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Post by topbilled on Jan 15, 2024 15:11:18 GMT
Reviews for Italian films will be placed here.
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Post by topbilled on Jan 16, 2024 14:35:31 GMT
This neglected film is from 1952.
Gogol’s overcoat
This Italian version of a Russian short story by Nikolai Gogol, originally known as Shinel, is meticulously directed by Alberto Lattuada. It presents a clear-eyed view of political corruption, and the plight of one small man (Renato Rascel), who needs two things. As a clerk for the mayor (Giulio Stival), he knows bureaucracy never works according to logic.
The first thing Carmine de Carmine (Rascel) needs is a new overcoat…hence the title. The one he’s been wearing year after year is all in tatters. A local tailor doesn’t think any more patches can be put on it. Carmine will need to purchase a new one, but such a garment would be too expensive for him to afford on his meager wages. He tries to do the repairs on the coat himself, but it is no use.
Because the weather in northern Italy is quite cold in winter, he cannot be without a heavy coat. In Gogol’s story, the action is set in even colder Russia; and our protagonist starves himself and refrains from turning on the heat in his apartment, to save up enough money for the purchase of the new overcoat.
When Carmine goes to buy the new coat, he purchases a most fancy one, with a fur collar. The coat becomes a source of pride, garnering all sorts of attention when he wears it down the street and into the office. In a way, the coat is an extension of the main character, a symbol of acquiring something that to others may denote newly gained social status.
The second thing Carmine needs is to feel valued. The new overcoat brings attention his way, but at 5’2, he’s still a guy the others tower over and look down upon. They don’t respect him. When he receives an invitation to a New Year’s party, his luck may be changing. The party will be attended by the mayor, the mayor’s mistress (Yvonne Sanson) and other office staff.
During the party, Carmine has a few drinks and loosens up. He suddenly feels confident. After looking out at the window at souls less fortunate on the street, he is moved to interrupt the mayor and make a speech about the city’s homeless population. Of course, the mayor and his cronies are not interested in this. The party is meant to be a celebration; they don’t want to be reminded of how they’ve been failing their jobs to do right by the public.
Carmine is soon ushered out, but before he goes, there is a well-filmed bit where he dances with the mayor’s mistress. The height disparity between Rascel and Sanson is obvious and adds to the amusing quality of their dance. After leaving the party, Carmine is heading home when he’s mugged. His beloved new coat is snatched away from him.
This leads to the next section of the story where he asks for help from the authorities to get his coat back. Some of this is played quite seriously, but of course, the situation becomes increasingly absurd. One thing Lattuada understands about Gogol’s story is that it works in a vein of neorealism, but it also lends itself to a grotesque form of satire and surrealism.
After Carmine’s unable to get his coat back, we have scenes where he is forced to wear the old one with holes in it. This causes him to get sick in the freezing weather. Soon he develops pneumonia, and there’s a memorable scene where neighbors in his apartment building check on him and use a stethoscope to determine if he’s still breathing. Unfortunately, he’s dead.
The story doesn’t end there. Carmine’s spirit comes back to avenge his needless death. He haunts thieves who may have been responsible for stealing his coat; and he haunts the mayor during an evening with the mistress. Eventually he reveals himself to the mayor, who didn’t know until then that he had died. The mayor has an examination of conscience and quickly reforms, vowing to do better.
Personally, I found the ending too tidy and the mayor’s conversion a bit too fast. At least with Dickens, it takes a while for Scrooge to change. Here the change in the mayor’s character is almost too abrupt. The point is probably to let the audience know there is hope after all, and corrupt officials can become decent ones.
The best aspect of IL CAPPOTTO is not the rather seamless blending of neorealism and surrealism. It’s the strong presentation of a central character who makes a statement about social injustice and causes important self-reflection. That type of truth may be just as stinging as the bitter cold air.
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Post by topbilled on Feb 2, 2024 16:51:36 GMT
This neglected film is from 1949.
A family separation
This was the first pairing of heroic Italian heartthrob Amedeo Nazzari and beautiful leading lady Yvonne Sanson. Nazzari had already been been making hit films for over a decade in Italy; while Greek-born Sanson, who had worked as a model, was just getting started in the Italian film industry. They were such a popular duo with audiences that they went on to make a half dozen more films together for the same director (Raffaello Matarazzo).
Subsequent efforts were just as successful. Off-screen, the two stars were romantically involved; though Nazzari would marry another Greek-born actress, while Sanson remained unwed. At first you don’t realize that Nazzari, sometimes known as the Italian Errol Flynn, was actually 42 years old when he made CATENE (CHAINS). He looks very youthful.
Sanson was 24, and she looks older than her actual age. So if you put them next to each other on film, they seem to be about the same age (30s), but Nazzari was in reality 18 years older than Sanson.
In CATENE, they play a couple who’ve been married for at least a decade, since they have a son who looks and acts about ten; and they also have a young daughter. The children in this film are very natural in their portrayals. American child actors from this period tend to be a bit too precocious, always trying to be too cute. The daughter in this film is certainly a cutie, but she’s not trying to act cute.
The boy has some important moments. Initially, he is seen as a clone of his father; helping fix cars, reading the newspaper together. Later, there is a group lunch scene where his parents are eating with other adults. The boy notices his mom (Sanson) holding hands under the table with a man (Aldo Nicodemi) doing business with the family.
Realizing his mother may be cheating, he tries to stop her from visiting the man the next day. It leads to an emotional scene. Sanson has no choice but to visit Nicodemi, since she’s being blackmailed over the details of an earlier relationship they had, which she never told husband Nazzari about. While it takes a bit of time for Nazzari to see what’s been going on under his nose, it doesn’t take him long to act once he has all the facts.
There is a huge scene midway through the picture, where Nazzari goes to confront Nicodemi and finds Sanson in the guy’s hotel room. He sends his wife out, there is a quarrel, a gun is involved, and it goes off. Nazzari has accidentally shot and killed the man, and now he goes on the lam.
Although Nazzari did the killing, it is Sanson who gets the brunt of the blame. Nazzari’s mother (Teresa Franchini) becomes primary caregiver for the children, and at first she prevents Sanson from seeing the kids. Sanson is finally allowed into the house for a visit, which leads to plenty of grateful tears. Sanson does a lot of suffering in this story.
Meanwhile Nazzari has gone to the U.S. and ends up in Ohio with other expatriated Italians. Nazzari is still wanted for murder. The police in Ohio catch up to him and deport him to Italy. I found the scene with the Italian-American policeman very interesting. In order to ensure realism, they had to use an Italian actor who had some command of the English language, because a cop in Ohio would most likely speak English.
After Nazzari returns, the story becomes more of a legal melodrama. He goes on trial, and ultimately he is saved when his wife allows herself to be a martyr. She claims she was having an affair with the dead man, which isn’t exactly true, so that Nazzari will be exonerated. A sympathetic jury will overlook his actions and consider what he did a crime of passion.
After the not-guilty verdict, the family is reunited. Sanson is allowed to come back home. There are more grateful tears, but somehow none of this seems too over-the-top. It does feel authentic, because what we have is a family that lives and feels things deeply. They are real in every sense of the word. They are bound by an unbreakable bond…by love…not by chains.
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Post by topbilled on Mar 5, 2024 8:26:25 GMT
This neglected film is from 1950.
Continuous bad luck and pain
I’m not sure if people enjoy these extreme Italian melodramas because they get some sort of odd pleasure seeing people suffer, and these characters do suffer a lot, or if it’s just because every now and then a viewer needs a good emotional release (a good old-fashioned cry). I suppose if that’s true, it’s cathartic on some level.
Previously, the two leads— Amedeo Nazzari and new star Yvonne Sanson— had a smash hit with CATENE (1949), directed by Raffaello Matarazzo. The three were quickly teamed up again for this follow-up, which no surprise, became the second most successful hit at the box office during the 1949-50 season, after CATENE.
As the story begins, the main characters are not married, but they are definitely in love. Sanson plays a woman who is beholden to her father’s new wife (Tina Lattanzi).
When she decides to leave the family house to marry Nazzari, though the union is frowned upon, things don’t go as planned. Nazzari is a struggling businessman who has just had a violent fight with his partner (shades of what happened in CATENE) and the partner dies soon afterward. Nazzari is blamed. Unlike the action in CATENE, Nazzari is innocent this time but still sent to jail.
As a result of the incarceration, Sanson cannot be with Nazzari. She must go on without him, but as fate would have it, she finds out she’s pregnant. Moving on with the rest of her life won’t be easy. She tries to return to her family’s house, but the wicked stepmother (shades of Cinderella to be sure) forces her to give up the baby…and then Sanson must go into some sort of women’s reformatory.
So now we have both lovebirds in their respective prisons, and the life of an illegitimate child at stake. Of course Sanson will try to convince a nun who oversees her at the reformatory that she is ready to return to society a short time later, in order to reclaim her child who has been sick. Meanwhile, Nazzari appeals his conviction and hopes to be released.
It occurs to me while watching TORMENTO that what Matarazzo is doing is taking a simple fairy tale, in this case the Cinderella tale, and denying the couple a happily-ever-after until much continuous bad luck and pain engulfs the characters to the point their relationship seems impossible…until some kind of miraculous reprieve and reunion near the end.
Most of the entanglements occur not through the characters’ own doings, but because circumstances work against them. It makes the audience root for their ultimate redemption and triumph even more. As I said these tear-jerking sentimental melodramas were very popular in the postwar period among the Italian public. Though Matarazzo’s heightened stories were initially frowned upon by contemporary critics subsequent re-evaluation has classified them as a form of “appendix neorealism” worthy of veneration.
A key theme in these stories is about the main characters trying to improve themselves despite considerable odds. They are often torn apart by the jealousy and hypocrisy of others. The crises seem to multiply and reach a crescendo in a way that is truly operatic. Yet, somehow (amazingly) the stories are still grounded by the director’s ability to add in realistic details.
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Post by topbilled on Apr 28, 2024 15:21:33 GMT
This neglected film is from 1951.
Illegitimate figli
Raffaello Matarazzo was a successful Italian filmmaker who had specialized in comedies during the 1930s and historical dramas during the 1940s. But with his hit film CATENE (CHAINS) in 1949, he began making a series of popular melodramas, the most successful ones pairing Amedeo Nazzari and Yvonne Sanson.
Matarazzo’s technique could be compared to Rossellini or DeSica, since he favored a more naturalistic approach in the postwar period. But unlike those neorealist auteurs, Matarazzo wasn’t as focused on political or economic points; instead, he was more interested in depicting overheated passion and religious symbolism. He liked to elevate drama that would pull tears from viewers, even when his plots became convoluted.
The convoluted aspects, which are still be quite satisfying for the audience, play on coincidences and overwrought emotions. Typically, the conflicts involve class divisions. In I FIGLI DI NESSUNO (NOBODY’S CHILDREN), Amedeo Nazzari plays the owner of a quarry. His family, the Canalis, are headed by a ruthless matriarch (French actress Francoise Rosay, expanding her repertoire of international roles). Mama spends hours in bed barking orders.
One of mama’s henchmen (Folco Lulli) visits to go over accounts. While he’s there he tells mama that her son is having an affair with a quarry worker’s daughter (Sanson). This is like a dagger in the heart. Since mama does not intend for her son to marry down, she does everything in her power to thwart the relationship. Never mind the fact that the couple is deeply and completely in love.
Mama works night and day to break them up. And she succeeds, except for one loose end. Sanson has become pregnant and gives birth to a child that is a short time later is thought to have died in a fire. After the “death” of the child, Sanson decides to become a nun much to Nazzari’s displeasure.
Meanwhile the baby, which is still alive, and is now nobody’s child, has been raised in an orphanage. The story advances, and we see Nazzari has married a more socially acceptable woman (Enrica Dyrell) and has a young daughter in this marriage. But he still thinks about Sanson, and mama still knows there is a grandson out there somewhere who’s been denied part of the family heritage.
This leads into the second half of the story where that long-lost child, Bruno (Enric Olivieri) leaves the orphanage and comes to the quarry looking for clues about his parentage. Ironically, Olivieri bonds with Nazzari, neither one knowing they are son and father. Olivieri also has a scene in which he meets Sanson the nun, not knowing she’s his mother. The film is full or great irony.
But instead of providing a happy resolution— since Sanson cannot turn back on her vows and leave the convent, and since Nazzari already has a wife and another child— tragedy escalates. Young Bruno (Olivieri) gets caught in the middle of dynamite being detonated at the quarry. Yes, Matarazzo is going there…and the boy so close to learning about his real family is fatally injured in a blast.
This sets us up for the huge scene at the end where Sanson and Nazzari have learned the boy now dying in the hospital, is their long lost son. You cannot help but cry watching this stuff. The performances are so pure and so affecting, despite the more operatic aspects of the plot, that you feel moved by these characters and weep for their terrible losses. On some level, it’s kind of therapeutic in a very emotional way. And when NOBODY’S CHILDREN seems to have come full-circle, it really hasn’t. Four years later, Matarazzo produced a sequel even more melodramatic and terrific.
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Post by topbilled on May 19, 2024 14:59:19 GMT
This neglected film is from 1952.
Trying to move up, they all fall down
This film, known in English as ROME 11:00, was directed by Giuseppe De Santis, who specialized in neorealism. De Santis was at the height of his powers in the late 1940s and 1950s. Though he would make a few more motion pictures after 1960, his style as a filmmaker evolved. Unlike other neorealist directors, De Santis was a bit more idealistic, though scenes are still punctuated with uncertainty.
The story is based on an actual incident that had occurred in early 1951. A tragedy takes place one morning at 11 o’clock when over 200 women turn up at an address in Rome to apply for a job. It’s a rainy winter day, and all these gals are dealing with financial hardship and desperately want to be hired as a typist for a businessman who had placed an ad. We aren’t told whether or not he expected so many applicants, but he’s overwhelmed to see so many women lined up in the hallway outside his office and down a concrete stairwell that is several floors up from the ground.
At one point he tells the women that he will only interview 30 or 40 of them, meaning the others should leave as they will be turned away. Interestingly, none of the women leave, that is how desperate they are for this modestly paying position. During the initial sequence of the movie, we get to know some of these women, since there are snippets of dialogue here and there that tell us in conversation what individual circumstances have brought them here looking for work.
Not all of the women are unemployed. Some of them already have jobs, but jobs they wish to quit for something better. One applicant is a saucy prostitute who is tired of entertaining men. Another applicant is a maid for a wealthy couple who is tired of being treated like a lowly servant. Then, of course, there are some who definitely are unemployed, or have never worked before because they are homemakers, but their husbands are now unemployed, so they must see if they can get hired somewhere.
Personally I found the first half hour a bit tedious and was ready to give up on the film. There were just too many characters to connect to, and they all seemed a bit precocious in a strange way; not exactly human to me. Also, almost all the ladies were glammed up, which I understand may have been necessary to entice the businessman to hire them. But after the stairwell collapses when dozens are hauled off to a hospital, they still look glamorous with no signs of having scratches or bruises, let alone life-threatening injuries. If the goal of this film is to provide a sense of deep realism, that has to be reflected beyond the economic situation and the political situation. Physically, there should be realism, too.
The stairwell collapse occurs around the 35 minute mark, and it lasts about ten minutes or so. I did think the collapse was suitably dramatic, as horrific and dangerous as one would expect. It was a bit silly, though, that the women had to wait for male firemen and male paramedics to come rescue them…that none of them could fend for themselves or depend on each other. They were totally helpless without men…really? Come on!
The film finds its stride during the second half. This is when extended hospital scenes take place, and the victims’ families and friends show up which does flesh out the individual stories more. Also, there is an ongoing police investigation; and one woman (Carla Del Poggio) who jumped the line to secure an interview and had caused a scuffle on the stairs leading to the collapse, has to deal with her confusion over being responsible for disaster.
Some of the individual character stories are wrapped up quite nicely. Most of them cannot afford an expensive hospital stay; they start to file out of the medical facility. Outside the hospital, the maid is “reunited” with her bourgeoisie employers who learned of the calamity on the radio. They are shocked someone they considered to be a ‘daughter’ no longer wants to work for them. When the maid refuses to go back to the manse with them, another poor applicant leaving the hospital overhears this and offers her services…meaning she will go off with the snobby couple and become their new maid, so she at least ended up with a new job!
Meanwhile we see the prostitute taken back to her apartment by a rich old fat man who wants to get it on with her, even though she just barely escaped death. She tells him she has had a tiring day and needs to spend the evening alone, a rarity for her; and compassionately, he leaves a bunch of money behind without getting sex from her. At least not tonight!
There is one woman who is pregnant out of wedlock, and her story basically resolves with a doctor telling her that she did not lose her baby. However, she still has no job. Yet another gal has been in the process of leaving her husband but decides to go back to him; their reunion scene is beautifully played without dialogue. And then we have a woman who at her mother’s prodding, leaves the hospital and goes back to the office building where the debris is being cleaned up. She hopes to speak to the businessman and see if she can get the job that was originally advertised, since he had not completed the interviews due to the tragedy.
Of course, we get a resolution for the woman who blamed herself for the collapse. She is told by the police that no charges will be pressed, and she is free to go. Off to the side, architects have been summoned and they may be held responsible for the damages, though they are already trying to weasel out of it. But the building itself is not the film’s main concern. It’s the women and their dire socio-economic condition that De Santis wants us to think about. And that is something we can do at 11 o’clock or any other time of the day.
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Post by topbilled on Jun 21, 2024 15:35:54 GMT
This neglected film is from 1955.
One man and two different women
The most well-known collaborations between Italian heartthrob Amedeo Nazzari and starlet Yvonne Sanson are I FIGLI DI NESSUNO (NOBODY’S CHILDREN) from 1952 and its sequel L’ANGELO BIANCO (THE WHITE ANGEL) from 1955. Interestingly, a sequel had not originally been planned, so the two stars went off and made some other films during the intervening period.
But then director Raffaello Matarazzo was persuaded to craft a sequel, even though Sanson’s character had jilted Nazzari at the end of NOBODY’S CHILDREN to become a nun after the sad death of their illegitimate son. Yes, in Italian cinema when the characters’ passions are denied, they must suffer-suffer-suffer.
So how was Matarazzo going to reunite them on screen in a sequel if Sanson could no longer be with Nazzari romantically, since her character had become a nun? They couldn’t have her give up her religious vocation, because that would distress faithful Catholic moviegoers.
So Matarazzo put his thinking cap on, and he came up with a very clever solution. It was a solution that predated what Alfred Hitchcock did a few years later with Kim Novak’s character in VERTIGO. He decided to give Sanson a new second role.
In L’ANGELO BIANCO, Nazzari’s character is still reeling from the death of his son and is still struggling with not being able to reconcile with Sanson’s nun character. So he takes a trip across country. While traveling on a train, he comes across an attractive doppelgänger (Sanson) for whom he develops an unhealthy obsession. It’s certainly similar to the relationship between Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak in VERTIGO, which may suggest Hitchcock had seen Matarazzo’s movie and borrowed the idea.
As L’ANGELO BIANCO’s doppelgänger plot unspools, we learn that Sanson’s new character is the complete opposite of the nun, about as unholy as they come…using this man’s fixation with her to great advantage. Meanwhile, in other scenes, Sanson is still playing the nun, who helps out in a women’s prison…which, you guessed it, is where the evil double is sentenced for her crimes.
I don’t want to give away the ending of L’ANGELO BIANCO but Sanson does such a tremendous job with this unique double plot…you truly do believe these are two very different women. When they cross paths at the prison, things get a bit more complex and incredibly melodramatic.
The success of L’ANGELO BIANCO– considered a highpoint in the careers of Matarazzo, Sanson and Nazzari– meant there would be a few more follow-ups before the decade was over.
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Post by topbilled on Jul 24, 2024 13:08:44 GMT
This neglected film is from 1954.
A classic journey
This is a 1954 drama about an Englishman (Sanders) and his wife (Ingrid Bergman) who travel from London to Italy to take care of a deceased relative’s estate. Along the journey, they begin to understand why their marriage is crumbling. Bergman’s own marriage to the director, Roberto Rossellini, was starting to crumble off-screen.
George Sanders and Ingrid Bergman had costarred 13 years earlier in MGM’s RAGE IN HEAVEN. That was before Bergman’s Oscar win for GASLIGHT and Sanders’ Oscar win for ALL ABOUT EVE.
When JOURNEY TO ITALY was originally released, it did not do well with audiences and critics were lukewarm towards it. But it has steadily grown in reputation and is believed to have influenced many well-known directors. The film gets better with each subsequent viewing.
In a way Sanders and Bergman are playing bourgeoisie caricatures. Since Rossellini was using a loose script, the actors were allowed to invent dialogue that was much more natural than what we’re accustomed to hearing them recite in their Hollywood movies.
A few things stand out– the clothing is fabulous on both of them, and the hotel and villa used for those scenes are exquisite– better than anything that could have been constructed on a sound stage. It feels like the characters are living in a real time and place because of this, and ultimately, it makes the film and its goals more endearing.
Also, I love the little tourist interludes Rossellini has Bergman do, not only at Pompeii, but earlier in the film when she visits the museum. I was completely caught up in it, though there was little plot during those sequences, because of the fluid camera work.
The story slows down a bit when Sanders’ character goes off to Capri, and we see Bergman driving around looking at women with baby carriages. But I understood why this was done, as it gave us insights into what was wrong with her. Then when we cut to him ending his time away, tempted by a hooker on the street, we were likewise given insights into what was wrong with him.
The ending of JOURNEY TO ITALY is truly wonderful. There’s this long scene where they are on a street and they get tangled up with some outdoor religious procession that occurs in the main plaza.
The way they come to their senses and realize the potential of their relationship is well played. I think the way he pulls her in for the embrace was spectacularly done. To me, this scene, as well as a scene earlier in the picture where he is eating pasta with her and raving about the wine, are moments where we see George Sanders at his most vulnerable and at his best.
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Post by topbilled on Aug 8, 2024 12:33:34 GMT
This neglected film is from 1955.
Child prodigy Italian style
“He’s a phenomenon.” We hear this line several times during the course of the film. It is usually said by Alberto Sordi’s character, a music teacher, when referring to the young boy (Giancarlo Zarfati) he gives lessons to in the story. Of course, he doesn’t exclaim this fact in the earlier scenes. In the beginning, he is annoyed that he’s been given this six-year-old kid to teach.
Actually, the relationship involves more than just the traditional teacher-student scenario. Young Zarfati’s father has been imprisoned one day after school, while Sordi is tutoring the boy. Not wanting to be saddled with the responsibility of looking after him, Sordi takes the kid around the city to drop him at the uncles. But all three uncles refuse to take the child in; so Sordi has no choice but to provide food and shelter for the kid himself.
There are some cute scenes in which Sordi and Zarfati bond. The best moment during this part of the film is when Sordi realizes that Zarfati has a deep sounding baritone voice that makes him a natural for opera. We have several funny scenes with Zarfati (obviously lip-syncing) performing opera. Sordi quickly takes the boy to an agent who signs him to a contract.
One of the movie’s funniest parts has young Zarfati performing opera in a mature role, though he has to stand on a chair to be taller than the diva playing his “daughter” on stage. It’s a really inspired gag. Zarfati has a pure screen presence, even while hamming things up; though Sordi is definitely the bigger ham.
While watching BRAVISSIMO, I had to ask myself what the moral of the story was, because it’s there but not so obvious. The moral is that postwar Italy was building its hopes of renewed prosperity on the younger generation since these kids would lead the country into the future. Sordi’s character makes the mistake of pushing the child too hard and not letting him be like the other boys and girls his age.
Zarfati’s character ends up rebelling and running away. He is subsequently hidden by a German girl (Riccarda Momo) whose nanny happens to be a relative (Patrizia Rovere). It’s sweet how Momo and Rovere express fondness in looking after the boy, when all the male authority figures in his life either didn’t want him, or were exploiting his talents.
There’s a very memorable shot where Zarfati, dressed in a clown jester’s costume for the opera, has run away in the rain and ends up on the balcony of Momo’s home. He is on the outside looking in, a funny boy with a sad life.
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Post by topbilled on Aug 8, 2024 13:49:32 GMT
A very nice restored print of BRAVISSIMO is on YouTube. It has multi-language settings, so if your Italian language skills are rusty or non-existent, you can select English subtitles.
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Post by topbilled on Sept 30, 2024 15:15:41 GMT
This neglected film is from 1949.
She’s their patroness and savior
This is a film that elicits a lot of different emotional responses in me. First, it appeals to me because of the historical backdrop, where we see clips of Allied soldiers leaving Italy at the end of WWII to return home. They leave behind the women they loved, and used; as well as the illegitimate children they sired.
Second, the film appeals to me because it’s an intelligent yet somewhat cynical look at what happens after a war ends, and how the country left behind and its people must rebuild. But in that rebuilding process there are competing agendas, particularly among the more established elements of society: specifically, the law and the church.
In this story, there is a crooked mayor and his cronies in a seaside Neapolitan village who try to grab money that doesn’t belong to them; and there is a much-loved and revered priest who manipulates political situations to help the poor.
I did like the fact that the priest wasn’t totally above reproach. He was a human being who made decisions with the idea in mind that the ends justify the means…though he did make sure everything was right in the end, before he died.
Mixed into this power struggle between the mayor and the priest, we glimpse the arrival of two women (Gina Lollobrigida and Yvonne Sanson) in Ischia who have a real claim on the funds that are in dispute.
The women are fiercely independent, yet soft and feminine. We can only imagine what they did in the war with those recently departed soldiers to earn such money.
The story was filmed in two versions simultaneously, the Italian production CAMPANE A MARTELLO (ALARM BELLS) with Lollobrigida and Sanson; and an English facsimile by British producers called CHILDREN OF CHANCE, which stars Patricia Medina and Yvonne Mitchell.
Both versions had the same director (Luigi Zampa). They contain the same scenes and the same background players whose lines are dubbed into either Italian or English, depending on which movie you watch. A few of the supporting players were bilingual and perform their parts in both productions with authenticity and ease.
Off screen, Lollobrigida and Sanson, who were each starting their illustrious screen careers in Italian cinema, became close friends. They share a very good camaraderie on camera, and it’s fun to watch them. I think they give much earthier portrayals than their counterparts, Medina and Mitchell, do in the other version. However, Medina seems to excel with the poignant aspects of the drama.
One key feature of the drama involves the use of the money to help sustain an orphanage. There is considerable irony that a prostitute (Lollobrigida/Medina) who sent her hard-earned cash to a priest for safekeeping is outfoxed, and ultimately seen as heroic, in giving the orphaned kids a chance in life. There is a point in the narrative when the local people learn how the money was raised and try to expel the prostitute from their village, but then they have a change of heart.
And this is where I must mention the third reason this film appeals to me. There is a sense of history and cynicism, but there is considerable heart. The more poignant attributes of the story are not drowned in excessive sentiment. But it is still quite moving to see the little children on the dock saying goodbye to the kind lady of ill-repute who has been their generous patroness and savior. They knew she was special from the first moment they met her.
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Post by topbilled on Oct 25, 2024 15:15:19 GMT
This neglected film is from 1957.
“It’s difficult to hide your responsibility.”
Translated into English, the title I COLPEVOLI literally means THE GUILTY. It’s a step up from the usual juvenile delinquent dramas of the period, taking its cue from Hollywood’s REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE, but going the extra mile. It is more a philosophical examination of a teen who has failed and the parents who have failed him. A young son (Sandro Ninchi) will be charged and stand trial, convicted as the guilty one along with his hoodlum pals; but mother (Isa Miranda) and father (Carlo Ninchi, real-life uncle of Sandro) are just as guilty in their own way.
The most riveting performance is the one given by Isa Miranda. She was an international success, making films in different countries, including the United States where Paramount Pictures touted her as an Italian Dietrich. At this stage, she is 52 and easily looks like her late 30s. Her line readings are fascinating, and her dramatic emoting is mesmerizing to say the least.
The story features Miranda as a doting, overprotective mom; while hubby is a magistrate, up for an important government position. On the eve of this promotion, it is learned their son went out with a group of friends to a party. But after dancing and drinking, they did something rather dumb— they went to a gas station where they had been earlier in the day and proceeded to rob the joint. In the process of robbing the place, someone was shot and killed.
What’s kind of great about this film is that it doesn’t rush into the violence, and the murder scene is delayed so it is not viewed until halfway into the movie. Even then, it is a flashback…quick scenes really, as the teen boy confesses in a distraught scene at home, to his folks, that he was involved in a killing some time earlier in the evening.
Initial reactions denote shock and horror. Mixed into this is a bit of a mystery. Did their son pull the trigger, or was it another boy in the gang who did the actual shooting? They need to believe everything they are being told. The father goes off to visit the girlfriend (Etchika Choureau) to get the truth.
Meanwhile, Miranda’s character continues trying to protect her boy, thinking what occurred can be covered up and that none of it will have to be reported. She’s wrong, of course.
Not only must she deal with her own serious denial about her son’s serious problems, she becomes alienated from her husband. If the truth is known, it will ruin any chances of getting the new government job. Also, if the son is convicted, and he is the only child they have, there will be nothing but grief.
This is a family that suffers immeasurably because of something terrible that has happened. It’s something that might have been prevented with better parenting. We’re left to ponder that for ourselves. The premise is a simple one. As the tragedy spins outward, everyone is caught up in it and forever changed by it.
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