The Great Italian Films of the 1970sThere was a certain type of great art film which was being made from 1968 through the 1970s which can never be approximated. Active and engaged filmmakers were consciously wakening out of the post-war amnesia and taking a perversely erotically charged political stand against the hypocrisy of the previous generation.
Italy was the hotbed of this examination of fascism coming out of World War II. Luchino Visconti’s The Damned (1969), Bertolucci’s The Conformist (1970), Pier Paolo Pasolini’s infamous Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975). Even the American musical, via Bob Fosse’s adaptation of Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin Stories, Cabaret (1972) hinted at what the Italians went after with their full force of creative muscle.
Take Liliana Cavani’s The Night Porter (1974), set in Vienna in 1957, the film centers on the sadomasochistic relationship between a former Nazi concentration camp officer (Dirk Bogarde) and one of his inmates (Charlotte Rampling). Their sadomasochistic love is their only happiness and it paralyzes the former Nazis who have been reintegrated into polite society.
Universally reviled by U.S.’s top critics, Roger Ebert of The Chicago Sun-Times called it “as nasty as it is lubricious, a despicable attempt to titillate us by exploiting memories of persecution and suffering”. Vincent Canby, prominent critic for The New York Times, called it “romantic pornography” and “a piece of junk”. Pauline Kael wrote in The New Yorker, “Many of us can’t take more than a few hard-core porno movies, because the absence of any human esteem makes them depressing rather than sexy; The Night Porteroffers the same dehumanized view and is brazen enough to use the Second World War as an excuse.”
Susan Sontag’s essay Fascinating Facism for New York Review of Books (February 6, 1975) stated, “If the message of fascism has been neutralized by an aesthetic view of life, its trappings have been sexualized. This eroticization of fascism can be remarked in such enthralling and devout manifestations as Mishima’s Confessions of a Mask and Sun and Steel, and in films like Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio Rising and, more recently and far less interestingly, in Visconti’s The Damned and Cavani’s The Night Porter.”
However, its value was recognized by the executive producer Joseph E. Levine who quoted them on the posters of the U.S. theatrical release through his company Avco Embassy.
In a brilliant essay of the film by Kat Ellinger I quote:
Filmmakers were suddenly touching the untouchable, and it made certain people incredibly uncomfortable.”
Unlike Naziploitation, The Night Porter does nothing to cartoonise the Nazi officers that dominate the narrative. It isn’t a case of good versus evil, or that sadism is presented as a form of lasivious softcore pornography. Neither is the film a deliberate political treatise like the art films of Bertolucci, Visconti, or Pasolini. Its biggest transgression is that it humanises one of its main characters, Max (Dirk Bogarde), a former Nazi officer with a penchant for sadism, when he finds his ‘little girl’ again in the postwar period; a former concentration camp inmate Lucia (Charlotte Rampling) with whom he undertook a sadistic affair while she was incarcerated. On reuniting it is clear that their loved never died, so they continue, even though they know it will eventually contribute to their downfall and consequent death. Love in this realm is desperately profane, disgusting, something that should never be. And because of this it remains infinitely fascinating and uniquely humanistic.
Related in spirit was Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris (1972), using sex to express the death of love and male causality, its own furor when it hit American cinemas still continues to court controversy; and Luchino Visconti’s The Innocent (1976), based upon the novel by the decadent writer Gabriele D’Annunzio, expressing the same but in a totally antithetical environment of the aristocracy. Bertolluci’s The Conformist(1970) twisted the repressed homosexual of its title into a sadomasochistic fascist.
One could say, as did Gabriel Jenkinson, “the dynamics of conformity present in the modern consumerist capitalist system result in repression, which in turn manifests as violent sadomasochism — and …if one does not actively rebel against this system, one is complicit in its proliferation.”
Parenthetically on the other side of the earth, in Japan, In the Realm of the Senses (1976) by Nagisa Ôshima about a woman whose affair with her master leads to an obsessive and ultimately destructive sexual relationship also came out of Oshima’s early involvement with the student protest movement in Kyoto in ‘68 and out of his concern with the contradictions and tensions of postwar Japanese society in which he exposed contemporary Japanese materialism, while also examining what it means to be Japanese in the face of rapid industrialization and Westernization.
In 2020 Vincent Canby might have revisited The Night Porter and seen it in a different light. His 2020 review of Visconti’s last film, L’innocente (The Innocent), completed in 1976 shortly before his death was “among the most beautiful and severely disciplined films he has ever made.” It was also brazenly sadistic and sexy to a point that today would be labeled pornographic, and today could not be conceived of, much less made, diving, as it does, into sex, abortion, male domination and violence.
According to The World, public radio’s longest-running daily global news program, a co-production of Prx and Wgbh, in 2012:
British scientists have finally confirmed what women worldwide have been suspecting for centuries. It’s not religious principles that start wars. It’s not even civilization’s thirst for oil. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s the penis.
According to a study published this week in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society publication, the male sex drive is the cause of most conflicts in the world, from soccer hooliganism to religious wars, not to mention family disputes over the toilet seat being left up.
According to this story in The Telegraph, the scientists call it the “male warrior instinct” and claim men are programmed to be aggressive toward outsiders. It apparently used to be a handy instinct, back when you had to kill other suitors in order to gain more access to mates, but nowadays, this only works in some countries and a few US cities. For the rest of us, this unreformed sex drive only means ever-increasing defense budgets.
The magnitude of this discovery is so great, it’s difficult to estimate the potential ramifications.
At only eight inches on average (or that’s what we have been told), it’s smaller in size than most other controversial discoveries, yet — just like the atom — it has catastrophic consequences if in the hands of the wrong people.
And so these filmmakers show us the pathological drive of the unleashed male libido.
But times are different in the 21st century. These films could never be approximated by our Tik Tok generation where porn has created a quick witty and essentially violent vibrato of sexuality. These films of the late ‘60s and ‘70s took the libido at its rawest and showed its drive as an expression of political evil in very different types of stories.
And it might be worth noting that of all these films, the most reviled was written and directed by a woman and in most of the films, it is, in fact, a woman who proves the stronger of the two sexes and disarms the man. What remains viscerally true to this day is that that missile shaped 8 inch organ needs to be beaten into a plowshare.
SexFascismMoviesItalyInternational Film...
Italy was the hotbed of this examination of fascism coming out of World War II. Luchino Visconti’s The Damned (1969), Bertolucci’s The Conformist (1970), Pier Paolo Pasolini’s infamous Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975). Even the American musical, via Bob Fosse’s adaptation of Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin Stories, Cabaret (1972) hinted at what the Italians went after with their full force of creative muscle.
Take Liliana Cavani’s The Night Porter (1974), set in Vienna in 1957, the film centers on the sadomasochistic relationship between a former Nazi concentration camp officer (Dirk Bogarde) and one of his inmates (Charlotte Rampling). Their sadomasochistic love is their only happiness and it paralyzes the former Nazis who have been reintegrated into polite society.
Universally reviled by U.S.’s top critics, Roger Ebert of The Chicago Sun-Times called it “as nasty as it is lubricious, a despicable attempt to titillate us by exploiting memories of persecution and suffering”. Vincent Canby, prominent critic for The New York Times, called it “romantic pornography” and “a piece of junk”. Pauline Kael wrote in The New Yorker, “Many of us can’t take more than a few hard-core porno movies, because the absence of any human esteem makes them depressing rather than sexy; The Night Porteroffers the same dehumanized view and is brazen enough to use the Second World War as an excuse.”
Susan Sontag’s essay Fascinating Facism for New York Review of Books (February 6, 1975) stated, “If the message of fascism has been neutralized by an aesthetic view of life, its trappings have been sexualized. This eroticization of fascism can be remarked in such enthralling and devout manifestations as Mishima’s Confessions of a Mask and Sun and Steel, and in films like Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio Rising and, more recently and far less interestingly, in Visconti’s The Damned and Cavani’s The Night Porter.”
However, its value was recognized by the executive producer Joseph E. Levine who quoted them on the posters of the U.S. theatrical release through his company Avco Embassy.
In a brilliant essay of the film by Kat Ellinger I quote:
Filmmakers were suddenly touching the untouchable, and it made certain people incredibly uncomfortable.”
Unlike Naziploitation, The Night Porter does nothing to cartoonise the Nazi officers that dominate the narrative. It isn’t a case of good versus evil, or that sadism is presented as a form of lasivious softcore pornography. Neither is the film a deliberate political treatise like the art films of Bertolucci, Visconti, or Pasolini. Its biggest transgression is that it humanises one of its main characters, Max (Dirk Bogarde), a former Nazi officer with a penchant for sadism, when he finds his ‘little girl’ again in the postwar period; a former concentration camp inmate Lucia (Charlotte Rampling) with whom he undertook a sadistic affair while she was incarcerated. On reuniting it is clear that their loved never died, so they continue, even though they know it will eventually contribute to their downfall and consequent death. Love in this realm is desperately profane, disgusting, something that should never be. And because of this it remains infinitely fascinating and uniquely humanistic.
Related in spirit was Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris (1972), using sex to express the death of love and male causality, its own furor when it hit American cinemas still continues to court controversy; and Luchino Visconti’s The Innocent (1976), based upon the novel by the decadent writer Gabriele D’Annunzio, expressing the same but in a totally antithetical environment of the aristocracy. Bertolluci’s The Conformist(1970) twisted the repressed homosexual of its title into a sadomasochistic fascist.
One could say, as did Gabriel Jenkinson, “the dynamics of conformity present in the modern consumerist capitalist system result in repression, which in turn manifests as violent sadomasochism — and …if one does not actively rebel against this system, one is complicit in its proliferation.”
Parenthetically on the other side of the earth, in Japan, In the Realm of the Senses (1976) by Nagisa Ôshima about a woman whose affair with her master leads to an obsessive and ultimately destructive sexual relationship also came out of Oshima’s early involvement with the student protest movement in Kyoto in ‘68 and out of his concern with the contradictions and tensions of postwar Japanese society in which he exposed contemporary Japanese materialism, while also examining what it means to be Japanese in the face of rapid industrialization and Westernization.
In 2020 Vincent Canby might have revisited The Night Porter and seen it in a different light. His 2020 review of Visconti’s last film, L’innocente (The Innocent), completed in 1976 shortly before his death was “among the most beautiful and severely disciplined films he has ever made.” It was also brazenly sadistic and sexy to a point that today would be labeled pornographic, and today could not be conceived of, much less made, diving, as it does, into sex, abortion, male domination and violence.
According to The World, public radio’s longest-running daily global news program, a co-production of Prx and Wgbh, in 2012:
British scientists have finally confirmed what women worldwide have been suspecting for centuries. It’s not religious principles that start wars. It’s not even civilization’s thirst for oil. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s the penis.
According to a study published this week in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society publication, the male sex drive is the cause of most conflicts in the world, from soccer hooliganism to religious wars, not to mention family disputes over the toilet seat being left up.
According to this story in The Telegraph, the scientists call it the “male warrior instinct” and claim men are programmed to be aggressive toward outsiders. It apparently used to be a handy instinct, back when you had to kill other suitors in order to gain more access to mates, but nowadays, this only works in some countries and a few US cities. For the rest of us, this unreformed sex drive only means ever-increasing defense budgets.
The magnitude of this discovery is so great, it’s difficult to estimate the potential ramifications.
At only eight inches on average (or that’s what we have been told), it’s smaller in size than most other controversial discoveries, yet — just like the atom — it has catastrophic consequences if in the hands of the wrong people.
And so these filmmakers show us the pathological drive of the unleashed male libido.
But times are different in the 21st century. These films could never be approximated by our Tik Tok generation where porn has created a quick witty and essentially violent vibrato of sexuality. These films of the late ‘60s and ‘70s took the libido at its rawest and showed its drive as an expression of political evil in very different types of stories.
And it might be worth noting that of all these films, the most reviled was written and directed by a woman and in most of the films, it is, in fact, a woman who proves the stronger of the two sexes and disarms the man. What remains viscerally true to this day is that that missile shaped 8 inch organ needs to be beaten into a plowshare.
SexFascismMoviesItalyInternational Film...
- 2/11/2023
- by Sydney
- Sydney's Buzz
While his latest film, Nostalgia, is Italy’s Oscar entry this year, director Mario Martone’s previous feature will finally arrive stateside. The King of Laughter, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival last year and picked up the Best Actor Award for Toni Servillo at Venice and Best Costume Design at Italy’s 2022 David di Donatello Awards, is being released on VOD and on digital platforms by Film Movement on November 25 and we’re pleased to exclusively debut the new trailer.
At the beginning of the 20th century, in Belle Époque Naples, theatres and the cinema were thriving and the great comic actor Eduardo Scarpetta (Servillo) is the box office king. Known in the Neapolitan theater for his cheeky alter egos, Scarpetta’s larger-than-life stage productions were matched only by his eccentric personal life. Composed of wives, partners, lovers, legitimate and illegitimate children, Scarpetta’s home situation resembled one...
At the beginning of the 20th century, in Belle Époque Naples, theatres and the cinema were thriving and the great comic actor Eduardo Scarpetta (Servillo) is the box office king. Known in the Neapolitan theater for his cheeky alter egos, Scarpetta’s larger-than-life stage productions were matched only by his eccentric personal life. Composed of wives, partners, lovers, legitimate and illegitimate children, Scarpetta’s home situation resembled one...
- 11/11/2022
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
In “The March on Rome,” which world premieres in the Venice Days sidebar of Venice Film Festival Wednesday, Northern Irish-Scottish filmmaker Mark Cousins tracks the ascent of fascism in Italy in the 1920s, and its fall-out across 1930s Europe. He also draws a dotted line from those events to the storming of the Capitol in Washington, D.C., in January 2021.
The documentary, illustrated with archive footage and Cousins’ characteristic cinematic analysis, starts with Donald Trump defending his decision to retweet a quote from Italian dictator Benito Mussolini: “It is better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep.” Later in the film, Cousins inserts footage of Trump supporters attacking the Capitol, hoping to overturn Joe Biden’s electoral victory.
The issue of the Mussolini quote made a strong impression on Cousins at the time. “I remember seeing that thing on TV and thinking, ‘Wow, he’s actually not denouncing Mussolini,...
The documentary, illustrated with archive footage and Cousins’ characteristic cinematic analysis, starts with Donald Trump defending his decision to retweet a quote from Italian dictator Benito Mussolini: “It is better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep.” Later in the film, Cousins inserts footage of Trump supporters attacking the Capitol, hoping to overturn Joe Biden’s electoral victory.
The issue of the Mussolini quote made a strong impression on Cousins at the time. “I remember seeing that thing on TV and thinking, ‘Wow, he’s actually not denouncing Mussolini,...
- 8/30/2022
- by Leo Barraclough
- Variety Film + TV
Above: Qui rido io (The King of Laughter).Ever so slowly, at least in good parts of Europe, life is returning more and more to a semblance of what we once knew as normal—setbacks and snags included, of course.The 2021 Venice Film Festival was a curious example of that on the organizational level: The same security measures as last year plus vaccination or recovery certificates on top; the same ticketing system, but much more attendees. Which ended in a bit of a massive mess as getting access to screenings became an ordeal. The festival probably hoped that if they just offered enough possibilities to watch a film then everything would even out somehow, but that was not the case, for myriads of reasons, some too mathematical to get into here and others too tediously defined by circumstances. These things happen when a team has to deal with dozens and...
- 9/28/2021
- MUBI
The Great Beauty and The Hand Of God star Toni Servillo plays Neopolitan actor and playwright Eduardo Scarpetta in The King Of Laughter (Qui Rido Io), Mario Martone’s latest Venice Film Festival competition premiere. An affectionate, theatrical portrait set in the early 20th century, it culminates in an historic court case, but the build-up is leisurely to a fault.
We first meet Scarpetta when he’s preparing to go on stage. It’s a place where he seems the happiest, if you discount the beds of various female family members. That pretty much sums up the characterization that takes over two hours to repeat. We see that Scarpetta craves the adulation and laughter of the audience, and is having affairs with both his wife’s sister and his wife’s niece. Everyone knows that the resulting children are his, but it’s barely spoken of: he’s known as “Uncle” to the kids.
We first meet Scarpetta when he’s preparing to go on stage. It’s a place where he seems the happiest, if you discount the beds of various female family members. That pretty much sums up the characterization that takes over two hours to repeat. We see that Scarpetta craves the adulation and laughter of the audience, and is having affairs with both his wife’s sister and his wife’s niece. Everyone knows that the resulting children are his, but it’s barely spoken of: he’s known as “Uncle” to the kids.
- 9/11/2021
- by Anna Smith
- Deadline Film + TV
Italian auteur Mario Martone is a Venice aficionado. He was recently in competition on the Lido in 2018 with “Capri Revolution,” and then again in 2019 with “The Mayor of Rione Sanità,” a contemporary adaptation of the play about organized crime by late Neapolitan playwright Eduardo De Filippo. The Naples native is vying for the Golden Lion this time with “The King of Laughter,” a historical drama about Neapolitan theater luminary Eduardo Scarpetta — played by Toni Servillo (“The Great Beauty”) — who was De Filippo’s father.
In 1904, at the height of his popularity, Scarpetta took a great risk: He staged a parody of “La figlia di Iorio,” a tragedy written by the greatest Italian poet of the day, Gabriele D’Annunzio. After all hell broke loose, Scarpetta ended up being sued for plagiarism by D’Annunzio himself. It was the beginning of the first copyright lawsuit in Italy, and a draining experience for Scarpetta and his family.
In 1904, at the height of his popularity, Scarpetta took a great risk: He staged a parody of “La figlia di Iorio,” a tragedy written by the greatest Italian poet of the day, Gabriele D’Annunzio. After all hell broke loose, Scarpetta ended up being sued for plagiarism by D’Annunzio himself. It was the beginning of the first copyright lawsuit in Italy, and a draining experience for Scarpetta and his family.
- 9/10/2021
- by Nick Vivarelli
- Variety Film + TV
“I’ve never liked artists who have more fun offstage than onstage,” says Italian comic star Eduardo Scarpetta (played by Toni Servillo) in “The King of Laughter.” If that was indeed Scarpetta’s belief, he would have thoroughly approved of Mario Martone’s big, brash, garishly frosted celebration cake of a biopic, in which everyone involved seems to be having the very best of times, tumbling onto screen with the breathless energy of a community theater crew given a very generous spotlight. How much fun viewers will be having with them is open to question. Those au fait with the particular chapter of Italian theater history outlined in Martone’s film might join in the eager applause from the local press contingent at Venice. Others may be more bemused by its unrelenting, dialed-to-11 spirit of cinematic carousing.
“The King of Laughter” is Martone’s third film in four years to premiere in competition at Venice,...
“The King of Laughter” is Martone’s third film in four years to premiere in competition at Venice,...
- 9/8/2021
- by Guy Lodge
- Variety Film + TV
Film Movement has acquired U.S. rights to Italian director Mario Martone’s “The King of Laughter” (“Qui Rido Io”) ahead of its world premiere Tuesday in competition at the Venice Film Festival.
The film, being sold internationally by Italy’s True Colours, toplines Toni Servillo (“The Great Beauty”) as popular and prolific early 20th century Neapolitan actor and playwright Eduardo Scarpetta.
In 1904, at the height of his popularity, Scarpetta took a great risk: he staged a parody of “La figlia di Iorio,” a tragedy written by the greatest Italian poet of the day, Gabriele D’Annunzio. After all hell broke loose, Scarpetta ended up being sued for plagiarism by D’Annunzio himself. It was the beginning of the first copyright lawsuit in Italy, and a draining experience for Scarpetta and his family. It was also a challenging time that he overcame with an act worthy of a great thespian.
Film...
The film, being sold internationally by Italy’s True Colours, toplines Toni Servillo (“The Great Beauty”) as popular and prolific early 20th century Neapolitan actor and playwright Eduardo Scarpetta.
In 1904, at the height of his popularity, Scarpetta took a great risk: he staged a parody of “La figlia di Iorio,” a tragedy written by the greatest Italian poet of the day, Gabriele D’Annunzio. After all hell broke loose, Scarpetta ended up being sued for plagiarism by D’Annunzio himself. It was the beginning of the first copyright lawsuit in Italy, and a draining experience for Scarpetta and his family. It was also a challenging time that he overcame with an act worthy of a great thespian.
Film...
- 9/6/2021
- by Nick Vivarelli
- Variety Film + TV
Movie theaters started to gradually reopen in Italy on Monday, serving up Oscar-winning titles such as “Minari” and “Mank” in a fraction of the country’s venues, just as Covid-19 restrictions begin to ease.
For the moment, it’s a few mostly arthouse venues in Italy’s biggest cities that are becoming active again, while Italian multiplexes remain closed until mid-May when Uci Cinemas, which is the country’s top exhibitor, has announced they will be back in business.
The cinema re-openings are allowed to go ahead on the basis of pre-ordered ticketing, distanced seating, obligatory mask-wearing inside the venues, and no popcorn.
Italy’s gradual easing of restrictions also sees museums reopening to visitors, with reservations required. Restaurants and bars in most Italian regions are allowed to serve people at outdoor tables for both lunch and dinner, although Italy’s 10 p.m. curfew remains in effect at present, though...
For the moment, it’s a few mostly arthouse venues in Italy’s biggest cities that are becoming active again, while Italian multiplexes remain closed until mid-May when Uci Cinemas, which is the country’s top exhibitor, has announced they will be back in business.
The cinema re-openings are allowed to go ahead on the basis of pre-ordered ticketing, distanced seating, obligatory mask-wearing inside the venues, and no popcorn.
Italy’s gradual easing of restrictions also sees museums reopening to visitors, with reservations required. Restaurants and bars in most Italian regions are allowed to serve people at outdoor tables for both lunch and dinner, although Italy’s 10 p.m. curfew remains in effect at present, though...
- 4/26/2021
- by Nick Vivarelli
- Variety Film + TV
Luchino Visconti’s handsome final feature adapts a classic Italian novel about an arrogant aristocrat whose selfish double-standard philosophy causes ruin and misery. The 19th century villas and ornate costumes dazzle, but the depressingly fated story will be tough going for sensitive audiences. This new disc encoding highlights the intoxicating atmosphere, and the intense performances of Giancarlo Giannini, Laura Antonelli and Jennifer O’Neill.
L’innocente
Blu-ray
Film Movement Classics
1976 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 129 112 min. / Street Date July 14, 2020 / 29.95
Starring: Giancarlo Giannini, Laura Antonelli, Jennifer O’Neill, Rina Morelli, Massimo Girotti, Didier Haudepin, Marie Dubois, Roberta Paladini, Claude Mann, Marc Porel.
Cinematography: Pasqualino De Santis
Film Editor: Ruggero Mastroianni
Original Music: Franco Mannino
Production Design: Mario Garbuglia
Costumes: Piero Tosi
Written by Suso Cecchi D’Amico, Enrico Medioli, Luchino Visconti from the novel by Gabriele D’Annunzio
Produced by Giovanni Bertolucci
Directed by Luchino Visconti
The availability of European art cinema became spotty in the 1970s,...
L’innocente
Blu-ray
Film Movement Classics
1976 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 129 112 min. / Street Date July 14, 2020 / 29.95
Starring: Giancarlo Giannini, Laura Antonelli, Jennifer O’Neill, Rina Morelli, Massimo Girotti, Didier Haudepin, Marie Dubois, Roberta Paladini, Claude Mann, Marc Porel.
Cinematography: Pasqualino De Santis
Film Editor: Ruggero Mastroianni
Original Music: Franco Mannino
Production Design: Mario Garbuglia
Costumes: Piero Tosi
Written by Suso Cecchi D’Amico, Enrico Medioli, Luchino Visconti from the novel by Gabriele D’Annunzio
Produced by Giovanni Bertolucci
Directed by Luchino Visconti
The availability of European art cinema became spotty in the 1970s,...
- 8/4/2020
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Co-produced with Spain, the Neapolitan director’s new film focuses on the great actor and playwright Eduardo Scarpetta, father to Eduardo De Filippo. Filming kicked off last week on Qui rido io, Mario Martone’s new work on the king of Neapolitan comedy, the great actor and playwright Eduardo Scarpetta, who will be played by Toni Servillo. Scarpetta, who fathered Titina, Eduardo and Peppino De Filippo (who were born out of an incestuous relationship with his wife Rosa’s niece), dedicated his entire life to the theatre world, producing works which would go on to become timeless classics, such as Miseria e nobiltà, which was transposed to the big screen in the famous film starring Totò in 1954. He achieved extraordinary success during his long career, which spanned the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, and was a protagonist in the renowned dispute with Gabriele D'Annunzio over Il.
What's smoother than Kris Jenkins' Ncaa tourney winning shot? Jay Wright's semi-bespoke, $4,000 Italian suit ... that was so sharp, social media freaked out. TMZ Sports spoke to the man behind Wright's suit, his tailor, Gabriele D'Annunzio ... who tells us Jay has impeccable tastes ... and takes pride in being one of the best dressed coaches. "He appreciates the press and comments [about his style]. It's flattering." And the best ain't cheap ... at D'Annunzio's shop, semi-bespoke suits (like Jay's) run...
- 4/5/2016
- by TMZ Staff
- TMZ
Luchino Visconti's reputation precedes him, and it is slightly terrifying. There are few directors who require quite so deep an intake of breath before discussing — his relatively small filmography spans divergent impulses that can seem so unbridgeable as to be self-contradictory. How can one auteur rise to prominence as part of the Italian neo-realist movement, alongside contemporaries Roberto Rossellini and Vittorio De Sica, but become most famous for wildly decadent, brocaded period melodramas, often so theatrical as to be operatic, and sometimes so stately as to be stultifying? It is famously a paradox embodied by Visconti himself. Born a wealthy aristocrat (his official title was Count don Luchino Visconti di Modrone), he was friends with the likes of opera composer Puccini, conductor Toscanini, and writer Gabriele D'Annunzio (who would write Visconti's last film, "The Innocent"). Indeed, his entree into film (Visconti directed plays and operas prior, as...
- 10/8/2015
- by Jessica Kiang
- The Playlist
Bombardment!
Bombardment: textures. If you, like many, have been waiting so many years for Soviet/Russian master Aleksei German (My Friend Ivan Lapshin; Khrustalyov, My Car!) to finish what, upon the director's passing last year, has ended up being his final film (with finishing touches by his wife and co-writer Svetlana Karmalita and his son Aleksei German Jr.), you will have to embrace muck. You will have to swim in shit, slather yourself with grime, dirt, and water, enrobe yourself in filthy fog, feel roughened leather, splintered wood, caked and hardened cloth, rusted and creaky iron armor; you will have to embrace the damp, dank, dirty opus of cinema that is Hard to Be a God. It is cinematic texture taken to an extreme.
Based on a 1964 novel by the Strugatsky brothers (literary sources for Tarkovsky's Stalker and Aleksandr Sokurov's Day of Eclipse, among other adaptations), its barely sci-fi...
Bombardment: textures. If you, like many, have been waiting so many years for Soviet/Russian master Aleksei German (My Friend Ivan Lapshin; Khrustalyov, My Car!) to finish what, upon the director's passing last year, has ended up being his final film (with finishing touches by his wife and co-writer Svetlana Karmalita and his son Aleksei German Jr.), you will have to embrace muck. You will have to swim in shit, slather yourself with grime, dirt, and water, enrobe yourself in filthy fog, feel roughened leather, splintered wood, caked and hardened cloth, rusted and creaky iron armor; you will have to embrace the damp, dank, dirty opus of cinema that is Hard to Be a God. It is cinematic texture taken to an extreme.
Based on a 1964 novel by the Strugatsky brothers (literary sources for Tarkovsky's Stalker and Aleksandr Sokurov's Day of Eclipse, among other adaptations), its barely sci-fi...
- 1/30/2014
- by Daniel Kasman
- MUBI
From new voices like NoViolet Bulawayo to rediscovered old voices like James Salter, from Dave Eggers's satire to David Thomson's history of film, writers, Observer critics and others pick their favourite reads of 2013. And they tell us what they hope to find under the tree …
Curtis Sittenfeld
Novelist
My favourite books of 2013 are Drama High (Riverhead) by Michael Sokolove, Sea Creatures (Turnaround) by Susanna Daniel, and & Sons (Harper Collins) by David Gilbert. Drama High is incredibly smart, moving non-fiction about an American drama teacher who for four decades coaxed sophisticated and nuanced theatrical performances out of teenage students who weren't privileged or otherwise remarkable and in so doing, changed their conceptions of what they could do with their lives. Sea Creatures is a gripping, beautifully written novel about the mother of a selectively mute three-year-old boy; when she takes a job ferrying supplies to a hermit off the coast of Florida,...
Curtis Sittenfeld
Novelist
My favourite books of 2013 are Drama High (Riverhead) by Michael Sokolove, Sea Creatures (Turnaround) by Susanna Daniel, and & Sons (Harper Collins) by David Gilbert. Drama High is incredibly smart, moving non-fiction about an American drama teacher who for four decades coaxed sophisticated and nuanced theatrical performances out of teenage students who weren't privileged or otherwise remarkable and in so doing, changed their conceptions of what they could do with their lives. Sea Creatures is a gripping, beautifully written novel about the mother of a selectively mute three-year-old boy; when she takes a job ferrying supplies to a hermit off the coast of Florida,...
- 11/24/2013
- by Ali Smith, Robert McCrum, Tim Adams, Kate Kellaway, Rachel Cooke, Sebastian Faulks, Jackie Kay
- The Guardian - Film News
Hilary Mantel, Jonathan Franzen, Mohsin Hamid, Ruth Rendell, Tom Stoppard, Malcolm Gladwell, Eleanor Catton and many more recommend the books that impressed them this year
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Five Star Billionaire by Tash Aw (Fourth Estate) is a brilliant, sprawling, layered and unsentimental portrayal of contemporary China. It made me think and laugh. I also love Dave Eggers' The Circle (Hamish Hamilton), which is a sharp-eyed and funny satire about the obsession with "sharing" our lives through technology. It's convincing and a little creepy.
William Boyd
By strange coincidence two of the most intriguing art books I read this year had the word "Breakfast" in their titles. They were Breakfast with Lucian by Geordie Greig (Jonathan Cape) and Breakfast at Sotheby's by Philip Hook (Particular). Greig's fascinating, intimate biography of Lucian Freud was a revelation. Every question I had about Freud – from the aesthetic to the intrusively gossipy – was...
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Five Star Billionaire by Tash Aw (Fourth Estate) is a brilliant, sprawling, layered and unsentimental portrayal of contemporary China. It made me think and laugh. I also love Dave Eggers' The Circle (Hamish Hamilton), which is a sharp-eyed and funny satire about the obsession with "sharing" our lives through technology. It's convincing and a little creepy.
William Boyd
By strange coincidence two of the most intriguing art books I read this year had the word "Breakfast" in their titles. They were Breakfast with Lucian by Geordie Greig (Jonathan Cape) and Breakfast at Sotheby's by Philip Hook (Particular). Greig's fascinating, intimate biography of Lucian Freud was a revelation. Every question I had about Freud – from the aesthetic to the intrusively gossipy – was...
- 11/23/2013
- by Hilary Mantel, Jonathan Franzen, Mohsin Hamid, Tom Stoppard, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, William Boyd, Bill Bryson, Shami Chakrabarti, Sarah Churchwell, Antonia Fraser, Mark Haddon, Robert Harris, Max Hastings, Philip Hensher, Simon Hoggart, AM Homes, John Lanchester, Mark Lawson, Robert Macfarlane, Andrew Motion, Ian Rankin, Lionel Shriver, Helen Simpson, Colm Tóibín, Richard Ford, John Gray, David Kynaston, Penelope Lively, Pankaj Mishra, Blake Morrison, Susie Orbach
- The Guardian - Film News
Huppert/Radio France Choir/Gatti/Orchestre National de France
(Radio France)
Le Martyre de Saint Sébastien – a "mystery" by Gabriele d'Annunzio for which Debussy wrote the incidental music – caused ructions in its day (1911), thanks to the fact that the text drew parallels between Christianity and the classical cult of Adonis. Nowadays, we're more likely to ponder why two such publicly heterosexual men collaborated on so deeply homoerotic a work. That the title role was written to be performed in drag by d'Annunzio's then mistress, Ida Rubinstein, only adds to the piece's complex sexual implications. The "orchestral fragments" Debussy assembled after the premiere have become familiar in the concert hall. This Radio France production from 2009 gives us the complete score, together with a drastic abridgement of the play. Sébastien is played by Isabelle Huppert, sounding androgynous and admirably restrained. The closely recorded soloists are nothing special, but the choral singing is exquisite,...
(Radio France)
Le Martyre de Saint Sébastien – a "mystery" by Gabriele d'Annunzio for which Debussy wrote the incidental music – caused ructions in its day (1911), thanks to the fact that the text drew parallels between Christianity and the classical cult of Adonis. Nowadays, we're more likely to ponder why two such publicly heterosexual men collaborated on so deeply homoerotic a work. That the title role was written to be performed in drag by d'Annunzio's then mistress, Ida Rubinstein, only adds to the piece's complex sexual implications. The "orchestral fragments" Debussy assembled after the premiere have become familiar in the concert hall. This Radio France production from 2009 gives us the complete score, together with a drastic abridgement of the play. Sébastien is played by Isabelle Huppert, sounding androgynous and admirably restrained. The closely recorded soloists are nothing special, but the choral singing is exquisite,...
- 5/10/2012
- by Tim Ashley
- The Guardian - Film News
Italian screenwriter who worked with directors such as Visconti and Zeffirelli
The Italian screenwriter Suso Cecchi d'Amico, who has died aged 96, collaborated on the scripts of more than 100 films, including Vittorio De Sica's Ladri di Biciclette (Bicycle Thieves, 1948), William Wyler's Roman Holiday (1953), Mario Monicelli's I Soliti Ignoti (Big Deal on Madonna Street, 1958) and Francesco Rosi's Salvatore Giuliano (1962). She also worked with Michelangelo Antonioni on Le Amiche (The Girlfriends, 1955) and Franco Zeffirelli on Jesus of Nazareth (1977), but she was best known for her creative contribution to the films of Luchino Visconti, including Il Gattopardo (The Leopard, 1963).
She was born Giovanna Cecchi in Rome to a Tuscan painter, Leonetta Pieraccini, and the literary critic Emilio Cecchi, a major figure in 20th-century Italian letters. For a few years in the early 1930s, before the Cinecittà studios were built in Rome, her father had been entrusted by Mussolini's government with...
The Italian screenwriter Suso Cecchi d'Amico, who has died aged 96, collaborated on the scripts of more than 100 films, including Vittorio De Sica's Ladri di Biciclette (Bicycle Thieves, 1948), William Wyler's Roman Holiday (1953), Mario Monicelli's I Soliti Ignoti (Big Deal on Madonna Street, 1958) and Francesco Rosi's Salvatore Giuliano (1962). She also worked with Michelangelo Antonioni on Le Amiche (The Girlfriends, 1955) and Franco Zeffirelli on Jesus of Nazareth (1977), but she was best known for her creative contribution to the films of Luchino Visconti, including Il Gattopardo (The Leopard, 1963).
She was born Giovanna Cecchi in Rome to a Tuscan painter, Leonetta Pieraccini, and the literary critic Emilio Cecchi, a major figure in 20th-century Italian letters. For a few years in the early 1930s, before the Cinecittà studios were built in Rome, her father had been entrusted by Mussolini's government with...
- 8/1/2010
- by John Francis Lane
- The Guardian - Film News
Cabiria (1914) was the seminal Italian historical epic, adding to the gigantic sets and overplayed melodrama of predecessors like Nero and The Fall of Troy, with elegant camera moves (using Segundo de Chomon's first purpose-built dolly) and celebrity cameos for Hannibal and Archimedes. "It had everything but a story," observed Karl Brown, Dw Griffith's camera assistant. Giovanni Pastrone and Gabriele D'Annunzio's historical pageant influenced movies from Intolerance to Metropolis to Conan the Barbarian, and Fellini borrowed its heroine's name for his wife's role in The White Sheik and Nights of Cabiria.
But the figure who caught the public imagination was not the titular heroine, but Maciste, the heroic slave, played by Bartolomeo Pagano, a Genovese longshoreman with a spectacularly muscled physique. Maciste/Pagano went on to star in twenty-four more movies over the next fourteen years, of which the most famous (and the only one available, albeit in somewhat...
But the figure who caught the public imagination was not the titular heroine, but Maciste, the heroic slave, played by Bartolomeo Pagano, a Genovese longshoreman with a spectacularly muscled physique. Maciste/Pagano went on to star in twenty-four more movies over the next fourteen years, of which the most famous (and the only one available, albeit in somewhat...
- 4/1/2010
- MUBI
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