La vita provvisoria (Provisional Life, 1963)

Director: Vincenzo Gamna (with Enzo Battaglia and Christopher Broadbent)
Starring: Paolo Graziosi, Kristina Stipulkowska, Gigi Zerbinati, Enzo Cerusico
Label:  Ripley's Home Video (2015)
Format: DVD / PAL / Region 0
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1 b/w
Audio: Italian (Dolby Digital 1.0 mono)
Subtitles: English

Bonus:

* Short Giovedì: passeggiata (13 minutes)
* Alternative credit sequence

Available on Amazon.it

What's the film about?

An omnibus film, where the common theme is the conflict between modern lifestyle and traditional values. The film is made up of eight segments, each one with a different mood, so you have both Nouvelle Vague and comedy Italia style, an intimate love story and the chronicle of a massacre, a Fellini-esque sketch and even a science-fiction finale. Hit-and-miss but interesting.

Recommendations
...if you are looking for oddities from the golden era of Italian cinema.

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Assunta Spina (1915)

Director: Gustavo Serena
Starring: Francesca Bertini, Gustavo Serena, Carlo Benetti
Label:  Cineteca di Bologna (2015)
Format: DVD / PAL / Region 2
Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
Subtitles: Italian, English

Bonus:
* Interview with film historian Vittorio Martinelli (6 minutes, with English subtitles)
* 1912 short, Tempestuous Love (21 minutes, with English subtitles)
* 1912 short, The Fascination of Violence (13 minutes, with English subtitles)
* Photogallery
* 32 page bilingual booklet

Available on Amazon.it.


What's the film about?
The tragic story of a beatiful girl of the people, torn between the love of two men. Adapted by a popular drama by Salvatore Di Giacomo, Assunta Spina is widely recognized as one of the most important Italian silents, both for its appeal as a major example of the Diva-film genre as well as for its early realistic features. This DVD presents the film in the Bologna 1993 restoration, alongside with two more Neapolitan melodramas from the 1910s.

Recommendations
...Must-have.

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Le bambole (Bambole, 1965)

Directors: Mauro Bolognini, Luigi Comencini, Dino Risi, Franco Rossi
Starring: Gina Lollobrigida, Elke Sommer, Virna Lisi, Monica Vitti
Label:  Sony Pictures (2006)
Format: DVD / PAL / Region 2
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1 b/w
Audio: Italian, English (Dolby Digital 1.0 mono)
Subtitles: English, Italian

Available on Amazon.it

What's the film about?

In the mid '60s, Italian cinema faced a change in audience attitudes, reflecting the evolution of Italian society (especially the shift toward urbanization). As a response, Italian filmmakers created new genres (sexy comedy, spaghetti western, spy story) and adopted new technical process (zoom, color, Techniscope), also exploring modernity-oriented themes (pop culture, youth protest, sexual revolution). The omnibus film, consisting of various segments by various directors, thus became a very popular genre, also because it allowed filmmakers to experiment different styles. Bambole is a typical example of this trend, showcasing four popular female stars, each one directed by a talented director. While Risi and Comencini's sketches are quite lame, episodes by Rossi and Bolognini are still enjoyable in their own way: The Soup (starring Monica Vitti) is a black comedy set in a low-class district of Rome; Monsigor Cupid (starring Gina Lollobrigida and inspired by Boccaccio) features a rare portrait of female lust, very unusual in comedy Italian style. The DVD also provides an English dubbing, but subtitles are to be preferred.

Recommendations
...if you don't want to miss a rare Italian comedy centered on female charachters.

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Virna Lisi

Monica Vitti

Gina Lollobrigida

Titanus. Family Diary of Italian Cinema

I am glad to report that the Titanus Retrospective for the Locarno Film Festival has been a real hit, and our bilingual book, Titanus. Family Diary of Italian cinema, has been warmly greeted both by press and public. Anyone interested can buy his own copy on Amazon.it.

The book covers Italian cinema evolution from 1904 to 2014, ranging from early silent cinema to post-modern television, featuring original essays, interviews and production papers. Despite being focused on Italian most important major company, we have chosen an auterist perspective, investigating how directors' and producers' contributions melt together during the 1945-1964 golden age of Italian cinema.

Carlo Chatrian talks about our book on MUBI.

Some highlights from the book:
* Neapolitan silents
* Matarazzo's melodramas
* Mastro5's revue films and musical extravaganzas
* Risi and Comencini's early comedies
* Tourneur and Corbucci's peplums
* Ava Gardner's Italian films
* nouvelle vague Italian style (Olmi, Zurlini, Petri)
* confessions of Visconti's editor
* Aldrich's Sodom and Gomorrah backstory
* De Santis on The Wolves director's cut
* memo from producer Goffredo Lombardo
* unfilmed projects
* 150+ photos

* essays by Roberto Turigliatto, Simone Starace, Bernard Eisenschitz, Sergio Toffetti, Sergio M. Germani, Miguel Marías, Chris Fujiwara, Olaf Möller, Jean Douchet, Stefania Parigi.

L'invenzione di Morel (Morel's Invention, 1974)

Director: Emidio Greco
Starring: Giulio Brogi, Anna Karina, John Steiner
Label:  Ripley's Home Video (2012)
Format: DVD / PAL / Region 0
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Audio: Italian (Dolby Digital 1.0 mono)
Subtitles: English, French

Available on Amazon.it

What's the film about?

A fugitive lands on an apparently deserted island, but soon some strange tourists arrive... Based on Adolfo Bioy Casares' science fiction novel, the film reduces the plot to its bare essentials, focusing on the metaphorical level.  The style is both minimalist (no word is spoken in the first 30 minutes) and surrealist, with a dreamlike quality of mise-en-scène. Very demanding but also very inspiring.

Recommendations
...if you enjoy arthouse cinema, here you have a sci-fi fantasy in form of Borgesian paradox.

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Sangue bleu (The Princess of Monte Bello, 1914)

Director: Nino Oxilia
Starring: Francesca Bertini, Angelo Gallina, André Habay
Label:  Cineteca di Bologna (2014)
Format: DVD / PAL / Region 2
Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
Subtitles: Italian, English, Dutch

Bonus:

* Featurette on Nino Oxilia (11 minutes, with English subtitles)
* 1913 short, Kri Kri e il tango (5 minutes, with English subtitles)
* Photogalleries
* 28 page bilingual booklet

Available from Cineteca di Bologna and Amazon.it.

What's the film about?

A noble lady divorces from her husband and gets blackmailed, losing her child's custody. Among the greatest divas of Italian cinema, Francesca Bertini stars as a fallen woman in this maternal melodrama. Perhaps not on the same level with Assunta Spina or Mariute, but Nino Oxilia's tableaux are alway enriched by his mastery in blocking and lighting. The 1913 comedy short, starring Raymond Frau, is also quite enjoyable.

Recommendations
...if you are interested in Diva-films, this is an indispensable release.

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L'imperatore di Capri (Emperor of Capri, 1949)

Director: Luigi Comencini
Starring: Totò, Yvonne Sanson, Marisa Merlini, Mario Castellani
Label:  Dolmen Home Video (2008)
Format: DVD / PAL / Region 2
Aspect ratio: 1.33:1 b/w
Audio: Italian (Dolby Digital 1.0 mono/5.1 remix)
Subtitles: English, Italian

Bonus:
* Photo gallery (20 stills)

Available on Amazon.it

What's the film about?

The adventures of a humble waiter who is mistaken for an Arabian Prince. Totò debuted as film actor in 1937, and he remained the most popular Italian comedian until his death in 1967. Comedy doesn't travel well, especially when based on verbal humour, so his films are generally little known outside Italy, but some of his best works should be discovered by international audiences. Directed by Luigi Comenini, Emperor of Capri offers one of Totò's most enjoyable performances, a twisted farce enriched with some black comedy moments and a surrealistic touch.

Recommendations
...if you want a sample of Totò's talent in one of his best vehicles.

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Titanus (1904-2014)

The Retrospective for the 67th edition of the Festival del film Locarno (6–16 August 2014) will be dedicated to the Italian production studio Titanus. Numerous European and American institutions will repeat the program: the Cineteca di Bologna, the Cineteca Nazionale (National Film Archive) in Rome, the National Cinema Museum in Turin, the Cinémathèque suisse, the Cinémas du Grütli in Geneva, the Filmpodium in Zurich, the Film Society of Lincoln Center in New York, the American Cinematheque and the USC School of Cinematic Arts in Los Angeles. The retrospective will be accompanied by an English-friendly book, on which I am currently working.
 

Official press release:
http://www.pardolive.ch/it/Pardo-Live/today-at-the-festival/2014/retrospettiva-titanus?sl=en

Inferno (1911)

Directors: Francesco Bertolini, Adolfo Padovan, Giuseppe De Liguoro
Starring: Salvatore Papa, Arturo Pirovano, Giuseppe De Liguoro
Label:  Cineteca di Bologna (2011)
Format: DVD / PAL / Region 2
Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
Subtitles: English, Italian

Bonus:
* 1909 short, Il diavolo zoppo (15 minutes, with English subtitles)
* 1910 short, Come fu che l'ingordigia rovinò il Natale a Cretinetti (13 minutes, with English subtitles)
* Excerpt from 1926 Maciste all'inferno (8 minutes, with English subtitles)
* Comparison between the film and Gustave Doré's engravings
* Photogallery

Available on Amazon.it

What's the film about?

Often cited as the first feature-lenght film ever, this version of Dante's Inferno also marked a milestone in Italian early cinema. Entirely framed in Full or Long Shot, the film is pre-Griffithian in pacing and editing, with storytelling heavily relying on titles. Still, composition and lighting are often quite enchanting, clearly indebted to Gustave Doré's works, but also to the visionary cinema of Georges Méliès. The DVD features two different soundtrack: I couldn't stand the modernist "dubbing" by Edison Studio, but the piano score by Marco Dalpane was fine.

Recommendations
Essential for anyone interested in early development of film style.

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1860 (1934)

Director: Alessandro Blasetti
Starring: Giuseppe Gulino, Aida Bellia, Gianfranco Giachetti, Mario Ferrari
Label:  Ripley's Home Video (2007)
Format: DVD / PAL / Region 0
Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
Audio: Italian (Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo)
Subtitles: English, Italian

Bonus:
* Contains both the 1998 restoration (74 minutes) and the 1951 reissue by Blasetti (69 minutes)
* 1934 alternate epilogue (1 minute)

Available on Amazon.it

What's the film about?

A chronicle of the unification of Italy as seen through the eyes of a young partisan. While the film is sometimes (unhappily) labelled as "propaganda", Blasetti's approach can easily be considered as proto-Neorealist because of its attention on popular participation and historical process. Influenced by Eisenstein and Pabst, the style is in fact anti-rhetorical and even anti-spectacular, but also unexpectedly lyrical and touching. Perhaps, non-Italian viewers may prefer to start with the 1951 version, which has a more declared didactic aim.

Recommendations
...well, a must see.

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Borelli Lives!

Update

Ma l'amor mio non muore! is now also available from Amazon.it.
Here you can find my review, written when the disc was still only available from Cineteca di Bologna.

Necropolis (1970)

Director: Franco Brocani
Starring: Viva, Carmelo Bene, Tina Aumont, Pierre Clementi
Label:  Ripley's Home Video (2013)
Format: DVD / PAL / Region 0
Aspect ratio: 1.66:1
Audio: multilingual (Dolby Digital 2.0 mono)
Subtitles: English

Available on Amazon.it

What's the film about?

Underground film from the 1968 era, clearly influenced by pop art (the color scheme is very Mario Schifano-like) and Warhol's works. The film lacks any kind of storyline, being made up of monologues by such popular characters as Frankenstein's monster, King Kong, Mona Lisa and Bloody Countess Bathory, and these fragments convey an apocalyptic view of our culture, where ideology, religion and love are definitely dead. Great casting, especially for the unforgettable Viva/Bene duet.

Recommendations
...if you want to discover one of our most important underground filmmakers.

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Parole dipinte (1940-2009)

Director: Luciano Emmer (often with Enrico Gras and Tatiana Grauding as co-directors)
Label:  Cineteca di Bologna (2010)
Format: DVD / PAL / Region 2
Audio: Italian (Dolby Digital 2.0 mono)
Subtitles: Italian, English, French

Contents:
* Racconto da un affresco (1940-1946)
* Paradiso terrestre (1941-1946)
* Cantico delle creature (1943)
* Guerrieri (1943)
* Destino d'amore, ovvero, Piccolo mondo al platino (1942)
* I fratelli miracolosi (1949)
* L'invenzione della croce (1948)
* L'allegoria della primavera (1948)
* La leggenda di Sant'Orsola (1948, French version also included)
* Isole nella laguna (1948)
* Romantici a Venezia (1948, French version also included)
* Goya. La festa di Sant'Isidoro / I disastri della guerra (1950)
* Leonardo Da Vinci (1952)
* La sublime fatica (1966)
* Il dramma di Cristo narrato da Giotto (1966, French version also included)
* Incontrare Picasso (1954-2000)
* Nostalgie (2001, French version only)
* I magici colori di Napoli (2004)
* La paz y la guerra (2009)
* Le carceri di invenzione (2009)

Bonus:

* Interview with composer Roman Vlad (16 minutes, with English and French subtitles)
* Scherzo su Giotto by enrico ghezzi and Luciano Emmer (5 minutes, with English and French subtitles)
* Passeggiate con Luciano (12 minutes, with English and French subtitles)
* 52 page Italian/French booklet

Available on Amazon.it

What are these films about?

Perhaps today Luciano Emmer is best known for a fistful of comedies shot in the '50s, but in his career he actually worked mainly in non-fictional cinema (educational shorts, spots, TV). His documentaries on art, in particular, represent his most accomplished works and are known to have inspired Alain Resnais' early films. In this wonderful 6-hour boxset Cineteca di Bologna has collected 20 shorts, ranging from Emmer's first attempts to his most recent videos. Notable appearances by Jean Cocteau (La leggenda di Sant'Orsola and Romantici a Venezia) and Picasso (Incontrare Picasso).

Recommendations
...if you want to get in touch with one of Italian greatest documentary filmmakers.

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Racconto da un affresco, 1940-1946

Romantici a Venezia, 1948

Incontrare Picasso, 1954-2000

Ma l'amor mio non muore! (Love Everlasting, 1913)

Director: Mario Caserini
Starring: Lyda Borelli, Mario Bonnard, Giampaolo Rosmino
Label:  Cineteca di Bologna (2013)
Format: DVD / PAL / Region 2
Aspect ratio: 1.33:1 b/w
Subtitles: Italian, English

Bonus:

* Tinted fragment (9 minutes)
* Photogalleries
* 24 page bilingual booklet

Available from Amazon.it and Cineteca di Bologna.

What's the film about?

Beautifully shot and acted, this melodrama is one of the most outstanding examples of the so-called "Diva film", a hugely popular genre in Italian early cinema. These films were meant as vehicle for their leading female star (in this case, the measured, stylized Lyda Borelli), but here you also have an added value consisting in Mario Caserini's fine mise-en-scène, where each shot becomes an art déco piece. The DVD features a superior restoration, and you also have two differents soundtracks: a new 2013 orchestral score and a compilation from 1913-1961 opera recordings.

Recommendations
...if you want to discover Italian cinema from one hundred years ago.

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Il Cinema Ritrovato DVD Awards

I just got home from Bologna, where I attended "Il Cinema Ritrovato" 2013. Here you can have a look at the DVD Awards ceremony.

http://www.cinefiliaritrovata.it/il-cinema-ritrovato-dvd-awards/

Gli ultimi (already reviewed here) won as the Best DVD of the year.
Also, Geoff Gardner wrote a nice appreciation of the film:

The Award for Best DVD of the year at the Bologna Cinema Ritrovato to Gli Ultimi. It was made in the Friuli region in 1963 and not long after fell into obscurity. Friuli, a northern province which was Pasolini’s birthplace, has its own Cineteca and it supervised the restoration work and commissioned the 150 page publication, only in Italian, that accompanies the DVD. The film itself is a sensitive story of a young peasant boy growing up in the depression years of the 30s. The son of a farm labourer he tends several sheep, is mercilessly bullied at school and lives with his family in dirt poor surroundings. The family diet is polenta (il cibo della miseria) and vegetables. The village is hollowing out as most of the able bodied men have headed for Belgium to work in the coal mines. Fascism gets only a brief nod via a ranter in the local pub. The black and white photography by Armando Nannuzzi is beautiful to behold. Singling the film out for this attention had one immediate positive effect. Nobody having heard of it there was a run on the available copies being offered at the Cineteca’s book and DVD stall and it sold out quickly.

A luci spente (Lights Off, 2004)

Director: Maurizio Ponzi
Starring: Giulio Scarpati, Giuliana De Sio, Toni Bertorelli, Damiano Andriano
Label:  Ripley's Home Video (2007)
Format: DVD / PAL / Region 0
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Audio: Italian (Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo)
Subtitles: English, French, German

Available on Amazon.it

What's the film about?

Loosely inspired by Vittorio De Sica's La porta del cielo backstory. In 1943 an antifascist director is shooting a film with financial support from the Vatican, trying to avoid the regime propaganda in the name of realism. Maurizio Ponzi had been one of Italian most interesting new wave critics (also writing for "Cahiers du Cinéma"), and when he later became a director he especially worked in comedies and TV series. This film combines both his activities, offering a nice insight into Italian fascist cinema. Lightly likeable.

Recommendations
...if you want a portrait of Italian cinema before Neorealism.

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