Barbara Alberti Movies
- 1998
This sexy comedy from Italian director Tinto Brass stars Anna Ammirati and Mario Parodi as Lola and Masseto, a young couple about to be married. While Masseto looks forward to deflowering his bride-to-be on their wedding night, Lola is reluctant to betroth herself to him without first ensuring that he will be a good lover. The more Masseto resists her advances, the harder Lola tries to convince him to break tradition and make love before the wedding. Also starring Mario Parodi and Susanna Martinkova, Monella was released in the U.K. as Frivolous Lola. ~ Matthew Tobey, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Arina Ammirati, Mario Parodi, (more)
- 1979
- R
Ernesto (Martin Hahn) is a young Italian Jew of the early 1900s who works in his uncle's factory in Trieste. Not entirely secure with his sexual orientation, Ernesto enters into an affair with one of his uncle's employees--then experiments with heterosexuality, courtesy of an obliging prostitute. When the boy finds himself participating in an arranged marriage with the female twin of one of his male lovers, he finally makes the choice that will determine the direction of his subsequent sex life. The carnal confusion inherent in Ernesto is nothing new to director Salvatore Samperi, who has trod this path before in previous films. This particular effort was based on a novel by Umberto Saba. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Martin Halm, Michele Placido, (more)
Max (Dirk Bogarde) is a discreet, unassuming night porter working in a posh hotel in Vienna in 1957, tending to the guests' needs, from cold water to a bed-warming gigolo. Then Lucia (Charlotte Rampling) arrives at the hotel, on the arm of her husband, an American composer, and Max's past comes flooding back to him. It turns out Max was an S.S. officer at a Nazi concentration camp where Lucia was a beautiful young prisoner. She became, in effect, Max's sexual slave. Now, years later, their reunion shatters both of their lives. Lucia stays in Vienna after her husband travels on, in order to see Max, and they find themselves caught up in a renewal of their former sadomasochistic relationship. Max has an upcoming show trial for his war crimes. His former S.S. comrades have been carefully destroying documents and "filing away" witnesses to clear all their names, and, while Max tries to keep Lucia's existence a secret from them, they eventually find out about her. They consider her a threat, and they urge Max to turn her over to them. He quits his job, and he and Lucia hide out in his apartment, while his former friends keep watch. Liliana Cavani (Ripley's Game) co-wrote and directed this controversial film, Il Portiere di Notte, which she reportedly based partly on her own interviews with a Holocaust survivor. ~ Josh Ralske, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Dirk Bogarde, Charlotte Rampling, (more)
This strident Yugoslavian/Italian film is a very uneven adaptation of a small portion of the famous and much-loved whimsical novel The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulghakov. It attempts to deal only with the Moscow portion of the novel. Even so, it was a brave attempt to film the unfilmable, and uses animation and other techniques to portray the more fantastic aspects of the story. In the film, which lovingly recreates the Moscow of the 1920s, the Master (Ugo Tognazzi) is a playwright. He is attending the dress rehearsal for his play, which is being performed over the objections of everyone involved, except for his girlfriend Margarita (Mimsy Farmer) and Professor Woland (Alain Cluny). He grows frantic when he discovers that the Professor is actually the Devil (the actual supernatural being, not just a very bad man). The Master tries to warn people but is committed to an insane asylum for his pains. At the play's premiere, the Professor uses his magical powers to add terrifying special effects which send the audiences screaming out of the theater. The film makes many guarded references to the persecution (past and present) of artists under communism. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- 1971
A particular highlight of this symbolic Italian drama is that it marks the return of Lucia Bose to film. She retired from film when she married the famed Spanish bullfighter Dominguin in the 1950s. Socialite Danielo is a higher-up in the television world but is repulsed both by high society and the media. In his dreams, he is Gulliver in Lilliputia, and the Lilliputians torture him in various ways. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
