire life has been shaped and supported by the movies. Jordan (Marcello Mastroianni) grew up at his father's movie theater, and after World War Two, he took over as the theater's manager. In those halcyon days, the theater was so popular that police had to be hired to keep the crowds waiting to get in from rioting. Now, however, the theater is losing money and is in danger of being torn down, or sold to a department store. Jordan has long since concluded that the townspeople have forgotten their affection for the movies, but in a Capra-esque vision, he imagines them gathering as a body to prevent him from selling the theater. One highlight of this successful film about films is the glimpses it offers of over a dozen great works of Italian cinema. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

The Italian artist Ligabue grew up as a withdrawn child in Switzerland, speaking a hodge-podge of Italian and German. On his return to Italy, he takes up residence by the banks of the Po river, but his uncouth speech and his near-mad behavior cause him to be shunned and ridiculed. In the movie, he is portrayed as a child-like figure who is encouraged by a local sculptor to paint on canvas. Even when he is beginning to gain some recognition as a painter, Ligabue (Flavio Bucci) still behaves like a wild, untamed woodland creature. This film is an adaptation of an Italian television series based on a book by Cesare Zavattini exploring the life of the artist and his works. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

The son of Emperor Franz Josef of Austria, Crown Prince Rudolf, is believed to have shot his female lover and himself in a tragic suicide pact in 1882 in Mayerling. Due to Imperial cover-ups, the full story may never be known. This story has been filmed several times, in French in 1935 and in English in 1968. Hungarian director Miklos Jancso recreates those events for his own purposes, continuing his favored theme of the rejection of paternal authority. In the film, which has very little dialog, Rudolf is a good-natured pan-sexual golden boy, who cavorts on his rural estate with a host of beautiful, aristocratic lovers and friends of both sexes. He refuses to leave his country idyll even though he has been ordered to by the Emperor, his father. Despite the fact that for a large part of the film, attractive young people go about unclothed and engaging in erotic encounters, the mood is one of melancholy rather than prurience. The Prince is a political liberal who wishes to arrange things so that the Emperor will arrest him, creating a public scandal which will provide a rallying point for the opposition. Instead, when the expected troops come, Rudolf's sensuous friends loyally ward off the Imperial officers, humiliating them in the process. The result is that the guests, the Prince and a hermaphrodite friend are killed by newly arrived Imperial reinforcements, and the now-familiar official story of murder and suicide is concocted for public consumption. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi