Ugo Tognazzi
A captivating portrait of French actor Michel Piccoli, who has worked with the greatest filmmakers of his time and has built a dazzling career of remarkable merit and success, focusing on his work during the 1970s and his professional relationship with Claude Sautet, Romy Schneider, Marco Ferreri and Luis Buñuel.
At house of Agathon get together many intellectuals and philosophers, including Socrates, to discuss the theme of love and sex: each of them intervenes to support its argument dialogical rules, within the context symposial.
In the 18th century, English aristocrats had, among their better known strange customs, one really strange one: they kept "ornamental hermits" for their gardens. These were actual people who were willing to live in squalid conditions and serve as something like museum exhibits for the amusement of the wealthy. This movie takes that notion and transfers it to 18th century France. In the story, an English hermit Rupert Everett) has somehow been brought to France in the period following the French Revolution, and prior to the Napoleonic Era, a period (1795-1799) known as "The Directory." He eventually comes down out of his tree into a chateau owned by an Italian nobleman (Ugo Tognazzi) and his wife. Before long, the hermit has washed and bathed and become quite presentable, even charming. However, his appearance in their midst is like a sentence of death for many of those who associate with him.
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.
This time the "amici" (friends) are just four: Necchi, Meandri, Mascetti and Sassaroli. Nevertheless they are older they still love to spend their time mainly organizing irresistible jokes to everyone in every kind of situation. Mascetti is hospitalized in a geriatric clinic. Of course the place become immediately the main stage for all their jokes. After some jokes they decided to place an ultimate incredible and farcical joke to the clinic guests.
During the reign of King Alboin, the peasant Bertoldo, sly and smart, manages to always get away with pranks and pleasantires with great mastery, and, even if his clumsy wife Marcolfa and their foolish son Bertoldino always put him in trouble, his shrewdness and acumen save him from any unfortunate situation...
King's Dagobert I intestinal and sexual problems loom large as he survives an attack on his royal caravan then barely makes it to Rome to personally give thanks to the Pope. After he arrives at the Vatican, he becomes involved in the battle between two contenders for the papacy and has to face the machinations of a ruthless Byzantine princess.
The internal minister's very sophisticated ultra-technological and plated car stops for a mechanical accident in front of a villa. The owner of the villa is De Andreis that immediately offers his help to save the minister entrapped inside the car. Everything has to be done in secret to avoid a scandal within the Roman politic world. Many attempt are done but the result is unexpectedly terrific.
The four old friends meet on the grave of the fifth of them, Perozzi, who died at the end of the first episode. Time has passed but they are still up for adventures and cruel jokes, and while they recall the one they created together with the late friend, new ones are on their way, starting right there at the cemetery.
An omnibus of two different stories: In the first a divorced couple (actress wife and director husband) refresh their old passions via their common flat. In the second a well-to-do dentist-wife is attacked by her petty bourgeois family when she writes a sex novel.
The son of the owner of a large Italian cheese factory is kidnapped, but as the factory is on the verge of bankruptcy the owner hatches a plan to use the ransom money as reinvestment in the factory.
Antonio Barozzi moves from Lago Maggiore to Rome to become an actor. He does not realize his agent and acting coach are only manipulating him to further their own careers.
Drama about the difficulties of a group of people trying to change their lives. A group of people gathers in a terrace in Rome . Some are friends, some know each other and others just meet for the first time. All are intellectual and belong to the middle class.
In a move to make his partner, Renato, jealous, the flamboyant Albin waits in a local cafe - dressed as a woman - hoping to be picked up. But Albin gets more than he bargains for when the fly he catches in his web is actually a spy, who uses him as an unwitting courier of secret microfilm. Now on the run from ruthless agents, Albin and Renato flee to Italy where they attempt to hide out on a farm, with Albin posing as Renato's wife. Can Albin escape the deadly pursuit of these relentless spies or does he have to sustain this charade - as a woman - forever?
In the year 1870 Rome, then governed by the Pope, was captured by the Italian General La Marmora's troops. After the armistice, the Italian soldier Alfonso killed a Pope's soldier, the son of Don Prospero. Then he sought refuge in the house of Don Prospero himself. There Costanza and Olimpia, respectively the wife and the daughter of Don Prospero, fall for him. Then Gustavo, who knew that Alfonso had killed Don Prospero's son arrived in the house... Some things are going to happen
A sex comedy anthology containing four stories, each from a different country (England, France, USA and Italy). "An Englishman's Home" "The French Method" "Armando's Notebook" "Skippy"
A large international cast takes part in this comedy in which the stories of numerous individuals whose cars are stalled in a massive Roman traffic jam are told.
Ugo is an old actor who feels too young to be in an "old actor's house". He just can't stand the rules of the other old people so he escapes with a young girl.
Interspersed with interviews that the actress Sydne Rome gives to some of the most famous "Formula 1" champions - from Lauda to Regazzoni, from Andretti to Fittipaldi, from Villeneuve to Reutemann - the film shows some moments of the races on the most famous tracks of the world, and above all, the accidents that have caused it.
Two gay men living in St. Tropez have their lives turned upside down when the son of one of the men announces he is getting married. They try conceal their lifestyle and their ownership of the transvestite club downstairs when the fiancée and her parents come for dinner.
Mario, a rich and eccentric war hero befriends Marco, a loner with a sailboat, and takes him home to meet his estranged wife Cleofe and sexually repressed sister in law Matilde. Mario confesses his love for Matilde and so ensues a love triangle.
Summer Sunday at a small beach house at the coast of Rome. Many people and stories: women's basketball team, two sports-obsessed soldiers, two men with their girlfriends and the priest with a big secret, an elderly couple with their pregnant granddaughter, and engagemented couple wanting to have sex for the first time.
Amedeo and Ofelia, middle aged brother and sister, own jointly an old decadent, but still attractive, condominium. They want to sell it, but before they have to evict all the tenants. Of course, these don't want to leave at all. The cat (Il Gatto), mascot and beloved by all, dies and this gives the two an excuse to enter the tenants' life. Amedeo starts to court the young Wanda and Ofelia seduces the priest Don Pezzolla. In the meantime police is looking for the cat killer...
15 years after the monumental "I mostri" which was a great example of Italian sketch comedy, 3 of the greatest Italian directors ever (Risi, Monicelli, Scola) the best Italian writers ever (Age, Scarpelli) the best Italian actors ever (Tognazzi, Gassmann, Sordi) one of the most beautiful woman in the world (Ornella Muti) participate to this great tribute.
Mario Marani is a well-respected lawyer in late 70s Milano. He and his wonderful wife Francesca have an intense high social life. But Mario has a problem. He is obsessed by bad thoughts (cattivi pensieri); he is always concerned about his wife, thinking continuously to be betrayed by her. It is a nightmare, every time Mario sees Francesca talking to one of their friends immediately starts to see her and him in an hot affair. Jealousy and suspects increase and increase, till their life cross with a young man hidden inside their flat.
An episodic satire of the political and social status of Italy in the seventies, through the shows of one day of a television channel. An English language lesson turns into a killing of a black dignitary of an embassy by a CIA agent and then into his own killing by another colleague. In a television film, the police are befooled by a fake bomb and put a real one in order not to be derided by the public. In a film inquisition show, the bishop of Naples speaks highly of the importance of the family, but a child who lives a miserable family life kills himself. In the debate that follows it is proposed that they should eat the children, as Swift had said. In the next episode, a general who is in the toilet is called for the NATO parade, but the flasher breaks and in his effort to fix it, he dirts allover and kills himself. In a children's show an inspector finds excuses and delays the arrest of a powerful man...
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…
When the wife wants to leave her husband in preference of a romantic Frenchman, the husband seemingly does not raise difficulties and invites his rival, along with his own secretary, for a weekend. His real purpose is taking her wife back through an elaborate plan.
Four middle-aged friends in Florence organize together idle pranks (called zingarate, "gypsy shenanigans") in a continuous attempt to prolong childhood during their adult life.
Greece 1974 - during the brutal era of the military government, and innocent tourist manager (Ugo Tognazzi) is accused of being a member of the illegal resistance movement. Two secret agents (Michel Piccoli and Mario Adorf) are bringing the innocent victim to Athens. During their trip, their car breaks down, and they're stopping in a small village. From now on, everybody is fighting against each other, and a psychological cat-and mouse-play is starting...
During his preparation for his film on Casanova Fellini asks a number of renowned actors to give him their view on the character of Casanova.
A fig tree located in the lands of a baron of the lower Padana has for many centuries been the subject of veneration. The baron, crippled and atheist, one day sees a girl lying on the fig tree in a benevolent attitude and exchanges for the holy venerated by her villagers. Immediately the aristocrat converts and decides to give his belongings to a religious institute. In fact, he was a victim of a cheating and the "santa" is a prostitute who has given up on rage.
A highly stylized surreal farce about the events leading up to Custer's Last Stand anachronistically reenacted in an urban renewal area in modern Paris.
A colonel in the Army has a problem: when resting lying starts screaming anarchist and antimilitarist phrases. Because of his fitful sleep is therefore forced to sleep standing up.
50 year old Giulio (Tognazzi) and his 17 year old goddaughter, Vincenzina (Muti) fall madly in love with each other and soon are wed. Unfortunately for Giulio he walks in on his friend and Vincenzina upon a return from a trip. His jealousy and anger get the best of him and he kicks his wife out of the house. Years pass and Giulio decides to rekindle the lover affair with Vincenzina
A group of men hire some prostitutes and go to a villa in the countryside. There, they engage in group sex and resolve to eat themselves to death.
A lowly bank clerk, literally allergic to money and revolted by its nefarious influence on humanity, launches a campaign of harassment against a wealthy butcher, stealing small, insignificant items— but never money—from the man. The victim uses the thefts to make large and fraudulent insurance claims, refusing to finger the thief for fear his own financial improprieties might be exposed.
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!
Caustic satire on bureaucracy of the Vatican authority and a simple Italian who wants to achieve the audience with the Pope.
Hoping to avoid the fate of his anti-Fascist father, an Italian leaves his community to marry a nobleman's daughter.
The Master and Margaret (1972) is based on the eponymous book by Mikhail A. Bulgakov. The film is set in the Soviet Union under Stalin, it has several story-lines, that are intertwined. Maestro Nikolai Masoudov, a talented writer, and his assistant Margaret, are working on a biblical story of Pontius Pilate. The Satan — Woland, and his lieutenants, are harassing Master by surveillance, by killing his friend, and sending another friend to Gulag prison in Siberia. Victimized by their harassment, Master becomes paranoid, and is locked up in a mental institution. Margaret is trying to save him regardless of the danger.
La Califfa's husband was killed during the strikes so she takes the side of the strikers. Her conflict with the plant owner Doverdo gradually turns into a love relationship.
An obscure Italian magistrate suspects that a well-known industrialist commited murder, and decides to investigate him, and bring him to court, whatever it takes. But - will the magistrate have it in him to go against impossible odds, in the name of the Italian people he represents?
Comedy about a man (Tognazzi) who is sentenced to life imprisonment mainly because of a woman's (Vitti) testimony, but she later marries him during his sentence
Paronzini at the age of 50, decides to get married and he looks at the Tettamanzi's three sisters.
A gay man who is trying to protect his wayward ward runs afoul of criminals.
An adaptation of Petronius' satire about the decadent life in ancient Rome. "If you like the Fellini version, you should definitely see this one, too. It's every bit as good and in some ways better."
Two dramatic stories. In an undetermined past, a young cannibal (who killed his own father) is condemned to be torn to pieces by some wild beasts. In the second story, Julian, the young son of a post-war German industrialist, is on the way to lie down with his farm's pigs, because he doesn't like human relationships.
Rome, 1825. Bishop Rivarola (Tognazzi) and colonel Nardoni (Salerno) are in charge to suppress liberal revolution. Shoemaker Cornacchia (Manfredi) got the information that the liberal Filippo Spada (Ekland) is a spy and is going to denounce his revolutionary companions. So Cornacchia decides to report Spada to two "Carbonari" (kind of Freemasons) to kill Spada. The two, Montanari (Hossein) and Targhini (Verley) fail to kill him and decide to escape from Rome. But they are arrested and sentenced to death. Cornacchia will spend his last chance to save them.
A police commissioner in a little town in the Italian Venetian province investigates a prostitution ring run by two pensioners; during his investigations he also learns that a former manicurist shacks up with ten students, the prefect's daughter prostitutes to keep her pimp, a famous doctor has sex with his young patients, a headmaster has his eyes on the pupils, a noblewoman organizes orgies in her villa, the local convent is run by a dyke and his actual girlfriend poses for a hardcore magazine. He wants everything to come out in the open but his superiors try to put obstacles in his way.
When Marino goes to Rome for an event, he certainly does not imagine meeting Marisa, who will become the love of his life. But once love is found, it is a matter of spreading it and here the difficulties begin: first the father who opposes it; then, after the death of his father, the gossips who make Marino believe that Marisa was a little good, so much so that Marisa runs away. Repentant, Marino searches in vain and then, almost by accident, finds her again, Mrs. Ciceri. But love admits no obstacles, not even that of a deaf and dumb husband.
A businessman is nicknamed "L'avvocato" and his driver, Oscar, is a yes-man. When L'avvocato has a crash while driving his car, Oscar is put in jail in his place. When Oscar gets out, he finds himself married to the beautiful Maria, but he can't even touch her: she is l'avvocato's lover. Afterwards Oscar is appointed manager, but he can't manage a dime. At the end he shall find himself again in jail, hoping that his "sissignore" (yessir) will let him have, sometime, a driver to send to prison in his place. —
In the far future, a highly sexual woman is tasked with finding and stopping the evil Durand-Durand. Along the way she encounters various unusual people.
Mario is a Milan industrialist who is constantly testing balloons to see how much air one can take before busting.
A violin player is going to be father of a sixth child by his second mistress, Marisa. Quite nervous about that, he does not leave the clinic... except to drive Giulia, his legitimate wife, along with his legitimate kids to the station as they leave for a vacation at the seaside.
A man is delighted to hear that his wife is pregnant and he begins to prepare for the wonders of fatherhood. As time progresses along, the family grows larger with each successive child and the father feels his importance in the family has been lessened with all the children. This man's quiet desperation to hold onto his position is an interesting lesson in the family dynamic and how everyone is an important part of the whole.
In this unusual offbeat black comedy directed by Ugo Tognazzi, Giuseppe (Tognazzi) is a middle-aged industrialist obsessed with gadgets. When his nose starts to whistle uncontrollably, he checks into a clinic to resolve the problem. What begins as a minor affliction worsens, and Giuseppe is placed on a different floor as his ailments multiply. The sicker he gets, the higher he goes up in the floors of the clinic, until he is near death's door.
A young woman from the Italian countryside experiences the dark side of the business after she moves to Rome to become a star.
In the first episode, Quirino tries to conquer co-worker Gabriella. In the second episode, Prof. Beozi tries to avoid a scandal. In the third episode, Guglielmo passes all tests in order to become reader of the television news brilliantly, although the commission works with all subtleness's to exclude him.
In Italy in the 60's it is difficult to get a divorce. Carlo gets a visit from his Swedish wife, but he is already remarried. Every time he meets a new woman, he vanishes away from the last wife.
Riccardo, an unhappily married middle aged Italian working for a shoe factory, goes to America on a four day business trip.
Luciano Bianchi lives with his wife and son in the small town of Guastalla. As an intellectual and bibliophile, he works as head of cultural initiatives at a mining plant.
In late 19th century Sicily, handsome free-spirit Liolà wanders into town, where he encounters an old flame now married to a wealthy landowner.
A vivid assortment consisted of three acts taken from the lives of modern 1960s Italians, always in orbit around the restless theme of sexual inhibition and the pursuit of pleasure in sex.
Four different directors present lighthearted stories about married Italian couples and their dilemmas with jealousy, sex and love.
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.
The Magnificent Cuckold is about a hat tycoon who is ecstatically, if not hungrily, in love with his youthful wife. It is all blissful, that is, until our man, middle-aged and somewhat of a square among his blasé, upper-class friends to whom cuckoldry is a common practice, is seduced by one of them. At this point doubts and suspicions, like conscience, begin to plague him. If he could succumb to extramarital confections, why not his gorgeous mate? Quickly his love for his spouse degenerates beyond obsessive, into the realm of maniacal. He becomes madly concerned that his wife is cheating on him --even though she is not being unfaithful. When he looks at her it becomes obvious to him that she is a very attractive woman. And, all the men around her must be dying to be with her. Gnawed by jealously, he will imagine variations on nabbing her and her lover in flagrante delicto.
A forty-year-old employee marries a seemingly quiet girl who turns into a mantis after the wedding.
Gianni and Marietta get along wonderfully as lovers, but not as a couple. Despite being married, they agree to become lovers again.
Unreleased episodes from "I Mostri" with Ugo Tognazzi as protagonist.
This consists of four short films by different directors. Rosselini's 'Chastity' deals with an attractive air hostess who receives the unwelcome attentions of a middle aged American. Godard's 'New World' illustrates a post-apocalypse world the same as the pre-apocalyptic one but for an enigmatic change in attitude in most people, including the central character's girlfriend. In Pasolini's 'La Ricotta' (Curd Cheese), a lavish film about the life of Jesus Christ is being made in a poor area. The impoverished people subject themselves to various indignities in the name of moviemaking in order to win a little food. The central character is hoisted up on a cross for filming, and dies there. Finally comes Gregoretti's 'Free Range Chicken' in which a family of the materialist culture inadvertantly illustrate the cynical, metallic voiced doctrine of a top sales theorist.
Five episodes which show Italian peoples pathological unfaithfulness in marriage.
Gregoretti's Il pollo ruspante ("Free Range Chicken") shows an Italian middle-class family with two children traveling via an autostrada (highway) to the site of a real-estate project where they could be interested in buying a detached house.
This film is very much a docudrama which portrays the difficulties of Italian life circa 1963 due to the absence of a divorce law. Five scenarios with different actors portray realistic situations where divorce is clearly warranted but, because marriage was strictly in the purview of the Catholic Church at that time, which strictly forbade divorce, these people are shown to suffer the consequences in their daily lives. Italy got its first civilian divorce law in 1970.
A guy is about to become the millionth citizen to buy a car in Rome. Frightened, he decides to remain pedestrian, and recalls several stories, with new car owners as protagonists. Episodic comedy.
A middle-aged businessman meets a band of rowdy youths and is smitten by one, named Francesca.
March on Rome (Italian: La marcia su Roma) is a 1962 comedy film by Dino Risi with Vittorio Gassman and Ugo Tognazzi, aimed at describing the March on Rome of Benito Mussolini's black shirts from the point of view of two newly recruited, naïve black shirts
Pablo, Domingo and Jose, three idiots, gunmen exchanged for large liberate a village in the republic of "Nonduras" from the oppression of dictator Bonarios. Parody of The Magnificent Seven, five writers got together for an anemic script that exploits a repertoire mixture with the song "A man alive"by Gino Paoli.
1944. Primo Arcovazzi a fanatic member of Brigate Nere (fascist organization) is in charge to bring an opponent to the regime, Prof. George Wilson, from Abruzzo to Roma. He accepted the mandate because of his wish to be upgraded to "Federale". They travel by a sidecar trough the disastrous Italy, near to the final collapse, under bombings and in agony. Nevertheless the bad situation, they manage to build up a kind of friendship. Primo, even if the signals of final destruction are near, doesn't lose his trust in the regime. The end is near.
Stefano Garbelli is employed by a pharmaceutical company. One evening Daniela, a young independent prostitute, approaches Stefano pretending to be a nurse. They get together, but Daniela has a sinister plan.
Ulisse is a naive young man out looking for a job after being released from the army. He drops the offer he gets from a group of fascists to go in with the Fossatis, a family of anarchists (unknown to him).
A fashion designer rents his villa to a woman before leaving to go abroad. The daughter of the woman is forced to pretend to be handicapped in a dark conspiracy aimed to prevent the man from leaving.
Two conmen, Alamo and Mike, find shelter in Paradise City, which is full of jokers like themselves, who assume them to be lawmen and are almost hanged.
A farcical account of the happenings in Rome in 1943 when the allied army and the partisans fight the nazis.
A gang of outlaws terrorizes Rio Ciuccio. When they kill the sheriff his wife, an old neapolitan lady, takes his place.
An American military aircraft with some female soldiers crash lands in an Italian air base to the delight of the Italian soldiers.
America wants to send a rocket to the moon. A group of advanced extraterrestrials, represented on screen by a pair of animated Mr. Peepers eyes, do not want primitive humans poking around in space and keep sabotaging their rockets.
Antonio De Papis is a lawyer and his specialization is separation by mutual consent. He is contrary to marriage because he sees so many of them going wrong. So when his nephew calls on him asking for his approval to his marriage, Antonio suggests to him to spend a day in his office to see what marriage really is.
A series of comical sketches featuring a doctor, a travelling salesman and some posh gents.
Five stories of life, love and tears in Rome by five of Italy's best film directors. Each of them take his turn at showing how love is found, lost, and nurtured in the Eternal City.
Carlo wins some money and decides to go to Rome to celebrate, but he gets his money stolen on the train. He tries to find a friend of his for a loan. Unfortunately, he is at his wedding at the church. When Carlo goes there he met his runaway bride...
