Ninetto Davoli Movies

Relating his facts in straight-on documentary fashion, Pier Paolo Pasolini's 1964 Biblical film stars Enrique Irazoqui as Jesus. In it, Christ and his followers are depicted as gentle radicals working against the grain of the unjust Roman power structure. Typically offbeat Pasolini touches include having Satan disguise himself as a Catholic priest and the casting of the director's own mother as the Virgin Mary. The music is selected from a variety of sources, from Bach to American spirituals. Il Vangelo Secondo Matteo was released in the U.S. as The Gospel According to St. Matthew -- much to the discomfort of Pasolini, who didn't want Matthew designated as a saint. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This Dino De Laurentiis production from 1965 is actually an anthology of five different directors' work, each telling their own stories about witches. The five stories are "The Witch Burned Alive," "Civic Sense," "The Earth As Seen From The Moon," "The Girl From Sicily," and "A Night Like Any Other." Silvia Mangano appears in all five, with Clint Eastwood starring in the last featured vignette. Like many gang-directed projects, this film is also plagued by a lack of continuity and by the pretentiousness of the individual directors. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

Terence Stamp is known only as "The Visitor" in Pier Paolo Pasolini's Teorema. The mysterious stranger insinuates himself into the home of a wealthy Italian family, where he exerts a curious, sensual spirituality over everyone in the household. He then proceeds to seduce everyone in the family (male and female) including the maid, which gives each person some sort of unique epiphany. Because he reveals so little about his innermost thoughts, "The Visitor" becomes all things to all people. What it boils down to is this: Is the enigmatic visitor Christ, or is he the Devil? Matching Terence Stamp's multi-textured performance every step of the way is Laura Betti as the family's maid; Betti, in fact, won the "Best Actress Award" at the 1968 Venice Film Festival. Director Pasolini adapted the screenplay of Teorema from his own novel. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Bernardo Bertolucci was obviously influenced by the films of Jean-Luc Godard and the worldwide political upheavals of 1968 while assembling his feature-film Partner. This unorthodox adaptation of Dostoevsky's The Double studiously avoids traditional linear storytelling and exposition techniques. Pierre Clementi stars as a repressed young student who concocts a radical alter ego for himself. As the student's two faces argue polemics, Bertolucci uses the opportunity to take freewheeling critical potshots at all forms of political ideology. Not all of Partner makes sense, but the film will command the viewer's interest from beginning to end. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Julian (Jean-Pierre Leaud) is the son of German industrialist Klotz (Alberto Lionello) who seeks to go into business with the former Nazi Herdhitze (Ugo Tognazzi). Herdhitze had spent most of World War II collecting human skulls for experiments with brain matter. As a protest, Julian refuses to marry his fiancé from a pre-arranged marriage, and he becomes romantically involved with pigs. Part two finds a man driven to cannibalism by hunger while wandering Mount Etna. He scavenges the mountainside looking for any kind of sustenance. In both cases, humans revert to animal behavior when they are removed from the spectrum of social rules and opinions. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

The Decameron was the first of director Pier Paolo Pasolini's "trilogy of life." The film, based on the sexually supercharged tales of Boccaccio, is a patchwork of many of Pasolini's favorite themes. Pasolini himself plays the role of an aspiring fresco painter who is advised that his completed work will never be as satisfying as his dream of that work. The film is followed by Pasolini's The Canterbury Tales and The Arabian Nights. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Italian director Pier Pasolini tells four of the Chaucer tales in this graphic and satirical picture that chronicles the 14th-century's social, sexual, and religious standards in England. In Pasolini's Trilogy of Life, this second entry follows The Decameron and precedes The Arabian Nights. ~ Kristie Hassen, All Movie Guide

This lush anthology of erotic tales was filmed in four countries (Iran, Nepal, Yemen, and Eritrea) over a period of more than two years. Completing the literary cycle begun by Pier Pasolini in Il Decamerone and I Racconti di Canterbury, this one is perhaps the most controversial of the lot, engendering reactions from admiration to dismissal. The connecting story deals with Mur el-Din (Franco Merli), a prince searching for his slave girl lover, Zumurrud (Ines Pellegrini), who has been kidnapped, only to disguise herself as a man, take a wife, and become ruler of a great city. Mur el-Din's quest carries him to the ends of his known world, where he listens to several stories of carnality and betrayal. The continuity and fluidity of the film depend entirely on the version screened, because several different cuts exist; producer Alberto Grimaldi insisted on a 130-minute release, whereas Pasolini and United Artists preferred the unexpurgated 155-minute version with its ten stories all intact. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide

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

Momo (Radost Bokel) is a ten-year-old orphan girl who tries to save her village from the evil clutches of the Grey Men in this uneven children's story. Led by Chief Grey Man (Armin Muller-Stahl), the Grey Men have managed to make the villagers give up all their leisure time. Momo must get to the rococo palace where the time guardian Hora (John Huston) stands in her way. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

Vulgar, blood-soaked humor abounds in this rollicking Italian black comedy that follows the hellish, bizarre New Years Eve of two average guys who find themselves stumbling from one outlandish situation to the next. After one guy gets dumped by his girl friend, he brashly invites himself to the exclusive party his pal plans to attend. His friend is not happy at spending the evening with such a morose character but allows him to go. Unfortunately, things go awry at the party and he must take the troublesome friend to his parent's suburban home. On a dark, empty highway, the two spy two hitchers. They offer them a ride and end up held at gun point, robbed and then running frantically for their lives in a field. Their flight leads them through dense woods and ultimately to a seemingly empty farmhouse that proves inhabited by a criminally insane poetry fan and his brutal gang. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide