Ornella Muti Movies

Juan (Imanol Arias) speaks Catalan and Spanish. He was active in political protests under the Franco regime. He is an astonishingly bad accordian player, and an acceptable ventriloquist, which enables him to scratch a living from the streets as an itinerant musician/entertainer. A long time ago, he met an aristocratic young woman (Ornella Muti) at a sit-in at an art gallery and married her. She has long since divorced him, but he still yearns for her. Juan was injured in a random terrorist incident, and now affects costumes that evoke the Phantom of the Opera and other famous mutilated men. He has minor encounters with women, but he is still seeking some way to come back into his former wife's life again. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Sylvester Stallone gives comedy another try in this farce set in the 1930s. Angelo "Snaps" Provelone (Stallone) is the wealthy and powerful head of the Chicago mob, but his ailing father (Kirk Douglas) doesn't approve of his life in crime, and on his deathbed, Dad makes Snaps promise to go straight. Determined to honor his late father's wishes, Snaps decides to go into banking -- just as his life has fallen into chaos. Anthony Russano (Vincent Spano) informs Snaps that he's hijacked $50,000 of his money and wants to marry his daughter. Snaps discovers that his daughter Lisa (Marisa Tomei) is actually involved with the chauffeur, Oscar (Jim Mulholland), but Anthony's girlfriend Theresa (Elizabeth Barondes) has convinced her beau that Snaps is her father. Snaps hopes to use this misunderstanding as a way of getting his money back, but in the meantime, he has to deal with a wary banking board, rival mob boss Vendetti (Richard Romanus), prissy elocution coach Thornton (Tim Curry), and Snaps' one-time girlfriend Roxanne (Linda Gray). Oscar's stellar supporting cast includes Don Ameche, Chazz Palminteri, Harry Shearer, Eddie Bracken, Yvonne DeCarlo, and Bruce Davison. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

This coarse bedroom farce takes place at the St. Moritz ski resort over a Christmas vacation. Among the couples whose lives intersect are a widowed artist honeymooning with his second wife, a gay man traveling with his son and his lover (and hiding each from the other), a snobbish couple from Milan who have been forced to share a suite with a pair of crass Romans, etc. The movie features a host of popular stars (including Christian De Sica, Ornella Muti and Alberto Sordi) and was wildly successful at the box office in its native Italy. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Season of Giants succeeds more in ambition than in execution. This 195-minute TV movie proposes that a great professional rivalry existed between Renaissance geniuses Michelangelo (Mark Frankel) and Leonardo da Vinci (John Glover). While the Florentine and Roman scenery is authentic, certain elements of the story cause the viewer to doubt its credibility. For starters, both Michelangelo and Da Vinci weather several years' time without either aging or changing their clothes; also, the "creative process" is minimized, with both artists going from inspiration to final product in what seems to be a matter of hours (maybe Michelangelo used a roller on the Sistine Chapel). Season of Giants was originally shown in two parts over the TNT Cable service, with a surprising paucity of advertising fanfare. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Serafina, Pulcinella and Isabella are three lusty, beautiful members of a traveling theatrical troupe touring the French countryside in the 17th century, leaving in their wake a crop of broken hearts. This picaresque romantic comedy is based on the 1863 novel Le Capitaine Fracasse by Theophile Gauthier. In the story, the company stops at a castle owned by the scruffy young Baron de Sigognac (Vincent Perez), who is deeply smitten with the charms of the middle-aged (and somewhat morose) beauty Serafina (Ornella Muti). He decides to travel with the company, and Serafina perversely tries to get him to woo the youngest of the company, the newly bereaved Isabella (Emmanuelle Béart). When the company plays before a group of noblemen, the three women make yet more conquests, a few of them unwelcome, and a series of competitions and duels for the hearts of the lovely ladies follows, before everyone settles down with the "right" person. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Italy was finally unified in the latter half of the nineteenth century under the revolutionary leader Giuseppi Garibaldi (1807-1882), and the whole nation was then given by him to the rulership of its king, Victor Emmanuel II. One of the key factors in Italian unification was the overthrow in 1860 of Francesco (Giancarlo Giannini), the King of Naples and the two Sicilies, who went into elegant but impoverished exile in Rome with his queen Maria Sofia (Ornella Muti). This serio-comic drama follows the deposed king and his queen as they adapt to their new lives. The former king has recognized the political finality of his deposition, but his queen has taken to traveling in men's clothing all over Italy trying to foment an uprising to restore them to the throne. Not only that, but she is frantic to have a baby and heir, but the king has become celibate as a kind of homage to his beloved mother. He is spending all his time lobbying the Vatican to get her declared a saint. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

This provocative drama toys with notions of time and space on film as it presents the story of a woman who is suddenly abandoned by her lover and mentor, the famed Italian writer Emilio Flora who has been nominated for a Nobel Prize. For the past three years this man who is considerably older than the woman has devoted most of his time educating her in art, literature, and science, and love. Now that he is gone, the woman must try to understand why. She is the only character in the film which takes place in the little house they shared. Her only outside connections are with the telephone. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

This suspenseful Italian crime drama is set in a Colombian river town and chronicles the series of events that led up to murder. Based on a novel by distinguished author Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the tale begins in the present as a middle-aged doctor returns to the village after a twenty-year absence to investigate the murder that occurred just before he left. A flashback ensues. All the trouble began when a wealthy general's son came to town searching for a bride. He found an appropriate girl and was very happy until he discovered that his bride was not a virgin. In a terrible rage he sent the poor girl back to her family where her father beat her into revealing her lover's name. Her twin brothers then set out to punish the guilty fellow, a much-despised womanizer. Though the entire town knew that the brothers planned to kill him, no one intervened. Strangely, the victim died without a fight. The story jumps back to the present to witness the return of the general's son. He runs into his former fiancee and quietly hands back all of the letters she had written him over the years. Not a single one is opened. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Decked out in powdered wig and pasty "dandy" makeup, Richard Chamberlain stars as legendary Venetian lover Giovanni Casanova (1725-1798) in this made-for-television biopic. The teleplay by George Macdonald Fraser (of "Flashman" fame) follows Casanova as his reputation for being catnip to women builds throughout the 18th century. His sexual exploits cost him several important social and professional posts, and eventually land him in a Venice prison on a morals charge. Casanova's escape attempt provides a strong second act for this 3-hour effort, which also offers an amusing "con job" practiced by Casanova on a willing countess (Faye Dunaway). Frank Finlay co-stars as a nobleman who conducts a decades-long feud with our rakish hero. Filmed in Spain and Italy, Casanova debuted on March 1, 1987. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Perhaps taking a cue from the popular 1970s Brit television comedy "Are You Being Served?," this Italian department store comedy is a series of skits involving customers and store personnel from several departments. In one skit, Elena (Laura Antonelli) and her husband the personnel director, are certain that an inept salesman in the bathroom fixtures department is actually the son of the store's owner. They launch into a campaign to woo him over without bothering to check up on his credentials. In another skit, the famous Italian actress Ornella Muti, playing herself, walks into one of the men's departments and sends a salesclerk into near heart failure. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

This ambitious attempt to film a portion of Marcel Proust's epic novel Remembrance of Things Past stars Jeremy Irons as Charles Swann, a Jewish intellectual who has managed to overcome growing anti-Semitism in 19th century France and travels in an elite social circle. But Swann has become obsessed with Odette (Ornella Muti), a courtesan who cares more for money than Swann's passion for her. In time they marry, but Swann soon realizes his desire for her is based purely on physical lust for someone with whom he has no rapport, or even much affection, and the relationship begins to erode the social acceptance Swann struggled to achieve. Meanwhile, the Baron de Charlus (Alain Delon) finds himself similarly attracted to a young man who does not share his desires. Un Amour de Swann was much praised for its production design and the cinematography of frequent Ingmar Bergman collaborator Sven Nykvist, though many felt director Volker Schlondorff failed to capture the narrative depth and complexity of Proust's novel. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

This ineffably bizarre drama stars Ben Gazzara as an American cartoonist who sees a beautiful woman named Nicole (Ornella Muti) being saved from drowning while he draws on the beach. He offers her a blanket, beginning a strange relationship with the obviously unbalanced woman which ends when she shaves her own head and walks into the ocean to die. Muti carries the film with an engagingly peculiar performance as the disturbed Nicole, who strips for bellboys, exposes herself to passing tourists, hallucinates insects in her bathroom, and goes into a coma after being raped in a mental institution. Mimsy Farmer co-stars as Gazzara's ex-lover and William Berger appears briefly as a bartender. Despite being blighted by a distracting Riz Ortolani soundtrack and a fundamentally lurid approach, Muti and director Pasquale Festa Campanile imbue this film with enough interesting touches to make it worthwhile. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide