Claudio G. Fava Movies
- 2000
A young man's determination to put a stop to organized crime in his community puts him at odds with his family in this drama from Italy. As a child, Peppino Impastato was very close with his uncle Don Cesare (Pippo Montalbano), but was unaware that he was head of local Mafia operations. As he grew to adulthood, Peppino (Luigi Lo Cascio) became a political activist and a member of the Communist party, thanks to the influence of a close friend and leftist artist (Andrea Tidona). With his friends, Peppino starts an underground radio station to speak out against the corrupt influence of the Mafia and their control of local government, bravely leading public rallies calling for citizens to stand united against organized crime. However, Peppino's family still has strong ties with the mob, and as the young man and his comrades wage war against Tano and his men, Peppino's father (Luigi Maria Burruano) does everything he can to bring his wayward son back into the fold. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
- Starring:
- Luigi Lo Cascio, Luigi Maria Burruano, (more)
- 1989
As indicated by its title, The Icicle Thief shamelessly parodies Vittorio De Sica's neorealist classic The Bicycle Thief--but it's much more than a mere lampoon. Director Maurizio Nichetti appears on-screen as a pompous filmmaker whose new film The Icicle Thief is the last-minute substitute for a more highly regarded "masterpiece" on an intellectual Italian TV program. The film, in black and white, begins to unreel on screen, only to be interrupted at crucial moments by loud, vulgar, full-color commercials. The film-within-a-film's central character (Nichetti again!), who works in a chandelier factory, is suddenly cut adrift when there's a power failure at the TV studio. Soon the hero of the film finds himself in the alien environment of TV advertising, and separating reality from fantasy becomes a lost cause. The worst of it is, the viewers at home don't notice that anything's amiss--they've been so long inundated by commercial intrusions on theatrical films that they're grown numb to the artistic outrages perpetrated upon both director Nichetti and star Nichetti. The various clever cinematic tricks deployed by Nichetti in Icicle Thief are reminiscent of another highly regarded film classic: cartoon director Chuck Jones' Duck Amuck. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Maurizio Nichetti, Renato Scarpa, (more)
- 1983
In a revealing documentary about one slice of film history, directors Francesco Bortolini and Claudio Masenza interview eight Italian actresses who attained fame in the U.S. through films they made in Hollywood. Most of the eight agree that performers are treated better in Hollywood than in Italy, and that U.S. efficiency and organization impressed them -- but that in Italy, they had more challenging roles than was allowed in the U.S. Virna Lisi was made over to look like another Marilyn Monroe, Gina Lollobrigida was employed like the others for her sex appeal -- and left after a few films --, and Claudia Cardinale, for inscrutable reasons, was meant to be another Doris Day. Unfortunately, even though great stars are included among the eight, the most obvious and inexplicable omission is Sophia Loren, well-known to American audiences. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi
- Starring:
- Gina Lollobrigida, Sylva Koscina, (more)
