Showpeople: film festival folk

Antonioni and Fellini in 1982; below: Fellini, Jeanne Moreau and Antonioni at the Cannes festival in 1960 when L'AVVENTURA and LA DOLCE VITA caused a furore; Visconti and Losey at the 1971 Venice festival when both were competing - Losey got the main prize for THE GO-BETWEEN so they created a special prize for Luchino for DEATH IN VENICE.

Below: two shots of Sophia Loren, Alain Delon and Romy Schneider at the 1962 Cannes Festival (all that talent and glamour in the back of the car, Ponti is in front with the driver); plus Vitti, Delon and Schneider in 1960.

L'Innocente - Visconti's final film, 1976

L'INNOCENTE, 1976 - Luchino Visconti's final film (he shot most of it from a wheelchair) is both an intense drama and also one of the most ravishing costume dramas ever committed to celluloid. [It sits next to BARRY LYNDON in my cabinet shelf of 70s movies as the 2 most perfect costume dramas of that decade].
Giancarlo Giannini is Tullio, a wealthy and arrogant aristocrat openly having an affair with another woman (Jennifer O'Neill's Teresa Raffo), thus driving his wife (Laura Antonelli's Giuliana) to start her own affair with a writer Filipo D'Arborio (Marc Porel) that leads to a pregnancy and baby. Giannini is magnificent in a role that instills in the viewer zero sympathy and outright hostility. The film heads into what can only be described as one of the most memorably tragic conclusions since Shakespeare, and is also one of the most beautifully filmed and costumed movies ever (Antonelli with that veil across her face...), with sumptuous costumes, rooms and sets. Surprising nudity too - male as well as female as Guiliana is undressed a few times, and Tulio glares at the naked D'Arborio in the shower. One can see how this lush, opulent film stately directed by Visconti with slow zooms and tracking shots must have influenced Scorsese's AGE OF INNOCENCE, played out as it is in stately drawing rooms for piano recitals, fencing classes, summer villas and mansions at dawn, in that "fin de siecle" era.


Jennifer O'Neill (dubbed in Italian - did Luchino need an American name in the cast?) is devastatingly beautiful and seductive as the self-assured, selfish, spoiled, ambitious, self-seeking lover, as much as Laura Antonelli is the opposite side of the coin but in a lower key, as the humble and insecure, betrayed, embittered, resentful wife, but also devastatingly gorgeous. (Below: Visconti on set).



The drama increases as Guiliana becomes pregant as her husband desires her all over again and wants her back, D'Arborio having died of a tropical disease, but he does not want the baby, the innocent of the title (we never see the wife and lover together, that affair is played out offstage). She pretends not to care for the baby to keep it safe but Tullio is too jealous of it, leading to ultimate tragedy. Then after a final confrontation with the glacial Teresa .... there is that great last shot of her leaving in that chilly dawn. The novel is by the great Gabriele D'Annnunzio, and script co-authored by Visconti regular Suso Cecchi D'Amico (who died last year aged 96), photography by Pasqualino De Santis. The costumes are ravishing and the cast including Rina Morelli, Didier Haudepin, Massimo Girotti, ideally cast even to the smallest part. It's a lasting pleasure and Visconti's farewell to the class and way of life he knew. Giannini was also ideal in those Lina Wertmuller films like SEVEN BEAUTIES.

My Voyage to Italy - Martin Scorsese

The perfect documentary for me is Martin Scorsese's MY VOYAGE TO ITALY, I missed this whenever it played on television - did it ever play here in the UK? - but at least the dvd is now avalable. Scorsese of course as an Italian-American is the ideal guide through Italian cinema, he grew up watching these films and they have inluenced his work. It is a given that he would have loved Fellini's I VITELLONI (which I raved about here a while back), it is a major influence on his MEAN STREETS.

This four hour documentary charts the landmark films and directors of the post-war era, including Vittorio de Sica, Luchino Visconti, Federico Fellini, Roberto Rosselini and Michelangelo Antonioni, good to see the usually neglected Rossellini given his due here. Given Marty's wealth of knowledge and infectious passion, just watching this DVD is like attending the best film class. He knows what he’s talking about and gives precise, eloquent descriptions of each movie, using his years of experience in front of a screen as well as behind the camera. Most of all this is 246 minutes of one of the great US directors imparting his passion about some of the most important films of the 20th century. It makes one want to go back to the movies and experience them all over again, particularly Visconti's great SENSO, De Sica's UMBERTO D, and those Fellini and Antonioni masterworks. I VITELLONI for instance remains a timeless pleasure and makes me want to see those other early Fellini films.



If you care about the medium, then it is an essential purchase. Scorsese introduces various segments and through judicious use of clips and an informed, eloquent voiceover takes us on a journey of the following films:

• Paisà (1946))
• Rome, Open City (1945)
• Stromboli (1950)
• Europa ’51 (1952)
• Shoeshine (1946)
• Bicycle Thieves (1948)
• Umberto D (1952)
• The Gold of Naples (1954)
• Ossessione (1943)
• La Terra trema (1950)
• Senso (1954)
• I Vitelloni (1953)
• La Dolce Vita (1960)
• Voyage to Italy (1954)
• L’avventura (1960)
• L’eclisse (1962)
• 8½ (1963)

His focus of course is on classic Italian cinema, but a broader view would encompass the sword-and-sandal peplum films popular in the late 50s/early 60s (like GIANT OF MARATHON, Leone's rather good THE COLOSSUS OF RHODES, THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII and the Steve Reeves spectaculars, APHRODITE, MESSALINA (see Belinda Lee label), and the giallo thrillers by the likes of Mario Bava and Dario Argento (Jean Sorel label), as well as the popular Loren-Mastroianni films and the delicious comedy films of Monica Vitti, Alberto Sordi et al (BOCCACCIO 70, LE BAMBOLE, LE FATE etc); and those films from the works of Alberto Moravia (TIME OF INDIFFERENCE (Claudia Cardinale label), TWO WOMEN), Georgio Bassani (THE GARDEN OF THE FINZI CONTINI'S) and those intriguing novels by Natalia Ginzburg (DEAR MICHAEL (CARO MICHELE), FAMIGLIA etc). Other strands of Italian cinema I liked are those Lina Wertmuller films like SEVEN BEAUTIES, the Taviani's PADRE PADRONE and new comedies like LOOSE CANNONS (review at Italian label), and the lesser known films by Alberto Lattuada (THE TEMPEST, DOLCI IGNANNI), Mauro Bolognini (GRAN BOLLITO, METELLO), Monicelli etc; Visconti's 1952 BELLISSIMA and 1965 operatic melodrama SANDRA (VAGHE STELLE D'ORSA) being my recent re-dioscoveries. I will have to comment separately on the polarising works of Bertolucci and Pasolini!

I have written about these in more detail at Italian, De Sica, Antonioni, Fellini labels ....plus at labels for Loren, Vitti, Valli, Cardinale, Magnani, Mangano, Mastroianni. We sure love those Italians!

Showpeople (15): Bogarde and pals

I have done some 'Showpeople' posts on Dirk Bogarde previously, with the likes of pals Kay Kendall and Rex Harrison, meeting Rock Hudson - did the closeted British and American heart-throbs compare notes? - and with co-stars like Jean Simmons, Anouk Aimee (whom he knew since she was a teenager), Monica Vitti, Julie Christie, Lilli Palmer - did he and Lilli discuss the Rex and Kay story?, Lilli being the previous Mrs Harrison. (Left, another shot from that DARLING premiere with Christie and Vitti. Glamour!)

Below with Kay and Kenneth More in DOCTOR IN THE HOUSE, and with Muriel Pavlow, another Rank Organisation stalwart and co-star, and with Capucine. Dirk and Kay were also guests at Kenneth More's "This Is Your Life" tv show in 1959.









I suggest that Lauren Bacall and Dirk really are the people who knew everybody - and SHE visited HIM the day before he died in 1999, and I love the photo of her with Kay, Vivien Leigh and Coward back in 1959, and with Kay at the theatre that year! [Showpeople label]. He worked of course with all the English talent of the time including those newcomers Courtenay, Fox, Miles ("dainty Miles" as he referred to her at one of his NFT discussions), Christie, Stamp, York - Michael and Susannah, etc. Then of course he knew all the European ladies: the young Bardot in DOCTOR AT SEA, Thulin, Seyrig, Aimee, Vitti, Mangano, and became great friends with Charlotte Rampling and Jane Birkin, he was also pals with Simone Signoret and Yvonne Mitchell though did not work with them, and of course his later co-stars like Lee Remick and Glenda Jackson. [It is a shame that Romy Schneider did not get to play the Austrian princess in Losey's ACCIDENT in '67, as originally planned - she would have brought so much more to the role and made her a real tease, rather than Sassard's blankness]. Then of course there are the Garland, Capucine and Ava Gardner stories, as per his books ... here is a further selection then:

Awards time in 1965 with Lee Marvin, Julie C and Patricia Neal - later of course he and Glenda Jackson did THE PATRICIA NEAL STORY for television; and that silent scene with Delphine Seyrig in ACCIDENT and with Anouk in JUSTINE, and Bjorn from DEATH IN VENICE!

The Stranger - Luchino Visconti, 1967

THE STRANGER (LO STRANIERO). A very missing movie, this 1967 film of Albert Camus’s “The Stranger” was directed by Luchino Visconti – quite a departure for him from his usual operatic, decorative works, and co-scripted by Visconti's usual writer Suso Cecchi D'Amico. The book was one of those novels one simply had to read back then, and probably still is. It is the bare story of a man who commits a senseless murder, is caught, tried and executed, in Algeria. One of those existentialist works then, as our “hero” Meursault finds life meaningless, he does not care what happens to him or what he does to others, and at his trial much is made of his lack of emotion at his mother’s funeral. Is he a psychopath? We hear his interior monologue.







Marcello Mastroianni gives one of his major performances and is compelling throughout, Anna Karina has the thankless role of the girlfriend. It certainly conjures up the atmosphere of hot, airless rooms and that life lived outside in those hot opressive climates. What I saw was a dubbed copy but that did not detract from the powerful images and mood the film creates. This was made after Visconti's 1965 SANDRA or VAGHE STELLE D'ORSA, that other rare Visconti I re-discovered recently, and is a firm favourite of mine. Visconti was back in operatic mode with his next one, THE DAMNED in ’69.

Boccaccio 70

BOCCACCIO 70. That other great Italian compendium, produced by Carlo Ponti in 1962 – which was sold at the time on the starpower of the 3 actresses and directors: Anita Ekberg in the Fellini sketch (as the giant billboard advertisement which comes to life, stalking Peppino De Phillipo; Romy Schneider is a delightful tease in the lush Visconti episode making her cheating husband Thomas Milian pay for her favours, Romy dressed (and undressed) in Chanel stakes her claim to being a prestige actress here (as in Welles’ THE TRIAL, same year) and Sophia Loren in the amusing De Sica segment as the weekly prize in a fairground raffle - I had forgotten how hilariously funny this tale is as Vittorio piles on the local colour as the locals go gaga for Sophia, then the bull spies her red blouse so it has to come off, as the local hunk comes to her rescue, then the weedy cleric wins the raffle ticket! It is always amusing seeing Sophia acting as one of the common people and De Sica ramps up the laughs, just like that Naples segment in YESTERDAY TODAY & TOMORROW.
The 3 ladies deliver what is expected of them, but there was a fourth segment, by Mario Monicelli, which was cut at the time but is now restored in the dvd release. This is an amusing little tale too of a young newly-married couple wanting to find time to be alone together (like that crowded scene at the swimming pool) but continually being thwarted in that new Italian economic boom of the early 60s. Finally, they they get their own apartment but he has work nights and comes home to go to bed as she heads off to work on the bus. The couple are the attractive Marisa Solinas and Germano Gilioli and it still looks marvellously fresh and amusing. But why is it ’70 if it was made in ’62?