Turin at the end of the fifties: two brothers have emigrated there from Sicily and the older works very hard to let the younger study and free himself from poverty through culture. The boy ...
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Antonio, a policeman (carabiniere), has an order to take two children (Rosetta and her brother Luciano) from Milan to Sicily to an orphanage. Their mother has been arrested for forcing ... See full summary »
Director:
Gianni Amelio
Stars:
Enrico Lo Verso,
Valentina Scalici,
Giuseppe Ieracitano
Two Italian racketeers come to Albania just after the fall of the communists to set up a fictive firm and pocket the grants. They need a stooge. They choose an old one in a jail : Spiro. ... See full summary »
Director:
Gianni Amelio
Stars:
Enrico Lo Verso,
Michele Placido,
Piro Milkani
Tommaso Scalia is a man who commits three murders: he killed his superior who sacked him, he kills the man who replaced him, and he kills his own wife. He wants a quick trial and an early ... See full summary »
Director:
Gianni Amelio
Stars:
Gian Maria Volontè,
Ennio Fantastichini,
Renato Carpentieri
An alcoholic homeless man is given two hundred francs by a stranger, who requests that when he can he will return the money to Saint Therese in the cathedral.
Director:
Ermanno Olmi
Stars:
Rutger Hauer,
Anthony Quayle,
Sandrine Dumas
The first man is an adaptation of the unfinshed autobiographical novel "Le Premier Homme" by the french writer Albert Camus. It tells the story of Jacques Cormery and his childhood in Algeria.
Director:
Gianni Amelio
Stars:
Michel Crémadès,
Jacques Gamblin,
Mickaël Batret
Vittorio Gassman stars as different characters in each of the nine episodes of this unusual Italian comedy. Playing everything from a practical joker to a prisoner, he comments upon romance, love and women in general.
A man returns to the place where his father was murdered and tries to find closure. But he finds himself in a similar predicament as his late father instead.
Desert ants suddenly form a collective intelligence and begin to wage war on the desert inhabitants. It is up to two scientists and a stray girl they rescue from the ants to destroy them. ... See full summary »
Director:
Saul Bass
Stars:
Nigel Davenport,
Michael Murphy,
Lynne Frederick
Turin at the end of the fifties: two brothers have emigrated there from Sicily and the older works very hard to let the younger study and free himself from poverty through culture. The boy however is not keen on school and would like to begin to work. When after some time he gets his degree however things take a violent and dramatic turn......Written by
Salvatore santangelo <pappagone2@libero.it>
The title refers to the back page of a popular 1950s Italian magazine which had a section devoted to old jokes that were no longer funny but still evoked a sense of nostalgia. One such joke is repeated throughout the film: "How do you get four elephants in a Fiat?" The answer: "Two in front and two in back". See more »
Quotes
Giovanni:
You think your children are your own, then they learn to walk and they leave you. Know what they say back home? "Raise hogs, 'cause then you can eat them"
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Cucara cha cha cha
Written by Tony Vargas and Pepe Villa
Performed by Dámaso Pérez Prado
Courtesy of Peer International Corp./Edizioni Peersongs Italy Srl See more »
This is to me the finest foreign language film to appear on American shores in many a moon. Gianni Amelio as well as the two splendid actors, Enrico Lo Verso and Francesco Giuffrida are to be congratulated for giving us this amazingly moving film about the human and fallible relationship between two brothers...a relationship laced with unabashed love (yet never sentimentally portrayed) that brings a feeling that these are two sides of one person...The older brother is intelligent, but illiterate and therefore enamored of education (a scene in which he hugs his brother's books through the streets of Turin without a word of dialogue makes a fully felt experience). His sacrifices to further his young brother's studies is brilliantly off-set by the ironic disdain that the 16 year old demonstrates...until he later comes to realize the value of his intellectual capacity.
The non-linear structure...set on six separate days, from 1958 to 1964...is completely in keeping with the curvilinear unfolding of the events and emotional reactions throughout this splendid film.
It's powerful ending achieves the exact right tone. I only wish that awful music that accompanies the closing credits didn't nearly jar my sensibilities out of the rich rewards of the movie.
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This is to me the finest foreign language film to appear on American shores in many a moon. Gianni Amelio as well as the two splendid actors, Enrico Lo Verso and Francesco Giuffrida are to be congratulated for giving us this amazingly moving film about the human and fallible relationship between two brothers...a relationship laced with unabashed love (yet never sentimentally portrayed) that brings a feeling that these are two sides of one person...The older brother is intelligent, but illiterate and therefore enamored of education (a scene in which he hugs his brother's books through the streets of Turin without a word of dialogue makes a fully felt experience). His sacrifices to further his young brother's studies is brilliantly off-set by the ironic disdain that the 16 year old demonstrates...until he later comes to realize the value of his intellectual capacity.
The non-linear structure...set on six separate days, from 1958 to 1964...is completely in keeping with the curvilinear unfolding of the events and emotional reactions throughout this splendid film.
It's powerful ending achieves the exact right tone. I only wish that awful music that accompanies the closing credits didn't nearly jar my sensibilities out of the rich rewards of the movie.