why are italian films so terrible?

http://www.tultw.com/pics/pasquale0035.jpg

also liked 'nights of cabiria'.

there's a fellini season till the end of the month (for ppl in london, this):

http://www.bfi.org.uk/showing/nft/fellini/calendar/index.php

Antonioni
De Sica
Rossellini
Pasolini
Bertolucci
fucking VISCONTI
Leone
Fellini
Wertmuller
Nichetti
Amelio

for fucks sake. Best national cinema tradition ever.

anyway, i don't know of any national cinemas that i would deem "terrible." least of all the italian one.

Wasn't Satyricon close enough?

roma and amarcord are pretty good too

the rest... eh

i too have been dying to see the flowers of st. francis.

what is "salon kitty"?

The bit in Bicycle Thieves where the little boy tries to copy his Dad shaving is one of my favourite film scenes ever.

I'm recalling the scene where Maria Schneider tells Brando he's self-centered and that he doesn't take an interest in the details of her life. And he's on that ladder, and then he climbs down, and he places his harmonica on her head, and then he goes into the other room. And Maria masturbates, while he breaks down and cries.

Recalling this scene, right now, I am bawling like a baby. Brando was incredible. THE BEST. I know, apres his death, us cinemaphiles are probably sick of the hosannas and so forth. But make no mistake, this man was incredible.

sorry

Anyone see the Scorcese doc about Italian cinema? 2nd part tonight. Basically as cheap as any neo-realist film, s talking over scenes from films by Rossellini and De sica, which is ok w/me.

The way it started with him reminiscing about going to the cinema with his dad and all I thought it was going to be a more rounded picture of what he was getting as a kid, and at one point he does talk about the kitschy looking Roman epics but he switches to neo-realism, Chaplin, etc pretty quickly with a script written by Bazin's ghost. In that sense its a shame.

thread lacking in Bruno Mattei, Joe D'Amato, George Eastman

thread lacking in 'il divo'

which might be the best european film of the year? it seems to have got slept the fuck on everywhere. didn't realize it had been released in the US.

i didn't understand it but it's pretty mazing.

oh i was going to see this at the GFT a few months ago but slept in.

Seriously funny thread!!!

hstencil's first response is OTM - I saw The Conformist recently, and it's utterly brilliant

antonioni died
rossellini died

fellini, leone and visconti are dead too.
but we have muccino now.

Bertolucci is alive.

y'all watch the Rossellini war trilogy on CC.

The Conformist is still slick homophobic bullshit.

Yet still marvelous!

Bertolucci is alive.

LOL

wait Morbius you mean fags don't eat cats? dipshit

"The Conformist is still slick homophobic bullshit"

Blame it on Alberto Moravia.

Who is one of the few post-war European authors worth bothering with..

you could have posted that directly to challops really, saved someone else the effort

wait I thought it was quite pansexual in its outlook; like, it surprised me how fluid its sexuality was, altho that could have just been an idealisation of gay Paris to put the main character and his dutiful henchman into some sort of strained perspective

hmm

I don't do fucking "challops" or "zings"

Il Divo was OK, but really?

what about Bellocchio, who likes him?

There's a slightly homophobic undercurrent in some of Moravia's work, i.e. Agostino.

Never particularly liked Bellocchio. I'm a huge fan of Valerio Zurlini, who is/was sort of popular in France but is now largely forgotten.

My favourite is probably still Mario Bava: visionary, striking, haunting, desperately uninterested in storytelling.

Saw Cottafavi's Una donna ha ucciso last night. Kind of like a muted diva film. Or a much more ambiguous Possessed (the 1947 one). Really riveting!

i saw la dolce vita for the first time ever only a few weeks ago, its kinda long and some of the sexual politics are pretty whack but there are great moments too, esp the whole seance sequence and the long tracking shot following the partygoers into daylight the morning after

Saw this last week - the last scene was a funny ol' pisstake of Italian neo-realism.

Some good stuff in it; the soundtrack is key for me, keeps it together..

Marco Ferreri, anyone? Dillinger is Dead is one I'd like to see.

Has anyone seen Rosi's Salvatore Giuliano? I have just been reading The Sicilian and am now consumed with a need to see this film, but the version we have at work is without subtitles (or rather it has Italian subtitles but even that is a bit too much hard work).

― Archel (Archel), Monday, 6 September 2004 Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Seen a Rosi film: Hands over the City, a v sober portrayal of corruption surrounding a building project. Feels base on an actual case, though it was not.

Displays some of the pessimistic qualities of Sciascia - set in Naples, there are protests and the odd scuffle but no one even looks like getting to any truth; the speech by the lefty councillor at the end on 'things beginning to change' serves only to deepen the despair.

Impressive, and you get Rod Steiger playing the corrupt councillor.

Dillinger is Dead is completely off the wall.

Like the Rosi I've seen, need to see more.

[Started by cºzen (Cozen) in September 2004

eek

Are you ready to declare a jubilee?

salvatore giuliano is excellent

You started two Zurlini threads too, a long one valerio zurlini. and a short one rfi: valerio zurlini.

Another thread Search and Destroy: Italian Cinema

MoMA is showing three restored Rosi films in their preservation fest; caught Lucky Luciano last night which is famously "decentralized" (LL is sort of barely 'there' although played by Gian Maria Volonte). Pretty much no attempt at Coppola-style melodrama, a sort of anti-Godfather interested in the politics of the US and Italy aiding and hindering the Mafia. Also there's American actors like Edmond O'Brien, Vincent Gardenia and Charles Cioffi throughout, the Narcotics fed who pursued LL playing himself (one of the fascinating Boy This Guy is No Actor performances ever), and Rod Steiger swaggering through for about 20 minutes as an informer/associate, slapping a "countess" on the ass and chortling about what a great lay she is.

tonight is I Magliari, which i'd never heard about

http://sensesofcinema.com/2012/cteq/i-magliari/

hey so did Marco Ferreri make any other good movies? i saw Dillinger is Dead once a thousand years ago & loved it but never pursued him any further

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/81vNnJnBdsL._SL1500_.jpg

ty! will check it out

Have you guys managed to see The Wonders yet? Saw it back in the spring, but it's opening here in DK next week, so I thought I'd catch up on Alice Rohrwacher's other film Corpo Celeste. She really has a beautiful analogue style, and a willingness to treat life and light and imagery as, well, wonderful. I was thinking about Italian film, and how directors like Sorrentino and Garrone are stylists, quite good stylists, and it's interesting to me that there seems to be a new wave of more realistic, almost documentary like films, with Rohrwacher as the biggest name. Also debut-films like Laura Bispuri's Sworn Virgin and Alessandro Rosetto's Small Homeland. And all these films, by the way, feature female leads. I think I'll call it a wave, with La Quattro Volte and perhaps Sacro GRA as documentary forefathers, but there is nothing one can call a new wave of Italian realist filmmaking, it's been named too many times before. Neo-neo-neo... There are definitely a lot of ruins once again, though, that's quite central to the aesthetic.

tl;dr: Corpo Celeste and The Wonders are really good films, and if you can find it, Small Homeland is good as well.

I think I'll call it a wave

Can we not k tx bye.

"There are no new waves there is only the ocean" - JLG

Always wanted to see Fists in the Pocket because of Kael's rave, finally did tonight. Guessing Amy Robinson's epilepsy in Mean Streets is a nod to Bellocchio's film; the bonfire as they got rid of the mother's stuff reminded me of a similar scene in Six Feet Under, and Paola Pitagora was like a cross between Monica Vitti and Barbara Streisand--very attractive. Did this get mentioned at all in the ILX horror-film poll? Seems to belong almost as much as Peeping Tom.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_8pKgDm9-eJ0/TKtcGKJGULI/AAAAAAAAAD0/HYClqza6M34/s640/Picture%2045.png