Massimo Foschi Movies
Having previously staged Verdi's 1887 opera Otello at the Met and La Scala, filmmaker Franco Zeffirelli committed his production to film in 1986. Starring as the fatally jealous Moor of Venice is Placido Domingo, who had also headlined Zeffirelli's 1976 La Scala staging (production on the film was briefly interrupted while Domingo participated in the rescue operations following the Mexico City earthquake). While Katia Ricciarelli as Desdemona and Justino Diaz as Iago perform their own singing, Zeffirelli's Cassio--played by real-life European prince Urbano Barberini--is dubbed by Ezio de Cesare. The director made several cuts in the original libretto and score in order to accommodate the film's two-hour time limit, but these excisions are done with taste and discretion. Because of the excessive violence in the third act--two murders, a suicide, a superficial throat-slashing--Otello was released with a PG rating. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Plácido Domingo, Katia Ricciarelli, (more)
- 1983
Director Gabriele Lavia has stayed close to his stage production of Heinrich von Kleist's play Prinz Friedrich von Homburg in this story of a prince who must choose between his ideals and death. The romantic villas, gardens, fountains, and the prince set the tone for a conflict between remaining true to one's beliefs, or not. The prince daydreams and sleepwalks, and in one somnambulist excursion he meets the beautiful Natalie d'Orange, the niece of his commander in the army, the Prince Elector. When Prince Friedrich is engaged in battle soon after, he charges the enemy ahead of time and because of the element of surprise, wins the battle. Nevertheless, he disobeyed the orders of the Prince Elector -- and so is sentenced to die unless he can maintain that a soldier has the right to disobey orders. Meanwhile, Natalie goes to her uncle to beg for the life of the man she loves -- and it is her passion, and the love the prince feels for her -- that just might carry the day. Director Marco Bellocchio came out with another cinematic version of Kleist's play in 1997. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi
- Starring:
- Gabriele Lavia, Monica Guerritore, (more)
Robert Caine (Kirk Douglas) is a wealthy and powerful industrialist, an engineer who develops nuclear power plants. A true believer in nuclear energy, he plans to make nuclear generation commonplace around the world. He is about to retire and turn over the running of his corporations to his son, Angel Caine (Simon Ward) when he begins having disturbing dreams. In one of these, the vision of the Apocalypse as spoken of in the Biblical book of Revelations comes to life in a horrifying way. After this, he begins to notice that his son is behaving in ways which identify him with the Antichrist. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi
- Starring:
- Kirk Douglas, Agostina Belli, (more)
Ruggero Deodato directed this gory cannibal movie, one of many to pour out of Italy in the wake of Il Paese del Sesso Selvaggio (1972), which also starred Me Me Lay and Ivan Rassimov. Rassimov's plane crashes in the Amazon jungle, and he is soon captured by a Stone-Age tribe, which tries to kill him -- until a native woman (Lay) frees him for sex and pays with her life. There is real mondo-style footage of animals devouring each other to go along with staged horrors such as Lay being gutted and having her body cavity filled with hot coals. Deodato returned with the more extreme Cannibal Holocaust a few years later. ~ Robert Firsching, Rovi
- Starring:
- Massimo Foschi, Ivan Rassimov, (more)
- 1976
A group of Italian anarchists were given a charter by the Emperor of Brazil to open and run a commune in that country. In this film, they are shown attempting to do just that. The film also follows their struggles after the overthrow of the Emperor before they manage to return to Italy. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi
- Starring:
- Massimo Foschi, Maria Carta, (more)
- 1973
Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) was one of the pivotal thinkers of the Renaissance. A Dominican friar in Italy, he left the order and taught widely throughout Europe. Among the ideas he taught were the inexpressibility of any ultimate truths and the complete relativity of ordinary truth. He also taught religious tolerance. For these and other deviations, he was burned at the stake by the Inquisition. This lavish Italian film takes up his story after he has returned to Venice from meetings with European heads of state and teaching sessions at the great universities. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi
- Starring:
- Gian Maria Volontè
- 1970
- R
Better known as Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion, this Oscar-winning political drama stars Gian Maria Volonte as the citizen of the title, an unnamed police inspector. The story finds the inspector calmly cutting his mistress' throat, then planting evidence that will clear him of accusation -- and attempting to evade arrest by virtue of his "clean" public image. Elio Petri's own anti-establishment stance was never more pronounced than in this film, where the truth is whatever the ruling class chooses to acknowledge. The original Italian title of Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion was Indagine su un Cittadino al di Sopra di Ogna Sospetto. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Gian Maria Volontè, Florinda Bolkan, (more)
