Claudia Cardinale Movies

Claudia Cardinale is Popsy, who double-crosses her older partner Silva (Stanley Baker). Silva has arranged to divert diamonds from a large corporate-run diamond mine in the South American jungle, and Popsy does her "pop" wrong as they are both pursued by police. This French-language underworld adventure film has a screenplay by Henri Charriere (who also acts in the film), better-known for his screenplay for Papillion. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

In this Italian comedy, Amedio (Alberto Sordi) is a telephone lineman who works in remote parts of Australia. Unfortunately, for this shy, homely Italian man, all of Australia is remote. He wants a wife, and arranges for one by mail. The woman he has chosen is Carmela (Claudia Cardinale), a very beautiful mature prostitute who seeks to retire from her profession. The picture he sent her to induce her to come to Australia wasn't of himself, but of his handsome buddy Giuseppe (Riccardo Garrone). The picture convinces her to come out, but when she arrives and meets Amedio, she says she won't go through with the marriage because she wants Giuseppe. How will he be able to satisfy Carmela and still marry her? ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

This tiresome comedy features pop singer Enzo Jannacci as Amedeo, a country rube who comes to Vatican City seeking a personal audience with the Pope. Detailing Amedeo's battle with officious Vatican bureaucrats and bungling attempts to catch the Pope off-guard, the film rarely rises to the level of director Marco Ferreri's more subversive farces and resembles nothing more than a 1970s Neapolitan-style Pauly Shore vehicle. Italian film buffs will still appreciate the cast, which includes Ugo Tognazzi and Michel Piccoli of La Cage aux Folles as well as Claudia Cardinale, Vittorio Gassman, and Alain Cuny. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide

The literal translation of this title is Certain, Very Certain, As a Matter of Fact...Probable. This indeed was the title by which this trivial Italian comedy was known during its limited American release. The star is international glamour plate Claudia Cardinale, improbably cast as a telephone switchboard operator. It is believable that Cardinale is using her job as a means to trap a man for herself. When she is stood up by her first conquest, Cardinale teams with Catherine Spaak to romance and fleece eligible rich bachelors (and a few wealthy husbands) up and down the European continent. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this 1968 Italian production, Francesco Maselli directs this light-hearted and fast-paced caper comedy with Rock Hudson as New York City police captain Mike Harmon, who becomes involved with sex bomb Esmeralda Marini (Claudia Cardinale). Esmeralda, using the ploy that Harmon was an old friend of her father, convinces him to help her return some hot jewels to their former owners. Soon enough, Harmon and Esmeralda are jetting to Austria, where Harmon disables the victims' home-security system and sneaks the jewels back into their rightful place. But Esmeralda has tricked Harmon into replacing the real gems with fake ones, and now Harmon is a jet-set thief along with Esmeralda. Harmon, having gotten a taste of criminal high life, wants to split fifty-fifty with Esmeralda on the next heist. Esmeralda, however, wants to call it quits and get married. Harmon, doesn't see it that way, and Esmeralda, a one-man woman all the way, follows him as he heads off to his next nefarious adventure. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

In Sergio Leone's epic Western, shot partly in Monument Valley, a revenge story becomes an epic contemplation of the Western past. To get his hands on prime railroad land in Sweetwater, crippled railroad baron Morton (Gabriele Ferzetti) hires killers, led by blue-eyed sadist Frank (Henry Fonda), who wipe out property owner Brett McBain (Frank Wolff) and his family. McBain's newly arrived bride, Jill (Claudia Cardinale), however, inherits it instead. Both outlaw Cheyenne (Jason Robards) and lethally mysterious Harmonica (Charles Bronson) take it upon themselves to look after Jill and thwart Frank's plans to seize her land. As alliances and betrayals mutate, it soon becomes clear that Harmonica wants to get Frank for another reason -- it has "something to do with death." As in his "Dollars" trilogy, Leone transforms the standard Western plot through the visual impact of widescreen landscapes and the figures therein. At its full length, Once Upon a Time in the West is Leone's operatic masterwork, worthy of its legend-making title. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

Set in Sicily, this violent crime drama tells the tale of an Italian cop who heads to a small island town to look into the death of a construction supplier. Once there he is shocked by the influence the Mafia has over the people and even himself. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In this comedy, a lovely woman lives and loves freely. Her many lovers do not mind and all are happy until one of the men gets possessive and knocks her around. As the woman recovers in the hospital, her physician suggest she try monogamy for a while. She does, but it is not as much fun and so returns to her freewheeling ways. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In this wartime melodrama, Lieutenant Colonel Raspeguy (Anthony Quinn) is a French peasant who has worked his way up the military ladder during the French involvement in Indochina. Sent to Algeria, Raspeguy must mold a group of raw recruits into a competent fighting unit. He calls on Esclavier (Alain Delon), his sensitive assistant who eventually deserts the military out of frustration over the pointlessness of war. Raspeguy's other assistant is Boisfeuras (Maurice Ronet), the affable officer whose outside demeanor hides the heart of a vicious killer who loves the bloodlust of battle. Raspeguy takes up with Countess De Clairefons (Michele Morgan), the widow of a respected general. She promises Raspeguy she will marry him if he comes back from the conflict as a general. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

In this offbeat mixture of espionage and slapstick comedy, Arthur Vincenti (Alejandro Rey) is a scientist working on secret military projects for the United States government. Vincenti is becoming increasingly unstable as he works in solitude in a backwater swamp; his superiors fear that he might be going mad, so they arrange for a respected psychiatrist from New York, Dr. Bartholomew Snow (Rock Hudson), to meet with him on a regular basis. However, in order to keep Vincenti's whereabouts a secret, Snow is blindfolded before he's driven to his meetings with the scientist. When a group of enemy agents kidnaps Vincenti, Snow could be the only one who can help him; however, he can't track down his patient without wearing the blindfold. Prominent in the supporting cast are Claudia Cardinale, Jack Warden, and Guy Stockwell. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

American Andrew (Michael Craig) comes with his young wife Sandra (Claudia Cardinale) to her Italian estate, where she again finds herself a prisoner of the past: the memories of her dead father, hostility towards her mother, and her strange relationship with her brother Gianni (Jean Sorel). Psychological chamber pieces weren't the most fruitful area for director Luchino Visconti, who was more successful in grandiose costume spectacles, but his high professionalism and touch of style helped the film find admirers; it received the Grand-Prix at the Venice Film Festival. ~ Yuri German, All Movie Guide

Filmed in Cinerama and Technicolor, Circus World may have drawn the crowds for various reasons -- not the least, perhaps, for the big names. John Wayne stars as circus owner Matt Masters, who takes his show to Europe hoping to save it from financial ruin. Accompanying Matt, is young Toni (Claudia Cardinale), whom Matt had raised since her aerialist mother Lili (Rita Hayworth) left them years before. Just before he departs from New York, Matt is reminded that Lili may be somewhere in Germany. Upon their arrival in Europe, much of the equipment is lost when their ship sinks in a Spanish port. Matt doesn't let that get the best of them, and he is soon up and running with the show, becoming a hit throughout Europe. Against Matt's wishes, Toni trains to become an aerialist like her mother. A quiet figure in the shadows proudly watches Toni rehearse her daring routines. The writing team of Ben Hecht, James Edward Grant and Julian Halevy adapted their screenplay from a story by Philip Yordan and Nicholas Ray. Though this was not a gunslinger role for Wayne, Matt Masters was not a far stretch. This could have been due to the fact that Wayne had previously worked on several projects with director Henry Hathaway and writers Hecht and Grant -- and the part was altered to suit him. ~ Kristie Hassen, All Movie Guide

Arguably Luchino Visconti's best film and certainly the most personal of his historical epics, The Leopard chronicles the fortunes of Prince Fabrizio Salina and his family during the unification of Italy in the 1860s. Based on the acclaimed novel by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, published posthumously in 1958 and subsequently translated into all European languages, the picture opens as Salina (Burt Lancaster) learns that Garibaldi's troops have embarked in Sicily. While the Prince sees the event as an obvious threat to his current social status, his opportunistic nephew Tancredi (Alain Delon) becomes an officer in Garibaldi's army and returns home a war hero. Tancredi starts courting the beautiful Angelica (Claudia Cardinale), a daughter of the town's newly appointed Mayor, Don Calogero Sedara (Paolo Stoppa). Though the Prince despises Don Calogero as an upstart who made a fortune on land speculation during the recent social upheaval, he reluctantly agrees to his nephew's marriage, understanding how much this alliance would mean for the impecunious Tancredi. Painfully realizing the aristocracy's obsolescence in the wake of the new class of bourgeoisie, the Prince later declines an offer from a governmental emissary to become a senator in the new Parliament in Turin. The closing section, an almost hour-long ball, is often cited as one of the most spectacular sequences in film history. Burt Lancaster is magnificent in the first of his patriarchal roles, and the rest of the cast, especially Delon and Cardinale, become almost perfect incarnations of the novel's characters. Filmed in glorious Techniscope and rich in period detail, the film is a remarkable cinematic achievement in all departments. The version that won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival ran 205 minutes. Inexplicably, the picture was subsequently distributed by 20th Century Fox in a poorly dubbed, 165-min. English-language version, using inferior color process. The restored Italian-language version, supervised by cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno, appeared in 1990, though the longest print still ran only 187 minutes. ~ Yuri German, All Movie Guide