Mariangela Melato Movies

A group of amoral students pay a visit to their professor, a noted architect with plans to construct his buildings in Africa. Marcello (Michel Piccoli) and his wife Marina (Lisa Gastoni) invite the dissident students into their home and a philosophical discussion develops. They start to paint his walls and begin to debase the couple. One student urinates on the professor while two make love to the wife amidst the crowd of cheering voyeurs. When his wife starts to take on more men in their bedroom, the professor reveals his homosexual yearnings. The hosts are willingly subjected to sexual debauchery and have their home nearly wrecked by the student visitors. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

If this Italian drama were any less well told, it would come off as a pure union propaganda piece. Instead, it is a worthy film for the director who made the acclaimed film Investigation Of A Citizen Above Suspicion. In any manufacturing situation, it simply doesn't pay to be the fastest and hardest working person on the assembly line. In the first place, you probably can't keep up the pace you've set. In the second place, you make all your co-workers a) look bad and b) have to work harder; they will not thank you for this. Appearances to the contrary, it's a really stupid thing to do. However, Lulu Massa (Gian Maria Volonte) doesn't understand this simple principle, and he enjoys the pay bonuses he gets from management -- until he has to leave work to recuperate from an accident in which he lost a finger. During that time, he visits a colleague who shows him not only the error of his own ways, but the horror of his whole working situation. When he goes back to work, Massa tries to organize a union. At first, he is just as unpopular with his co-workers as before, but he is persistent. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

A Georges Simenon novel was the basis for the French Le Chat. Not much happens in the way of plot, nor are many words of dialogue spoken; the character relationships (or lack of same) are the focal point here. Jean Gabin and Simone Signoret, long married, plainly despise one another. Rather than call it quits, Gabin and Signoret spend their days in a crumbling mansion, figuring out ways to make each other's lives a hell on earth. The only thing Gabin truly cares about is his pet cat--and you can bet Signoret will do something about that. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Lo Chiameremo Andrea is an Italian comedy by famed director Vittorio De Sica. It tells the story of Paolo (Nino Manfredi) and Maria (Mariangela Melato) two elementary schoolteachers whose "biological clock" is ticking. They have been married for some time, and desperately want a child of their own. So powerful is this desire that Maria suffers for a while from a hysterical pregnancy. The film focuses on their efforts to overcome sterility and the humor to be found in the affectionate lack of understanding each has for the other . ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Lina Wertmuller's fifth feature, The Seduction of Mimi, stars the director's favorite leading man, Giancarlo Giannini. Giannini plays the muddler of the title, who can't keep apace with the exigencies of a cruel, callous society (this character would be honed to perfection in Wertmuller's subsequent Seven Beauties); his political and sexual ignorance land him in hot water time and again. Wertmuller devotes much of the picture's running time to lengthy monologues and diatribes involving sex and politics; the film attained notoriety for its infamous sequence of Giannini bedding an obese woman. Wertmuller won a Best Director prize at the Cannes Film Festival for her work in this picture. Originally titled Mimi Mettalurgio Ferito nell'Onore, the film has also been released as Mimi the Metalworker and Wounded in Honor. It was remade (very loosely) by Richard Pryor as Which Way Is Up? (1977). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

By the Blood of Others was directed by Marc Simenon, son of famed French crime novelist Georges Simenon. In emulation of his dad, the younger Simenon builds his suspense methodically, with very little wasted motion. The story involves the kidnapping of two young women by a mentally unbalanced man. The men in charge of the small village where both kidnapper and victims live desperately try to formulate a plan to end the crisis safely. The pastoral village settings provide a piquant contrast to the sordidness of the abduction. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Gianna Abastanza (Mariangelo Melato) is tired of men acting as though they can do everything better than women, so she enters the police force and dons a policewoman's uniform. By following the law more closely than her police comrades and superiors, she soon runs into trouble with them, though this does not prevent love from blossoming. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

In this intellectual drama, Ras (Eli Wallach) is a ruler or dictator who, somewhat like the Biblical King David, covets another man's wife as his own. Unlike David, however, Ras wants to humiliate Marcello (Nino Manfredi), a dedicated musician whose life he has already ruined. He forces Marcello to seek an annulment to his marriage through the Vatican. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Originally filmed for British television as a six-hour miniseries, Moses appeared in the U.S. in 1975 as a 2 1/2-hour theatrical release. God's lawgiver (Burt Lancaster) is chosen by God to deliver the Israelites out of Egypt, across the Red Sea and into the promised land of Canaan. ~ John Bush, All Movie Guide

Michael is the younger son of a middle-class family, a strong-willed and free-thinking fellow, who is off in some distant country fighting for a revolutionary cause. Everyone in the family writes to him, describing the events of their lives, as they drift into a kind of conventionality which would perhaps have horrified them earlier. Only Michael's girlfriend Mara (Mariangela Melato), the mother of his child, retains her independence, even though it is through the help of Michael's increasingly conventional friends and family that she survives. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Amedeo and Ofelia (Ugo Tognazzi and Mariangela Melato) own an old, fairly unprofitable apartment house in Rome. Someone has offered to buy the property for redevelopment for a lot of money, but only if the building has no tenants. Since six of its apartments are currently in use, Amedio and Ofelia decide to find ways to get every one of them emptied. In this antic comedy, they manage to blackmail a priest-tenant and have almost half the remainder arrested for crimes ranging from drug-trafficking to prostitution. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

This effective drama about crisis and change in an unorthodox family is directed by Franco Brusati, best known for his earlier Bread and Chocolate. Marta (Hella Petri) lives in a large country estate after retiring from her career as an opera singer. She is not alone. Two women live with her, Claudia (Eleonora Giorgi) and Anna (Mariangela Melato), of uncertain familial ties, though perhaps nieces. Claudia and Anna are established in a lesbian affair and both depend on Marta like daughters would depend on a mother. Marta's brother Nicky (Erland Josephson) and his lover Picchio (David Pontremoli) arrive one day because Marta wants to take the two couples for a brief trip to Venice. Circumstances conspire to change those plans as one crisis after another, as well as a tragedy, make Claudia, Anna, and Nicky rethink their dependent behavior. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide