Franco Branciaroli Movies
- 2002
Directed by Tinto Brass, Senso '45 takes place during the waning period of Nazi occupation in Venice, and is based on an 1882 novella written by Camillo Boito. When a wealthy, politically connected older woman named Livia (Anna Galiena) develops a relationship with Helmut (Gabriel Garko), a rakish, opportunistic SS officer, both are sucked into a state of moral decline similar to that which the country itself has gone into since the occupation. Senso '45 also features Franco Branciaroli, Antonio Salines, Loredana Cannata, Erika Savastani, and Simona Borioni.
~ Tracie Cooper, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Anna Galiena, Gabriel Garko, (more)
- 1980
One of director Michelangelo Antonioni's more obscure works from the 1980s, this psychological period piece reunites the filmmaker with one of his favorite performers, Monica Vitti. Shot on video and based upon the play The Eagle Has Two Heads (Jean Cocteau made his own film version of the work in 1947), the film casts Vitti as a queen who squares off against an anarchist poet who has come to her castle to kill her. Due to his remarkable resemblance to the long-dead king of the land, the queen falls in love with the dissident. ~ Michael Hastings, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Monica Vitti, Franco Branciaroli, (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)
