Eleonora Morana
Sequel to "La Orca" which follows the life of the kidnapped girl after she returns home to her boyfriend and family. After her kidnap ordeal Alice tries to return to her normal life, but her memories still haunt her and her way to see the world has been changed forever.
Michael is the younger son of a middle-class family, a strong-willed and free-thinking fellow, who is off in some distant country fighting for a revolutionary cause.
This homage to Italy’s “White Telephone” films (sophisticated comedy-dramas revolving around working-class girls) of the 1930s gives Agostina Belli her best role – going from chambermaid to prostitute to singer to film-star to mistress of ‘Il Duce’! – for which she received a special David Di Donatello award, the Italian equivalent of the Oscar. Incidentally, the English title evokes memories of Octave Mirbeau’s ‘scandalous’ novel “Diary Of A Chambermaid” – thrice brought to the screen (in Hollywood in 1946 by Frenchman Jean Renoir, in France in 1964 by Spaniard Luis Bunuel and in 1974, typically as a sexploitationer, by prolific “Euro-Cult” exponent Jess Franco: the latter being the only one I haven’t watched and don’t own in any form). At other points in the narrative, the film also reminded me of A STAR IS BORN (itself filmed several times) and BELLE DE JOUR (1967), Bunuel’s celebrated classy treatment of prostitution…
Director Mauro Bolognini inserts this story in Fascist Italy, with careful attention to details. The couple formed by Matteo Zannoni (Bruno Cirino) and Libera Valente (Cardinale) can't bear fascism. They move constantly between cities, settling down in Modena, where Libera quickly collides with the fascist political commissar Franco Testa (Philippe Leroy). Libera has to suffer awful moments due to her attachment to the resistance, and to the political and sexual harassment from Testa.
The titular medallion is a gift presented to young Nicole Elmi. Once the girl places the gift around her neck, she is possessed by the spirit of a dead child who was a murderess.
A series of random suicides in Rome, Italy are attributed to a heatwave, but a young pathologist named Simona—who is working on a thesis about murders disguised as suicides—suspects otherwise. When a young girl associated with Simona's playboy father ends up dead in another apparent suicide, Simona teams up with the girl's priest brother to prove she was murdered and track down the unknown serial killer.
A young writer is invited to stay in a religious hostel run by a sinister, manipulative nun who plays deadly psychological games with the inhabitants.
An unidentified fifteen year-old girl is found hanged after an anonymous tip-off. The girl, Silvia Polvesi, is soon discovered to have been murdered. A peeping tom is caught with photos of her having sex with a teenage drop-out but he is later released due to lack of evidence. The investigation, conducted by Inspector Silvestri and the assistant public prosecutor Vittoria Stori, focuses on the girl's parents. It transpires that a private detective, Ruggero Pollente, was hired by Silvia's mother because the latter was concerned about her activities. As a conspiracy begins to emerge, Pollente's body is found dismembered and his girlfriend is subsequently attacked by a machete-wielding killer clad in motorcycle gear...
A young man is temporarily home from a Seminary, but eventually falls in love with his father's young new wife.
A doctor accidentally kills his girlfriend, when he causes her to fall onto an ornamental flower which has metal spikes. He disposes of her by chopping up and then dissolving her corpse. The woman's sister accuses the doctor and an investigation begins. In the meantime, a second woman is killed and the doctor begins to receive metal petals through the post...
A young priest arrives in a small village because his old colleague is old and frail and cannot uphold the law of God with the necessary strength. He means well but the hypocrisy of the villagers who do not trust him makes his task only harder and while struggling for his beliefs, he falls victim to the sins of the flesh.
An Italian variation on the Frankie & Annette-Gidget beach party movies that were all the rage in North America in the early 60s. Nicole Molino (Catherine Spaak) and Nicola Molino (Gianni Garko) are not related to one another. In fact, they don’t even know each other until both are inadvertently assigned the same hotel room on the island of Ischia. Nicole isn’t interested in any hanky-panky, so Nicola reluctantly promises to keep his hands to himself.
