Tag Archives: Gianni Di Venanzo

FEDERICO FELLINI: COMPLETE RETROSPECTIVE

Federico Fellini directs two actors in Block-notes di un regista (Felllini: A Director’s Notebook)

FEDERICO FELLINI
MoMA Film, Museum of Modern Art
The Debra and Leon Black Family Film Center
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Through January 12
212-708-9400
www.moma.org

Italian auteur Federico Fellini gave the world a view of society and the human condition like no other filmmaker. A former caricaturist, joke writer, and journalist, Fellini made twenty-four films before passing away in 1993 at the age of seventy-three. MoMA is celebrating his wide-ranging and incredibly influential legacy by screening every one of his works as a director (earning four Oscars in the process), from 1950’s Luci del varietà (Variety Lights) to 1990’s La voce della luna (The Voice of the Moon), in 4K restorations. In between are such classic, unique works as La Strada (The Road), Amarcord, La Dolce Vita, Le notti di Cabiria (Nights of Cabiria), Roma (Fellini’s Roma), Giulietta degli spiriti (Juliet of the Spirits), Otto e mezzo (8½), and La città delle donne (City of Women), among many others that helped redefine cinematic storytelling by breaking all the rules. Below are only a few favorites being shown in this complete retrospective.

Giulietta Masina is unforgettable in Fellini masterpiece Nights of Cabiria

NIGHTS OF CABIRIA (LE NOTTI DI CABIRIA) (Federico Fellini, 1957)
MoMA Film
Monday, December 6, 7:00
www.moma.org

Giulietta Masina was named Best Actress at Cannes for her unforgettable portrayal of a far-too-trusting street prostitute in Nights of Cabiria. Directed by her husband, Federico Fellini, produced by Dino De Laurentiis, and written in collaboration with Pier Paolo Pasolini, the film, Fellini’s second to win the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film (after La Strada), opens with Cabiria taking a romantic stroll by the river with her boyfriend, Giorgio (Franco Fabrizi), who suddenly snatches her purse and pushes her into the water, running off as she nearly drowns. Such is life for Cabiria, whose sweet, naive nature can turn foul tempered in an instant.

Over the course of the next few days, she gets picked up by movie star Alberto Lazzari (Amedeo Nazzari), goes on a religious pilgrimage with fellow prostitutes Wanda (Franca Marzi) and Rosy (Loretta Capitoli), gets hypnotized by a magician (Ennio Girolami), and falls in love with a tender stranger named Oscar (François Périer). But nothing ever goes quite as expected for Cabiria, who continues to search for the bright side even in the direst of circumstances. Masina is a delight in the film, whether yelling at a neighbor, dancing the mambo with Alberto, or looking to confess her sins, her facial expressions a work of art in themselves, ranging from sly smiles and innocent glances to nasty smirks and angry stares.

Guido Anselmi (Marcello Mastroianni) is in a bit of a personal and professional crisis in Fellini masterpiece 8½

8½ (Federico Fellini, 1963)
MoMA Film
Friday, December 10, 7:00
www.moma.org

“Your eminence, I am not happy,” Guido (Marcello Mastroianni) tells the cardinal (Tito Masini) halfway through Federico Fellini’s self-reflexive masterpiece 8½. “Why should you be happy?” the cardinal responds. “That is not your task in life. Who said we were put on this earth to be happy?” Well, film makes people happy, and it’s because of works such as 8½. Fellini’s Oscar-winning eighth-and-a-half movie is a sensational self-examination of film and fame, a hysterically funny, surreal story of a famous Italian auteur who finds his life and career in need of a major overhaul. Mastroianni is magnificent as Guido Anselmi, a man in a personal and professional crisis who has gone to a healing spa for some much-needed relaxation, but he doesn’t get any as he is continually harassed by producers, screenwriters, would-be actresses, and various other oddball hangers-on. He also has to deal both with his mistress, Carla (Sandra Milo), who is quite a handful, as well as his wife, Luisa (Anouk Aimée), who is losing patience with his lies.

Trapped in a strange world of his own creation, Guido has dreams where he flies over claustrophobic traffic and makes out with his dead mother, and his next film involves a spaceship; it doesn’t take a psychiatrist to figure out the many inner demons that are haunting him. Marvelously shot by Gianni Di Venanzo in black-and-white, scored with a vast sense of humor by Nino Rota, and featuring some of the most amazing hats ever seen on film — costume designer Piero Gherardi won an Oscar for all the great dresses and chapeaux — 8½ is an endlessly fascinating and wildly entertaining exploration of the creative process and the bizarre world of filmmaking itself. And after seeing 8½, you’ll appreciate Woody Allen’s 1980 homage, Stardust Memories, a whole lot more.

Terence Stamp is an alcoholic, fast-fading Shakespearean star in Federico Fellini’s Toby Dammit

SPIRITS OF THE DEAD: TOBY DAMMIT (Federico Fellini, 1968)
MoMA Film
Wednesday, December 8, 7:00, & Tuesday, December 21, 4:00
www.moma.org

MoMA is presenting all three of Federico Fellini’s shorter works: Agenzia matrimoniale (A Marriage Agency) was part of the 1953 omnibus L’amore in città (Love in the City), which also includes films by Carlo Lizzani, Michelangelo Antonioni, Dino Risi, Francesco Maselli and Cesare Zavattini, and Alberto Lattuada, while the 1969 documentary Block-notes di un regista (Felllini: A Director’s Notebook) was made for NBC television, about an uncompleted project. Toby Dammit concludes the Edgar Allan Poe anthology Spirits of the Dead, following Roger Vadim’s Metzengerstein, starring Jane Fonda and Peter Fonda, and Louis Malle’s William Wilson, with Alain Delon and his doppelgänger.

Adapted by Fellini and Bernardino Zapponi from Poe’s “Never Bet the Devil Your Head: A Tale with a Moral,” Toby Dammit is fiercely unpredictable, evoking La Dolce Vita and 8½ as British actor Toby Dammit (Terence Stamp) is lured to Rome to make a movie in exchange for a Ferrari. Amid bizarre interview segments, an absurdist awards ceremony, and meetings with his overbearing producers, Toby is haunted by a girl with a white ball (Marina Yaru). Toby Dammit is screening with 1962’s Le tentazioni del dottor Antonio (The Temptations of Doctor Antonio), featuring Anita Ekberg in a film dealing with sexual repression.

FELLINI: 8½

Guido Anselmi (Marcello Mastroianni) is in a bit of a personal and professional crisis in Fellini masterpiece “8½”

WEEKEND CLASSICS: 8½ (Federico Fellini, 1963)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
September 2-5, 11:00 am
Series continues through September 25
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com

“Your eminence, I am not happy,” Guido (Marcello Mastroianni) tells the cardinal (Tito Masini) halfway through Federico Fellini’s self-reflexive masterpiece 8½. “Why should you be happy?” the cardinal responds. “That is not your task in life. Who said we were put on this earth to be happy?” Well, film makes people happy, and it’s because of works such as 8½. Fellini’s Oscar-winning eighth-and-a-half movie is a sensational self-examination of film and fame, a hysterically funny, surreal story of a famous Italian auteur who finds his life and career in need of a major overhaul. Mastroianni is magnificent as Guido Anselmi, a man in a personal and professional crisis who has gone to a healing spa for some much-needed relaxation, but he doesn’t get any as he is continually harassed by producers, screenwriters, would-be actresses, and various other oddball hangers-on. He also has to deal both with his mistress, Carla (Sandra Milo), who is quite a handful, as well as his wife, Luisa (Anouk Aimée), who is losing patience with his lies. Trapped in a strange world of his own creation, Guido has dreams where he flies over claustrophobic traffic and makes out with his dead mother, and his next film involves a spaceship; it doesn’t take a psychiatrist to figure out the many inner demons that are haunting him. Marvelously shot by Gianni Di Venanzo in black-and-white, scored with a vast sense of humor by Nino Rota, and featuring some of the most amazing hats ever seen on film — costume designer Piero Gherardi won an Oscar for all the great dresses and chapeaux — 8½ is an endlessly fascinating and wildly entertaining exploration of the creative process and the bizarre world of filmmaking itself. And after seeing 8½, you’ll appreciate Woody Allen’s 1980 homage, Stardust Memories, a whole lot more. “Weekend Classics” continues September 9-11 with Fellini Satyricon before concluding September 23-25 with City of Women.

TITANUS — A FAMILY CHRONICLE OF ITALIAN CINEMA: LE AMICHE

LE AMICHE

Michelangelo Antonioni’s LE AMICHE will screen May 29 & 31 at Titanus festival at Lincoln Center

LE AMICHE (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1955)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater, Francesca Beale Theater
144/165 West 65th St. between Eighth Ave. & Broadway
Friday, May 29, 4:15, and Sunday, May 31, 9:00
Festival runs May 22-31
212-875-5050
www.filmlinc.com

Winner of the Silver Lion at the 1955 Venice Film Festival, Michelangelo Antonioni’s sublimely marvelous Le Amiche follows the life and loves of a group of oh-so-fabulous catty, chatty, and ultra-fashionable Italian women and the men they keep around for adornment. Returning to her native Turin after having lived in Rome for many years, Clelia (Eleonora Rossi Drago) discovers that the young woman in the hotel room next to hers, Rosetta (Madeleine Fischer), has attempted suicide, thrusting Clelia into the middle of a collection of self-centered girlfriends who make the shenanigans of George Cukor’s The Women look like child’s play. The leader of the vain, vapid vamps is Momina (Yvonne Furneaux), who carefully orchestrates situations to her liking, particularly when it comes to her husband and her various, ever-changing companions, primarily architect Cesare (Franco Fabrizi). As Rosetta falls for painter Lorenzo (Gabriele Ferzetti), who is married to ceramicist Nene (Valentina Cortese), Clelia considers a relationship with Cesare’s assistant, Carlo (Ettore Manni), and the flighty Mariella (Anna Maria Pancani) considers just about anyone. Based on the novella Tra Donne Sole (“Among Only Women”) by Cesare Pavese, Le Amiche is one of Antonioni’s best, and least well known, films, an intoxicating and thoroughly entertaining precursor to his early 1960s trilogy, L’Avventura, La Notte, and L’Eclisse. Skewering the not-very-discreet “charm” of the Italian bourgeoisie, Antonioni mixes razor-sharp dialogue with scenes of wonderful ennui, all shot in glorious black and white by Gianni Di Venanzo.

LE AMICHE

LE AMICHE explores world of catty, chatty, ultra-fashionable women in Turin

Recently restored in 35mm, Le Amiche is a newly rediscovered treasure from one of cinema’s most iconoclastic auteurs. It is screening on May 29 at 4:15 and May 31 at 9:00 in the Film Society of Lincoln Center series “Titanus: A Family Chronicle of Italian Cinema,” a ten-day, twenty-three-film retrospective honoring the Italian production company founded by Gustavo Lombardo in 1904 and later run by his son, Goffredo, and grandson, Guido, that remained active until 1964 (although it continues to occasionally release work). The festival displays the wide range of Titanus’s output, including Dario Argento’s The Bird with Crystal Plumage, Camillo Mastrocinque’s Little Girls and High Finance, Raffaello Matarazzo’s The White Angel, Elio Petri’s Numbered Days, Federico Fellini’s The Swindle, Giorgio Bianchi’s Cronaca Nera, and Dino Risi’s The Sign of Venus, but not Luchino Visconti’s The Leopard; the tremendous cost of filming Giuseppe di Lampedusa’s epochal novel played a major role in the company’s downward fortune.

NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS 50th ANNIVERSARY: LE AMICHE

Luc Sante will introduce a special presentation of Michelangelo Antonioni’s magnificent melodrama LE AMICHE on July 15 at Film Forum

LE AMICHE (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1955)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Monday, July 15, 7:00
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org

Winner of the Silver Lion at the 1955 Venice Film Festival, Michelangelo Antonioni’s sublimely marvelous Le Amiche follows the life and loves of a group of oh-so-fabulous catty, chatty, and ultra-fashionable Italian women and the men they keep around for adornment. Returning to her native Turin after having lived in Rome for many years, Clelia (Eleonora Rossi Drago) discovers that the young woman in the hotel room next to hers, Rosetta (Madeleine Fischer), has attempted suicide, thrusting Clelia into the middle of a collection of self-centered girlfriends who make the shenanigans of George Cukor’s The Women look like child’s play. The leader of the vain, vapid vamps is Momina (Yvonne Furneaux), who carefully orchestrates situations to her liking, particularly when it comes to her husband and her various, ever-changing companions, primarily architect Cesare (Franco Fabrizi). As Rosetta falls for painter Lorenzo (Gabriele Ferzetti), who is married to ceramicist Nene (Valentina Cortese), Clelia considers a relationship with Cesare’s assistant, Carlo (Ettore Manni), and the flighty Mariella (Anna Maria Pancani) considers just about anyone. Based on the novella Tra Donne Sole (“Among Only Women”) by Cesare Pavese, Le Amiche is one of Antonioni’s best, and least well known, films, an intoxicating and thoroughly entertaining precursor to his early 1960s trilogy, L’Avventura, La Notte, and L’Eclisse. Skewering the not-very-discreet “charm” of the Italian bourgeoisie, Antonioni mixes razor-sharp dialogue with scenes of wonderful ennui, all shot in glorious black and white by Gianni Di Venanzo. Recently restored in 35mm, Le Amiche is a newly rediscovered treasure from one of cinema’s most iconoclastic auteurs. The film will have a special screening July 15 at 7:00 as part of Film Forum’s ongoing celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the New York Review of Books and will be introduced by frequent NYRB contributor Luc Sante (Low Life, The Factory of Facts). The NYRB edition of The Selected Works of Cesare Pavese, which will be available at Film Forum, includes Among Only Women in addition to Pavese’s The Beach, The House on the Hill, and The Devil in the Hills.

HAPPINESS IS . . . 8½

Guido Anselmi (Marcello Mastroianni) is in a bit of a personal and professional crisis in Fellini masterpiece “8½”

CABARET CINEMA: 8½ (Federico Fellini, 1963)
Rubin Museum of Art
150 West 17th St. at Seventh Ave.
Friday, October 19, free with $7 bar minimum, 9:30
212-620-5000
www.rmanyc.org

“Your eminence, I am not happy,” Guido (Marcello Mastroianni) tells the cardinal (Tito Masini) halfway through Federico Fellini’s self-reflexive masterpiece 8½. “Why should you be happy?” the cardinal responds. “That is not your task in life. Who said we were put on this earth to be happy?” Well, film makes people happy, and it’s because of works such as 8½, which will be screening October 19 as part of the Rubin Museum Cabaret Cinema series “Happiness is . . .” and will be introduced by Mexican-born, New York-based cartoonist Felipe Galindo. Fellini’s Oscar-winning eighth-and-a-half movie is a sensational self-examination of film and fame, a hysterically funny, surreal story of a famous Italian auteur who finds his life and career in need of a major overhaul. Mastroianni is magnificent as Guido Anselmi, a man in a personal and professional crisis who has gone to a healing spa for some much-needed relaxation, but he doesn’t get any as he is continually harassed by producers, screenwriters, would-be actresses, and various other oddball hangers-on. He also has to deal both with his mistress, Carla (Sandra Milo), who is quite a handful, as well as his wife, Luisa (Anouk Aimée), who is losing patience with his lies. Trapped in a strange world of his own creation, Guido has dreams where he flies over claustrophobic traffic and makes out with his dead mother, and his next film involves a spaceship; it doesn’t take a psychiatrist to figure out the many inner demons that are haunting him. Marvelously shot by Gianni Di Venanzo in black-and-white, scored with a vast sense of humor by Nino Rota, and featuring some of the most amazing hats ever seen on film — costume designer Piero Gherardi won an Oscar for all the great dresses and chapeaux — 8½ is an endlessly fascinating and wildly entertaining exploration of the creative process and the bizarre world of filmmaking itself. And after seeing 8½, you’ll appreciate Woody Allen’s 1980 homage, Stardust Memories, a whole lot more. “Happiness is . . .” continues through December 28 with such other Allen favorites as Ingmar Bergman’s Cries and Whispers, Michael Curtiz’s Casablanca, and George Cukor’s Camille, held in conjunction with the larger Rubin Museum program “Happy Talk.”

LE AMICHE

Antonioni’s magnificent melodrama returns to Film Forum by popular demand

LE AMICHE (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1955)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
August 25–31
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org

After its much-hailed one-week run in June at Film Forum, the 35mm restoration of Michelangelo Antonioni’s LE AMICHE returns by popular demand, playing August 25-31, and there’s just no reasonable excuse for missing it again. Winner of the Silver Lion at the 1955 Venice Film Festival, the sublimely marvelous LE AMICHE follows the life and loves of a group of oh-so-fabulous catty, chatty, and ultra-fashionable Italian women and the men they keep around for adornment. Returning to her native Turin after having lived in Rome for many years, Clelia (Eleonora Rossi Drago) discovers that the young woman in the hotel room next to hers, Rosetta (Madeleine Fischer), has attempted suicide, thrusting Clelia into the middle of a collection of self-centered girlfriends who make the shenanigans of George Cukor’s THE WOMEN look like child’s play. The leader of the vain, vapid vamps is Momina (Yvonne Furneaux), who carefully orchestrates situations to her liking, particularly when it comes to her husband and her various, ever-changing companions, primarily architect Cesare (Franco Fabrizi). As Rosetta falls for painter Lorenzo (Gabriele Ferzetti), who is married to ceramicist Nene (Valentina Cortese), Clelia considers a relationship with Cesare’s assistant, Carlo (Ettore Manni), and the flighty Mariella (Anna Maria Pancani) considers just about anyone. Based on a novella by Cesare Pavese, LE AMICHE is one of Antonioni’s best, and least well known, films, an intoxicating and thoroughly entertaining precursor to his early 1960s trilogy, L’AVVENTURA, LA NOTTE, and L’ECLISSE. Skewering the not-very-discreet “charm” of the Italian bourgeoisie, Antonioni mixes razor-sharp dialogue with scenes of wonderful ennui, all shot in glorious black and white by Gianni Di Venanzo. LE AMICHE is a newly rediscovered treasure from one of cinema’s most iconoclastic auteurs.