Agostina Belli Movies

A young woods-walking female scientist tangles with a roving murderer when she's just trying to do her job. ~ All Movie Guide

Bluebeard is the retelling of the now familiar story of a wealthy aristocrat who marries and murders and marries again. Baron Von Sepper (Richard Burton), the BlueBeard of the story, meets and marries Anne (Joey Heatherton) who becomes suspicious of Von Sepper when she finds evidence of his murders shortly after their wedding. Van Sepper then, in graphic detail, tells Anne the stories of his former wives' lives and deaths. The movie, directed with ham-handed archness by Edward Dmytryk, attempts to tell the story as a black comedy. Despite an array of beautiful women, including (Virna Lisi), (Nathalie Delon) and (Raquel Welch), nothing can distract from the abysmal performances of Burton and Heatherton. The film has some nice costumes and is beautifully photographed by cinematographer Gabor Pogany, but all the humor is unintentional and the actors, particularly Richard Burton all seem to wish they were elsewhere. ~ Linda Rasmussen, 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

Before Al Pacino ever picked up a blind man's cane in the 1992 production of Scent of A Woman, Vittorio Gassman played a blind army captain in the 1974 Italian film Profumo di Donna, based on a novel by Giovanni Arpino. The earlier film unquestionably inspired the later one, though they differ significantly. The Captain, accompanied by Ciccio (Alessandro Momo), who has been assigned to him by the army, is on his way from Turin to Naples to meet with an army compatriot who was also disfigured in the same military incident. Unknown to his aide, the Captain means to fulfill a suicide pact there. While they journey, the captain asks Ciccio to help him spot beautiful women. Unsatisfied with the boy's descriptions, he uses his nose instead, claiming that he can smell a beautiful woman. The dashing blind military man enjoys considerable success with women. During their journey, he carries with him a picture of his beloved Sara (Agostina Belli), whom he could not bear to have see him disfigured and helpless. The suicide pact is eventually thwarted, Sara enters the picture, and the boy Ciccio does some much-needed growing up. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

When Carolina (Anicee Alvina), the daughter of wealthy banker Georges de Saxe (Philippe Noiret), is reported kidnapped, it is upsetting to him even though he knows it isn't true. The kidnappers have taken the wrong person. The banker hires Frantz (Jean-Louis Trintignant) a disheveled, seedy detective to find his daughter and hide her safely away. She soon finds herself in a fantasyland whorehouse, where all kinds of extreme perversions are routinely practiced. There, a near-double of her father whips and then seduces her. Eventually, she and the private eye escape or leave, having extorted the kidnapping money from the girl's father. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

The luridly titled Italian/French/German thriller Blood in the Streets went into production under the more restrained cognomen The Revolver. Oliver Reed plays a prison official whose wife is kidnapped. The price for her return is the release of incarcerated criminal Fabio Testi. When it becomes obvious that Testi's former cohorts plan to murder him once he's set free, Reed and Testi team up to foil the baddies. Blood in the Streets poses as an anti-gun tract, but its plot is still resolved by Oliver Reed wielding a weapon. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

When he is not working as a stage performer, Emile (Yves Montand) works as a small-time con-man. He has a brand-new plan for a big job and needs the services of one of his former assistants. He also persuades a young actress to help out with part of the plan: kidnapping the child of a very shady arms merchant who will be pressured to keep the police off their backs. Emile is a kindly man with more charm than skill. When his plans go badly awry, he sends the two assistants away as a couple, along with the baby they had planned to substitute for the child in the arms merchant's house. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

At eight o'clock in the evening in San Babila Square in Milan, a gang of neofascist youths choose a couple seemingly at random from the crowds there and savagely beat and knife them in full view of everyone. The man dies quickly, the injured woman does not receive any help for almost an hour. This movie, done in a pseudo-documentary style, investigates the crime and the circumstances which led up to it, focusing particularly on the activities of the youths beforehand. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Claudia is on a pilgrimage to the mountain site where her son was killed in an auto accident. Once in the area, she begins to see a young lad who closely resembles her lost son. Except for footprints in the snow, no one else sees him, and it begins to appear that she is either haunted or crazy. When she returns home, it becomes necessary to ask who poisoned her husband and family dog. When she later leaves town, was the boy in the car seat next to her there all along, or did he just appear? ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Robert Caine (Kirk Douglas) is a wealthy and powerful industrialist, an engineer who develops nuclear power plants. A true believer in nuclear energy, he plans to make nuclear generation commonplace around the world. He is about to retire and turn over the running of his corporations to his son, Angel Caine (Simon Ward) when he begins having disturbing dreams. In one of these, the vision of the Apocalypse as spoken of in the Biblical book of Revelations comes to life in a horrifying way. After this, he begins to notice that his son is behaving in ways which identify him with the Antichrist. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide