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Tino Scotti Movies

1970  
 
Add L'Urlo to Queue 
Tinto Brass directed this bizarre counterculture escapade, which was shot in 1968 and reflects that momentous year in its frequently playful outrage. Anita (Tina Aumont) is a student activist whose politics move even further to the left after she's raped by police officers following her arrest during a demonstration. Her fiancée Berto (Nino Segurini) is still eager to marry her, but during a performance-art ceremony held in an industrial wasteland, Anita changes her mind and runs away. She soon meets Coso (Gigi Proietti, here billed as Luigi Proiette), who may or may not be an escaped prisoner, and together they wander from one part of Italy to another, encountering a variety of bizarre characters along the way, including a family of well-bred cannibals, a handful of mental patients who stage a revolt, a military leaders whose short stature has not stunted his arrogance, a band of angry but inept police officers and a hotel full of sexual experimentalists. Abandoning a traditional narrative once Anita and Coso hit the road, L'Urlo (aka The Howl) was Brass's second film exploring the changing mood of the Swinging Sixties, following Nerosubianco (aka Attraction and Black On White). ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

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Starring:
Tina AumontLuigi Proietti, (more)
 
1970  
 
Originally produced for Italian television, Bernardo Bertolucci's The Spider's Stratagem (La Strategia del Ragno) can be regarded as a cinematic tone poem. Adapted from a Jorge Luis Borges short story, the film stars Giulio Brogi as a young Italian who returns to his ancestral home -- the place where his anti-fascist father was assassinated, a long-ago incident that still disturbs the populace. Cold-shouldered by everyone in town, the young man tries to find out why everyone is so hostile towards him; after all, was not his father a hero of the people? In some (but not all) ways, The Spider's Stratagem is a precursor to Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris, delineating the correlation between sex and political ideology. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

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Starring:
Giulio BrogiAlida Valli, (more)
 
1947  
 
The plot of the Italian Before Him All Rome Trembled bears traces of the Puccini opera Tosca. Let's go farther than that: it is Tosca, albeit in modern dress. During World War II, British agent Joop van Hulsen parachutes into Rome. He is hidden in the catacombs of the Royal Opera by anti-fascists. As a production of Tosca progresses on the stage of the opera house, the activities below ground begin to mirror the events in the Puccini piece, wherein the heroine must choose between allowing a political prisoner to die, or to surrender herself sexually to the one man who can save the prisoner's life. Most of the acting is as floridly operatic as the musical numbers, with the exception of earth-mother Anna Magnani. Before Him All Rome Trembled was originally released as Davanti a lui tremave tutta Roma.. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

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Starring:
Anna MagnaniGino Sinimberghi, (more)
 
1947  
 
Anything for a Song exists primarily as a showcase for the miraculous singing talents of opera star Ferruccio Tagliavini. The nonsensical story casts Tagliavini as the son of a wealthy eggplant processor (no kidding!) who elects to foresake the family business and try his luck as a singer. His father does everything in his power to prevent our hero from succeeding in his chosen profession. Forced to return home to raise enough money for a blind girl's operation, Tagliavini may well have to marry a woman of his family's choosing to do so. But there's a happy ending, as if there was any doubt. By the time Anything for a Song was released in the US, Ferruccio Tagliavini was firmly entrenched at New York's Metropolitan Opera. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

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Starring:
Ferruccio TagliaviniLuisa Rossi, (more)