Tonino Guerra Movies

Theo Angelopoulos (Reconstruction) directed this 1998 Cannes Film Festival Palme d'Or winner about a famed author nearing the end of his life. Alexander (Bruno Ganz) lives in his old seaside family home near Thessaloniki, but his daughter and son-in-law plan to sell the house, slightly damaged by an earthquake. Seriously ill, Alexander thinks if he checks himself into the hospital, he'll never check out. Awash in nostalgia, he recalls his late wife, Anna (Isabelle Renauld), seen in flashback, and he lets his daughter read a letter her mother had written to him right after her birth. Alexander's current project involves completing the last unfinished work of a 19th-century poet, but he puts that aside in order to spend time finding a home for his dog. Since his son-in-law won't take the dog, Alexander gives it to his servant. After rescuing an Albanian boy (Achileas Skevis) from a gang that sells children to wealthy Greeks who can't adopt legally, Alexander intends to return the youth to his grandmother in Albania. However, the child lied, and Alexander is unaware the boy has no grandmother. The old man and the boy set forth on a journey, and the other bus passengers include several musicians and the 19th-century poet (Fabrizio Bentivoglio). Bruno Ganz was dubbed into Greek for this Greek-French-Italian co-production. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide

Winner of the Grand Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, this drama centers on the Balkan conflict as viewed through the eyes of a filmmaker named A (Harvey Keitel). Director Theo Angelopoulos wrote the screenplay, drawing from personal experiences. A is a Greek émigré director who returns to his homeland after 35 years in the U.S., ostensibly to screen his latest film, which is so controversial that it attracts religious protests. In fact, A's real purpose is to search for three reels of undeveloped film that may be the first ever shot by pioneer Balkan filmmakers the Manakis brothers, who documented simple circa-1900 peasant life. A's Homeric journey includes flashbacks into past historical events. He travels by taxi to Albania, where he enlists the help of a film archivist (Maia Morgenstern, who plays all four female roles). She joins him on a train ride to Bucharest, Romania. An extensive flashback chronicles A's childhood under Communism in Bucharest. His next stop is Belgrade, the capital of Serbia, where he is directed to Sarajevo. Angelopoulos mixes scenes shot during the actual Balkan war with historic re-enactments and dreamscapes to examine the role of the artist in political upheaval. ~ Michael Betzold, All Movie Guide

A man unwillingly looks back upon his life as he prepares for his death in this grim Russian drama that features the final film appearance of star of stage and screen Innokenti Smoktunovsky. Knowing that he will soon pass on, elderly Valentin Grack hires private detective Stanislav to follow him around for an entire day and write down everything that he does. It is a cold day and during Grack's travels he encounters a younger woman who addresses him as "professor." He then meets a prostitute who turns out to be his daughter, and finally he meets an old woman, his worried wife who has been searching eight days for him. In between meeting the women, Grack finds himself in some almost surreal situations and having flashbacks about his youth. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In this film, Tolsoy's classic story Father Sergius is translated from 19th century Russia to 19th century Italy. As in the original story, Sergio (Julian Sands) is a nobleman and a military cadet who is posted in a position close to the (in this case Neapolitan) throne. He is about go through with an arranged marriage linking him with a higher-ranking noblewoman (Natassja Kinski) when he discovers that she has been the King's mistress. Disgusted, he renounces the world and becomes a churchman and a hermit. At his hermitage, he encounters a woman who considers any priest, especially an ascetic one, fair game. She attempts to seduce him and he nearly succumbs, narrowly avoiding that fate by chopping off a finger, in a scene harking back directly to the 1918 Russian silent classic Otets Sergey. Soon after that, he begins to acquire a reputation as a miracle worker. However, by now he has succumbed to his ever-present demon of sexual temptation in the form of a conniving young girl, and he knows he is not worthy of the adulation he is receiving. Devastated by his lapse, he leaves the hermitage and wanders around Italy as a homeless beggar. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Rico (Omar Sharif) has been a barber for a long time, and he has been married to his wife for four decades. It's about time that they take a vacation from the tiny village of Petrella Guidi and concentrate on themselves and their relationship. Zaira (Léa Massari), Pico's wife, surely loves him: however, she is tormented by guilt for an affair she had (and enjoyed enormously) years before. Together, they journey on foot along a river to the sea, where the landscape is marvelously picturesque. Along the way, they eavesdrop on a young couple of lovers, and Zaira confesses her long-cherished sin to a priest. Eventually they make their way to the ocean. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Alexander Sokurov made this biography of filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky during the final years of the Russian master's life, when he was living in exile in Western Europe. Completed shortly after Tarkovsky's death in 1986, the movie eschews by-the-numbers portraiture, opting for a more ruminative approach that evinces its subject's influence. Sokurov flits back and forth between scenes of contemporary Moscow and of Tarkovsky directing his last two pictures, Nostalghia and The Sacrifice. Using footage of Tarkovsky at work and play, Sokurov assembles a touching scrapbook of a stateless artist, forced to live in exile to continue working. (After leaving the U.S.S.R. to film Nostalghia in 1982, Tarkovsky was soon told by Soviet officials that he would no longer be allowed to make movies if he returned home.) Moscow Elegy also features generous excerpts from both Nostalghia and The Sacrifice, and priceless clips of Tarkosky's turn in front of the camera in the 1963 film The Gates of Ilyich. Infused with personal feeling, Sokurov's paean to his mentor is a heartfelt document that devotees of both filmmakers will not want to miss. ~ Elbert Ventura, All Movie Guide

This suspenseful Italian crime drama is set in a Colombian river town and chronicles the series of events that led up to murder. Based on a novel by distinguished author Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the tale begins in the present as a middle-aged doctor returns to the village after a twenty-year absence to investigate the murder that occurred just before he left. A flashback ensues. All the trouble began when a wealthy general's son came to town searching for a bride. He found an appropriate girl and was very happy until he discovered that his bride was not a virgin. In a terrible rage he sent the poor girl back to her family where her father beat her into revealing her lover's name. Her twin brothers then set out to punish the guilty fellow, a much-despised womanizer. Though the entire town knew that the brothers planned to kill him, no one intervened. Strangely, the victim died without a fight. The story jumps back to the present to witness the return of the general's son. He runs into his former fiancee and quietly hands back all of the letters she had written him over the years. Not a single one is opened. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

When an old Communist fighter from the days of the Civil War (the 1967 rightist military take over) comes back to Greece from years of exile in Russia, his denial of the past and present causes behavior that frustrates his long-estranged family. He intends to go to the island of Cythera, Aphrodite's ancient center of worship, now rather ironically a place for pensioned seniors. But as the old man joins up with his son, daughter, and wife, he refuses to cooperate with them and will often be where they least expect to find him - his behavior is erratic and they are constantly following after him. This makes his journey to Cythera about as certain as his arriving at Kafka's castle. Director Theo Angelopoulos often sets an interior world against the exterior landscape, evoking a symbolism that is not easy to grasp - yet most viewers will be captivated by what they are seeing since it is the art of the film itself that dominates over any political or social statements. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

This Italian version of Henry IV is based on the Luigi Pirandello play rather than Shakespeare's historical work. Moreover, the Henry depicted herein is not the English king, but the 11th-century Holy Roman emperor. In addition, central character Marcello Mastroianni doesn't play emperor Henry, but instead a contemporary man of wealth who thinks he's Henry. Also, Mastroianni's delusion is not a delusion, but a subterfuge. Well, we told you it was based on a Pirandello play, so enter ye and leave all sanity behind. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Nostalghia is Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky's enigmatic work about a writer (Oleg Yankovsky) who, trapped by his fame and an unhappy marriage, seeks out his cultural past in Italy. Here he meets Erland Josephson, a local pariah who declares that the world is coming to an end. The writer finds this prophecy curiously more alluring than the possibility of a dead-end future. Nostalghia won the Grand Prix de Creation and the International Critics Prize at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A divorced middle-aged Italian film director (Tomas Millian) is seeking meaning and love in both his life and his film. He becomes involved with an aristocratic woman, but trouble ensues when he begins to receive anonymous threats demanding that he abandon the relationship. When the woman mysteriously disappears, the director begins seeing an actress who works in experimental plays. She too leaves after telling him that she is carrying another man's child. In his quest for meaning, all the director manages to find is meaningless sex and lots of metaphors for isolation and abandonment: fog, open doors, empty landscapes. ~ John Voorhees, All Movie Guide