Anna Magnani
Anthology film by three directors, "A Day in the Country", "Jofroi" and "The Miracle".
The destiny of legendary actress Anna Magnani through archive footage, often unpublished.
"The Italian Jobs: Paramount Pictures e l'Italia" tells the story of two men, two Italian-American executives, Pilade Levi and Luigi Luraschi, who came to Italy at the end of the Second World War to recreate the Italian film industry; their work went on to have a significant influence on cinema worldwide. The idea of producing European films financed by American funds, in fact, originated in Italy with Paramount Pictures. Masterpieces such as Nights of Cabiria, Romeo and Juliet and The Conformist, to name just a few, were created precisely thanks to the work of these two men. The exclusive testimonies of Gioia Levi and Tony Luraschi, the children of the two executives, describe how their fathers were not only businessmen but how their lives were dedicated entirely to cinema.
The fascinating story of a man destined to be only a son of and who sought all his life to become "someone" by getting rid of the overwhelming image of his genius as a father, the painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir.
In 1948, a fan letter arrived for director Roberto Rossellini from Ingrid Bergman, one of Hollywood’s biggest stars; after a meeting in New York, Rossellini invited Bergman to Italy to work on a project. Meanwhile, Anna Magnani, one of Italy’s biggest stars and Rossellini’s longtime lover, was furious. When the Rossellini/Bergman project was announced as a tale set on Stromboli, one of the volcanic Aeolian Islands, Magnani quickly set up her own Aeolian project, financed by Hollywood, to be called Volcano. Italy’s tabloids simply went wild: the prospect of these two great divas battling it out with rival productions was breathlessly followed, especially as it became clear that the Rossellini/Bergman relationship was more than professional. Francesco Patierno has created an engrossing, revealing and highly entertaining chronicle of this cinematic battle royal.
Girlfriend in a Coma is a documentary that exposes the dire situation of Italian politics and the process of economic and social decline the country has suffered during the last two decades, treating the decline as a warning of what might happen elsewhere in the West. The decline has occurred amid a collapse of moral values and the victory of “Mala Italia” over “Buona Italia”. It has been lauded as being ground-breaking in its creative combination of animation, interviews and hard facts, and has caused fierce controversy in Italy.
A documentary about Vittorio de Sica with clips of his films and testimonials from friends and family.
Documentary consisting of archival footage that depicts the evolving conditions of Italian women during the first half of the 20th century.
Bonus DVD accompanying the special edition CD "The Movie Album". The DVD contains Barbra performing "Wild Is The Wind" & "I'm In The Mood For Love", with excepts from the films they originate from playing in the background. The Movie Album is the thirtieth studio album by American singer Barbra Streisand, released on October 14, 2003, by Columbia Records. Overall her sixtieth release with her record label, it was executively produced by Streisand and her manager, Jay Landers. A concept album, it contains twelve songs from the singer's favorite films ranging in release from 1935 to 1988.
A study of Tennessee Williams's life and work as a whole, ranging from his youth in Mississippi and in St. Louis to success and acclaim, followed by the final difficult years. Includes some of the most celebrated scenes from film adaptations of Williams' work, among them extracts of A Streetcar Named Desire (1951),Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), Night of the Iguana, The (1964), and Suddenly, Last Summer (1993) (TV). Contains footage of Williams being interviewed, including conversations with David Frost, 'Edward R. Murrow (I)', and Melvyn Bragg, as well as reminiscences from people who knew and worked with him, among them Edward Albee, Gore Vidal, and his lifelong friend, Lady Maria St. Just. Features readings from Elia Kazan's Notebook by Kim Hunter.
A documentary about the Italian cinema as art form and industry.
Traces the life of Anna Magnani, her creations, her successes, her triumphs, her boycotted career, her nonconformism, her anxieties, her generosity ... Punctuated with photos that tell her career in theater and cinema, Extracts of films, this documentary portrait also gives the floor to his friends and relatives, from Roberto Rossellini to Marcello Mastroianni, through Federico Fellini.
Rome, 1870. Opponents of the church power are being sent to prison. Some of the exhausted prisoners are asking for the mercy of Pope. Others, like Augusto Parenti, prefer to fight for their rights until the end. His wife, Teresa is a simple woman, who gets involved with the rebels...
La Sciantosa is part of a project created by writer/director Alfredo Gianetti for the Italian TV. The objective was to portrait a hundred years of Italian history through three movies, all of them with Anna Magnani. The other two are "1943: un incontro" and "L'autmobile". In this first movie, La Magnani is Flora Torres, a "sciantosa" (kind of a small stage diva) who is forgotten during the WWI, living only to remember her past glory. One day she receives a letter to present herself to the high command. There, Flora is called to go to the front and entertain the troops. Along with her maid Cristina, Flora goes to the front. There they are welcomed by the young private Tonino (Massimo Ranieri). Flora starts to act like a prima donna, making absurd demands to everyone. But when she is about to present herself, the vision of the wounded soldiers makes her change her way
An ex-prostitute, feeling an emptiness in her life, decides to fill it by buying a car.
This vehicle for the great actress Anna Magnani was one of the four made for Italian television and shown in 1971-1972 at the end of her career. The other three were "La sciantosa," "Correva l'anno di grazia 1870," and "L'automobile" and were all directed by Alfredo Giannetti.
During World War II, Italian villagers hide their wine from the German army.
A group of Italians take a flight to Sweden: among them there are the tourists, and the immigrants.
After years spent working as a prostitute in her Italian village, middle-aged Mamma Roma has saved enough money to buy herself a fruit stand so that she can have a respectable middle-class life and reestablish contact with the 16-year-old son she abandoned when he was an infant. But her former pimp threatens to expose her sordid past, and her troubled son seems destined to fall into a life of crime and violence.
On New Year's Eve, an insecure, struggling actress (Anna Magnani) has nothing to do. When a colleague invites her to a New Year's party, she jumps at the opportunity. Accidentally she runs into an old acting acquaintance (Toto), who is helping a professional pickpocket (Ben Gazzara) steal from people during the hustle-bustle of New Year's Eve festivities. During the course of the evening, they have numerous crazy, humorous adventures all over Rome at different parties, restaurants, and even the Trevi fountain. Magnani's character (Tortorella) falls for Gazzara's character (Lello) without knowing what he's up to, while Toto tries to placate them both.
Val Xavier, a drifter of obscure origins, arrives at a small town and gets a job in a store run by Lady Torrence. Her husband, Jabe M. Torrance, is dying of cancer. Val is pursued by Carol Cutere, the enigmatic local tramp-of-good-family.
A young girl comes to prison and experiences the entire prison subculture. The inmates she befriends vary from big tough dangerous dames to smaller submissive ladies who are totally lost in prison life.
A widowed Nevada rancher goes to Italy and marries the sister of his deceased wife and brings her back to the ranch, but his haunting memories of his lost love and her tendency to drift away to other men cause the two to have a tough time at keeping a marriage together.
Directed by the incredibly prolific Mario Camerini, Suor Letizia was released in English-speaking regions as When Angels Don't Fly and The Awakening. In her first film appearance since The Rose Tattoo, Anna Magnani plays a feisty nun named Sister Letizia. Believing herself above such earthly trivialities as a maternal instinct, Sr. Letizia changes her way of thinking when an abandoned child is placed in her care. Unofficially adopting the boy, the good sister eventually comes to realize that even she cannot provide the care and guidance of a biological mother. Carefully constructed to accommodate all the surefire box-office elements inherent in Camerini's earlier films, Suor Letizia was almost guaranteed to be a hit.
A grieving widow embarks on a new romance when she discovers her late husband had been cheating on her.
Five portraits of actresses in their "common" life, seen as women rather than movie stars.
A viceroy, a nobleman and a bullfighter court a comedy-troupe actress in 16th-century Peru.
Bellissima is a satire of the film industry, and centers on a mother and daughter after the latter attends an audition.
A rowdy woman is so forceful that she outdoes her husband in a loud cry against speculators who refuse poor people entrance to a block of new apartments, built after WW2. Without noticing it, she starts a people's movement, and leads a march to the capital. She returns to her village a winner, an honourable MP. Yet, she is still the same simple, fiery woman, able to get in a hair-pulling brawl with the local barmaid for the affection of her man.
Among others, Ernesto returns to Turin after the war from a German POW camp; his household destroyed and family deceased, he tries making an honest living.
Thanks to wartime smuggling Gioconda Perfetti, a roman fruit vendor, becomes very rich. She leaves her shop and moves to a magnificent villa which once belonged to a count. She also becomes involved with some very dubious characters who profit from her ignorance and cheat her out of her money.
An opera singer hides an American soldier in his house in Nazi-occupied Rome.
ROME, OPEN CITY is a landmark in film history. Filmed in secrecy during the Nazi occupation of Italy, the film shows a realistic portrayal of the underground resistance in Italy in 1945. The film has strong impacting imagery with its mix of fiction and reality that strengthened Italian Neo-realism and the film industry.
The two drivers Giovanni and Gaetano are friends. Gaetano, bold and ruthless, thrives in the black market, while Giovanni, who is a naive and fundamentally honest worker from the North of Italy, cannot get any profit and his wife, an energetic and talkative Roman woman, can't help blaming him for his poor business skills. Returning from a trip to Naples, he brings home a little hungry orphan, Nello. At first Giovanni's wife doesn't want the boy, but then she begins to like him. The little boy does whatever he can to help the family. Nello's father, who everybody thought to have died during the war, finds his little son and, being a rich business man, he employs the good and generous Giovanni. Meanwhile the former friend Gaetano is caught by the police and convicted for his illegal trades.
Elena invites her former husband Roberto to her country house with the aim of winning him back while her sister Monica invites her lover Filippo.
Toto (Aldo Fabrizi), a Roman coachman with an old fashioned horse-drawn carriage who objects to the competition from motorised taxis, doesn't want his daughter Nannarella to go out with Roberto, a young taxi driver. But it is Roberto who helps him when he gets into trouble with a former client, Mary Dunchetti (Anna Magnani), an arrogant singer.
The merchant Giovanni Illes is tracked down by the debtors, but cannot pay his debts. To save her father from bankruptcy, Anna talks to the lawyer, trying to earn an extension. The lawyer grants it to him, but he gets too close, even physically. She wants to defend herself, but his power dominates the impotence of the woman.
A comedy of errors in which the sweetly incompetent Dr. Pietro Vignali (de Sica) has been run deep into debt by his girlfriend, Loletta Prima (Magnani). After his creditors threaten to sell his belongings, he takes a job as an orphanage health inspector to pay his debts and ends up engaged to wealthy Lilli, daughter of a mattress tycoon, and chased after by the orphan Teresa Venerdí, while trying to keep his life in order.
In the absence of the biological mother, too busy pursuing her theatrical career, we see the glorification of the maternal surrogate, a woman who is a paragon of sacrifice and self-abnegation. La Fuggitiva is also a film in which a child actress takes a prominent role. In this sentimental drama, the little girl suffers for and rebels against the loneliness and neglect stemming from the lack of a mother and a loving family setting.
Umberto Solaro loses the love of his life Speranza, a noble but poor girl who has been forced to marry a rich Austrian army officer. Heartbroken Umberto becomes a riding instructor but during a competition his horse dies and he decides to give up equitation and become an aviator.
Drama set in the nineteenth century in Sorrento in southern Italy. It is an adaptation of the 1852 novel of the same title by Francesco Mastriani. A young woman named Beatrice loses her sight after witnessing the death of her mother. Unable to see Beatrice is unable to identify her mothers’ killer. The police arrest a man who they believe is the murderer. Did they get the right man or is the killer still lurking in the shadows? Years later a family friend introduces Beatrice to a renowned Doctor who specializes in restoring sight. Will Beatrice regain her sight and identify her mothers’ killer or will someone make sure that she never sees again?
