Piero Tosi
The history of the birth of an icon, the Borsalino hat. From the factory where it was conceived in a small Italian town, to the glamorous world of Hollywood.
Federico Fellini's adaptation of a story by Edgar Allan Poe. Originally appeared as a segment in the omnibus film "Spirits of the Dead" but has been theatrically presented as a separate film.
The Making of The Leopard, an hour-long documentary featuring interviews with Claudia Cardinale, screenwriter Suso Ceccho D’Amico, Rotunno, filmmaker Sydney Pollack, and many others.
Meeting his handicapped son for the first time, a young father attempts to forge a relationship with the teenager.
Costume designer Piero Tosi discussing his involvement working on Death in Venice.
Adaptation of the Balzac story as told by Rosalie, a young girl in love with the idea of her extraordinary neighbor, Albert Savarus, and the lengths she goes to ensure their marriage, even after she learns he is in deeply in love to another woman.
Catania, Sicilia 1854. A serious epidemic of cholera is hitting the region. Maria a 16 years old novice leaves her convent and returns her home to avoid contamination. Here she finds a difficult situation, in fact her stepmother and her half-sisters prevent Maria to live the normal life of a teenager. In their minds Maria is the promised "bride of God" and a regular life for her is inappropriate. Nino, her handsome neighbor, falls in love for Maria who isn't indifferent to him. But when Maria comes back to her convent the way to become nun is compelled. Now Maria can understand Sister Agata, and realizes she became mad cause a lost and impossible love like the one between Maria and Nino.
Third and final version of the La Cage aux Folles series has Renato's drag queen lover Albin learning that he can inherit a vast fortune from a distant relative. But the catch is that Albin must marry (a woman) and produce a heir within a year or the whole inheritance will be forfeited.
Tom Berenger stars in this Italian film featuring legendary Italian star Marcello Mastroianni. Berenger is Matthew, an American engineer who falls in love with Nina (Eleanora Giorgi), a woman who holds many disturbing secrets.
This “Traviata” became one of the most succesful of all opera films, especially in France, where 800,000 Parisian cinemagoers flocked to it in the first six week. It was nominated for two Oscars (for production and costume design) and won BAFTAs in those two categories, as well as receiving BAFTA and Golden Globe nominations as 1983’s Best Foreign-Language Film.
A young girl from the provinces, comes to Paris with one goal: to become a part of the rich bourgeoisie. To achieve this she will use her unique beauty and charm.
An eccentric recluse deals with his unfaithful wife, estranged daughter and doctor.
The life and ideas of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. A love triangle unfolds as Nietzsche and his best friend decides to live with a Jewish woman. According to Nietzsche's philosophy, that is beyond all morality. Depicting Nietzsche's opium addiction and madness meritorious.
Tullio Hermil is a chauvinist aristocrat who flaunts his mistress to his wife, but when he believes she has been unfaithful he becomes enamored of her again.
A mental hospital somewhere in Tuscany during the thirties. Far away from fascism, this closed world is rules over by Dr. Bonaccorsi, a passionate benevolent psychiatrist whose dream is to isolate the germ of madness. He is also a very active ladies'man and makes three women benefit from his sexual itch: Francesca the hospital manager's wife, Bianca, his devoted nurse and Carla, a nymphomaniac doctor's wife. His well-ordered universe starts being challenged with the coming of Anna, a trainee psychiatrist, who disapproves of his theory on the origin of madness. Worse, she resists his advances. As Bonaccorsi is more insecure than he looks, what will become of him
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.
Simon (O.E. Hasse) fought in the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), but now he is an old man, readying himself for death. His daily life is filled with memories, reveries, feelings, and small but meaningful encounters; these are the stuff the film is made up of. Some of the musings are of a hallucinatory nature, as when he meets with a tramp during imaginary walks. Others are more ordinary, as when he interacts with his son's family or enjoys looking at the pretty women in the building across the street.
A concentration camp survivor discovers her former torturer and lover working as a porter at a hotel in postwar Vienna. When the couple attempt to re-create their sadomasochistic relationship, his former SS comrades begin to stalk them.
Historical evocation of Ludwig, king of Bavaria, from his crowning in 1864 until his death in 1886, as a romantic hero. Fan of Richard Wagner, betrayed by him, in love with his cousin Elisabeth of Austria, abandonned by her, tormented by his homosexuality, he will little by little slip towards madness.
Italy 1973. Giuseppe Tritoni (Ugo Tognazzi) is an ultra-right-wing congressman that doesn't agree anymore with his fascist party policy. He contacts many Italian Army officers and built a net of relationship in order to organize a Coup d'Etat (Golpe). Something goes wrong and the Interior Minister (Home Secretary) Mr. Li Masi (Lino Pugliesi) got the all information about the attempted Golpe. So the Minister organizes a counter-Golpe. Tritoni desperately, to save his project, kidnaps the Italian Republic President (Claude Dauphin) that immediately dies for heartache. Now Minister Mr. Li Masi is free to lay down the law to the rest of the country, realizing basically the actual Golpe! Tritoni surrenders and will spend rest of his time trying to sell his ideas about managing Golpe in Africa!
Bubu leaves his job in a bakery, forces his girl-friend into prostitution, and from then on lives out of the money she makes. The young couple find their place in the world of prostitutes and pimps, but the lack of perspective in their life - which is permanently haunted by the possibility of an incurable and fatal venereal infection - and the humiliations the girl endures strain their relationship and lead to conflicts.
Composer Gustav von Aschenbach, travels to Venice for health reasons. There, he becomes obsessed with the stunning beauty of an adolescent Polish boy named Tadzio who is staying with his family at the same Grand Hôtel des Bains on the Lido as Aschenbach.
Story of a man with a double personality, on one side his character is honest and sincere, which makes him appreciate reality and participates with sorrow in the tragedies of our times: his other side is that of a dreamer and he identifies himself with Swift's hero Gulliver.
In the early days of Nazi Germany, a powerful noble family must adjust to life under the new dictatorship regime.
Three directors each adapt a Poe short story to the screen: "Toby Dammit" features a disheveled drugged and drunk English movie star who nods acceptance in the Italian press and his producers fawn over him. "Metzengerstein" features a Mediveal countess who has a love-hate relationship with a black stallion - who it turns out is really her dead lover. "William Wilson" tells the story of a sadistic Austrian student with an exact double whom he later kills.
Pasquale and Maria, husband and wife, live in a palace supposedly haunted by ghosts and pay no rent. When Pasquale finds some food in the cupboard he thinks the ghosts are at work.
The Stranger is a literal (but still very cinematic) adaptation of the novel by Albert Camus. Marcello Mastrioanni stars as Meursault, a man who feels utterly isolated from everyone and everything around him. This alienation results in sudden, inexplicable bursts of violence, culminating in murder. The subsequent trial of Meursault manages to convey the oppressive heat of its Algerian setting with director Luchino Visconti's usual veneer of elegant decadence. Though set in the 1930s, the sensibilities of the film were very much attuned to the 1960s: the problem was that Camus' sentiments had been adopted by so many other filmmakers of the period that The Stranger seemed rather commonplace. The film was originally released in Italy as Lo Staniero.
Five short stories loosely dealing with the roles of women in society. A superstar actress travels to a mountain resort, only to evoke jealousy from women and lust from men. A woman offers to take an injured man to the hospital. A widowed father and his son seek for a new wife/mother. A man seeks revenge for a woman's honor. A bored housewife tries to explain to her husband that he's not as romantic as he used to be.
Criminal mastermind 'The Fox' sets up a phony film production and masquerades as it's director as part of a plan to smuggle a stolen gold shipment into Italy.
A modest Neapolitan man meets a young woman with excessive hairiness. He exhibits her at fairs and marries her.It is after marriage that he receives a tempting offer from a French manager.
Three tales of very different women using their sexuality as a means to getting what they want.
Professor Sinigaglia (Marcello Mastroianni) is the title character in this darkly comedic Italian drama about mistreated factory workers in the city of Turin. Toiling away in appalling conditions in a textile mill, these employees have no one to stand up for them until Sinigaglia puts his academic career on the line by helping them to start a strike. Although the teacher comes under scrutiny by unsympathetic authorities, he maintains his dedication to the workers' cause.
As Garibaldi's troops begin the unification of Italy in the 1860s, an aristocratic Sicilian family grudgingly adapts to the sweeping social changes undermining their way of life. Proud but pragmatic Prince Don Fabrizio Salina allows his war hero nephew, Tancredi, to marry Angelica, the beautiful daughter of gauche, bourgeois Don Calogero, in order to maintain the family's accustomed level of comfort and political clout.
Certain that "the right man" is crucial to her escaping the confines of the Italian village where she lives, Pina (Sandra Milo) places an ad in the newspaper. She gets a response from Adolfo (Francois Perier), who agrees to travel from his residence in Rome to visit her. As flashbacks shed light on both their pasts, suspense builds about how they will relate to one another. Sharp, dark Italian comedy co-stars Mario Adorf, Gastone Moschin.
The place is Trieste and the time is 1927. Emilio Brentani leads a peaceful and uneventful life with his older sister Amalia. At least until the day he meets Angiolina Zarri, a beautiful young woman. But the lady is also fickle, wayward and coquettish. Unfortunately for him, Emilio falls madly in love with her.
The tormented love story between an egoist academic and a superficial starlet.
Problems arise for Antonio Magnano when he is unable to consummate his marriage to the beautiful Barbara Puglisi and his virility is called into question. Despite the fact that he loves his beautiful wife and they have otherwise been happily married for a year, his problem becomes a source of contention for all concerned.
When a widow’s family moves to the big city, two of her sons become romantic rivals, with deadly results.
The title of this Italian slice-of-life drama translates to Young Husbands. The husbands in question rather casually enter into marriage, never intending true fidelity to their spouses. When they realize that they're committed for life, our immature heroes return to their home town for one last fling. In the course of their final hours of bachelorhood, they come to the sobering conclusion that their carefree youth is not only past, it's already long past. Somewhat reminiscent of Fellini's I Vitelloni, Giovani Mariti boasts excellent performances from all concerned.
A lonely city transplant, and a sheltered girl haunted by a lover’s promise, meet by chance on a canal bridge and begin a tentative romance that quickly entangles them in a web of longing and self-delusion.
For the 17-year-old Mariza, there is no other house than the train station in Civitavecchia. Here, an orphaned girl lives early after the death of her father, a railwayman; here she earns additionally at the station buffet, selling ice cream to passengers of passing trains. Beautiful and brisk, she was accustomed to the admiration of others and perfectly mastered the art of coquetry, but Marise’s heart remains calm until the young sailor Angelo, who is in a hurry on her first voyage, leaves the train on the platform on a sunny Sunday morning.
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.
In this comedy Alberto Sordi plays Rosario Scimoni, known as Sasà, an opportunistic and unscrupulous guy, nephew of the mayor of Catania, and he's always ready to take sides with anyone who can help him. He switches from socialism to fascism; he changes his political faith the same way he changes women. He even tries to found his own party.
Bellissima is a satire of the film industry, and centers on a mother and daughter after the latter attends an audition.
The story of the legendary star Alida Valli through the unpublished words of her letters and diaries, enriching it with other exclusive materials: photographs, family film in 8mm, new interviews with her sons, relatives, friends and collaborators, and much more archive material.
