Armando Trovajoli Movies

This complexly plotted comedy interweaves snippets from the lives of nearly 40 diverse patrons sitting at 14 tables in a little Italian trattoria. Though the diners come from all levels of society, most are bound by one or two common threads: their engagement in illicit romantic affairs and the fact that they are, for the most part, morally and spiritually bankrupt. The restaurant's unflappable, wise owner Flora (Fanny Ardant) is the only one with any real common sense. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Unhappy neighbors hatch a homicidal scheme, then turn on each other in this Italian thriller similar to Strangers on a Train (1951). Vincenzo Persico (Rolando Ravello) is a miserable man. Despite graduating from college six years ago, he can't land a teaching position, so he's forced to live in humiliation with his mother, a pensioner. Vincenzo's neighbor, the 70-year-old Bartoloni (Alberto Sordi) is in a similar position. His wife, once a gorgeous artist, is now an obese, abusive alcoholic. One night Bartoloni gets Vincenzo drunk and makes him a proposition -- he'll pay him a large sum of money if the young man will kill his wife. The intoxicated Vincenzo doesn't agree, but the offer plagues his mind. Not long after, Mrs. Bartoloni is killed in a fall from her balcony. When her husband discovers his money missing, he assumes that Vincenzo is responsible. At the same time, Vincenzo claims to have landed a job, buying his mother gifts and taking his girlfriend out dancing. Bartoloni betrays Vincenzo, accusing him of murder. Arrested, Vincenzo unemotionally claims his innocence. The police investigation reveals Bartoloni's love for another woman, leaving them baffled over a case that had seemed to be an accident. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide

In an innovative collaboration, the maker of this movie got the cooperation of the mainstream director (Ettore Scola) to shoot this film on the set for the film Captain Fracassa's Journey. While the latter film is being made, the characters in this film are all attempting to break into show biz, or are coping with their lowly status in it. One character is a would-be screenwriter who is attempting to corner the producer of the film in order to give him his first script -- which may or may not have been commissioned. Two extras have a lot of fun playing bloodied-up corpses in the main movie. Another character is a young mother, hoping to get an acting part. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Serafina, Pulcinella and Isabella are three lusty, beautiful members of a traveling theatrical troupe touring the French countryside in the 17th century, leaving in their wake a crop of broken hearts. This picaresque romantic comedy is based on the 1863 novel Le Capitaine Fracasse by Theophile Gauthier. In the story, the company stops at a castle owned by the scruffy young Baron de Sigognac (Vincent Perez), who is deeply smitten with the charms of the middle-aged (and somewhat morose) beauty Serafina (Ornella Muti). He decides to travel with the company, and Serafina perversely tries to get him to woo the youngest of the company, the newly bereaved Isabella (Emmanuelle Béart). When the company plays before a group of noblemen, the three women make yet more conquests, a few of them unwelcome, and a series of competitions and duels for the hearts of the lovely ladies follows, before everyone settles down with the "right" person. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Loosely based on an historical character and his ennoblement by a Pope, Conte Tacchia relates the adventures of Checco (Enrico Montesano), an upbeat carpenter living at the beginning of the 20th century who is convinced that he is the illegitimate son of a local prince (Vittorio Gassman). Because of his fixation, Checco is nicknamed "Count Tacchia" for the wedge tacchia that a carpenter puts underneath the short leg on an unbalanced table. Checco tries to romance a young Duchess and soon becomes the brunt of cruel jokes by the aristocracy, but then King Humbert actually gives him the title of Count so Checco can fight a French swordsman in a duel to the death. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Four popular Italian comedians (Adriano Celentano, Carlo Verdone, Enrico Montesano, and Diego Abantantuono), at the time this film was shot, play characters who either work in or visit a large hotel. Each comedian reprises some of the roles or attitudes that made him famous in a series of connected vignettes. Unfortunately, the supposedly comic treatment of women and one black bellhop carry enough outmoded gender and racial stereotypes to offend more than a few viewers. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Professional soldier Bernard Giraudeau is enmeshed in an affair with the beautiful but very much married Laura Antonelli. Transferred to a remote outpost, Giraudeau discovers to his chagrin that the only woman in the region (Valeria D'Obici) is about as appealing as a plate of pickles. Even so, Giraudeau falls madly in love with the woman, utterly forgetting Antonelli. He also forgets that he's a human being at fade-out time, metamorphosing into an epileptic bear! Perhaps Passion of Love made more sense in its original French-language version, Passione D'Amore. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this political drama, the critically acclaimed Russian director Grigori Chukhrai -- who also wrote the script -- focuses on the nature of political persecution through his hero Antonio (Giancarlo Giannini), a taxi driver in the capital of a dictatorship. Running alongside the political theme is a love story between Antonio and María, a waitress in a local café. Antonio was booted out of the military for refusing to fire on a boat carrying women and children during the Angola civil war. His main objective now is to stay aloof and uninvolved -- until he meets María. She has him take a man to the airport one day, and Antonio soon realizes that this fellow is a revolutionary working to oust the dictator. The ride he gave the man is the excuse the Secret Police need to pick up Antonio, and they put him in prison where they abuse him, trying to find out about his passenger. But he truly does not know anything, and he would never implicate María. The other prisoners at first turn against him but change their attitude when they discover he plans an escape, and soon everyone is about to make a break for freedom. Chukhrai's first film, The Forty-First won a special prize at Cannes in 1957, Ballad of a Soldier was also a 1960 winner at Cannes, and Clear Skies a winner in the 1961 Venice competition. Although La Vita è Bella indirectly involves the war themes of these preceding movies, it is not really in their same category. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

"Thou shalt not kill" is the fifth of the ten commandments handed down to Moses on Mount Sinai. In this movie, Bernhard and Leo Redder (Helmut Berger and Peter Hooten), who have grown up in an abusive family, escape into the streets at the earliest opportunity. In the Germany of the 1920s, especially in the Ruhr valley, the people they wind up hanging out with are members of radical political groups, especially the Nazi Stahlhelm and Freikorps organizations. They become involved in Nazi excursions and become wanted men for their involvement in robberies and murder. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

In this drama, Temistocle Orimbelli (Ugo Tognazzi) is a middle-aged man with a profound appreciation for womankind -- an appreciation that does not extend to Cleofe (Garbiella Giacobbe) his dried up old shrew of a wife. He is much taken with the charms of his sister-in-law Matilde (Ornella Muti), who is a widow. The attraction appears mutual, but he has first to overcome the obstacle of wifely suspicion in order to consummate the union. Eventually, he is able to appear at his boat at the same time as the lovely Matilde, and what had begun as a simple assignation turns into a complex tragedy. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide