Romolo Valli Movies
Once a leading figure in Italian theater, Romolo Valli occasionally appeared in feature films. In the latter medium he was best known for performing in Mario Monicelli's La Grande Guerra/The Great War and Il Giardino de la Finzi-Continis. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide- 1979
Noted political filmmaker Costa-Gavras turned his attention to personal issues in this drama. Michel (Yves Montand) has had to deal with the death of his wife, while Lydia (Romy Schneider) is mourning the loss of her daughter. Both Michel and Lydia are lonely, and they are attempting to start a relationship together, but neither has been able to purge themselves of their sorrows, which makes it difficult for them to live in the moment. Clair de Femme was based on a novel by Romain Gary. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Yves Montand, Romy Schneider, (more)
- 1978
- PG
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
- Starring:
- Kirk Douglas, Agostina Belli, (more)
Starring Al Pacino and directed by Sydney Pollack, Bobby Deerfield stars Pacino plays the title character, a reckless race car driver. As his fame grows, Bobby becomes increasingly full of himself, which seriously jeopardizes his performance on the track and his private life. Marthe Keller plays Bobby's aristocratic, enigmatic lady friend, whose tragic secret sets the stage for melodrama. Also on hand is Ann Duperey as a racetrack groupie. Originally released at 124 minutes, Bobby Deerfield was pared down to 99 minutes by director Pollack for cable-TV consumption. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Al Pacino, Marthe Keller, (more)
- 1977
Giovanni Vivaldi (Alberto Sordi) doesn't have many ambitions in life. As far as he is concerned, things are pretty good just as they are. He has a wonderful son, whom he is grooming for a place in the civil service, and a weekend hideaway which he loves fixing up. His wife Amalia (Shelly Winters) is also a happy sort, and she adores their son. However, when the boy, an innocent bystander, is killed by some bank robbers, Giovanni's fuse is finally lit. Soon he is consumed by the need to get revenge. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Alberto Sordi, Shelley Winters, (more)
Bernardo Bertolucci's 255-minute 1900 was a gargantuan undertaking, requiring the resources of three European countries and a trio of American movie studios. Set in the Italian town of Parma, the film's continuity backtracks from Liberation Day in 1945 to the occasion of composer/patriot Giuseppe Verdi's death in 1901. We follow the lives of two men born on that day in 1901, who grow up to be Alfredo Berlinghieti (Robert De Niro) and Olmo Dalco (Gérard Depardieu). Wealthy Alfredo sinks into dissipation, while poverty-stricken Olmo becomes a firebrand labor leader and communist. After WWI, Alfredo is allowed to peacefully retain his land holdings by playing nice with the burgeoning fascists; Olmo, on the other hand, engages in a long-standing battle against the minions of Mussolini. The two protagonists are reunited when Alfredo returns to Parma to preside over Olmo's trial for "political crimes." Co-star Burt Lancaster is cast as Alfredo's wealthy grandfather, who hates to see the old values buried beneath the social travails of the 20th century. Many American prints of 1900 were shortened to 243 minutes, rendering the story hard to follow at times. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Robert De Niro, Gérard Depardieu, (more)
- 1974
An introverted American professor (Burt Lancaster) has retired to an Italian house, but finds his life interrupted when a decadent family moves upstairs. ~ John Bush, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Burt Lancaster, Silvana Mangano, (more)
- 1973
One of Roman Polanski's lesser-known films, Diary of Forbidden Dreams (also known as What?) stars Sydne Rome as an attractive young hitchhiker who, as the film opens, accepts a ride from three men in a car, who later attempt to rape her. She escapes their clutches and makes her way to a mansion owned by millionaire Joseph Noblart (Hugh Griffith), who is overseeing a decadent party. Among the guests at his home are a pair of table-tennis players, a man with a harpoon (played by Polanski himself), and a hedonistic pimp played by Marcello Mastroianni. The woman's sexually charged adventure is an homage to Alice in Wonderland. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide
Originally titled Giù la Testa, Duck, You Sucker! is a Mexican-revolution yarn, filmed in Italy by spaghetti Western maven Sergio Leone. James Coburn is top-billed as John H. Mallory, an Irish soldier of fortune with a penchant for explosives. Rod Steiger plays Juan Miranda, another mercenary who wants to utilize Mallory's specialty to blast into a bank. Despite his avaricious intentions, Miranda becomes a hero when the hole he blows in the bank wall frees dozens of political prisoners. Duck, You Sucker originally ran 150 minutes, with U.S. release prints heavily trimmed. Taking into consideration the previous "Man With No Name" films masterminded by Leone, the distributors of Duck, You Sucker! reissued the film as A Fistful of Dynamite. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Rod Steiger, James Coburn, (more)
Based on a novel by Thomas Mann, Death in Venice stars Dirk Bogarde as a German composer who is terrified that he has lost all vestiges of humanity. While visiting Venice, Bogarde falls in love with a beautiful young boy (Bjorn Andresen). The relationship is ruined by Bogarde's obsession with the boy's youth and physical perfection; the composer realizes that the child represents an ideal that he can never match. The character played by Dirk Bogarde is evidently intended to be Gustav Mahler, whose haunting music is featured on the film's soundtrack. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Dirk Bogarde, Bjorn Andresen, (more)
- 1970
- R
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Vittorio De Sica directs the lyrical war drama Il Giardino dei Finzi-Contini (The Garden of the Finzi-Continis), based on a book by Giorgio Bassani. In Ferrara, Italy, at the beginning of WWII, anti-Semitism is spreading. Mussolini has passed several laws that forbid Jews from going to public schools, joining the army, or marrying non-Jews. While many middle-class Jewish families flee the country, the Finzi-Continis believe it's safe inside their sprawling estate. As a wealthy, aristocratic Jewish family, they think their luxurious garden walls will protect them from fascism. Micol Finzi Contini (Dominique Sanda) and her brother (Helmut Berger) invite their Jewish friends to join them in the estate for parties, tennis, and games while the war ravages on. Middle-class Jew Giorgio (Lino Capolicchio) attends the parties with his friend Malnate (Fabio Testi). Giorgio and Micol are childhood sweethearts, but she begins to reject him in favor of Malnate. She also refuses to accept that there's a war going on. Eventually they can pretend no longer, and the war closes in on them. The Garden of the Finzi-Continis won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 1971. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Dominique Sanda, Lino Capolicchio, (more)
- 1968
The literal translation of this Italian title is "He's My Husband, I'll Kill Him When I Please." A young woman is married to a man in his 70s. To make sure his wife is taken care of after his death, the husband tries to arrange her marriage to a friend of his. When the young bride discovers this, she plans to hasten his imminent demise. She takes up with a beatnik and goes about planning her husband's murder as if she were merely making out a grocery list of needed items at a convenience store. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Catherine Spaak, Hywel Bennett, (more)
- 1968
Boom is taken from the Tennessee Williams play The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore. Flora Goforth (Elizabeth Taylor) is a foul-mouthed, booze-swilling, pill-popping, middle-aged woman near death. She spends her time swearing at the servants and looks forward to the end of it all, until poet Chris Flanders (Richard Burton) comes to her island home. Known in literary circles as the "angel of death," the poet gives the dying woman some measure of comfort in his presence -- while he takes comfort in her liquor cabinet and her jewelry. Often she is visited by the Witch of Capri (Noel Coward), a gossip-minded homosexual who appears to be Flora's only friend. Williams wrote the screenplay, which unfortunately proved ineffectual, as Taylor and Burton were seemingly caught up in their own world of wallowing in self-importance. The feature did little to boost the sagging careers of Burton and Taylor or to alter the public's negative opinions of their personal lives. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, (more)
- 1966
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, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Philippe Leroy, Rosanna Schiaffino, (more)
- 1965
This gang-directed comedy combines the talents of Dino Risi, Franco Rossi, and Luigi Filippo Sonego. In "A Decisive Day," Nino Manfredi plays a shy company employee who wins the heart of a longtime flame only to discover she is married. Franco Rossi directs "Complex Of The Nubian Slave" starring Ugo Tognazzi and Claudie Lange. An Italian bigwig faces social ruin when he discovers his wife once appeared nude in a sword-and-sandal epic. Luigi Filippo directs "Toothsome Guglielmo" starring Alberto Sordi in the final episode. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- 1964
Friedrich Durrenmatt's misanthropic theatrical piece The Visit has never been totally successful in any production, not even in the original Broadway presentation starring Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne. The film version keeps this failure record consistent. Ingrid Bergman plays a fabulously wealthy woman who returns to her impoverished home town. Years earlier, she had been driven from town in disgrace after sleeping with solid citizen Anthony Quinn. She now offers a deal to the city elders: Bergman will alleviate the city's financial difficulties--in exchange for Quinn's life. The original play ended with the lynching of the seducer; the film ends with Bergman halting the execution, proclaiming that by allowing Quinn to live, the townsfolk will be forced to feel the pangs of guilt over what they might have done for the rest of their lives. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ingrid Bergman, Anthony Quinn, (more)
- 1963
Director Jacques Baratier's Sweet and Sour is an independently produced project with a surprising amount of European movie-industry input. Guy Bedos, a Brando wannabe, plays one of several young French cineastes who take to the streets to make improvisational movies. The "cinema verite" quality of the film is somewhat undercut by the presence of major stars: Anna Karina, Simone Signoret, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Monica Vitti, Claude Brasseur, and many others. After several "spontaneous" vignettes -- a street tennis game, a striptease lesson, a West Side Story style gang rumble -- Guy Bedos announces he will go to Hollywood to film the life of Voltaire. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Guy Bedos, Sophie Daumier, (more)
Arguably Luchino Visconti's best film and certainly the most personal of his historical epics, The Leopard chronicles the fortunes of Prince Fabrizio Salina and his family during the unification of Italy in the 1860s. Based on the acclaimed novel by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, published posthumously in 1958 and subsequently translated into all European languages, the picture opens as Salina (Burt Lancaster) learns that Garibaldi's troops have embarked in Sicily. While the Prince sees the event as an obvious threat to his current social status, his opportunistic nephew Tancredi (Alain Delon) becomes an officer in Garibaldi's army and returns home a war hero. Tancredi starts courting the beautiful Angelica (Claudia Cardinale), a daughter of the town's newly appointed Mayor, Don Calogero Sedara (Paolo Stoppa). Though the Prince despises Don Calogero as an upstart who made a fortune on land speculation during the recent social upheaval, he reluctantly agrees to his nephew's marriage, understanding how much this alliance would mean for the impecunious Tancredi. Painfully realizing the aristocracy's obsolescence in the wake of the new class of bourgeoisie, the Prince later declines an offer from a governmental emissary to become a senator in the new Parliament in Turin. The closing section, an almost hour-long ball, is often cited as one of the most spectacular sequences in film history. Burt Lancaster is magnificent in the first of his patriarchal roles, and the rest of the cast, especially Delon and Cardinale, become almost perfect incarnations of the novel's characters. Filmed in glorious Techniscope and rich in period detail, the film is a remarkable cinematic achievement in all departments. The version that won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival ran 205 minutes. Inexplicably, the picture was subsequently distributed by 20th Century Fox in a poorly dubbed, 165-min. English-language version, using inferior color process. The restored Italian-language version, supervised by cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno, appeared in 1990, though the longest print still ran only 187 minutes. ~ Yuri German, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Burt Lancaster, Alain Delon, (more)
- 1962
Flitting like the proverbial bee from flower to flower, Valeria (Daniele Gaubert) switches the gender roles in that metaphor as she goes from one relationship to the next with all the ease of trying on a new pair of shoes. Her first love waxes thin while her interest in a mutual friend, Gampiero (Enrico Thibaut) heats up and before she knows it, Valeria has broken one relationship to start another. She and Gampiero have a definite commitment which could be strengthened once Valeria discovers she is pregnant. Yet when they are on the verge of getting married, Valeria changes her mind once again and leaves Gampiero in the lurch. Meanwhile, she has met another interesting young man . . . . ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Daniele Gaubert, Romolo Valli, (more)
Released in the US by 20th Century-Fox, Boccaccio '70 is a compendium of short subjects directed by three of Italy's top filmmakers. Each story is written in the style of the famed Italian essayist Boccaccio, albeit told in contemporary terms. First up is "The Raffle", written by Cesare Zavattini and directed by Vittorio De Sica: Sophia Loren (wife of Boccaccio '70 producer Carlo Ponti) plays the sexy operator of a shooting gallery, who offers herself as first prize to the best shot. In "The Job", written by Suso Cecchi D'Amico and directed by Luchino Visconti, Romy Schneider carries a torch for her philandering boss Tomas Milian. The final segment is "The Temptation of Dr. Antonio", directed by Federico Fellini and scripted by Fellini, Ennio Flaiano and Tullio Pinelli; in this one, Anita Ekberg is an image on a poster who comes to life for the benefit of a drooling middle-aged professor (Peppino De Filippo). A fourth episode, "Renzo and Luciana", directed by Mario Monicelli, was cut from U.S. release. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Sophia Loren, Luigi Giuliani, (more)
The title character, played by Claudia Cardinale, is a young woman who heads out alone to the big city after being dumped by her lover. She is befriended and protected by her ex-suitor's younger brother Jacques Perrin, who eventually becomes her new romance, despite the difference in ages (Perrin is 16, while Cardinale is...somewhat older). When Cardinale begins a new relationship with a musician, she tries to let Perrin down easily, but the young man is too headstrong for that. When they finally do part, Perrin gives Cardinale a large sum of money as a farewell gift. Despite the fact that Claudia Cardinale subsists off the kindness of strangers in this film, Girl With a Suitcase (originally La Fille de La Valise in France and La Ragazza Con la Valigia in Italy) treats her character with warmth and sympathy. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Claudia Cardinale, Jacques Perrin, (more)
- 1960
This conventional, unimaginative drama is about a coterie of "ladies of the evening" who get themselves embroiled in a cover-up that results in murder and suicide. Life seems to be proceeding as normal until one of the hookers has an elderly client die on her. The women rightly deduce that if their already bad reputation is saddled with a distinction of being sexually lethal, business might deteriorate. And so they decide to hide the body, which starts off a set of circumstances that make matters much worse. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jean Valerie, Andreina Pagnani, (more)
- 1960
The original Italian is La Viaccia (the name of the family farm which motivates the plot). The death of a wealthy patriarch in 1885 sets off an interfamily power struggle. Son Ferdinando buys out his other relatives in order to gain full control over the dead man's property. But Ferdinando's country-bumpkin nephew Amerigo holds out. Amerigo's stance is weakened when he heads for the city and meets prostitute Bianca. To support her in the manner in which she is accustomed, Amerigo steals from his uncle. Disgraced in the eyes of his family, Amerigo decides to stay near his beloved Bianca by becoming a bouncer in her brothel. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jean-Paul Belmondo, Claudia Cardinale, (more)
- 1960
Once branded himself by the House Un-American Activities Committee, award-winning director Martin Ritt focuses on the cruel branding of five women in this standard wartime drama. Some of his better-known films (The Spy Who Came In from the Cold, Norma Rae) also deal with the question of social and ethical choices in the face of pressure. In this story, the savagery of the Yugoslav partisans as they fight off Nazi occupation forces is also vented on five women accused of Nazi sympathies because of their sexual association with one German officer. The women (played by Silvana Mangano, Vera Miles, Barbara Bel Geddes, Jeanne Moreau, and Carla Gravina) have their heads shaved in order to brand them as traitors. What the partisans did to the German officer (Steve Forrest) in revenge for sleeping with these women was much worse. Intermittently shocking, the film with its excess cruelty and hatreds stands as a good indictment against war and its causes. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Silvana Mangano, Vera Miles, (more)
- 1959
Vittorio Gassman and Alberto Sordi don ill-fitting military uniforms in this anecdotal Italian service comedy. They play a couple of World War I soldiers, adept at sidestepping duty and responsibility, but courageous to the core when in a pinch. The film strives for the boisterous feel of What Price Glory, but at 118 minutes the material wears rather thin. Still, the reputation of director Mario Monicelli helped this uneven production win a Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival. Originally released in Italy in 1959 as La Grande Guerra, The Great War was distributed in the U.S. two years later. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Vittorio Gassman, Alberto Sordi, (more)
