Armando Trovajoli Movies

Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni star in this Italian comedy. The story begins with Loren as Valerie, a woman whose suicide attempt, prompted by a romantic disappointment, is thwarted by Don Mario (Mastroianni), a priest whom she called before she lost consciousness. She immediately falls in love with the priest. He is much taken with her beauty and considers asking for a dispensation to marry her, which encourages her greatly. The priest asks for advice, which ranges from the sublime to the ridiculous (castration). Meanwhile, he is promoted to be a Monsignor. At the same time, Valerie learns that she is pregnant, though it is not clear who the father is. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Jane Birkin, Alessio Orano, and John Steiner star in this drama about three students whose lives intersect intellectually, emotionally, and sexually while attending classes at Oxford University. May Morning (also released as Alba Pagana and May Morning in Oxford) takes its title from the college's traditional May 1st celebration. The film features a score from British pop group The Tremeloes. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Revolutionaries in papal-dominated Rome are hunted down by the minions of Cardinale Rivarola (Ugo Tognazzi) for daring to rise up against the Pope. Cornacchia (Nino Manfredi) is the politician who helps the rebel outlaws Montanari (Robert Hossein) and Targhini (Renaud Verley). Martial law is imposed as the dragnet surrounds the rebels. Giuditta (Claudia Cardenale) tries to help the rebels, but all are arrested and sentenced to hang for crimes against the civilian and papal authorities. Britt Eklund plays Princess Spada and Alberto Sordi plays the priest who tries to console the captives in their last hours. The story is taken from actual incidents in Rome just after the turn of the 19th century. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

When Paola (Daniele Gaubert) feels her husband Marco (Philippe Leroy) is neglecting her, she willingly falls for his best friend Alberto (Horst Buchholz). Marco allows the affair to proceed and Paola experiences feelings of love she never knew were possible. She returns to her marital commitments but allows her romantic fantasies of Alberto and a Lesbian lover to continue. Marco soon experiences the positive benefits of his wife's imagination as their romantic romps take a favorable turn for the better. Nude scenes could mark this film as an exploitation feature. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

A romance between a young woman factory worker and a barber is stopped when her parents raise protests over her relationship with the man. When rumors of the romance run rampant in the small town, she leaves for Rome. She takes a job as an assistant to a deaf-mute tailor and eventually accepts his proposal of marriage. The barber attempts suicide and is hospitalized. His depression is cured when he wins the lottery and he travels to Rome to reclaim his old love. They rekindle their romance and plan the demise of her husband by planting a bomb in the stove. The explosion miraculously restores the hearing and speech of the intended victim. The miracle prompts the husband to enter a monastery and help those with the disabilities that he himself overcame in the explosion. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

The literal translation of this Italian title is "He's My Husband, I'll Kill Him When I Please." A young woman is married to a man in his 70s. To make sure his wife is taken care of after his death, the husband tries to arrange her marriage to a friend of his. When the young bride discovers this, she plans to hasten his imminent demise. She takes up with a beatnik and goes about planning her husband's murder as if she were merely making out a grocery list of needed items at a convenience store. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

This Italian-French co-production weds the giallo thriller with pop hipness in a manner akin to Blow-Up, but comes across as a less-inspired variant on the same year's La Morte Ha Fatto l'Uovo. Like that film, Col Cuore in Gola stars Jean-Louis Trintignant and Ewa Aulin in a loud, deranged thriller with hallucinatory visuals, irritating music, and plentiful visual references to kitsch culture. In this case, however, cult filmmaker Tinto Brass (Caligula) has only managed to be grating in telling the tale of a French actor named Bernard (Trintignant), who meets pretty Jane (Aulin) by the corpse of a murdered nightclub owner. Bernard knows Jane didn't commit the crime, and he starts to fall in love with her while running around London to the ear-piercing strains of Armando Trovajoli's score and through the wearingly garish production designs of Carmelo Patrono, who was influenced by the lurid comic-book art of Guido Crepax. Brass edits the film with a jackhammer, occasionally switching from color to black-and-white without apparent motive, and the whole thing looks more like a bad acid trip than the sort of Nouvelle Vague thriller for which he was obviously striving, wasting some fairly interesting cinematography by Silvano Tranquilli. Completists will want to look for an uncredited David Prowse as a hoodlum, and will no doubt be entranced by Ewa Aulin in yet another of the garish pop junk-heaps that comprised her career. She followed this one with the disappointing Candy and the demented Microscopic Liquid Subway to Oblivion. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide

In this comedy, two Yankee con artists pose as tourists visiting scenic Naples. There they intend to rob an old church. Before pulling the caper, the two enlist the aid of a local criminal. The theft succeeds, but afterwards the crooks begin double-crossing each other. Murder and mayhem ensues as one American murders the other and then heads for the airport dressed as a nun. "Her" loot is, in turn, captured by the Italian crook and his friend. The local thief then heads for Switzerland accompanied by a bogus "cardinal" who protects him. Unfortunately for the crook, the cardinal turns out to be the real thing and takes the treasure back to its original home. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Fifteen "monsters of modern Rome" are presented in this Italian episodic drama. Each of these "monsters" is highly misanthropic and nasty. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In this romance, a middle-aged playboy finds himself running his father's fur business after his father's death. He continues to allow his papa's mistress to run the business. The playboy's fiancee gets pregnant and he refuses to marry her. She dumps him in favor of his best friend. Soon the selfish man finds himself deserted by all his friends. He winds up involved with his father's patiently waiting lover. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide