Emma Baron Movies

The English-language title and the Anglo-Saxon name of the director (Alex Burks) of this film would tend to lead one to surmise that A Long Ride From Hell is a Hollywood western. But wait! That terrain looks awfully Italian, and it so happens that Alex Burks is really Camillo Bazzoni. You'll probably catch onto the film's country of origin the moment Steve "Hercules" Reeves rides into view; Reeves (who co-wrote the screenplay) plays a rancher framed on a train-robbery charge. "Long" and "Hell" are the operative words here. Originally titled Vivo per la Tua Morte, this sleep-inducer was Steve Reeves' cinematic swan song. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This Italian/French/Spanish sagebrusher stars Giuliano Gemma as the Arizona Colt, a notorious bandit. Imprisoned in a desert town, the Colt is sprung by gang leader Gordon Watch (Fernando Sancho). Instead of galloping off into the sunset, Our Hero elects to stay in town to defend its citizens from the film's real bad guys: Watch's gang. Had Clint Eastwood and Sergio Leone had anything to do with it, Arizona Colt would probably be hailed as a classic; as it stands, it's just another spaghetti western. The film was also released as Man From Nowhere. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Disorder was a French/Italian co-production, released as Le Desordre in France and Il Disordine in Italy (somebody was in a rut). This leisurely paced modern fable stars Renato Salvatore as a poor young man, struggling to pay for his mother's medical bills. Virtually everyone whom Salvatore approaches for help fails him: An industrialist reneges on a promise, a well-to-do friend laughs in his face, and a priest is defrocked before he can do any good. When the young man is finally able to raise the necessary money, he discovers that the ex-priest has sold all his possessions in order to help Salvatore's mother. Thus it is the film's one Good Samaritan whose life ends up in "disorder." ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Very loosely based on its Biblical source, this standard Italian sword-and-sandal action film stars Orson Welles as an intense, inward-turning King Saul, deteriorating at the same time that David is rising in renown. The shepherd David (Ivo Payer) is sent to the Israelite forces with supplies for his older brothers when he first discovers who Goliath is -- the giant over nine feet tall that challenges any single warrior to meet him one-on-one in battle. If someone takes up his challenge, it would decide whether the Israelites or Philistines are victorious in their current stand-off. David's one-shot victory turns the tide and hastens Saul's decline. The monarch's lithesome daughters Merab and Michal are played by Eleonora Rossi-Drago and Giulia Rubini, his son Jonathan is portrayed by Pierre Cressoy, and Goliath by Kronos, a muscular "giant" of European circus and music hall circuits. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Normally, an actor or actress in a foreign-language film was not the ideal candidate for an Academy Award, inasmuch as his or her English-language "performance" was often dubbed in by an anonymous third party. Such was not the case of Sophia Loren in Two Women (La Ciociara), who did her own English dubbing. Adapted by director Vittorio De Sica and Cesare Zavattini from the novel by Alberto Moravia, Two Women is the semi-neorealist account of widow Cesira (Loren) and her teenaged daughter, Rosetta (Eleanora Brown), as they struggle to survive in war-ravaged Italy. A conventional romantic triangle between mother, daughter, and Michele (Jean-Paul Belmondo), is barely under way when the war rears its ugly head once more. Seeking shelter in a bombed-out church, Cesira and Rosetta are attacked and raped -- a horrifying sequence, capped by a freeze-frame close-up of Rosetta, her face a taut mask of terror (this image was enough to prompt a virulent "anti-smut" editorial in The Saturday Evening Post). Once they've recovered from this appalling experience, mother and daughter are offered a ride back to Rome by friendly truck driver Florindo (Renato Salvatori). Though Cesira had hoped to keep her daughter from compromising herself as a means of survival, she is crushed to discover that Rosetta has given herself to the truck driver in exchange for a pair of stockings. When Cesira and Rosetta finally reconcile, it is a grievous occasion, mourning the death of their mutual love, Michele. A last-minute replacement for Anna Magnani, Sophia Loren brought hitherto untapped depths of emotion to her performance in Two Women; she later stated that she was utilizing "sensory recall," dredging up memories of her own wartime experiences. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Gina Lollobrigida has top billing in Four Ways Out, but the film's dramatic weight is carried by its male stars. The story concerns a quartet of hard-luck cases, played by Renato Baldini, Enzo Maggio, Paul Muller and Fausto Tozzi. Feeling as though the cards have been stacked against them in life (and not without reason), the foursome turns to crime. The film's setpiece, the robbery of a stadium box-office while a soccer game is in progress, bears a passing resemblance to the key scene in Stanley Kubrick's later The Killing, though it is obvious that Kubrick did not in any way imitate the earlier film stylistically. One of the collaborators on the script for Four Ways Out was Federico Fellini. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide