Tinto Brass Movies
One of Europe's leading figures in softcore erotic filmmaking, Tinto Brass has earned an international reputation for his blend of artiness and thematic extremity; his over-the-top style has also earned comparisons to American director Russ Meyer, though while Meyer's trademark has always been his obsession with the bustline, Brass is known for his fascination with the derriere. Tinto Brass was born in Venice, Italy, on March 26, 1933. While Brass received a degree in law, instead of opening a practice as an attorney he opted to follow his passion for film and moved to Paris, where he found work at the Cinémathèque Française, one of the world's leading film archives. In the mid-'50s Brass returned to Italy, and got his foot in the door of the film business as an assistant director to Roberto Rossellini on the documentary India. In 1963, Brass graduated to directing with the neorealistic drama In Capo al Mondo. Over the next several years, Brass would try his hand at everything from sci-fi comedies to spaghetti Westerns, but the style and themes for which he would become best known began to surface with his 1969 film Black on White, about an woman tempted into infidelity by a black man during a visit to London, and 1970's L'Urlo, a bizarre satire in which a runaway couple explore their most base emotional and sexual appetites.Brass' lush but unconventional eroticism arrived in full flower in 1976's Salon Kitty, concerning a house of prostitution favored by members of the Nazi SS; the film was an international hit, and Brass was tapped by Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione to direct his multi-million-dollar production of Caligula, based on a screenplay by Gore Vidal. The film became Brass' biggest international success, but it was a hollow victory; Guccione took the project away from Brass after principle photography was completed, and Brass, Vidal, and many members of the cast ultimately disowned the film. While his future projects never quite matched the blood-and-sex extremity of Caligula, his niche as a creator of offbeat softcore sex dramas (often with political or social undertones) was set, as evidenced by such films as Capriccio, Cosi Fan Tutte, and L'Uomo Che Guarda; in 1995 he even made a film, Fermo Posta Tinto Brass, which purported to be adapted from sexual fantasies sent to him by his many fans. ~ All Movie Guide
- 2002
Directed by Tinto Brass, Senso '45 takes place during the waning period of Nazi occupation in Venice, and is based on an 1882 novella written by Camillo Boito. When a wealthy, politically connected older woman named Livia (Anna Galiena) develops a relationship with Helmut (Gabriel Garko), a rakish, opportunistic SS officer, both are sucked into a state of moral decline similar to that which the country itself has gone into since the occupation. Senso '45 also features Franco Branciaroli, Antonio Salines, Loredana Cannata, Erika Savastani, and Simona Borioni.
~ Tracie Cooper, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Anna Galiena, Gabriel Garko, (more)
- 2000
Italian smutmeister Tinto Brass directs this erotic drama which offers this dubious assertion -- a couple that sleeps around ends up loving each other more. While scouting out apartments in London for her Venetian boyfriend, bubbly Carla (Yuliya Mayarchuk) rents an apartment that overlooks the Thames. She also gets jumped by hyper-horny real estate agent Moira (Francesca Nunzi), and the two shag, shag and shag again in increasingly perverse ways. When boyfriend Matteo (Jarno Berardi) shows up, the kinky hijinks really begin. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide
- 1999
- NR
Comic actor Massimo Ceccherini makes his directorial debut in this broad comedy with fantasy elements. Ceccherini plays Lucio, a free-spirited bohemian who is forced into a job at a retirement home, where he soon falls in love with the beautiful head nurse, Fatima (Claudia Gerini). When Fatima proves resistant to Lucio's charm, he hatches a bizarre scheme to seduce her with the help of his best friend Pini (Alessandro Paci). Meanwhile, Lucio keeps having a strange dream where he's put on trial for the crime of self-abuse. Hailed by some critics as a satiric affront to close-minded values and derided by others as simple vulgarity, Lucignolo was a box-office hit in its native Italy, and features a cameo by director Tinto Brass, no stranger himself to extreme reactions from critics. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Massimo Ceccherini, Claudia Gerini, (more)
- 1998
This sexy comedy from Italian director Tinto Brass stars Anna Ammirati and Mario Parodi as Lola and Masseto, a young couple about to be married. While Masseto looks forward to deflowering his bride-to-be on their wedding night, Lola is reluctant to betroth herself to him without first ensuring that he will be a good lover. The more Masseto resists her advances, the harder Lola tries to convince him to break tradition and make love before the wedding. Also starring Mario Parodi and Susanna Martinkova, Monella was released in the U.K. as Frivolous Lola. ~ Matthew Tobey, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Arina Ammirati, Mario Parodi, (more)
- 1988
Giancarlo Giannini plays a lawyer who now collects debts for his partner (Philippe Leotard) in this crime drama. He drops a woman off at a hospital before meeting with the teenage crime kingpin Molleco (Francois Negret). The two proceed to tear apart a hotel called the Snack Bar Budapest to force out the owners. Giannini accidently kills one of Molleco's punks and starts another wave of gang violence. Naked women loyal to Molleco begin to shoot at Leotard and Giannini. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Giancarlo Giannini, Philippe Léotard, (more)
- 1987
- R
Jennifer (Nicola Warren) and her husband, Fred (Andy J. Forest), seek out their old lovers for another fling in this erotic drama. Fred hooks up with the prostitute Rosalba (Francesca Dellera), while Jennifer returns to the arms of the handsome pimp Ciro (Luigi Laezza). The unfaithful couple return to each other after the affairs prove to be less satisfying then the memory of their initial experiences. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Nicola Warren, Andy J. Forest, (more)
This lavish big-budget epic was the pinnacle of a uniquely Italian subgenre, the historical hardcore gore/porn extravaganza. The star-studded cast, perhaps lured by the high-profile involvement of producer Bob Guccione and screenwriter Gore Vidal, includes such luminaries as John Gielgud, Peter O'Toole, and Helen Mirren. Director Tinto Brass, whose similar treatment of Nazi Germany in Salon Kitty won him the job, did his best with the mammoth enterprise, but numerous production problems and re-edits took their toll on the finished product. When Caligula works best, it works because of Malcolm McDowell, whose crazed portrayal of the title Emperor is the embodiment of villainous corruption. McDowell raises his performance level to match the gaudy spectacle around him, which led to charges of overacting, but there are moments when he is absolutely riveting. Some of the cast doesn't fare as well, as O'Toole makes a particularly unsubtle Tiberius. The sex is graphic and steamy, particularly a feverish lesbian interlude between Penthouse Pets Lori Wagner and Marjorie Thorsen (using the pseudonym "Anneka di Lorenzo"), and the various carnival freaks used as atmosphere imbue the film with a grotesque, Fellini-like opulence. There are many memorable scenes and a magnificent score by Paul Clemente, but the heady brew of historical epic, hardcore sex, and gory violence proved overwhelming to many viewers. Still, Gore Vidal's script is surprisingly accurate, and manages to be entertainingly vulgar while bringing a rather loathsome slice of human history to vivid life, warts and all. The more explicit scenes were directed by Bob Guccione and Giancarlo Lui, causing both Vidal and Brass to remove their names from the credits. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Malcolm McDowell, Teresa Ann Savoy, (more)
- 1979
Bruno Martel Luc Merenda is an idealistic hero who questions the meaning of life in this confusing and sometimes hallucinatory erotic drama. After a night in jail, he is gang-raped by punk rockers in a garbage dump. He later saves an old man who believes he is Garibaldi Alberto Sorrentino and a woman he believes is Ophelia Susanna Javicoli. Bruno watches helplessly as she later jumps from a window. The feature recalls some of the more avant garde efforts of Italian cinema from the 1960s. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Luc Merenda, Adriana Asti, (more)
- 1970
- Add L'Urlo to Queue
This symbolic satire of modern morality finds a young bride-to-be (Tina Aumont) leaving her perfect square fiance (Nino Segurini) to run away with a stranger (Luigi Proietti). The two take a strange journey through a myriad of bizarre themes such as cannibalism, gang rape, necrophphilia and auto erotic activities. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Tina Aumont, Luigi Proietti, (more)
- 1969
An Italian businessman brings his wife along on his trip to London. While he (Nino Segurini) attends meetings, his wife (Anita Sanders) takes in the sights of the city with the vibrant youth culture awakening sexual fantasies in her. She is followed by a black man (Terry Carter) and considers making love with the him. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Anita Sanders, Terry Carter, (more)
- 1969
Vanessa Redgrave and Franco Nero headline this off-beat medieval drama in which Redgrave plays an allegedly insane woman who is allowed to finally leave the madhouse to see if she is capable of functioning normally. Her parents pay no attention to her and eventually sell her to a creditor. En route she escapes and runs into a poacher. She explains her terrible situation via flashback. He feels sympathetic and so the two head off for many free-flowing adventures. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
This Italian-French co-production weds the giallo thriller with pop hipness in a manner akin to Blow-Up, but comes across as a less-inspired variant on the same year's La Morte Ha Fatto l'Uovo. Like that film, Col Cuore in Gola stars Jean-Louis Trintignant and Ewa Aulin in a loud, deranged thriller with hallucinatory visuals, irritating music, and plentiful visual references to kitsch culture. In this case, however, cult filmmaker Tinto Brass (Caligula) has only managed to be grating in telling the tale of a French actor named Bernard (Trintignant), who meets pretty Jane (Aulin) by the corpse of a murdered nightclub owner. Bernard knows Jane didn't commit the crime, and he starts to fall in love with her while running around London to the ear-piercing strains of Armando Trovajoli's score and through the wearingly garish production designs of Carmelo Patrono, who was influenced by the lurid comic-book art of Guido Crepax. Brass edits the film with a jackhammer, occasionally switching from color to black-and-white without apparent motive, and the whole thing looks more like a bad acid trip than the sort of Nouvelle Vague thriller for which he was obviously striving, wasting some fairly interesting cinematography by Silvano Tranquilli. Completists will want to look for an uncredited David Prowse as a hoodlum, and will no doubt be entranced by Ewa Aulin in yet another of the garish pop junk-heaps that comprised her career. She followed this one with the disappointing Candy and the demented Microscopic Liquid Subway to Oblivion. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide
- 1964
The Flying Saucer is an irreverent satire of the worldwide fascination in space travel in the early 1960s. Alberto Sordi plays four roles in this slight tale of an invasion from Mars. The Martians decide to kidnap several "typical" Earthlings to help them understand our curious planet. The subjects are maddening enough to send the Martians hurtling off the planet as fast as their fat little pods will carry them. Flying Saucer gets off to a good start with a phony newsreel, wherein several interviewees offer the most fatuous opinions ever put on film; the rest of the film isn't able to match this opening, but there are isolated belly laughs along the way. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Alberto Sordi, Monica Vitti, (more)
- 1964
Alberto Sordi co-stars with Silvia Mangano in this Dino DeLaurentiis comedy production gang-directed by Tinto Brass, Mauro Bolognini, and Luigi Comenichi. The sketches primarily deal with the endearing battles between husbands and wives, giving Sordi the chance to mug for the camera in the comic fashion that made him famous. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Alberto Sordi
- 1964
This montage of film footage put to music covers some of the great political revolts from the beginning of the 20th century until 1964, including the Russian Revolution, the Japanese invasion of China, and the invasion of Hungary. Commentary written by Giancarno Fusco and narrated by Tino Buazzelli indicates that revolution is the most savage of all types of war. Conspicuously absent from this Italian feature is anything having to do with the Italians and their own history of political turmoil and violence. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- 1959
This uneven documentary on the sights and sounds and people of India by noted Italian director Roberto Rossellini mixes together city and country views, and a variety of disconnected events and activities like vegetables in a salad. It can still taste good even though there is not a discernible pattern to it. Highlights include work on a dam, stories about a tiger and a monkey, and an unlikely love affair. Throughout the scenery and the action, Rossellini's enjoyment of India and talent with filmmaking is apparent. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
