Franco Fabrizi Movies

In this entertaining drama, "Carefree Giovanni" (Sergio Castellitto) is the beleaguered last heir to a dukedom closely associated with the great artist Leonardo da Vinci. As the curtain opens, one of Giovanni's ancestors drops dead when he hears that Leonardo has died. Cut to the present, and the last duke in this line, Giovanni, is miserable in a home shared by two older women who browbeat and badger him without mercy. Giovanni's one solace is to go up on the rooftop and gaze out at the world around him as he daydreams. He has a special passion for the lovely Claire (Eleonora Girogi) who lives next door. To show his sincerity, he zooms off paper airplanes in her direction. However, these missiles are made from actual letters written by the great Leonardo himself. Could this man be last link in the lineage that started 400 years earlier? ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Sophia Loren plays an Italian cab driver whose 12-year-old son (played by her real-life son Edoardo Ponti) is blinded in an accident. Lacking the funds necessary for her son's operation, Sophia goes the Buona Sera Mrs. Campbell route by scouring the Italian countryside looking for her former lovers. By claiming that each man is the father of her son, Ms. Loren is able to build up a sizeable bank account. True love rears its head when Sophia hits upon her American ex-lover Daniel J. Travanti, an embittered recluse who lives near Mont Blanc, on the French/Italian border. In addition to Edoardo Ponti, several other members of Sophia's family pop up as actors and on the production staff of Aurora; in addition, Ricky Tognazzi, son of Italian film star Ugo Tognazzi, is featured in the cast. Originally titled Aurora by Night, this US/Italian coproduction premiered on NBC TV in October of 1984, then was released theatrically in Europe. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Bruno Martel Luc Merenda is an idealistic hero who questions the meaning of life in this confusing and sometimes hallucinatory erotic drama. After a night in jail, he is gang-raped by punk rockers in a garbage dump. He later saves an old man who believes he is Garibaldi Alberto Sorrentino and a woman he believes is Ophelia Susanna Javicoli. Bruno watches helplessly as she later jumps from a window. The feature recalls some of the more avant garde efforts of Italian cinema from the 1960s. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

An ordinary man is driven to violence in the name of revenge in this drama. Paul Varlin (Jean-Louis Trintignant) is a businessman who decides to take his wife and daughter on a vacation. While stopping for gas, Varlin's wife is accosted by a gang of motorcycle thugs, who progress from ogling her legs to raping both the wife and the young girl, and then killing them both. When Varlin discovers this horrible crime, he takes it upon himself to track down and kill the bikers in the name of justice. L'Agression also features Catherine Deneuve and Claude Brasseur. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Marcello Mastroianni stars in this French farce, an absurd "western" set in Paris, with Mastroianni as the incurably vain General George Armstrong Custer. Richard Nixon is the American president, but everyone is costumed appropriately for the previous century. Buffalo Bill (Michel Piccoli), the famous scout, is here portrayed as a limp-wristed bungler. Ugo Tognazzi plays one of Custer's Native American opponents; he runs a curio shop selling Native artifacts made in sweatshops by white women. The climactic battle is held in a large construction excavation where Les Halles market used to be. The language the two sides use to justify their conflict is lifted from that used in the then-current Vietnam War. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

What started out as a one-night stand grows more complicated as television news-reporter Luigi (Gianni Morandi) encounters the traditional values not only of his girlfriend (Stefania Casini), but of the tiny provincial fishing village in which she lives. Through a series of events, he comes to prefer the more settled values of the countryside to the swinging ways of the big city. This film is notable as the first film appearance of the Italian pop singer Gianni Morandi. This Italian language film has no dubbing or subtitles. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Based on a novel by Thomas Mann, Death in Venice stars Dirk Bogarde as a German composer who is terrified that he has lost all vestiges of humanity. While visiting Venice, Bogarde falls in love with a beautiful young boy (Bjorn Andresen). The relationship is ruined by Bogarde's obsession with the boy's youth and physical perfection; the composer realizes that the child represents an ideal that he can never match. The character played by Dirk Bogarde is evidently intended to be Gustav Mahler, whose haunting music is featured on the film's soundtrack. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This situation comedy finds a chauffeur taking the rap for his wealthy industrialist boss for a traffic accident. To add injury to insult, the driver discovers on his wedding night that he is married to his boss' mistress as well. Oscar (Ugo Tognazzi) is the little man caught in a world of high-powered moguls who can buy their way out of any problem. Oscar takes the fall and while already doing time, he receives another prison sentence for involvement in a shipbuilding scam. He also discovers to his chagrin that his wife and his boss are expecting a child together in this satire of the rich and privileged elite versus the common man. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

Jason Fister (Dustin Hoffman) is the Internal Revenue Service agent sent to Rome to investigate the hidden money of the late gangster Mike Madigan (Cesar Romero). Jason meets Vick Shaw ( Elsa Martinelli) and he mistakenly takes her to be the dead mobster's mistress when in fact she is his daughter. Soon underworld thugs converge on the couple in an attempt to steal the stolen loot. This film was completed in 1967 and was subsequently shelved. It was released in the wake of Hoffman's popularity from his roles in The Graduate and Midnight Cowboy. This inept and contrived comedy is Hoffman's first feature film. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

Yet another entry in a long series of 1960s Italian sex comedies, this one has some clever moments in its study of four beautiful women (Ursula Andress, Marisa Mell, Virna Lisi, and Claudine Auger) who cheat on their husbands to relieve their marital discontent. Jean-Pierre Cassel also stars in this typical anthology written by Ruggero Maccari and Ettore Scola. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide

Pietro Germi's funny anthology combines the standard sex comedy format with some unexpectedly subtle observations about village life. The film centers on three stories exposing the sexual secrets of the Italian town of Treviso. Toni Gasparini (Alberto Lionello) pretends to be impotent in order to wrangle an illicit affair with his doctor's wife. Bank clerk Osvaldo Bisigato (Gastone Moschin) leaves his shrewish wife (Nora Ricci) to move in with his mistress Milena (Virna Lisi), a cafe cashier, but Treviso's jealous husbands unite to cost the lovers their jobs and have them arrested. Meanwhile, most of the village's men are busy seducing a promiscuous teenager (Patrizia Valturri), whose father eventually reveals that she is underage. Franco Fabrizi, Beba Loncar, and cult filmmaker Giulio Questi are among the cast, and Carlo Rustichelli provided the score. Signore e Signori won the Best Film award at the 1966 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide

In this offbeat black comedy, Efisio Ugo Tognazzi is smuggled into Sardinia to kill a man for his insulting remarks about another family. While he is with his wife in Milan, the intended victim is killed by another man and Efisio gets credit for the hit. When his wife becomes pregnant, rumors in town circulate that Efisio is not the father because he was supposedly in Sardinia at the time. Efisio becomes the target of a disapproving mob and must shoot his own wife to defend the honor of his family. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide