Anna Carena Movies
Vittorio De Sica's A Brief Vacation (Una Breva Vacanza) stars Florinda Bolkan as a downtrodden working woman. Forced to support herself, her children, her physically incapacitated husband and her obtrusive brother and mother, Bolkan contracts tuberculosis. She is granted a brief vacation at a health spa, where a whole new world--and potential new life--is opened up to her. A Brief Vacation was scripted by the prolific Cesar Zavattini, who like De Sica had once been a guiding force in the Italian neorealist movement. Though not De Sica's final film, A Brief Vacation was the last of the director's work to be released in America. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1953
Signora Senza Camelie (Lady without Camelias or Camille without Camelias) was the third feature-length directorial effort by Michelangelo Antonioni. It is possible that the director invested a great deal of himself in the story's central character, a film producer played by Gino Cervi. Turning shopgirl Clara Manni (Lucia Bose) into a major movie star, Ercole "Ercolino" (Cervi) caps this Svengalilike action by marrying the girl. Her head in the clouds, Clara demands that her husband star her in an "artistic" production, rather than the sexy vehicles in which she's previously appeared. When the film bombs, so does the marriage. The film ends with a backhanded paean to "public taste," a commodity Antonioni seldom bothered himself with in his future films. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Lucia Bosé, Gino Cervi, (more)
- 1951
Vittorio DeSica's follow-up to The Bicycle Thief documents the lives of the poverty-stricken in post-war Italy. Francesco Golisano is Good Toto, an orphan boy who begins living with a cluster of beggars. His organizational efforts bring some structure to the colony and engenders a sense of faint happiness among its morose dwellers. When Toto is given a magic dove by a fairy, he uses its wish-granting powers to whoever asks, but the dove is eventually stolen. As a result, the land on which the beggars live is taken over, and they are jailed. In his prison, however, the dove returns to Toto, and his wish for the freedom of his friends is granted. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Emma Gramatica, Francesco Golisano, (more)
- 1949
Il Mulino del Po was based on a novel by Riccardo Baccheli. Essentially an elaborate retelling of the old one about a pair of young lovers kept separated by family rivalries, the film is distinguished by its evocative location photography and tight, mathematically precise editing. Director Alberto Lattuada also manages to insert what one historian has labelled his "progressive ideology" into the proceedings. The romantic plotline is placed in context within the events leading up to the famous Po Valley farmers' strike of 1876; characteristically, Lattuada offers a topical political slant to the facts at hand. As in his other neorealist exercises, Lattuada manages to bridge the gap between "art" and box-office appeal in Il Mulino del Po. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Carla Del Poggio, Jacques Sernas, (more)
