Tonino Delli Colli Movies

Few American film enthusiasts were even aware that anyone made westerns in Italy before Sergio Leone's breakthrough film, 1964's Per un Pugno di Dollari (aka A Fistful Of Dollars), made Clint Eastwood a worldwide star and introduced audiences to the forbidding beauty and troubling morality of Leone's unique vision of the American West. A Fistful of Dollars was an international hit, as were its follow ups Per Qualche Dollaro in Più (aka For A Few Dollars More) and Il Buono, il Brutto, il Cattivo (aka The Good, The Bad and the Ugly), and Leone's striking visual sense and complex storytelling established him as one of the masters of genre filmmaking, though in later years his ambition would outstrip his ability to bring his projects to the screen. Sergio Leone: Il mio modo di vedere le cose (aka Sergio Leone: The Way I See Things) is a documentary which takes a loving look at the highlights of Leone's career in cinema, offering a behind-the-scenes look at how several of his best films were made through interviews with actors and technicians who collaborated with him as well as archival footage of Leone discussing his pictures. Sergio Leone: The Way I See Things received its American premiere at the 2006 Cinequest Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, 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

Serious, logical Martha (Barbara Sukowa) and dreamy, superstitious Anna (Stefania Sandrelli) have been best friends. That is, until Martha's lover Victor (Sami Frey) decides he'd rather be Anna's lover. Mortified, Martha flees to Africa, leaving the field clear for her ex-friend. When Anna comes down with cancer, she pleads with Victor to get her to come back and somehow put this rupture in their friendship behind them. Curiously, Martha does come back, and after some understandable tension and a few bitter words, they manage to reestablish their friendship, though it is now on a different basis. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

In this improbable, ponderous story about a couple who do not want to have children of their own, and a pregnant, single woman who needs a home for awhile, the relationship between the three protagonists is strange, at the very least. After Anna (Hanna Schygulla) and Gordon (Niels Arestrup) invite the expecting Malvina (Ornella Muti) to live with them, Anna becomes neurotically jealous and attempts suicide but is thwarted and in the end decides she really wants to be there for the baby when he/she comes into the world. Rather than trying to get rid of Malvina and the baby, both Gordon and Anna are in agreement on keeping it. When Gordon is accidentally killed, Malvina and Anna are left to plan for the future (now the best of friends), though it turns out the baby is destined to have only one mother after all. The confusion in the relationships of the main characters in this film is at times buried by clichés on the joys of motherhood and metaphors that overtake and bury the story. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Ben Gazzara delivers a gutsy, four-barreled performance as skid-row poet and storyteller Charles Bukowski (rechristened Charles Serking onscreen) in Tales of Ordinary Madness, blackly comic Italian director Marco Ferreri's adaptation of Bukowski's roman à clef Erections, Ejaculations, Exhibitions and General Tales of Ordinary Madness. Half soused, with a 2 a.m. shadow and street urchin rags, Serking waltzes through the scummiest neighborhoods of the City of Angels, soaking up booze, poetry, and copulation, and lounging in flophouses and on grimy public buses. His bedmates are a midget, a string of seedy whores, and various earthy L.A. denizens, played by Susan Tyrell, Ornella Muti, and others; he eventually falls for a prostitute who can express her affection only via self-mutilation. Ferreri lets Bukowski's ribald humor flow throughout and exposes the dark erotic currents at the heart of the author's narratives. Laced with perverse, shocking imagery, this unbridled celebration of life's dark underbelly has been praised by critics such as The New Yorker's Pauline Kael and Playboy's Bruce Williamson for its "genuine audacity and risktaking." ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide

After a beautiful woman's husband is murdered by the Sicilian Mafia, she is romanced by both an attorney and a local crook while maintaining her proper image. This Italian film stars Sophia Loren, Giancarlo Giannini and Marcello Mastroianni. ~ Kristie Hassen, All Movie Guide

When the young would-be artist Tino arrives in Venice to live at the house of his uncle while he studies art, he soon discovers that his Austrian/Venetian uncle's house is packed with mystery -- there are abandoned rooms from which strange sounds emanate. Eventually, he is told that his uncle's insane brother is being kept in rooms on the top floor, and only Uncle Fabio (who is seldom home) is permitted to visit them. However, youth and curiosity impel him onward to even more discoveries. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

With a superb music score by Django Reinhardt, this is a Louis Malle film about the German occupation of France. Based on his own experiences in France during the occupation, Malle's film does not paint a pretty picture of the French Resistance and eventually he emigrated to America because of the critical reaction to this film. Essentially the tale of a young boy who wants to join the Resistance but is shunned by them because of his youth, he joins the Gestapo. Unfortunately, he then falls in love with a young Jewish girl. Push comes to shove and he suddenly has the unsympathetic Resistance and the Gestapo hot on his trail. Not a pretty picture of either side. ~ Tana Hobart, All Movie Guide

This Italian feature caters to a self-congratulatory stereotype of male virility which many an Italian male might fantasize as being true for himself. Paolo is from the lower ranks of the Sicilian nobility, and he shares his grandfather's penchant for beautiful women. Indeed, he proved his readiness for bedroom sports at age 10, when he beat his grandfather to the bed of a lovely young new house servant. As a grownup, Paolo (Giancarlo Giannini) now lives in Rome and cuts a wide swath through the female population of that town. Though the depiction of his succession of conquests is repetitive, one of the film's highlights is the great beauty of the numerous women he has encounters with. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Two vagabonds, the "rogues" of the title Roguish Stories, tell each other stories while they squat side-by-side using a cave floor as a toilet. Their tales of jealousy, priests, seductions, murders and multiple castrations are not for the squeamish. The two later kill a man and are caught and convicted for the crime; nonetheless, they continue telling each other stories all the way to the gallows. This film is in Italian. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Since the Italian Homo Eroticus was released to the US as Man of the Year, this video version is available under both titles. Lando Buzzanca plays the servant to dazzling socialite Rosanna Podesta. His duties go far beyond carrying tea on a silver tray. Fact is, Rosanna is what you might call insatiatable. Pretty soon, Buzzanca is wondering where his next reserve of energy will be coming from. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Julian (Jean-Pierre Leaud) is the son of German industrialist Klotz (Alberto Lionello) who seeks to go into business with the former Nazi Herdhitze (Ugo Tognazzi). Herdhitze had spent most of World War II collecting human skulls for experiments with brain matter. As a protest, Julian refuses to marry his fiancé from a pre-arranged marriage, and he becomes romantically involved with pigs. Part two finds a man driven to cannibalism by hunger while wandering Mount Etna. He scavenges the mountainside looking for any kind of sustenance. In both cases, humans revert to animal behavior when they are removed from the spectrum of social rules and opinions. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide