Giorgio Prosperi Movies

A Polynesian boy and his beloved pet shark provide the basis of this South Seas adventure. It all begins when the boy finds a helpless baby shark and, with the help of a girl friend, raises it as a pet. After the shark grows up, the boy reluctantly returns it to the ocean; he is sad for he fears he will never see it again. Ten years pass and the natives are being forced to leave their fisheries by modern, more organized fishermen. Leading the way to progress is the girl's brother who sends her to the US for an education. Meanwhile, the boy works as a pearl diver. One day his life is endangered and he is suddenly saved by his shark. He is thrilled until the modern fishermen destroy his village and force the residents to flee. Eventually the girl returns from the States; she, the boy, and the shark leave the island to find a peaceful home of their own. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Filmed in Egypt, The Golden Arrow stars yesteryear's beefcake Tab Hunter as a bold Arabian Nights bandit. He discovers that he's actually the son of a Sultan, and that his kingdom is in danger. In order to save his people and restore his throne, the Tabmeister must locate a magic golden arrow. Or, if you prefer, he must locate "la fraccia d'oro", which was the original Italian title of this film. The Golden Arrow lets us know halfway through that it's not to be taken seriously (as if we had up till then) by offering us two comic genies: One skinny, one lazy. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Jean-Louis Trintignant's star was just rising when he took on the role of Carlo in this engrossing wartime coming-of-age story. Carlo is a young man living in his own world and blithely inattentive to the real war that is happening not very far away. This is particularly striking because he is the son of a high-level fascist. The year is 1943 and he has gone to a seaside resort on vacation where he meets the beautiful, older widow Roberta (Eleonora Rossi Drago). Carlo is smitten and in spite of various obstacles, he and Roberta enter into a romantic liaison. Then one day Allied forces land on the coast and Carlo is faced with the realities of war and a reassessment of his life. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

A reporter's search for scandal is the focus of this drama. He is looking for dirt to boost his paper's ratings. He begins digging around in the past of a prominent banker's new wife. Before her marriage, she had been a nobleman's personal secretary until he was poisoned. The journalist soon learns that the woman's daughter was born out of wedlock. The woman explains that the child's father, her fiance, had been killed during the war. This does not prevent the reporter from publishing his tales. As a result even her husband begins to doubt her.Their lives change dramatically, when her daughter, who suffers from polio, is run over by a truck while trying to escape from photographers. The banker soon believes his honest wife. The sleazy reporter gets his just desserts. ~ 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

Ho Scelto L'Amore (I Chose Love) is a satire of the Cold War, Italian style. Soviet flunkey Boris Popovitch (Renato Rascal) is sent on a goodwill mission to Rome, where he is to deliver a symbolic dove of peace to a group of WW II freedom fighters. Somehow or other, Boris winds up in Venice minus the dove. As he searches up street and down canal for the missing bird, he meets and falls in love with luscious flower-girl Maria (Marisa Pavan). Through her, Boris discovers the joys and benefits of democracy. Ho Scelto L'Amore is basically fill-in-the-blanks stuff, but it's fun while it lasts. ~ 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

The title of this Italian wartime drama translates to Without a Flag. Set during WW I, the story concentrates on a group of Austrian saboteurs, who wreak havoc on Italian military installations. A secret agent manages to infiltrate the saboteur's headquarters in Vienna, where he appropriates a list of secret plans. The trick now is to get out of the building and back to Italy. To improve the film's box-office chances, a romance between "mortal enemies" Massimo Serato and Vivi Gioi is concocted. Though essentially a thriller, Senza Bandiera is not without its (deliberately) comic moments. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide