Oscar-winning director Giuseppe Tornatore’s vintage TV series “Il Camorrista,” starring Ben Gazzara as one of the fiercest bosses of the Neapolitan Camorra crime syndicate, is being unearthed from the vault 37 years after the mobster himself quashed the show before it aired.
“Il Camorrista” was shot in 1985 as part of an innovative production mounted by Italy’s glorious Titanus shingle and Silvio Berlusconi’s ReteItalia. The production comprised both a Tornatore feature film by the same title and the five-episode TV show.
The “Il Camorrista” movie, which was Tornatore’s first feature, was briefly released locally in 1986 by Titanus before being pulled from Italian cinemas after lawyers for convicted mobster Raffaele Cutolo – considered one of Italy’s most brutal bosses who ruled over as many as 10,000 Camorra affiliates from his jail cell – reportedly sued both production companies for libel. Though Cutolo is not referred to by name, “Il Camorrista” is...
“Il Camorrista” was shot in 1985 as part of an innovative production mounted by Italy’s glorious Titanus shingle and Silvio Berlusconi’s ReteItalia. The production comprised both a Tornatore feature film by the same title and the five-episode TV show.
The “Il Camorrista” movie, which was Tornatore’s first feature, was briefly released locally in 1986 by Titanus before being pulled from Italian cinemas after lawyers for convicted mobster Raffaele Cutolo – considered one of Italy’s most brutal bosses who ruled over as many as 10,000 Camorra affiliates from his jail cell – reportedly sued both production companies for libel. Though Cutolo is not referred to by name, “Il Camorrista” is...
- 10/25/2023
- by Nick Vivarelli
- Variety Film + TV
The release of Cinema Paradiso was the point at which foreign-language film developed a new sheen for global audiences – complete with heartwarming stories and a hint of the exotic
• Salvatore Cascio: 'Cinema Paradiso is about the power of dreams'
• Cinema Paradiso: watch the trailer for the 25th anniversary edition
From the start, Cinema Paradiso carries itself like one of the classics its adorable scamp gazes at, open-mouthed, from the projection room. It has an adorable scamp, for starters – and plenty besides: the timeless Sicilian locations, the Felliniesque social carnival, the thunderbolt love affair, humanism lashed about as freely as olive oil. Giuseppe Tornatore's film is a cosy passeggiata down a celluloid Möbius strip looping art into life. When it arrived in the Us in February 1990 – all gilded sequences and grand themes – it seemed like the distillation of the idea of classic foreign cinema.
The two-hour cut – simplifying the characterisation,...
• Salvatore Cascio: 'Cinema Paradiso is about the power of dreams'
• Cinema Paradiso: watch the trailer for the 25th anniversary edition
From the start, Cinema Paradiso carries itself like one of the classics its adorable scamp gazes at, open-mouthed, from the projection room. It has an adorable scamp, for starters – and plenty besides: the timeless Sicilian locations, the Felliniesque social carnival, the thunderbolt love affair, humanism lashed about as freely as olive oil. Giuseppe Tornatore's film is a cosy passeggiata down a celluloid Möbius strip looping art into life. When it arrived in the Us in February 1990 – all gilded sequences and grand themes – it seemed like the distillation of the idea of classic foreign cinema.
The two-hour cut – simplifying the characterisation,...
- 12/5/2013
- by Phil Hoad
- The Guardian - Film News
"A New York native of Sicilian heritage, Ben Gazzara was a strongly masculine, subtly menacing screen presence with a gravelly voice that one writer described as 'saloon-cured' and another said could strip paint at 50 paces," writes Dennis McLellan in the Los Angeles Times. "The veteran actor, who died Friday in New York City, found fame on Broadway in the 1950s, starred in the TV series Run for Your Life in the 1960s and was closely identified on the big screen with independent filmmaker John Cassavetes."
In Cassavetes's Husbands (1970), The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976) and Opening Night (1976), "he plays varieties of himself, as Cassavetes saw him: the moderate man who loses his head and takes immoderate action," blogs the New Yorker's Richard Brody. "Husbands, in particular, finds Gazzara accomplishing one of the most astonishing, and moving, feats ever filmed: he steals a movie from Cassavetes and Peter Falk…. The movies...
In Cassavetes's Husbands (1970), The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976) and Opening Night (1976), "he plays varieties of himself, as Cassavetes saw him: the moderate man who loses his head and takes immoderate action," blogs the New Yorker's Richard Brody. "Husbands, in particular, finds Gazzara accomplishing one of the most astonishing, and moving, feats ever filmed: he steals a movie from Cassavetes and Peter Falk…. The movies...
- 2/5/2012
- MUBI
Prolific actor who built a 60-year career in the Us and Europe
Few screen debuts have equalled the searing malevolence of Ben Gazzara's Iago-inspired Jocko De Paris in The Strange One (1957). The role, which he had created on stage, became forever associated with this intense graduate of New York's method school of acting.
Gazzara, who has died aged 81 of pancreatic cancer, continued his stage career in modern classics including Epitaph for George Dillon and as the humiliated and vengeful George in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1976). He also achieved popular acclaim through television series – notably Run for Your Life (1965-68) – and in movies for his friend John Cassavetes and other directors including Otto Preminger, Peter Bogdanovich, David Mamet, Todd Solondz and the Coen brothers.
Gazzara was born to Sicilian immigrants and grew up on Manhattan's lower east side. He began acting at the Madison Square Boys Club and...
Few screen debuts have equalled the searing malevolence of Ben Gazzara's Iago-inspired Jocko De Paris in The Strange One (1957). The role, which he had created on stage, became forever associated with this intense graduate of New York's method school of acting.
Gazzara, who has died aged 81 of pancreatic cancer, continued his stage career in modern classics including Epitaph for George Dillon and as the humiliated and vengeful George in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1976). He also achieved popular acclaim through television series – notably Run for Your Life (1965-68) – and in movies for his friend John Cassavetes and other directors including Otto Preminger, Peter Bogdanovich, David Mamet, Todd Solondz and the Coen brothers.
Gazzara was born to Sicilian immigrants and grew up on Manhattan's lower east side. He began acting at the Madison Square Boys Club and...
- 2/4/2012
- by Brian Baxter
- The Guardian - Film News
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