Maria Pia Casilio Movies

Lo Chiameremo Andrea is an Italian comedy by famed director Vittorio De Sica. It tells the story of Paolo (Nino Manfredi) and Maria (Mariangela Melato) two elementary schoolteachers whose "biological clock" is ticking. They have been married for some time, and desperately want a child of their own. So powerful is this desire that Maria suffers for a while from a hysterical pregnancy. The film focuses on their efforts to overcome sterility and the humor to be found in the affectionate lack of understanding each has for the other . ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

In this sequel to Bread, Love, and Dreams a fortyish man gets himself in trouble with his wife who suspects him of messing around with a sexy woman. Unfortunately, he is innocent. His attempts to prove it form the basis for the story. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Legendary producer David O. Selznick teamed with Italian neorealist Vittorio De Sica (The Bicycle Thief) to bring audiences this heartfelt romantic drama concerning the pain of lost love and the difficulty of saying goodbye. When a beautiful but married American woman, Mary Forbes (Jennifer Jones), meets a handsome Italian, Giovanni Doria (Montgomery Clift), while on holiday in Rome, their forbidden affair soon develops into something more for the lovelorn Giovanni. As Mary bids her heartbroken lover farewell at the train station, Giovanni cannot repress his true feelings and begs her to remain with him in Italy. With a script that credits such writers as Truman Capote, Carson McCullers, Paul Gallico, and Alberto Moravia, Indiscretion of an American Wife has endured to become a true buried treasure of romantic cinema. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

This film boasts clips of numerous acclaimed actors and actresses of Italy's silent cinema: Francesca Bertini, Lyda Borelli, Eleonora Duse, Antonio Gandusio, Elena Makowska (who also acts in this film), Pina Manichelli, Amleto Novelli, Bartolomeo Pagano, and Ermete Zacconi. They're glimpsed in footage from the collection of a former silent-film actor, Ettore Omeri (Umberto Melnati), who shows them at local schools. The performances of Bertini and Borelli draw laughter from some of the younger members of the audience, provoking an incident at the screening. A woman recognizes herself acting in one of the films Omeri exhibits and takes offense at the derisive reactions. She requests the clip from him and sends her son to obtain it, but while he's visiting the film archive, Omeri's secretary accidentally starts a fire. Omeri is arrested for mishandling dangerous materials, but freed by the help of the wealthy producer who is the husband of the silent-film actress; he gives Omeri work and helps endow his film museum. ~ Nicole Gagne, All Movie Guide

Vittorio De Sica plays the middle-aged marshal of carabiniers in a remote Italian mountain village. He's anxious to marry, and selects young Gina Lollobrigida as his bride; but she is already in love with De Sica's shy subordinate Roberto Risso. Mistaking her headstrong behavior as promiscuity, De Sica makes advances towards her, but she spurns him. Forsaking the girl to the arms of Risso, De Sica decides to settle for village midwife Marisa Merlini. Originally titled Pane, Amore, e Fantasia when released in Italy, Bread, Love and Dreams contains what some regard as Gina Lollobrigida's best and most naturalistic performance. The film's popularity resulted in two sequels, both with Lollobrigida: Pane, Amore e Gelosia (US title: Frisky) and the open-ended Pane, Amore e... (released in the states as Scandal in Sorrento). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Indiscretion of an American Wife began its life as a romantic drama entitled Terminal Station, directed with extraordinary skill and sensitivity by neorealist filmmaker Vittorio De Sica and starring Jennifer Jones and Montgomery Clift as a visiting American housewife and her Italian lover. Their tale was depicted against the backdrop of a hundred other stories and characters that De Sica presented in his 89-minute Terminal Station. In Indiscretion, however -- which was cobbled together at 63 minutes by producer David O. Selznick for the U.S. market -- theirs is the only one. Jones' Mary Hughs wrings her hands and wrestles with her conscience, but with no real depth, while Clift's Giovanni Doria emotes with jealousy and lust as she tries to leave him, gets off one train, waits for another, attempts to soothe the feelings of her confused and disappointed nephew (Richard Beymer), and ponders the idea of leaving her husband and marriage. The two accidentally run afoul of the authorities in the process, and risk exposure of their affair. This was a difficult shoot, beginning with the fact that Jones -- who always required lots of direction to give a consistent performance -- didn't speak Italian and De Sica spoke no English. In addition, the actress reportedly found Clift attractive in ways that reminded her of her first husband, Robert Walker; she also found his method-based approach to acting a challenge which she might have met, if only her husband at the time, Selznick, hadn't been deluging them with script changes on a daily basis. To further complicate matters, at some point after Jones found herself drawn to the Clift, she discovered that he was attracted to men, not women, and she reportedly flew into a destructive rage for the afternoon. Despite these problems, De Sica ended up getting a lot more of what he needed than Selznick did of what he wanted. Unhappy with the Italian director's finished 89-minute film and unwilling to challenge the American censors over some of the content (in connection with the tale of an adulterous wife and mother), Selznick, his editor, and writers (including Ben Hecht) went to work on it and delivered Indiscretion of an American Wife, a Hollywoodization of De Sica's neorealist masterpiece, but which lacked almost all of the most subtle elements of De Sica's movie. At times it seems like another attempt (à la Portrait of Jennie) to celebrate Jones' melodramatic screen persona, while elsewhere it focuses on Clift's tempestuous, exciting screen persona; but otherwise, there's very little "there" there, and the setting and scenes are a mere shadow of what was seen in De Sica's original Terminal Station. In 2003, both films -- and they are two separate movies that just happen to utilize the same footage -- were finally compiled under one cover, and in their optimal states, on a Criterion Collection DVD, and can be seen and compared for what they are. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide