Lino Capolicchio Movies

The third feature film of Giacomo Campiotti, previously the assistant director to Mario Monicelli, Il Tempo Dell'Amore (A Time to Love) is an omnibus film of three different love stories that take place in three different eras and locations. The common element is the theme: love causes a lot of pain. In the first episode, we are in South Africa at the turn of the century during the Boer war. Martha (Juliet Aubrey), a forty-year-old English woman, is on her way to visit her brother Thomas (Tam Williams), who is in the army, when the train is attacked by Boers. Peter (Ciaran Hinds), an English soldier, saves her life. This unexpected encounter leads to an impossible love, as Peter happens to be one of Thomas' footsoldiers. In the second story, Paris is under German occupation during the Second World War. Claire (Natacha Regnier), a young French musician, meets Gabriel (Ignazio Oliva), a Russian musician, during a concert performance. Their passionate love affair has limits because of the linguistic barriers, and what begins well ends in tragedy. In the last episode, we are in present-day Italy. Teenager Guiseppe is in a coma following an accident. His classmates take turns by his bedside, but when summer arrives, they all go away. Naty (Natalia Piatti), who is much younger than Guiseppe and somewhat of a tomboy, stays behind and visits him regularly, developing an attachment to the boy even though she knows that, when he recovers, he would not look at her. Il Tempo Dell'Amore tries to create a magical atmosphere in dealing with affairs of the heart, using dreams and nightmares to interpret moods. The first episode is the least successful in terms of building the relationship to its climax. The last episode is the best one, particularly because of excellent acting by Natalia Pitti, who is a natural. Campiotti co-wrote the script with his partner in his previous film, Like Two Crocodiles, the Russian playwright Alexander Adabachian, who has also worked as a screenwriter for Nikita Mikhalkov. Il Tempo Dell'Amore was in competition at the 1999 Locarno International Film Festival. ~ Gönül Dönmez-Colin, All Movie Guide

To everything there is a season and the same is true for professional boxers as can be seen in this contemplative winner of the 1995 FIPRESCI (an international critics' choice honor) award in Turin. Using a semi-professional cast, some of whom are actual fighters, Italian filmmaker and screenwriter Lino Caplolichio examines four boxers, each in different stages in their career. All the stories are imbued with a sense of disillusion and the violent fights are presented without undue romanticism or glorification. The story of boxing great from the '40s and '50s Tiberio Mitri , told via archival clips of his major fights and includes the one in which he was pummeled by world champion, Jake La Motta, provides the framework for the other three stories. In the first episode, Ciro, a 16-year old rookie impresses those who watch him spar in a run-down gym in working-class Naples. Later he must fight his sparring partner and closest friend in the regional championships. This creates much inner turmoil for Ciro. In the following vignette, a rising champion tries to psyche himself up for the most important match of his career. He is stuck in an English hotel during a terrible rainstorm and his preparation and attempts to master his considerable fear are constantly undermined by his manager, who continues barging in, and a snoopy reporter, whom he suspects was hired by the opposition to rattle him. The final story follows the humiliation of an older fighter struggling to maintain his title. Unfortunately he suffers a terrible defeat. In the end, Mitri gets the last words as he reflects upon his own career. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In Italy, Gloria is so dismayed to find that her husband has been carrying on an affair behind her back that she takes her two boys and goes to visit a sister in the U.S. who lives in St. Louis. The lads are intrigued to discover that their cousins are young women with very distinct attractions: one is blond, difficult and a bit of a hussy; the other sister is a brunette, very nice and sympathetic, but rather plain. Reviewers suggested that this film was shot in order to take advantage of the U.S. working visas that director Pupi Avati arranged in order to shoot the heartland jazz biography Bix, and they felt that this was not an especially successful effort. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

This is a compelling drama about a young woman caught between two cultures. Olga (Marie Colbin) was born and raised in a German-speaking village in the north of Italy. Braving the censure of her somewhat backward and conservative relatives and friends, she marries an Italian from the south and moves out of the village. Though she has taken a big a step away from home, she refuses to speak Italian to her husband or anyone else, sticking with her native German. But on returning home for the funeral of her father she is treated with disdain by her former friends. She cannot adapt completely to her new life, but is now a stranger to her old life as well. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

This lavish, 10-hour European miniseries plots the life and times of the famous composer Giuseppe Verdi. Filmed on-location, the series also provides stellar interpretations of Verdi's work by Maria Callas and Luciano Pavarotti. ~ Michael Hastings, All Movie Guide

This well-handled giallo thriller was directed by Antonio Bido (Il Gatto dagli Occhi di Giada). After a young girl is murdered by a mysterious stranger, the young Stefano (Lino Capolicchio) comes home to Venice to visit his brother (Craig Hill), a priest with many enemies. As people start dying left and right, Bido introduces an odd assortment of characters, including a wife-killing doctor, an abortionist, and a nutty gay Count (Massimo Serato) who molests children. Stefano tries figuring out the mystery while having an affair with an interior decorator (Suspiria's Stefania Casini). It might be argued that the plot is merely a reworking of Lucio Fulci's superior Non se Sevizio un Paperino (1971), with shades of Capolicchio's previous starring turn in Pupi Avati's La Casa dalle Finestre che Ridono (1976), but in Italian genre film, the question of derivative plotlines becomes almost superficial. It works, and should please Euro-thriller fans. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide

Rod Steiger portrays Italian dictator Benito Mussolini in this internationally produced "how the mighty have fallen" biopic. In the waning days of the war, the once-strutting Il Duce hides from his pursuers like a common thief. He's hoping to fall into the hands of his former Axis comrades or the benign Allied troops, rather than suffer the vengeance of the out-for-blood Italian freedom fighters. But it is the latter group who reaches Mussolini first, ignominiously executing both the dictator and his mistress Clara Petracchi (Lisa Gastoni). This strangely cast period piece features Henry Fonda as a German cardinal and Franco Nero as an Italian officer. Originally titled Mussolini: Ultimo Atto, The Last Days of Mussolini was also issued as The Last Four Days. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this languorous Italian film, a father and son, separated by the "generation gap," discover kinship in their common affection for a young woman washed up onto their shore. Their bond is then strongly reinforced when, together, they kill a dangerous intruder. This film is notable for its ravishing photography. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

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

A liberal-thinking author watches his wife as she attempts to seduce his best friend at a dinner party. She ends up taking on another man as well, and the writer has an affair with the another dinner guest. Soon the three men and two women are entangled in a confusing series of partner-swapping sex sprees where everyone's morals are challenged in the wake of the sexual revolution. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

Franco Zeffirelli's adaptation of William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew is a zesty version of the classic comedy, highlighted by performances by Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor and Nino Rota's score. Instead of simply filming a play, Zeffirelli turned Shakespeare's text into a lively, cinematic movie, with sweeping sets and cinematography. Set in Padua, Italy in the late 1500s, the story concerns the shy Bianca (Natasha Pyne) and the mean-spirited Katarina (Elizabeth Taylor), the two daughters of a rich merchant named Baptista (Michael Hordern). Though Bianca is being courted by a number of young men, Baptista announces that she may not marry until Katarina is wed. None of the men in town are willing to marry Katarina, so Bianca remains unwed, even as more suitors--such as Lucentio (Michael York), a student who begins working as a tutor in the Hordern household just so he can be near Bianca--line up to wed the maiden. No man approaches Katarina until Petruchio (Richard Burton--a wanderer who arrived in Padua just to find a rich wife--falls in love with her. After an intense, occasionally furious, courtship, Katarina eventually agrees to marry him, and they move to Petruchio's shoddy house, which is located outside of the city. Following the wedding, Lucentio reveals that he is not a student, but instead the son of one of the most respected men in town. Lucentio gets permission to marry Bianca and a mild-mannered Katarina shows up at the wedding, giving advice to her sister on how to be a good wife. The Taming of the Shrew received Academy Award nominations for Best Art Direction and Best Costume Design, and opened the British Royal Film Festival. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Movie Guide