Teresa Ann Savoy Movies
This lavish big-budget epic was the pinnacle of a uniquely Italian subgenre, the historical hardcore gore/porn extravaganza. The star-studded cast, perhaps lured by the high-profile involvement of producer Bob Guccione and screenwriter Gore Vidal, includes such luminaries as John Gielgud, Peter O'Toole, and Helen Mirren. Director Tinto Brass, whose similar treatment of Nazi Germany in Salon Kitty won him the job, did his best with the mammoth enterprise, but numerous production problems and re-edits took their toll on the finished product. When Caligula works best, it works because of Malcolm McDowell, whose crazed portrayal of the title Emperor is the embodiment of villainous corruption. McDowell raises his performance level to match the gaudy spectacle around him, which led to charges of overacting, but there are moments when he is absolutely riveting. Some of the cast doesn't fare as well, as O'Toole makes a particularly unsubtle Tiberius. The sex is graphic and steamy, particularly a feverish lesbian interlude between Penthouse Pets Lori Wagner and Marjorie Thorsen (using the pseudonym "Anneka di Lorenzo"), and the various carnival freaks used as atmosphere imbue the film with a grotesque, Fellini-like opulence. There are many memorable scenes and a magnificent score by Paul Clemente, but the heady brew of historical epic, hardcore sex, and gory violence proved overwhelming to many viewers. Still, Gore Vidal's script is surprisingly accurate, and manages to be entertainingly vulgar while bringing a rather loathsome slice of human history to vivid life, warts and all. The more explicit scenes were directed by Bob Guccione and Giancarlo Lui, causing both Vidal and Brass to remove their names from the credits. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Malcolm McDowell, Teresa Ann Savoy, (more)
- 1987
During his lifetime, the noted Italian author Gabriele D'Annunzio was considered to be a genius, a daring adventurer, and a major Italian nationalist. During the Mussolini era, he was still considered to be a major figure in Italian literature, and many schoolchildren were required to study his tamer books. Several movies based on his life were made prior to this one, and they focused on his association with the Mussolini regime. Since then, his reputation has declined considerably, and this biographical drama certainly reflects his new status as a historically important but repugnant and artistically insignificant figure. In this story, the journalist-turned-author is a foolish-looking dandy who is just beginning to make his mark as a central figure in Italy's art-world. His little group would win the descriptive title of "the decadents." Here, he is shown as being the sort of man who would exploit the women he has affairs with to further his career. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Robert Powell, Stefania Sandrelli, (more)
- 1984
In yet another 1980s film on Italian radicals, Marco (Saverio Marconi) is a young man determined to leave his terrorist past behind him -- mainly because he is being hunted by a former companion out to silence him for good -- and he finds shelter with a wise elderly farmer addicted to reading Virgil. Between the old man, a friendly schoolteacher, Virgil, and the sheep, the terrorist begins to see the virtues of a peaceful life -- but will his change of heart matter at all to the determined woman hunting him down? The farming landscape of stone cottages and grazing animals adds the most colorful component to this otherwise routine chase story. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Riccardo Cucciolla, Saverio Marconi, (more)
- 1975
When the ambitious skirt chaser Saverio (Luigi Proietti) meets serenely nymphomaniac retarded rich Clothilde (Teresa Ann Savoy), he finds he has met his match; he calms down and she wises up. After he has bedded the girls' mother and a housemaid, he tries to figure out how to make use of his connection with this wealthy family to get a large loan -- which he needs for a business deal. However, the lustful designs of the otherwise witless girl overwhelm his own scheming, and he runs off with her. It is not clear whether he has been manipulated into this by the girl's conniving mother Donna Raimonda (Irene Papas), or if he is simply succumbing to his own desires. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- 1986
Two isolated people fighting different uphill battles come together in this touching romantic drama by Amadeo Fago). Gioli (Alessandro Haber) is a puppeteer like many generations before him. He has just had to bury his mother alongside his father, near the river. While performing this sad duty, Gioli meets the ferrywoman Viola (Teresa Ann Savoy) who is trying to stop her brother from selling the family property. To assuage his loneliness Gioli has been driven to create a puppet baby that cries mechanically. Viola, however, sees Gioli as he really is and has her own answer to his puppet-child. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Alessandro Haber, Teresa Ann Savoy, (more)
- 1975
The son of Emperor Franz Josef of Austria, Crown Prince Rudolf, is believed to have shot his female lover and himself in a tragic suicide pact in 1882 in Mayerling. Due to Imperial cover-ups, the full story may never be known. This story has been filmed several times, in French in 1935 and in English in 1968. Hungarian director Miklos Jancso recreates those events for his own purposes, continuing his favored theme of the rejection of paternal authority. In the film, which has very little dialog, Rudolf is a good-natured pan-sexual golden boy, who cavorts on his rural estate with a host of beautiful, aristocratic lovers and friends of both sexes. He refuses to leave his country idyll even though he has been ordered to by the Emperor, his father. Despite the fact that for a large part of the film, attractive young people go about unclothed and engaging in erotic encounters, the mood is one of melancholy rather than prurience. The Prince is a political liberal who wishes to arrange things so that the Emperor will arrest him, creating a public scandal which will provide a rallying point for the opposition. Instead, when the expected troops come, Rudolf's sensuous friends loyally ward off the Imperial officers, humiliating them in the process. The result is that the guests, the Prince and a hermaphrodite friend are killed by newly arrived Imperial reinforcements, and the now-familiar official story of murder and suicide is concocted for public consumption. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Lajos Balazsovits, Pamela Villoresi, (more)
- 1981
It is the 15th c. in Hungary. And young prince Gaspar (Laszlo Galffy) was sent off to Italy when he was just two years old, and now he has come back to his father's castle as a grown man, with a troupe of actors in tow. Once arrived at the castle, he discovers his mother is in a kind of trance state, reportedly drinking the blood of virgins to keep her forever young (just like the infamous Bloody Lady Elizabeth Bathory). Gaspar's father has died in very mysterious circumstances - some say it was a bear that killed him (another symbolical, legendary animal in European lore) and others say he was done in by the Turks. Meanwhile, his uncle says the trance-like queen was really in love with him - and sometimes he says not. Yet they marry, and when she comes out of her mesmerized state for awhile she tells Gaspar that just like his friends, none of the castle's inhabitants are real, they are all actors and she is actually younger than he is - and then she falls back into her trance. As Gaspar seems to have nowhere to turn, a Turk comes into the picture to test him for his worthiness to rule, and says he (the Turk) is really Gaspar's father. The tests turn out negative, and Gaspar is told he cannot be king. There seems to be no choice but to leave the castle with his troupe of actors, and as the castle opens up onto a vast field, he and his friends - and an underhanded Turkish priest - make a dash for freedom, hoping to elude the weaponry of the Turkish guards behind them. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ninetto Davoli, Laszlo Galffi, (more)
