Travelling through Italy (a Very Personal List)
A list of Italian movies that, in my view, allows us to understand the greatness of Italian cinema -- and which allows us to take a tour of the Italy imagination, in the past and in the present. (And, no, the list is not complete. I will be adding titles when I have free time. I will also be adding more descriptions of some of the films.)
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- DirectorRoberto RosselliniStarsAnna MagnaniAldo FabriziMarcello PaglieroDuring the Nazi occupation of Rome in 1944, the Resistance leader, Giorgio Manfredi, is chased by the Nazis as he seeks refuge and a way to escape.
- DirectorFederico FelliniStarsMarcello MastroianniAnita EkbergAnouk AiméeA series of stories following a week in the life of a philandering tabloid journalist living in Rome.
- DirectorLuchino ViscontiStarsLuchino ViscontiAntonio PietrangeliAntonio ArcidiaconoIn rural Sicily, the fishermen live at the mercy of the greedy wholesalers. One family risks everything to buy their own boat and operate independently.
- DirectorLuchino ViscontiStarsBurt LancasterAlain DelonClaudia CardinaleThe Prince of Salina, a noble aristocrat of impeccable integrity, tries to preserve his family and class amid the tumultuous social upheavals of 1860s Sicily.
- DirectorEmanuele CrialeseStarsCharlotte GainsbourgVincenzo AmatoVincent SchiavelliA Sicilian peasant begins the journey to the promised land and meets a beautiful Englishwoman. But neither is prepared for the harsh realities of Ellis Island. Can they make it through the golden door to the America of their dreams?This is a film about Sicilian immigration to the United States in the early years of the 20th century. That is the "new world" of the title. It is a very strange and disorienting new world that these people move into. The film is basically told in the realist mode, but there are occasional dream-like sequences, and these also contribute to explaining the sense of disorientation experienced by characters. At the same time, this is also a film about the old world, and the value and the wealth of the traditions that they have left behind.
- DirectorGianni AmelioStarsEnrico Lo VersoMichele PlacidoPiro MilkaniImmediately after the fall of communism in Albania, two Italians go there to embezzle investment money by creating a fake company. As the chairman/fall guy, they pick a former political prisoner who turns out to be more than meets the eye.
- DirectorFederico FelliniStarsMartin PotterHiram KellerMax BornA series of disjointed mythical tales set in first-century Rome.
- DirectorMario MonicelliStarsVittorio GassmanMarcello MastroianniRenato SalvatoriA motley quintet of inept small-time thieves attempt the burglary of a local pawnshop in this Italian farce.
- DirectorGiuseppe TornatoreStarsFrancesco SciannaMargareth MadèLina SastriBaaria is Sicilian slang for Bagheria where Tornatore was born and this is an autobiographic epic of three generations in the Sicilian village where he was born.
- DirectorGianni AmelioStarsKim Rossi StuartAndrea RossiCharlotte RamplingMeeting his disabled son for the first time, a young father attempts to forge a relationship with the teenager.
- DirectorEdoardo WinspeareStarsCosimo CinieriChiara TorelliFabio Frascaro1943, Italy's Salentino peninsula. Tony, an American fighter pilot, raised speaking Italian in New York, parachutes to safety and is hidden at the olive farm of Carmine, a man with three daughters. One is being courted by Pasquale, the son of the area's largest landowner. It is she, Cosima, whom Tony falls for. He gets to know her through the rhythms of the farm and a traditional way of life, expressed in spontaneous song and in pizzicatas (a courtship dance; a dance that enacts a knife fight between men; and, the frenzied tarantata - a woman's dance exorcising passion). As Carmine protects Tony and as Cosima begins to love him, Pasquale does not go gently.The director Winspeare has done for Salento (and, more generally, for the Apulia region) what other directors have done for other regions: his film provides a visual synthesis of the history, landscape and lore of that region.This film, apparently a straightforward rural story of love and jealousy, is also a profound mediation on the nature of the Salentian tarantella. We come to see how an entire worldview coheres around this particular dance form. Likewise, certain psychological reactions (grief, desire, etc) are translated into and expressed by the dance. It is as though people get "bitten" by the dance and becomes prisoners and prey to the dance. The "pizzica" is the name given to the tarantella danced in Salento.
- DirectorPier Paolo PasoliniStarsEnrique IrazoquiMargherita CarusoSusanna PasoliniThe life of Jesus Christ according to the Gospel of Matthew. Film shows Christ as a Marxist avant-la-lettre and therefore uses half of the text of Matthew.This film was dedicated to John XXIII. The film uses only the words of the Gospel of St Matthew. The radical fidelity to the spirit and the letter of the Gospel has not been to everyone's taste, and many people have assumed that the radical nature of the film had to with Pasolini's leftists politics. Pasolini always insisted that he did not believe in God, but he also insisted that Christ was a divine being. For Pasolini, the one idea did not annul the other. This film is not the work of a Christian, yet it is a film by someone who could see the radical message of Christianity in a way few Christians have done.
- DirectorFrancesca ArchibugiStarsAntonio AlbaneseKim Rossi StuartMicaela RamazzottiTwo men strike up a close friendship after suffering a heart attack.
- DirectorMario MonicelliStarsUgo TognazziGastone MoschinPhilippe NoiretFour inseparable friends try to face their midlife crisis with daytrips and pranks at the expense of their families and the people around them.This is a comedy. Humour is not universal and not everyone would find this film funny. I thought is was uproariously funny.
- DirectorMario MonicelliStarsTommaso BiancoRenato CecchettoMarina ConfaloneDuring the Christmas celebrations, a surprising announcement takes a family by surprise and threatens to break the delicate balance that regulates the familial relationships.This is a comedy, but it comes with a sting.
- DirectorRoberto RosselliniStarsIngrid BergmanMario VitaleRenzo CesanaKarin, a young woman from the Baltic countries, marries fisherman Antonio to escape from a prison camp. But she cannot get used to the tough life in Antonio's volcano-threatened village, Stromboli.
- DirectorEmanuele CrialeseStarsFilippo PucilloDonatella FinocchiaroGiuseppe FiorelloA Sicilian family deals with the arrival of a group of immigrants on their island.Crialese does something brilliant with this film. He deals with some very serious issues (namely, clandestine migration, the suffering of these people, the way bureaucratic systems do not always help), but he handles them with a lightness of touch and a sense of hope. The movie is almost an update of La Terra Trema (1948), which also dealt with the plight of Sicilian fishermen.
- DirectorMario MonicelliStarsPaolo VillaggioMassimo CeccheriniVittorio RapDuring the Allies liberation of Tuscany in 1944, a former boxer organizes rigged matches to make some money.
- DirectorPier Paolo PasoliniStarsPaolo BonacelliGiorgio CataldiUberto Paolo QuintavalleIn World War II Italy, four fascist libertines round up nine adolescent boys and girls and subject them to 120 days of physical, mental, and sexual torture.Pasolini's last film. It was a metaphor for fascist Italy, a place where young people were defiled and where they were forced to eat sh-t. The film has been much misunderstood and reviled. Other people have loved it for its pornographic content and the perversity of many of its scenarios. This is the problem that arises when we treat this film as some sort of realistic document. Even though this is a film that is offensive to bourgeois sensibilities, it is a film with a profound moral sense, one that was born out of indignation and anger.
- DirectorPier Paolo PasoliniStarsMaria CallasMassimo GirottiLaurent TerzieffAfter his quest to retrieve the fabled Golden Fleece, Jason returns to Greece with powerful sorceress Medea. However, when the king banishes her, it's only human that Medea plots her furious revenge. Can they escape her wrath?
- DirectorEdoardo WinspeareStarsCarlo BruniStefania CasciaroIppolito ChiarielloTonio is a 12 year old boy who one day gets run over by a car. Before he loses his senses, Tonio sees something which will change his life. When he wakes from the coma in the hospital, he casually comes into contact with a man who is dying.This was a surprising and intelligent film. This is another of Winspeare's films set in the Salento region. The film is almost a satire on ideas of miracle cures and miracle workers. At the same time, the film is about a miracle.
- DirectorRoberto RosselliniStarsAldo FabriziGianfranco BelliniPeparuoloA series of vignettes depicting the lives of the original Franciscan monks, including their leader and the bumbling Ginepro.There is nothing saccharine about the portrayal of St Francis in this movie. He is God's fool, and he behaves like God's fool. The movie is a masterpiece.
- DirectorRoberto RosselliniStarsCarmela SazioGar MooreWilliam TubbsAmerican military personnel interact warily with a variety of Italian locals over a year and a half in the push north during the Italian Campaign of WWII as German forces make their retreat.
- DirectorRoberto RosselliniStarsEdmund MoeschkeErnst PittschauIngetraud HinzeA young German boy faces the problems of the tough life in the immediate post-WWII Berlin.
- DirectorGianni AmelioStarsEnrico Lo VersoValentina ScaliciGiuseppe IeracitanoAntonio, a policeman (carabiniere), has an order to take two children (Rosetta and her brother Luciano) from Milan to Sicily to an orphanage. Their mother has been arrested for forcing Rosetta (11 years old) to work as a prostitute. First the relation between Antonio and the children is tough, but it relaxes so they become temporary friends.This is a story about a policeman and the two children that he escorts. It is story about lives blighted by child prostitution, about love found and love lost. Under the hands of another director, the film might have become either sentimental or sensationalist, but Gianni Amelio steers his way through a more nebulous and contradictory middle terrain and his film never become either sentimental or sensationalist. The success of the film is in large measure the result of what the director was able to achieve from those playing the roles of the three main characters. Enrico Lo Verso (the one playing the policeman) was quite brilliant.