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Italian films
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In the decade before he won international recognition as one of the masters of Italian neo-realism, Vittorio De Sica cut his directorial teeth making modest crowd-pleasers such as this. De Sica was not only a great director but was also a talented actor and plays the lead male role in this film. Maddalena, zero in condotta may not bear comparison with the director’s subsequent masterworks...
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With his native Italy brought to its knees by Mussolini’s fascist regime during World War II, with disease, starvation and unemployment rife, it was unlikely that Luchino Visconti’s first film as a director was going to be a cheery affair. Few films from this period convey the mood – the hopelessness, the squalor...
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One of the most important films in the history of European cinema, Roma, città aperta marked the birth of the Italian neo-realist movement and, no less auspiciously, sparked American interest in foreign language cinema (which had prior to the end of the Second World War been virtually non-existent). In a world still shocked by war...
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The second of Roberto Rossellini’s trilogy of World War II films (sandwiched between Open City and Germany Year Zero) is this powerful work comprising six vignettes linked effectively by actual newsreel footage. Often cited as Rossellini’s best work, the film paints a harrowingly realistic picture of Italy during its period of liberation...
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If Roberto Rossellini’s Rome Open City (1945) laid the foundation for the rebirth of Italian cinema in the aftermath of World War II, Vittorio De Sica’s Sciuscià (a.k.a. Shoeshine) would provide it with the impetus that would allow it to flourish in the following decades, establishing neo-realism and redefining the role of director as that of auteur...
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For the third part of his monumental World War II trilogy, director Roberto Rossellini directs our attention to post-war Berlin and this time shows human suffering from the perspective of the German people. The film is in the raw neo-realist style of Rossellini’s previous films, Open City (1945) and Paisa (1946) but places greater emphasis on the fictional drama...
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In his first film, Ossessione , director Luchino Visconti developed a style of cinema that came to be known as neo-realist. In stark contrast to the polished studio productions of the day, this approach used grim natural locations, largely non-professional actors, and accurately reflected the harsh reality of life as experienced by most people in run-down post-Mussolini Italy...
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Marcel L’Herbier’s last film but one is largely a disappointment, exhibiting very little of the cinematic quality and dramatic intensity of the director’s earlier works (particularly his silent masterpieces). Although the film is said to be based on the novel by Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, it differs markedly...
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After winning international acclaim with their neo-realist masterpiece, Ladri di biciclette (1948), Vittorio De Sica and Cesare Zavattini’s next collaborative venture was something of a surprise. Miracolo a Milano is an extraordinary combination of Chaplinesque comedy, surreal fantasy and hard-hitting neo-realism...
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Umberto D. completes a cycle of neo-realist masterpieces that was the fruit of a remarkable collaboration between eminent film director Vittorio De Sica and the legendary screenwriter Cesare Zavattini. This series of films, which includes Shoeshine (1946) and Bicycle Thieves (1948), paints a sobering picture of society in post-war Italy...
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Beat the Devil is a wonderfully tongue-in-cheek yet totally bizarre concoction of screwball comedy and film noir adventure thriller, which manages to be irresistibly funny in spite of a plot that is childishly absurd and at times unfathomable. Director John Huston intended it to be a spoof of his earlier noir films, particularly The Maltese Falcon (1941) and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre...
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I Vitelloni, Federico Fellini’s third film and his first international success, is an engaging piece that alternates between melodrama and farce in its colourful depiction of five wasters who seem incapable of growing up. Partly autographical (it is set in the director’s hometown), the film combines the neo-realist aspect which was prevalent in Italian cinema at the time with...
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The film that earned Federico Fellini his international reputation and won him the first ever Foreign Language Film Oscar was La Strada, a landmark Italian film that is regarded by many as the director’s greatest work. With the confidence of a true master, Fellini brings a lyrical poetry to the familiar trappings of Italian neo-realist cinema and the result is one of the most truthful...
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Joseph L. Mankiewicz followed his magnificent satire on Broadway All About Eve (1950) with this equally scathing depiction of Hollywood. A twisted reinterpretation of the fairy tale Cinderella, the film shows how a good woman of humble origins and romantic ideals falls prey to the machinations of film directors, producers and playboys who cynically exploit her whilst seeming to fulfil her...
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The sheer enormity of Leo Tolstoy’s epic novel War and Peace has always deterred filmmakers from attempting an adaptation. Not only does the novel have a daunting scope, encompassing the lives of many complex characters over several years, but it includes many spectacular episodes (the battle scenes, the evacuation and subsequent wrecking of Moscow...
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Whilst overshadowed by Fellini’s subsequent cinematic masterpieces, Le Notti di Cabiria deserves to be considered one of the director’s best works, a poignant examination of the fallibility and resilience of the human spirit. An intensely moving film, it shows the futility of blind faith – in religion...
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Das Indische Grabmal is the dreary sequel to Der Tiger von Eschnapur, Fritz Lang’s misguided and flawed excursion into the exotic adventure genre. Although the films were popular in Germany when they were released, they now come across as absurd and tedious, memorable only for their risibly bad action scenes that are played with virtually no conviction and an almost total lack of realism...
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After a successful period in Hollywood, Fitz Lang returned to Europe to make an ambitious romantic adventure film, of which this is the first instalment. (The second and concluding part was Das Indische Grabmal ). The scale of Lang’s ambition is apparent in the sumptuous location filming and huge interior sets, but the absence of the director’s renowned artistic sense is equally...
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There is some irony in the fact that René Clément’s only comic film deals with a subject that would appear to be hard to find humour in, namely the origins of Fascism in Italy of the early 1920s. Clément is following in the footsteps of the great Italian filmmakers who, from the 1940s, have endeavoured to find fun in some very dark subjects...
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La Dolca Vita may be Federico Fellini’s most famous film, but it’s a moot point as to whether it’s his best. It certainly made an impact when it was first released, and helped to establish Fellini as one of the foremost directors of his day. The scenes of drunken debauchery which take up most of the film’s runtime must have shocked liberal sensibilities in the early...
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