Rosanna Schiaffino Movies

In Pamplona, Spain, at the time of the running of the bulls (which takes place during the festival of San Fermin), a pious surgeon who belongs to Opus Dei (a Catholic service organization) tries to ward off the temptations of a lusty nurse by attending Mass frequently and clutching his crucifix. Finally, unable to resist further, he succumbs. Guilt-ridden, on the advice of his priest, he runs off, leaving both the nurse and his secretly unfaithful wife behind. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

The Man Called Noon is a western about a man who is called "Noon" (Richard Crenna) because he has amnesia and has no other name. As he searches for his identity, it becomes clear that he is on a mission to avenge the deaths of his wife and child. His quest is furthered by the outlaw Rimes (Stephen Boyd) and he receives comfort from a lady named Fan (Rosanna Schiaffino). The villain proves to be Judge Niland (Farley Granger), and the trio go to extraordinary lengths to put him out of action. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

A Quebecois architect at work on an assignment in Israel has a problem for which he seeks the services of a lissome psychoanalyst. It seems that he cannot resist the urge to make love to all the women he meets. Curiously, he does wind up bedding a large proportion of these women. This Canadian/Israeli film collaboration, with dialogue in French, can be considered "soft" pornography, as it almost exclusively focuses on (and depicts) sexual situations and encounters. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

This Italian movie is as much a love song to a place as a story. The place is the bohemian quarter in Rome known as the Trastevere. It is been compared to the Left Bank in Paris. This film features highly professional actors, a colorful setting, and very salty Italian dialogue. Actor/director Fausto Tozzi takes a tour of the neighborhood and its inhabitants in a series of colorful vignettes. Traveling between the Tiber river and the hill called Gianicolo, Vittorio De Sica searches for a lost pet, encountering along the way the difficulties faced by a gay nobleman, a suicidal American, the local prostitutes, and the intrigues and gossip that pass back and forth in a small square. The main dramatic issue seems to be how the slightly more conservative locals are dealing with an onslaught of hippie tourists. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

Simon Bolivar is the true-life story of the leader of the 1817 Venezuelan revolution. Maximilian Schell stars as the title character. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, Rovi

In this espionage drama, two FBI agents are on the trail of smugglers who have been selling electrical equipment to the enemy. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

A husband desperate for an heir, will do anything to produce one in this Italian drama, adapted from the long-banned Machiavelli classic. In desperation, the man sends his devoted wife to a man pretending to be a doctor. He convinces her to drink an infusion of mandrake weed, which he claims will kill the first man she has sex with, and render her fertile simultaneously. Not wanting to kill her husband, she sleeps with another--the doctor in disguise. Afterwards, he reveals his identity and the two fall in love. She feels no remorse as she realizes her husband cares only for an heir and not her. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

This uneven black comedy went into production as My Last Duchess. It then went through three title changes, representing, in the words of historian Leslie Halliwell, "a descending order of wit": Arrividerci, Baby, Drop Dead, Darling, and You Just Kill Me! Tony Curtis plays a charming contemporary Bluebeard who murders a succession of wives in order to fatten his bank account. At the beginning of the film, the 42-year-old Curtis, decked out in Buster Browns, does in his own stepmother. The remaining murders alternate between moderately amusing and just plain silly; our favorite scene is the disposal of Zsa Zsa Gabor, but that's just on basic principles. Curtis finally meets his match in a much-married widow who plots his demise (a plot point which, incidentally, was planned and abandoned for Chaplin's far superior Monsieur Verdoux). Director Ken Hughes and Ronald Harwood based their screenplay upon the Richard Deming novel The Careful Man. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Michael Scott (Stewart Granger) is an American Secret Service agent sent to Hong Kong to combat a gang of international smugglers who are bringing electronic devices into the country. He hooks up a female agent who has infiltrated the gang as a secretary to escape danger in this routine spy feature. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi

The young son of a wealthy industrialist eschews the material pleasures of life and decides to enter the priesthood. His father wishes his son to follow in his footsteps and recruits his young girlfriend to help change his mind. The girl seduces the inexperienced lad, and he quickly falls prey to the material and sexual pleasures of the flesh. Father and son argue over the boy's future as the son agonizes about his fall into hedonism. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi

RoGoPaG is an omnibus of short films by Roberto Rossellini, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Ugo Gregoretti and Jean- Luc Godard. Each episode is introduced by a quotation from the Bible which the episode illustrates with a fiction of contemporary life. Rossellini's film, "Illibatezza" ("Virginity"), is the tale of Anna-Maria Rosanna Schiaffino, a beautiful, demure stewardess courted by Joe, an American businessman on a trip to Bangkok. Pasolini's film, "La Ricotta" ("Ricotta Cheese"), concerns a film crew shooting the passion of Christ. The film's director, played by Orson Welles, gives a hilarious interview to a journalist who comes on the set. The scenes from the passion are shot as recreations of renaissance paintings and the landscapes are filled with beautiful boys. Godard's "Il Nuovo Mondo" ("The New World") follows a couple, played by Jean-Marc Bory and Alexandra Stewart, whose relationship ends just after an atomic bomb is exploded high over Paris. The film uses the Paris of the early 1960s as the city of some indefinite future, a technique Godard would use again in Alphaville. Gregoretti's contribution "Il Polo Ruspante" ("The Free Range Chicken") cuts between a speech by a marketing expert (Ugo Tognazzi) and a family's Sunday outing. The expert speaks on mechanisms for promoting sales by keeping the consumer dissatisfied. The family takes a drive through traffic, negotiates an impersonal highway restaurant, and considers buying some land. ~ Louis Schwartz, Rovi

Gentle Art of Murder is comprised of a trio of short crime tales: "The Spider's Web," "The Fenyrou Case" and "The Mask." An international all-star cast appears in these filmed playlets, wherein each perfect murder turns out to be less than perfect. The stories are linked by "bookend" scenes in which an aspiring wife murderer goes to a movie house and watches the three cautionary tales unreel. Nearly three hours long, Gentle Art of Murder holds both the audience--and the would-be killer--in thrall. The film's original title was Crime Does Not Pay, though it bears no relation to the MGM short-subjects series of the same name. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi