Nino Castelnuovo Movies

In this war drama, a band of Italian soldiers, elated to hear that the war is finally over, promptly desert and head for home. Only two soldiers remain loyal to the army and they promptly begin heading back to the main forces. En route they are enticed by partisan soldiers who want the two to join them. Later they are joined by more soldiers. One of them is arrested by the Fascists for concealing an American paratrooper. When the two finally return, the Germans force them to work on a road gang. They are attacked by partisans, and one of the soldiers escapes. His partner is shot so the soldier joins the rebels. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In this effective though still slightly uneven drama about mental illness, the worsening condition of a highly disturbed son wreaks havoc on the rest of the family. Dario (Thomas Milian) has episodes when he becomes violently insane yet his mother (Madeleine Robinson) refuses to put him in an institution where he can be professionally helped. Her desperate clinging to the belief that Dario will get better starts to wear away the equilibrium of the two other members of the family, the father (Tino Carraro) and Dario's brother, Gabriele (Nino Castelnuovo). In the end, the continued presence of Dario and his mother's near-fanatical insistence that he will recover create tragic consequences for everyone. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Jacques Demy's 1964 masterpiece is a pop-art opera, or, to borrow the director's own description, a film in song. This simple romantic tragedy begins in 1957. Guy Foucher (Nino Castelnuovo), a 20-year-old French auto mechanic, has fallen in love with 17-year-old Geneviève Emery (a luminous Catherine Deneuve), an employee in her widowed mother's chic but financially embattled umbrella shop. On the evening before Guy is to leave for a two-year tour of combat in Algeria, he and Geneviève make love. She becomes pregnant and must choose between waiting for Guy's return or accepting an offer of marriage from a wealthy diamond merchant (Marc Michel, reprising his role from Demy's masterful debut, Lola). A completely sung movie, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is closest in form to a cinematic opera. Composer Michel Legrand composed the score, modeling it around the patterns of everyday conversation. Umbrellas was re-released in 1997. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide

This claustrophobic WW II war drama chronicles the five months which six soldiers and one woman spent trapped within a deep cave in the Italian mountains. Two soldiers die while trying to escape. The survivors try to keep sane, but keep grating upon each other. The pressure reaches a fever pitch when the British general blows his head off. The gunshot creates an explosion and the others escape. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Although primarily known for gruesome 1980s horror films like L'Aldila and Lo Squartatore di New York, it took cult Italian director Lucio Fulci until this bloody spaghetti Western -- his 17th film -- before he began exploring the dark recesses of insanity and Sadean bloodshed which marked his later work. Bolstered by a commanding star turn from 24-year old Franco Nero, fresh from another Western success in the same year's Django, this dark, violent story -- which many fans consider the first "true" Lucio Fulci film -- begins with a man's murder at the hands of the insane Jason "Junior" Scott (Nino Castelnuovo) and the credits appearing over his victim's blood washing downriver. The rest of the film deals with the efforts of young prospector Tom Corbett (Nero) to avenge the death of his father...or the person whom he believes to be his father, for the familial relations in this film are as twisted as Fulci's violent imagery. At times, the film presages the hallucinatory atmosphere of L'Aldila, with Corbett returning to his family farm only to find it destroyed, and wandering the barren, windswept wreckage amidst a group of foraging pigs. George Hilton turns in a fine performance as Corbett's orphan half-brother, Jeff, an alcoholic whose years of dissolution have curbed neither his gunslinging talents nor his thirst for revenge, and the supporting cast does well by Fernando di Leo's somber script. Giuseppe Addobbati co-stars with Tom Felleghy, Salvatore Borgese, and Lynn Shayne. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide

Made in Italy is a multistoried film, set...in Italy, of course. An all-star cast appears in brief seriocomic vignettes about rich and poor, tourist and native. Director Nanni Loy exhibits the realistic and somewhat earthy technique he'd used on his earlier documentaries, with heavy emphasis on ironic punch lines. Filmed in 1965 by a Franco/Italian production team, Made in Italy received the best possible exposure upon its 1967 American release when clips were showcased on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show. Best bit: The "give to the poor" poster in an impoverished Italian mountain village. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This obscure film is directed by five well-known cinematographers. "Apathy" is directed by Carlo Lizzani and concerns a New York rape victim whose cries for help fall on deaf ears. Bernardo Bertolucci directs "Agony." Members of the Living Theater mime death scenes. In "The Paper Flower Sequence," directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini, a man carries a paper flower through Rome. Part four is directed by Jean-Luc Godard, a tedious segment where two people watch some actors give a boring performance. The last story is directed by Marcello Bellochio. Students at a Roman university engage in dialogue with members of the Establishment. While the stories averages 20 minutes each, this gang-directed effort quickly fell into cinematic oblivion. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

French New Wave filmmaker Agnes Varda writes and directs the intellectual drama Les Creatures. Michel Piccoli plays a novelist who gets in a severe car accident. He is injured and his wife (Catherine Deneuve) is rendered mute. They move to a small village on an island in order to recuperate, and for the husband to write his novel. He uses characters based on the townsfolk on the island. He meets a young man (Jacques Charrier) who is building a machine. They play chess and engage in a violent fight. The wife gives birth and regains her speech, and it is apparent that the young man only existed in the husband's imagination. The conclusion involves a futher distortion of fantasy and reality as the writer finishes his novel. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide

Five Man Army can best be described as a marked-down Magnificent Seven. Peter Graves, James Daly, Bud Spencer, Testuro Tamba and Nino Castelnuovo play the quintet of the title. Caught in the middle of the 1914 Mexican Revolution, the five men pool their individual skills in hopes of incapacitating the enemy. With Mission: Impossible star Graves in the lead, it's only natural that the plan involves the "impossible" task of relieving a nasty general of a large gold shipment. Set in Mexico but filmed in Italy, this spaghetti western was bankrolled by MGM, the same folks who brought you the popular The Dirty Dozen and who were undoubtedly hoping that lightning would strike twice. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Proof of the success of French filmmaker Edouard Molinaro is the fact that several of his home-grown hits have been remade as American films. The most recent example of this is 1996's The Birdcage, a highly profitable reworking of Molinaro's La Cage aux Folles (1978). The director's 1973 comedy A Pain in the A... also went the Cage aux Folles route of enjoying worldwide popularity, then undergoing an Americanization process. In the Molinaro original, Lino Ventura plays a friendless hit man who holes up in an Italian hotel room, awaiting the opportunity to knock off his target, a mob witness. No sooner has Ventura drawn a bead on his would-be victim than he is interrupted by the comically suicidal Jacques Brel, who wants to jump from the open window in the assassin's room. The banter and byplay between Ventura and Brel is priceless, especially when veering towards the "sick" humor that Molinaro handles so well. Based on a play by Francis Veber, Pain in the A... was remade by Billy Wilder as Buddy Buddy (1978), with Walter Matthau as the hit man and Jack Lemmon as his unexpected guest. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide