Marisa Belli Movies
- 1982
This biographical essay tackles the early life of Mother Teresa in her Yugoslavian homeland (she was born at Skopje in 1910). Her mother sent her to care for an aunt who was suffering from tuberculosis, a disease that young Agnes Gongia (Mother Teresa) contracted as a result of her exposure. She angrily turned against her mother for sending her to care for the aunt, but her mother was also responsible for her cure. She put Gongia in a convent in the mountains where she was cloistered with the rest of the nuns, and although she was healed in the process, she came away hating a cloistered life. Until that time, her career prospects had tended toward professional singing -- she had a striking voice and actually sang for awhile with an orchestra conducted by her cousin, someone that aroused her romantic interest. Her true vocation did not come to the fore until she talked to a priest (Rossano Brazzi) who had just returned from India, and she realized that she wanted to help others as a nun, but in a very practical way -- perhaps by handling cases that no one else wanted (not unlike caring for her sick aunt). It would not be long then, before Calcutta was to benefit from young Gongia's calling. (Mother Teresa) died in India on Friday, Sept. 5, 1997. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Marisa Belli, Bekim Fehmiu, (more)
- 1973
Written and directed by Italian filmmaker Alberto Bevilacqua, Questa Specie D'Amore (This Kind of Love) illustrates the difficulties one runs into when one attempts detached intellectualism. Ugo Tognazzi plays the son of a 1930s-era anti-fascist (also played by Tognazzi) who had suffered mightily for his beliefs. Wishing to cut himself off from all feelings and compassion lest he be tormented in the same manner as his father, Tognazzi rushes into a marriage with the spoiled daughter (Jean Seberg) of a wealthy nobleman. The misery attending this mismatch leads Tognazzi to desert his sheltered new lifestyle and return to his father's home town. Throughout the film, flashbacks are used to show the events that led Tognazzi into building huge walls around his true feelings. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1962
Disorder was a French/Italian co-production, released as Le Desordre in France and Il Disordine in Italy (somebody was in a rut). This leisurely paced modern fable stars Renato Salvatore as a poor young man, struggling to pay for his mother's medical bills. Virtually everyone whom Salvatore approaches for help fails him: An industrialist reneges on a promise, a well-to-do friend laughs in his face, and a priest is defrocked before he can do any good. When the young man is finally able to raise the necessary money, he discovers that the ex-priest has sold all his possessions in order to help Salvatore's mother. Thus it is the film's one Good Samaritan whose life ends up in "disorder." ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Renato Salvatori, Louis Jourdan, (more)
- 1953
One need not be fluent in Italian to figure out that Gelosia translates to Jealousy. Set in 19th-century Sicily, the film traces the tragic romance between a wealthy Marquis (Erno Crisa) and low-born servant girl Agrippina (Marisa Belli). Because he is forbidden to marry the girl, the Marquis asks his faithful lackey Don Sylvio (Alessandro Fersen) to wed Agrippina "in name only," so that she may remain in his household without arousing suspicion. Despite Don Sylvio's loyalty, the Marquis eventually goes insane with jealousy. As a result, few of the cast members are still breathing at film's end. Gelosia was based on a novel by Luigi Capuana. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Marisa Belli, Erno Crisa, (more)
