Ennio Flaiano Movies

A Roman warrior on a quest to uncover the truth about Jesus of Nazareth becomes enamored with an Israeli beauty after rescuing the woman from a violent mugger in this Biblical-themed period drama starring Dolph Lundgren, F. Murray Abraham, Max Von Sydow, and Mónica Cruz. A solar eclipse has cast darkness over the Roman Empire, and as the frightened population cowers in fear the earth beneath their feet begins to violently tremble. Having recently heard rumors about a mysterious Jewish savior who apparently transcended death, Emperor Tiberius sends fierce warrior Tauro to Jerusalem to solve a mystery that threatens to dissolve their empire. Upon arriving in Jerusalem, Tauro rescues a young beauty named Tabitha and her frail grandmother from a menacing street criminal. But Tabitha is forbidden to look at Romans - much less speak to them - and now after entering into a forbidden romance with Tauro the end of an era fast approaches. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

This dark offbeat comedy features Marcello Mastroianni and Catherine Deneuve. Mastroianni plays Giorgio, who lives on a island somewhere off the Mediterranean coast of France. He lives there with his dog, and the remains of an old German World War II airbase. He earns his living drawing cartoons. Liza (Deneuve) swims to the island from a rich man's yacht, and the yacht's crew confirm the end of her relationship with the owner by bringing her luggage to the island. She and Giorgio meet and become involved. She is jealous of his relationship with the dog and kills her rival while assuming its duties: wearing a collar, fetching sticks, etc. A great deal more happens in this movie, all of it symbolic. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Shirley MacLaine plays Charity Hope Valentine who, despite her job at a seedy dime-a-dance joint, is an incurable optimist. Charity never stops looking for true love and never seems to look for it in the right places. We first see her in the company of Charlie (Dante DiPaolo), a slimeball who steals her purse and pushes her into the Central Park pond. Next she stumbles into a one-night stand with Vittorio Vidal (Ricardo Montalban), an egotistical movie star; this comes to nothing when Vittorio's contrite girlfriend Ursula (Barbara Bouchet) comes calling, forcing Charity to spend the night hiding in the closet. Desperate to escape the dance hall, Charity heads to an employment agency, where a bureaucratic clerk (Alan Hewitt) informs her that she has no qualifications. Unhappily, Charity heads for the elevator, where she becomes trapped with the very shy -- and very claustrophobic -- Oscar Lindquist (John McMartin). Once they've gotten out of the stalled elevator, Charity begins dating Oscar, never telling him of her checkered past or her sordid dance-hall job. Oscar eventually finds out but assures her that it doesn't matter. However, at the engagement party held at the dance hall, Oscar's puritanical streak emerges. He walks out on Charity, leaving her alone and heartbroken once more. With the help of a group of flower children (among them Bud Cort and Kristoffer Tabori), Charity is able to pick herself up and start living "Hopefully Ever After." Sweet Charity was adapted from the 1965 Broadway musical of the same name, which in turn was inspired by the 1957 Fellini flick Nights of Cabiria. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this anthology, six French filmmakers each contributed a vignette, offering their take on the history of prostitution. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Ugo Tagnazzi and Rhonda Fleming co-star in this situation comedy that spoofs the lifestyles of wealthy American women. Ricardo (Tognazzi) is a teacher who accompanies an American businessman to act as an interpreter. Soon he is off on a series of adventures that brings him into the jet-set social life of the idle rich females of New York, Miami, and Texas. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

Based on an interesting plot from a novel by Robert Sheckley, this movie features tongue-in-cheek performances by Andress and Mastroianni, which are responsible for its status as a minor cult favorite. Set in the 21st century, this science fiction movie depicts a society in which population control is facilitated by the use of legalized murder. The society plays an assassination game for fun, in which the last person left alive is the winner. The movie is made for entertainment, but there are some sexual situations. ~ All Movie Guide

Fresh off of the international success of La Dolce Vita, master director Federico Fellini moved into the realm of self-reflexive autobiography with what is widely believed to be his finest and most personal work. Marcello Mastroianni delivers a brilliant performance as Fellini's alter ego Guido Anselmi, a film director overwhelmed by the large-scale production he has undertaken. He finds himself harangued by producers, his wife, and his mistress while he struggles to find the inspiration to finish his film. The stress plunges Guido into an interior world where fantasy and memory impinge on reality. Fellini jumbles narrative logic by freely cutting from flashbacks to dream sequences to the present until it becomes impossible to pry them apart, creating both a psychological portrait of Guido's interior world and the surrealistic, circus-like exterior world that came to be known as "Felliniesque." 8 1/2 won an Academy Award for Best Foreign-Language Film, as well as the grand prize at the Moscow Film Festival, and was one of the most influential and commercially successful European art movies of the 1960s, inspiring such later films as Bob Fosse's All That Jazz (1979), Woody Allen's Stardust Memories (1980), and even Lucio Fulci's Italian splatter film Un Gatto nel Cervello (1990). ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide

La Notte is another of Michelangelo Antonioni's cinematic interrupted journeys. Just as no one solved the central mystery in Antonioni's L'Avventura, neither does anyone truly enjoy the literary party that is La Notte's centerpiece. The party is being thrown to celebrate the publication of author Marcello Mastrioanni's new novel. But before he even reaches the door of the house, Mastrioanni's evening is ruined when his wife Jeanne Moreau announces suddenly she is disgusted with him--this reaction evidently triggered by an earlier visit to a dying friend. Moreau skips out on the party to wander the streets, searching for...for what? Meanwhile, Mastrioanni tries to inaugurate an empty affair with Monica Vitti, the daughter of a wealthy industrialist. The very elements that drive Mastrioanni and Moreau apart at the beginning of the film reunite them at the end. Maybe. L'Avventura and La Notte were the first two chapters in Antonioni's "barreness and alienation" trilogy; the third, L'Eclisse, was released two years later. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In one of the most widely seen and acclaimed European movies of the 1960s, Federico Fellini featured Marcello Mastrioanni as gossip columnist Marcello Rubini. Having left his dreary provincial existence behind, Marcello wanders through an ultra-modern, ultra-sophisticated, ultra-decadent Rome. He yearns to write seriously, but his inconsequential newspaper pieces bring in more money, and he's too lazy to argue with this setup. He attaches himself to a bored socialite (Anouk Aimée), whose search for thrills brings them in contact with a bisexual prostitute. The next day, Marcello juggles a personal tragedy (the attempted suicide of his mistress (Yvonne Furneaux)) with the demands of his profession (an interview with none-too-deep film star Anita Ekberg). Throughout his adventures, Marcello's dreams, fantasies, and nightmares are mirrored by the hedonism around him. With a shrug, he concludes that, while his lifestyle is shallow and ultimately pointless, there's nothing he can do to change it and so he might as well enjoy it. Fellini's hallucinatory, circus-like depictions of modern life first earned the adjective "Felliniesque" in this celebrated movie, which also traded on the idea of Rome as a hotbed of sex and decadence. A huge worldwide success, La Dolce Vita won several awards, including a New York Film Critics CIrcle award for Best Foreign Film and the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Nights of Cabiria opens with Cabiria (Giulietta Masina) and her boyfriend playfully embracing by the seaside -- and then he shoves her into the water and steals her purse. Cabiria is revived by some local boys and runs off by herself, shouting. What follows is a series of similarly humiliating episodes, in which the defiantly positive prostitute Cabiria is hurt, but never broken. She gets picked up by movie star Alberto Lazzati (Amedeo Nazzari, doing a self-parody) and taken to his palatial estate. However, his mistress shows up and Cabiria gets locked in the bathroom all night with the dog. She then joins her fellow prostitutes for a blessing from the Virgin Mary, and ends up getting drunk and wandering into a local show, where the hypnotist invites her to join him on-stage. The audience heckles her, and she toughly reminds them of her independence and that she owns her own house. There she meets Oscar (François Perier), an accountant who romantically pursues her. Despite the warnings of her fellow prostitute friend, Wanda (Franca Marzi), she prepares to sell all her belongings and accept Oscar's proposal of marriage. After being ruthlessly taken advantage of once again, Cabiria walks off alone with a smirk of hope. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide

The Spanish/Italian Rocket From Calabuch is significant only as the last film of beloved character actor Edmund Gwenn. The 78-year-old star plays a retired atomic scientist who settles in a peaceful Spanish village. But he can't remain sedentary for long, and soon he's off and about developing a new kind of rocket. So much for his retirement, and so much for the peace and quiet in his village, which is soon overrun with reporters and spies. Rocket From Calabuch was originally released in Spain as simply Calabuch; the film didn't make it to the states until after Edmund Gwenn's death in 1959. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Sophia Loren was twenty-one years old when she starred in this lightly spicy comedy. Antoinette (Loren) is an attractive young woman who is adjusting her stockings one day when a passing news photographer snaps her picture. To Antoinette's shock, the picture appears on the front page of one of Rome's biggest newspapers, and she's angered and embarrassed by the attention; soon, she finds herself fighting off the lustful attentions of Corrado (Marcello Mastroianni), the photographer who turned her into an unwitting cheesecake star, and Count Gregorio (Charles Boyer), a nobleman who tells Antoinette that he can make her a movie star. However, while the Count's attentions have little to do with any real effort to bring her to stardom, in time Corrado finds himself genuinely falling in love with the beautiful Antoinette. Fortuna Di Essere Donna was released in the United States under the titles Lucky To Be A Woman and What A Woman! ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Villa Borghese is Grand Hotel with trees and shrubbery. Set in the famed Roman city park of Villa Borghese, the film offers pithy character vignettes of the various people from various walks of life who stroll through the park in the course of a day. The all-star cast includes Vittorio De Sica as an aging playboy, Eduardo de Fillipo as a father arranging a wealthy marriage for his crippled daughter, Michele Presle and Gerard Philipe as a pair of illicit lovers, and Anna Maria Ferrero as a good-hearted prostitute. Six top Italian writers collaborated on the screenplay of this entertaining mosaic. TV prints of Villa Borghese retain the photographic slickness of the original, though the dubbing is rather crude. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide