Presented by Cinecitta International
and the Film Society of Lincoln Center
about the program
calendar
program notes and times
Note: all films are subtitled in English.
DIVORCE ITALIAN STYLE /
DIVORZIO ALL'ITALIANA
Pietro Germi, Italy, 1962; 104m
What if you lust after your pure yet sexy cousin (Stefania Sandrelli), but are thwarted by a mustached spouse (Daniela Rocca)? If you're a Sicilian aristo, the epitome of Italian masculinity (MM), you arrange events so you can play the murderously jealous husband! (No court in Italy grants divorces, but a crime passionnel warrants a judicial wink and a nod.) An Oscar-winning script full of black hilarity, with a suitably soignée MM, sporting a perfectly groomed little mustache and sleeked-down hair, lounge-lizard style.
Friday, January 1: 2 and 6:15 pm
MARRIAGE ITALIAN STYLE /
MATRIMONIO ALL'ITALIANA
Vittorio De Sica, France / Italy, 1964; 102m
After enjoying his servant-mistress Filomena (Sophia Loren) for 20 years, Domenico (MM) decides to marry--someone else! Jilted for youth, smart, sexy Filomena sinks into a fatal illness; rushing to her deathbed, Domenico marries her in honor of their long affair. Needless to say, Filomena makes a miraculous recovery--and produces three full-grown sons! Vulgar, erotic, wonderfully acted and masterfully directed by De Sica.
Friday, January 1: 4:10 pm;
Saturday, January 2: 7:30 pm
LA DOLCE VITA
Federico Fellini, France / Italy,1960;174m
In the role that rocketed him to international stardom and celebrity, Mastroianni supplied the all-too-human focus of Fellini's broadest canvas to date--Rome on the eve of the Apocalypse...or perhaps just another week of business as usual. Playing Marcello, an affable gossip columnist who seems to be on a first-name basis with just about everybody along the Via Veneto, he sustained just the right note of basic decency infected with a lazy willingness to be accommodating. With Anouk Aimeé and Anita Ekberg, among others.
Friday, January 1: 8:30 pm
Saturday, January 2: 4:15 pm
THE ORGANIZER /
I COMPAGNI
Mario Monicelli, Italy / France / Yugoslavia,1963; 126m
Although it's overshadowed by his landmark roles for Fellini, there are many who regard Mastroianni's performance as a schoolteacher-turned-activist in this gritty period piece as his finest of the 60s. Certainly he makes a memorable, audaciously delayed entrance, a ratty figure climbing down off a steam-belching train in the background of a boisterous protest scene--an unheroic man come to fan the flames of revolution in turn-of-the-century Torino.
Saturday, January 2: 9:30 pm
Sunday, January 3: 6:20 pm
A SPECIAL DAY /
UNA GIORNATA PARTICOLARE
Ettore Scola, Italy / Canada, 1977; 105m
MM received his second Oscar nomination for this performance as a gay man in Mussolini's Italy. The title officially refers to a ceremonial visit from Il Duce's Aryan ally Adolf Hitler, with virtually all of Rome turned out to supply an adoring audience. Two who don't are the homosexual and his neighbor across the courtyard, a beleaguered wife and mother (Sophia Loren) with whom he shares a rare moment of rapport and tenderness.
Sunday, January 3: 4:15 and 8:45 pm
IL BELL'ANTONIO
Mauro Bolognini, France / Italy, 1962; 101m
In this surgically spot-on satire of Sicilian machismo (script by Pier Paolo Pasolini), Antonio (MM) is a ladykiller who wilts on his wedding night with the voluptuous Claudia Cardinale. Naturally the marriage is annulled, our hero becomes a laughingstock and his poor father (Pierre Brasseur) is forced to do double-duty in the local brothel to uphold the family's reputation. (In Vitaliano Brancati's novel, Handsome Antonio's predicament became a metaphor for Fascist Italy.)
Monday, January 4: 2 and 9:15 pm
DARK EYES /
OCI CIRONI
Nikita Mikhalkov, Russia/Italy, 1987; 118m
Assembled from several short stories by Chekhov (especially, "The Lady with the Little Dog"), Dark Eyes showcases Mastroianni's skill and star power (Best Actor, 1987 Cannes Film Festival), as he plays from youth to age and back again. A fading rake on a sea cruise, Romano shares the story of his life--like some first-class Ancient Mariner--with a Russian acquaintance, recounting his marriage to a lovely heiress (Silvano Mangano) and his ill-fated pursuit of a Russian woman he once seduced, then fell deeply in love with. Running the gamut from tragedy to farce, DARK EYES is shadowed with irony, both cruel and poignant.
Monday, January 4: 4 pm
Thursday, January 7: 9 pm
TOO BAD SHE'S BAD /
PECCATO CHE SIA UNA CANAGLIA
Alessandro Blasetti, Italy, 1954; 96m
A cab driver (MM) has the bad luck to pick up a beautiful woman (Sophia Loren, the actress he called his "sister") on the way to the beach with a trio of guys. Gorgeous, and an extremely fast talker, this distaff con artist shamelessly tries to scam the hapless cabbie. The latter's obsession with bringing his tormentor and her larcenous family to justice is derailed by warmer feelings as this light-hearted romantic comedy (adapted from a story by Moravia) unfolds.
Wednesday, January 6: 2 pm
Thursday, January 7: 4 pm
Tuesday, January 12: 6:15 pm
ENRICO IV
Marco Bellocchio, Italy, 1984; 95m
From Luigi Pirandello, by way of one of Italy's most provocative filmmakers. A modernday businessman (MM) lives locked up in a castle for 20 years, believing and making others believe that he is the German emperor Enrico IV. Perhaps it was a fall from a horse or a woman's betrayal that drove him into madness--in any case, friends and family gather to make one last attempt to shock him back to reality. All goes at unexpected cross purposes, as the definitions of lunacy, sanity, hypocrisy, honesty blur and the line between performance and character erodes totally. With Claudia Cardinale, Leopoldo Trieste.
Wednesday, January 6: 4 pm
Tuesday, January 12: 8:15 pm
LEO THE LAST
John Boorman, Great Britain, 1970; 103m
In one of his first excursions into English-language filmmaking, MM plays a deposed monarch who fetches up in the midst of a black ghetto in London. At first oblivious to his neighbors and anything else but the local avifauna, he eventually abandons birdwatching in the interest of political activism, and winds up leading a cockeyed revolt. With Billie Whitelaw, Calvin Lockhart.
Thursday, January 7: 2 pm
Saturday, January 9: 8:45 pm
8 1/2
Federico Fellini, Italy, 1963; 135m
Having supplied LA DOLCE VITA with a spiritual and (a)moral center, Mastroianni consolidated his indispensability to Fellini by playing the maestro's alter ego: a film director who, with a string of critical successes behind him, a wife, mistress, and host of other women who adore him, and a crew ready to start filming, has not a clue what to do for his next movie. The possibility of being found shallow has never seemed more beguiling. A moment for the ages: Guido (MM) spotting his estranged wife (Anouk Aimée) window-shopping in the streets of a strange city, as "Blue Moon" plays on a car radio.
Friday, January 8: 2 and 6:45 pm
Saturday, January 9: 6 pm
WHITE NIGHTS /
LE NOTTI BIANCHE
Luchino Visconti, France / Italy, 1957; 107m
Visconti set this Dostoevsky story (later adapted by Pyriev and Bresson) in contemporary Italy, imbuing it with the look and movement of dreams. Shy Mastroianni falls for a strange, sweet girl (Maria Schell) who spends her time yearning for a sailor (Jean Marais) who promised to return after a year had passed. Magic and theatrical artifice are wonderfully aboard in these White Nights.
Friday, January 8: 4:35 and 9:20 pm
WHAT TIME IS IT? /
CHE ORA E?
Ettore Scola, France, 1989; 95m
An affluent attorney (MM) tries unsuccessfully to win the love of his soldier-son (Massimo Troisi) by means of all manner of expensive gifts. But the only possession his son really values is the watch his grandfather gave him. During one memorable day, father and son measure the gulf between them and forge a fragile bond--through the surprising mediation of the grandfather's timepiece. With Anne Parillaud.
Saturday, January 9: 4 pm
Tuesday, January 12: 4:15 pm
THE BEEKEEPER /
O MEKISSOKOMOS
Theo Angelopoulos, Greece, 1986; 112m
One of Angelopoulos's melancholy pilgrims, beekeeper Spyros (MM) takes to the road, touring Greece's beehive sites. Along the way, he is joined by a mysterious young hitchhiker (Nadia Mourouzi); this odd couple travels through a wintry countryside that is as much a landscape of the soul as it is a richly visualized Greece. Angelopoulos called THE BEEKEEPER "a film on the silence of history, of love and of God"; but this transcendent celebration--exquisitely visualized--of the human search for significance is never a downer.
Sunday, January 10: 4 and 8:40 pm
CHRONICLE OF POOR LOVERS /
CRONACHE DI POVERI AMANTI
Carlo Lizzani, Italy, 1954; 115m
CHRONICLE takes place in the Vico de Corno, a teeming alley in a low-rent district of Florence, where an anti-Fascist fruit vendor (MM) tries to mobilize his neighbors to fight the Mussolini regime and local Blackshirts. The director's cool bourgeois portraits were provocative enough to rile Italian officialdom--the Cannes Film Festival was warned that any prize for CHRONICLE would mean future boycotting.
Sunday, January 10: 6:20 pm
Tuesday, January 12: 2 pm
GHOSTS OF ROME /
FANTASMI A ROMA
Antonio Pietrangeli, Italy, 1961; 105m
In this light-hearted fable, a quartet of amiable ghosts (MM, for one) has lived for centuries with an aged prince in an old Roman palazzo. When their landlord is accidently killed, his low-down nephew (also MM) decides to sell the ghosts' home to a developer who wants to build a luxury hotel. Vittorio Gassman is a fresco artist called upon to help the haunts. With Belinda Lee and Sandra Milo.
Monday, January 11: 2 and 6:15 pm
FAMILY DIARY /
CRONACA FAMILIARE
Valerio Zurlini, Italy, 1963; 115m
The premature death of a much-loved younger brother--his fraternal twin--propels Enrico (MM) into griefstricken seclusion, where he broods over Lorenzo's short, sad life and the history of their separation at birth and eventual reunion. In The Holt Foreign Film Guide, Ronald Bergan and Robyn Karney rave over "this leisurely, elegiac and intolerably sad film, played with sensitivity and absolute conviction...directed [by] a superb visual artist [who] evokes feelings, events and atmosphere by use of an impressionist-painter style to moving and memorable effect, displaying a subtle eye for the significance of small moments."
Monday, January 11: 4 and 8:20 pm
LA NOTTE
Michelangelo Antonioni, Italy, 1961; 122m
Twenty-four hours in the lives of a thwarted novelist (Mastroianni) and his despairing wife (Jeanne Moreau), as they visit a dying friend, wander about the city, go to a nightclub and attend a millionaire's party. Antonioni brilliantly measures individual angst and mutual estrangement in the cold architectural lineaments of Milan and in the inability of his couple in crisis--or any of LA NOTTE's other somnambulists--to maintain eye contact, physical intimacy or anything more than solipsistic monologues when they try to communicate. Critic David Thomson writes that Antonioni is "capable of stripping people down to fragile skins that can hardly brush against one another without pain."
Wednesday, January 13: 2 and 6:30 pm
SCIOPIO THE AFRICAN /
SCIOPIONE DETTO ANCHE L'AFRICANO
Luigi Magni, Italy, 1971; 108m
An ironic look at the Roman Empire, Scipione's title character (MM) speaks the modern dialect of the Italian capital in an effort to underline his social antagonism to Cato the Censor (Vittorio Gassman), his main foe. Paralleling the political send-up are the aging hero's domestic problems with his spouse (Silvano Mangano). MM's brother Ruggero, a successful film editor, got his fondest wish fulfilled when he was cast as Sciopio the Asian--though critics were unkind when they wrote about his debut performance. (With the magnificent Woody Strode.)
Wednesday, January 13: 4:20 and 8:50 pm
GINGER AND FRED
Federico Fellini, West Germany / Italy / France,
1986; 126m
A TV variety show offers "Ginger and Fred," a pair of retired hoofers (Giulietta Masina and MM), the chance to reunite for one last, magical performance. Fellini warmly embraces nostalgia for old times, old music-hall performers, while assaulting the vast wasteland that is the boob tube (Italian TV often butchered his films). Masina and Mastroianni are flawless, delightful. (Ginger Rogers, lacking perspective, sued the film's distributors for "defamation of character.")
Friday, January 15: 2 and 6:45 pm
Saturday, January 16: 2 pm
LIZA / LA CAGNA
Marco Ferreri, Italy / France, 1972; 100m
Cartoonist Giorgio (MM) has deserted civilization, wife and grown children to live on a Mediterranean island with his dog Melampus. One day, a lovely blonde (Catherine Deneuve) walks out of the sea, having swum in from a rich man's yacht. Though the recluse tries to get rid of her, Liza soon becomes so obsessed with Giorgio that she refuses to share his affection--so Melampus must go. Taking to wearing a dog collar and fetching sticks, Liza truly lives up to the Italian title of the film: The Bitch.
Friday, January 15: 4:30 and 9:15 pm
THE LAST MOONS /
ULTIME LUNE
Guilio Bosetti, Italy, 1995-96; video; 85m
Mastroianni's last theatrical appearance--and final role--came in a comedy by Furio Bordon that features only three characters: an old professor, his wife and their young son. "The old professor," said Marcello, "speaks of death, of loneliness, of his son's lack of understanding, of his love for the wife he lost many years before (who materializes as he recalls her).... At times, especially in the theater, it can happen that an actor is moved...in this play, I have moments when my eyes fill with tears."
Saturday, January 16: 4:30 pm
|
