Giovanni Di Clemente Movies

Based on a true-life court case that rocked Italy during the 1980s, this film recounts the tribulations of Enzo Tortora, a popular television host who was wrongfully imprisoned for a crime he did not commit. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide

Actor-turned-director Michele Placido directed this Italian political drama inspired by Liliana Rossi, a crusading woman from Puglia, Placido's hometown. Priest Don Gerardo (Placido), at age 50, reflects on his life, looking back to 1958, his childhood, and the discipline of his father (Fabrizio Bentivoglio). Outspoken leftist Liliana (Giovanna Mezzogiorno) is in her twenties when Gerardo takes an interest in her, but her leftist leanings generate resentment in the Catholic community. Liliana turns an abandoned stable into a school for local youths expelled from the state schools, but her teaching of progressive ideas on such subjects as sexual equality and birth control stirs up hostility. Becoming politically active, she runs for a local council seat. Torn between his emotional response to Liliana, community traditions, and his religious background, Gerardo learns of Liliana's affair with a married doctor (Enrico Lo Verso), and this leads him to join right-wingers who attack and destroy her school. Shown at the 1998 Venice Film Festival. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide

Three foolish Italian hunters head into the Yugoslavian wilderness for a vacation. Unfortunately, their timing is terrible and the trio end up trapped by the dawn of the war that would tear the country apart. This fact-based actioner tells their terrifying and horrific tale. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Based on a short story from Giuseppe Pontiggia's popular Italian book Vite di uomini non illustri (Lives of Non-Illustrious Men), this comedy chronicles the many lively phases in the life of Claudia Bertelli, who lived between 1949 and 2011. Born to former radicals turned conservative middle-class Milanese, Claudia realizes that her parents can never consciously decide whether they find her behavior shocking or tolerable. During the 1960s, Claudia gets involved with protesting and falls in love for the first time with an idealistic, angry reactionary who subsequently disappears "underground" for many years. By the time he finally emerges he has become a corrupt devotee of the Socialist Party leader Bettino Craxi. By the 1970s, Claudia's protests have taken a feminist bent. She shocks her parents when she gives birth to a black baby from an unknown father and then later marries a Jewish philosopher. It doesn't last, but Claudia continues to be socially conscious for the rest of her life. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

This political docudrama follows the real-life circumstances that led to the assassination of the anti-Mafia crusading judge Giovanni Falcone (Michele Placido) and his wife, in addition to the assassination of another such judge. A number of high-ranking Italian public figures were under investigation by the judge for their alleged association with the Mafia (and hence with these "hits") and they threatened lawsuits to prevent this film from being made or shown. Some small changes were made to prevent libel suits from being filed. Much of the dialogue comes directly from official documents in the cases the judge was prosecuting. It is interesting to note that, in interviews filmed for U.S. television, the judge acknowledged that his and his wife's lives were in danger, but he felt that the possibility reducing the power of the Sicilian mafia in Italy was worth the risk. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

In this wry comedy, if it were not for the fact that screenwriter Giuseppe Marchi (Giancarlo Giannini) is clearly overwhelmed by attacks of guilt at his sometimes caddish behavior, it would be easy to dislike him as he is shown disclosing his inner life to his psychiatrist (Vittorio Caprioli). Instead, he is seen to have suffered a series of acute psychosomatic illnesses which were misdiagnosed so that he suffered a slew of unnecessary abdominal operations. Eventually some shred of self-understanding, coupled with a deep sense of resignation at life's unfairness, prompts him to leave all his travails behind for a simple, if lonely, life in Calabria. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Fortunato Assante (Leo Gullotta) is a merely adequate professional actor who is down on his luck, and has a hefty loan to repay. Why else would he agree to take a job coaching kids at a reformatory to put on a musical? However, once he gets into the job and discovers the keen intelligence and performing skill of the kids, he begins to take an interest in them. He soon learns about the precarious existence many of them have lived out on the streets, and the desperate acts they have committed simply to survive. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

The small adventures of ordinary eight-year old boys living in an Italian village are followed with care in this unusual, critically well-received film. The three boys in the film have become friends. One of them, a newcomer, is the son of a hairdresser, another is the son of a farmer, and the third is the son of the village doctor. Together, they explore the mystery of the soap which has gone missing from the school bathroom, enjoy a visit to the circus, and get to know one another. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Luciano Odorisio's Italian-made exploitation film La Monaca di Monza travels into the deepest and darkest recesses of a Catholic convent, where a nobleman (Alessandro Gassman) and a nun (Myriem Roussel) engage in a passionate love affair. Little can they foresee the dangerous and calamitous consequences that this will yield -- consequences involving betrayal, vengeance, and homicide. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide

Carefully side-stepping a full condemnation of Italy's notorious, 1980's cult leader Ebe Giorgini, this docudrama tells the story of her rise to religious power from the point of view of a distraught father of one of Ebe's cult members. The father was never around to develop much of a relationship with his daughter, and for that reason she has taken up as a novitiate with "Mamma Ebe," whose dubious lifestyle includes two husbands, at least one probable lover, and champagne cruises on her yacht. Worse than these private details of her life are the examples of sadistic physical abuse that millionaire "Mamma Ebe" meted out to her charges when she was displeased by their actions, or the fact that she makes her novitiates work 18-hour days. After this docudrama wrapped, Ebe Giorgini was sentenced to serve time for her activities, a sentence later commuted to house arrest. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

The popular Italian comic Adriano Celentano stars in this light comedy as Mattia, a wealthy novelist besieged by female admirers who recruits the aid of his young neighbor to discourage any women from proposing marriage as a logical outcome of their affections. Federica Moro plays Michela, feigning to be Mattia's daughter when she is introduced to the altar-prone women and always finding the necessary "faults" to end their relationship. The Celentano comedy technique is one of exaggeration, or role reversal -- as when he is rejected by the parents of an African woman he is chasing because they do not like whites, so he spends a fortune on sun tan oil trying to get his skin dark. Women stare at him as he walks down the street, they pinch him, or distracted, they run their cars into telephone poles -- a great take-off on male behavior patterns. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Two opposite military camps, one Italian and one American, are positioned across from each other in Sicily, separated by a river and an ancient Roman bridge, the "Bridge of the Caesars." World War II has almost ended and so perhaps the fighting spirit has dwindled a little in the ordinary soldier. This would explain why each team of demolitionists -- Italian and American -- decide that the historically valuable bridge is worth saving at all costs. The American team is made up of a cowboy, a Native American specializing in smoke signals, a narcoleptic soldier, a Mafia hit man, and an architect. The Italian team is made up of a chamber-music quartet headed by an orchestra conductor and comprised of a lazy Roman, a Southern mobster, and an Alpine mountain climber, among others. The teams assume a proper bellicose stance when they first see each other, but then quickly collude to outwit their commanders and try to save the bridge. When the overzealous American commander is ready to destroy the bridge at all costs, the soldiers connive to bring in a bevy of women from a nearby house of ill-repute to keep the men too occupied to even remember the bridge. Failing any other plan, the leaders of each team then decide to convince the American commander that the war has actually ended, and so there is every reason to leave the bridge alone, in fact, just to leave, period. And if that plan does not work either, well, there must be something else they can do . . . ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide