Olga Karlatos Movies

The tragic life of Italian poet Dino Campana (1885-1931) is the subject of this award-winning docudrama by Luigi Faccini. Born in Tuscany in 1885, Campana was already showing signs of mental illness at the age of 15 when he had his first breakdown. Intermittent visits and stays in mental institutions followed for several years, before he was permanently institutionalized in 1918. In this story the hospitalized Campana (Bruno Zanin) is visited regularly by a psychiatrist who clearly covets any writing the poet may have produced that has not yet come to light. He is already famous for his Canti Orifici published in 1914. Campana, who has no illusions when it comes to literary parasites, finds a clever way to put this doctor-cum-literary vulture in his place. In the meantime, the embittered poet remembers his brief love affair with the writer Sibilla Aleramo (Olga Karlatos) in flashbacks. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

Though some viewers might be put off by its length, graphic violence, and absence of likable characters, Sergio Leone's final film is also a cinematic masterpiece. Spanning four decades, the film tells the story of David "Noodles" Aaronson (Robert De Niro) and his Jewish pals, chronicling their childhoods on New York's Lower East Side in the 1920s, through their gangster careers in the 1930s, and culminating in Noodles' 1968 return to New York from self-imposed exile, at which time he learns the truth about the fate of his friends and again confronts the nightmare of his past. The acting, the re-creation of the time period, the cinematography, and the music are all superb. However, even more important is Leone's ability to make the film work on so many different levels: it's both a criticism of gangster-film mythology and a continuation of the director's exploration of the issues of time and history. Strange as it may seem, the violence and gore in the first half of the film turn into a sad elegy about wasted lives and lost love. The film's strengths emerge only in its full 229-minute version -- the 139-minute and other edited versions don't make nearly the same impact. ~ Yuri German, Rovi

Gregory Peck had made scattered television appearances before, but the 3-hour Scarlet and the Black was his first starring assignment in a made-for-TV movie. Peck plays Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty, a real-life cleric who, during World War II, rescued thousands of escaped POWs from the Gestapo. Christopher Plummer co-stars as the Rome-based SS official who tries to catch O'Flaherty in the act. The film won several industry and religious awards, and earned three Emmy nominations. Based on J. P. Gallagher's book The Scarlet Pimpernel in the Vatican, The Scarlet and the Black premiered on February 2, 1983. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In the original story of Camille by Alexandre Dumas, Jr. La Dame aux Camelias, a beautiful Parisian courtesan, Marguerite Gautier, (called "Camille" because of her love for camelias) is supported by a series of aristocratic lovers, but does not fall in love until she meets Armand Duval. Armand's father lets it be known that Camille would ruin Armand because of her "low" past, and she leaves to save his reputation, saying she does not love him anymore. She soon contracts tuberculosis, and Armand hears that she is dying. He rushes to her side, finds out she has loved him all along, and she dies knowing he has always loved her. The True Story of Camille uses the ploy of Alexandre Dumas, Jr. doing his version of "Camille" at the turn of the 20th century, as a means of introducing a flashback to the "real" story behind the "real" Camille, Alphonsine Plessis. In the film, Alphonsine (Isabelle Huppert) - a country girl - was sold by her father to a wealthy neighbor, which starts her off on a round of living in expansive palaces and keeping company with wealthy aristocrats and eventually, Alexandre Dumas, Jr. himself. But that trajectory did not happen all at once. Alphonsine first survives, barely, as a seamstress in Paris. Then she becomes a prostitute, after which a Count Peregaunts (Bruno Ganz) marries her, then more or less disappears, leaving her to become a high-class courtesan. As she makes her way from one handsome, aristocratic client to the next, a noble protector, Count Stechelberg (Fernando Rey) keeps her out of harm's way. By the time she and Dumas meet, she has become infected with tuberculosis - and she has created the inspiration for Dumas' story of Camille. Her father comes along at this point, however, ready to trounce Dumas for romanticizing his daughter's wretched life - the same father that sold her off in the first place. If the viewer can remember that the characters of Marguerite Gautier (Carla Fracci) and Armand Duval from Dumas' story of Camille have been given their "real" personas as Alphonsine Plessis and Dumas in this film, then the story within a story make more sense. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

This audaciously disgusting spectacle from the late master of gruesome horror, Lucio Fulci, was posited as a semi-sequel to George Romero's Dawn of the Dead, which was released in Italy as Zombi. Tisa Farrow and a group of vacationing tourists travel to an island where they find a doctor (Richard Johnson) who is attempting to cure a condition that reanimates the dead. Things quickly get out of control as undead Spanish conquistadors crawl from their graves hungry for human flesh. The nauseatingly graphic set-pieces by Gianetto de Rossi include a close-up of a woman's eye being pierced by a large shard of wood and a zombie fighting a Great White shark underwater. This relatively well-made shocker was enormously popular worldwide and led to the zombie-gore film becoming the dominant motif of 1980s Italian horror. ~ Robert Firsching, Rovi

Guido (Italian pop-music superstar Adriano Celentano) is a millionaire who has made his fortune by inventing an unbreakable glass. He has everything he wants except for casual sex from a woman who knows nothing of his wealth. While riding the subway, his Rolex watch is lifted by the beautiful felonious female Tilli (Eleanora Giorgi). Guido falls for Tilli and spends the rest of his time trying to keep his identity a secret from her and her larcenous family. Celentano plays the role with slapstick flair reminiscent of Jerry Lewis and the smooth deportment of Cary Grant. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi

In this black comedy, the men in a lovely mansion slowly give in to a kind of terminal sloth after they are freed from the need to actually work. The father takes to his bed after his hernia acts up and never leaves it. Of his three sons, only one wants to do much about leaving, and he does in fact cross the front threshold of the house with his lover, who is also the maid. However, before he has gotten very far, he is very tired, and goes to sleep where he stands. One of the sons outdoes them all by sleeping literally all the time. He is not in a coma -- he is just very, very lazy and tired. Some critics have viewed this film as a sharply delineated social satire. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

The disaster genre gets the exploitation treatment in this gruesome tale of survival at sea from director René Cardona Jr. In the wake of a violent cyclone, the remaining passengers of a downed airplane find refuge on a passing boat carrying the survivors of a shipwreck. Without a clue where in the world they are, a shortage of food and water, and the surrounding waters teeming with man-eating sharks, the tensions are soon on the rise. El Ciclon was released in the U.S. as The Cyclone. ~ Matthew Tobey, Rovi

A woman working for a film director, who is also a third-world terrorist, seriously abuses herself (i.e., by burning herself with cigarettes) to induce the correct emotional tone in herself for the movie they are working on. Left on her own when the director is forced to flee from the secret police, she takes some of his clandestine documents and tries to find someone who will help. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi