Fellini’s Roma (1972) dir. Federico Fellini
Starring: Peter Gonzales, Fiona Florence, Pia De Doses, Renato Giovannoli

By Alan Bacchus

During one of the sequences, in which we follow a camera crew around town photographing a hippie student rally, we watch a group of bystanders discuss with Fellini himself their desire for the director to depict Rome with a modern sensibility. Fellini candidly admits he can only make a film from his point of view with his own unique peculiarities. Thus Roma feels like his final chapter of self-reflection after his notable pictures La Dolce Vita and 8 ½ .

The opening chapter takes place in the pre-War 1938, depicts a teenaged Fellini arriving in Rome for the first time and observing the strange and wonderful characters in the tenement housing community of his family. The episode is anchored by a stunningly visual sequence of the community preparing for and indulging a group meal on the evening streets. It’s a sequence featuring a hundred or so actors and background players choreographed with the hypnotic, trance-inducing thrill only Fellini can create.

Two other mesmerizing sequences stand tall in Fellini canon. First, a journey underground into a subway construction project, wherein Fellini and his crew get a glimpse of the massive engineering project next to newly discovered artifacts from ancient Rome. When the crew discover a lost chamber they are forced to stop digging to investigate. Unveiled is a pristine room full of wall frescos which upon exposure to the exterior atmosphere degrades and fades never to be viewed in his former condition again. It’s an astonishing sequence.

A papal fashion show and an early brother sequence showcases Fellini’s indulgence in garish pomp, but his scenes of brilliantly choreographed movements recall the cinematic elegance of 8 ½. In particular the final sequence which follows a group of motorcyclists through the streets and roundabouts of the city is gorgeous and supremely cinematic.

Fellini’s Roma is available on Blu-Ray from the Criterion Collection


 
 

The Organizer (1963) dir. Mario Monicelli
Starring: Marcello Mastroianni, Renato Salvatori, Annie Girardot, Bernard Blier, Raffaella Carrà

By Alan Bacchus

Nineteen Sixty-Three was a great year for Italian cinema, among others the year brought us Fellini’s 8 ½ and Luchino Visconti’s The Leopard. Arguably on par with these two pictures, though much lesser known, is Mario Monicelli’s The Organizer, a superlative, visually stunning, period labour film featuring a bearded Marcello Mastroianni as a beleaguered professor who wanders into a small industrial town to incite a labour strike.

We can feel the weight of the film instantly. It’s the late 1800s in Turin, Italy, the heart of the European Industrial Revolution, and a power struggle has developed between a hopelessly exploited labour force at odds against a privileged bourgeoisie. Eighteen-hour work days, little pay, poor working conditions and inadequate benefits were the result of early unbridled capitalism. Out of this powder keg of conflict came labour unions, strikes and, ultimately, socialism in Europe.

This is the just context for Mario Monicelli, who covers the labour strike of one small Turin community at this time, the fear and trepidation of workers just beginning to organize. Marcello Mastroianni plays a bearded vagabond professor arriving in town, illegally hitching a ride on a train. Once in town he finds a room with a local worker, and while overhearing talks of a labour strike, he can’t help but intervene and offer advice. What the professor quickly realizes is that the town, while passionate about solidarity, is missing leadership. The professor turns out to be a brilliant orator and rallies the workers in a lengthy strike that tests the internal fortitude of the entire village.

It’s not all reverie, as Monicelli takes his characters to task for their decisions. The fight against the factory owners is bloody without the heroic ‘workers of the world unite’ propaganda one might expect from a ‘labour film.’ At the time the movie was billed as a period neo-realist film. Indeed, the use of local non-actors, real locations and distinctly working class themes are prominent, but it’s the dose of cold hard realism at the end that resonates best.

However, the reason the film justly sits alongside The Leopard and Fellini’s 8 ½ is the superlative visuals engineered by dynamo DOP Giuseppe Rotunno and the authentic production design of Mario Garbuglia (who also designed The Leopard). Rotunno’s magnificent black and white photography is rich with detail, particularly the scenes in the textile mill, which are a wonder. The wide-angle compositions showing the machines and men working in unison are awe-inspiring, capturing with utmost authenticity the look, sound and feel of the Industrial Revolution. Few films have captured more faithfully the flavour of this period (David Lynch’s The Elephant Man being one exception).

The Organizer comes at a time when, arguably, B&W cinematography was at its peak – the '60s - the last decade before colour almost fully took over. Thus, we get to see pristine, immaculately lit, stark imagery in beautiful widescreen, creating a truly epic feel, incomparable in quality to any colour films at the time. Though I have no quantitative evidence to base this on, I don’t think it would be too presumptuous to say it would take another 20 years before colour film stock caught up to the quality of B&W film in the '60s. From technical to creative to historical, The Organizer is a triumph on all levels of filmmaking.

The Organizer is available on Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection.

Identification of a Woman (1982) dir. Michaelangelo Antonioni
Starring: Tomas Milian, Daniela Silverio, Christine Boisson

**1/2

By Alan Bacchus

The great Italian modernist master known for beguiling cinema teasers like L’Avventura and Blow Up was 72 when he made this film. It has the makings of a 70-year-old, waning in creativity but still virile enough to titillate us with healthy doses of graphic Italian sex and a disconnected storyline that fits into his career of narrative ambiguities.

There is a strong connection to Fellini’s 8½ here too, with Antonioni’s lead character, Niccolo, like Fellini’s Guido, at a creative impasse, wandering through various affairs trying to connect emotionally with a woman and find a new leading lady for his next film. But is this really what the film is about? At the beginning, Antonioni sets up a mystery of sorts. Early on, after courting a very sexual female socialite called Mavi, Niccolo is threatened by a man advising him to stay away from her. The threat both angers and intrigues Niccolo, who sets off on a journey with Mavi to uncover the identity of the jealous other man.

Midway through, Antonioni crafts his key set piece, a suspenseful chase of sorts in a fog-enshrouded stretch of highway. It’s a lengthy sequence that plays as a metaphor for the murky background of Mavi, as well as Antonioni’s fascination with oblique narratives and loose-ended storytelling.

This film is no exception. Shortly after the fog sequence Mavi inexplicably disappears herself – the victim of the threatening man, perhaps? As expected, Antonioni provides little explanation or closure in this regard. Nor do we require this from him. Antonioni paints a vivid portrait of Niccolo, his leading man, as a sexually liberated middle-aged man with the most confident and casual sex life I’ve seen on screen in a while.

It’s mildly hilarious watching Niccolo approach female strangers with such casual candor. In one scene with a young girl at a swimming pool the gal admits to him in a matter of seconds that her favourite sexual position is masturbation. And yet this admission doesn’t phase Niccolo, who coolly accepts the statement like he’s working on a research project on the female mind and soul. He doesn’t bed the girl from the swimming pool, but he does find gratification with Ida, a comparatively demure actress who is still sexually vivacious and confident. Oh, to be Italian.

This film was also ‘celebrated’ for its sexual explicitness, and indeed we're treated to some truly eye-popping sexual acts and body positions. It also feature some extraordinarily aggressive kissing, which, under Antonioni’s direction, seems to have actor Tomas Milan attacking his partner’s mouth like a feral animal. It’s a head turner for sure. But hey, it’s Italy!

Niccolo’s relationship with Ida plays out more conventionally than the brainteaser plotting of Mavi and the mystery man. By the end, a strong theme of man’s inability to connect with women – or at least Antonioni’s inability to connect with women - develops. And Niccolo’s rejection of Ida in the end resounds with quiet tragedy. That is until a truly bizarre finale (even for Antonioni) when he indulges in a loopy science fiction dream sequence featuring Niccolo blasting into space toward the sun in an asteroid-shaped spaceship. But hey, Antonioni was 72 when he made this. By this time, like Jean-Luc Godard in the present, his career had given him carte blanche to do whatever he wanted.

Identification of a Woman is available on Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection.

It Rains In My Village (1969) dir. Aleksandr Petrovic
Starring: Ivan Paluch, Annie Girardot, Mija Aleksic, Eva Ras

***1/2

By Greg Klymkiw

A simple minded young woman begs for food from a rail worker who's been ogling her. Dangling a bit of his lunch as if it were a carrot before a horse, he leads her into a field and rapes her. Later, she staggers through the woods gnawing on a crust of bread and another man drags her into the bushes and rapes her. After satisfying his urges, he takes her to a wedding celebration where she is encouraged to humiliate herself for the amusement of all the townsfolk gathered there and is furthermore urged to humiliate the bride by removing the newly married woman's veil and headpiece and wear it while dancing to the music of a traveling Gypsy folk band. Much later on in the movie, the bruised, bloody, savagely beaten corpse of the same mute, mentally challenged young woman lies on a wooden bench in a filthy shack, her eyes frozen - open in terror - her last emotion before the last beat of her heart.

This is Serbia.

The young woman's name is Goca (Eva Ras) and while she is not the protagonist of Alexandr Petrovic's powerful, semi-neo-realist drama It Rains In My Village, it is her heart and soul that seems most central to the despair related in the narrative.

Telling the simple tale of a handsome, shy swine herder Trijsha (Ivan Paluch) who is drunkenly duped by his equally jack-hammered buddies at the local bar into marrying the mute, mentally challenged Goca, this is a film that never holds back in exposing the brutal, ignorant alcohol-fueled misery of life in a Serbian village in 1968. This is a patriarchal world where women are seen, but not heard - save for their fake cries of ecstasy while being drunkenly ploughed or the cries of pain and terror as they're beaten by their Neanderthal husbands.

Goca, being mute, cannot scream. Her eyes, however, tell tales beyond any words.

Trijsha toils with his herd of swine, spending as much time away from his wife and their eventual newborn child as possible. He spends downtime in the bar, bowling with his buddies on the rickety makeshift alley and drinking.

Always drinking.

Booze is the only thing that seems to numb the pain, but it never really does the trick. Trijsha falls madly in love with Reza (Annie Girardot) the new teacher who comes to town. She's from the city, and unlike the local women, she's her own woman. She takes whomever and whatever she wants - using her beauty and seemingly insatiable appetite for sex. Trijsha's stud qualities keeps her amused for awhile, but when she dumps him for a new succession of suitors, he drinks himself blind, beats his wife to death, drinks more, passes out and allows his elderly father to take the rap for the murder.

Other than booze, the only other thing that seems to mean anything to anyone in the village are the folk songs of their ancestors - played by gypsy musicians at weddings and in the local bar. Folk music fills the open air and permeates the spirits of the men as they continue to lead the brutal, aimless lives.

Though they live under the shadow of Communism, the Orthodox Church still, in its blessed patriarchy, reigns over all and whatever spare money anyone has goes to rebuilding the church - a ramshackle, bombed-out mess from the war. Their pathetic attempts to hold a Communist Party meeting is an excuse to drink and discuss what they need from the party. The needs are for the collective, so to speak, but they're self-serving and certainly no in the supposed spirit of the movement.

The village teems with mud, puddles and pigs (not just the men). Life plods along, punctuated by occasional bursts of violence and the denizens of the village hurling insults at each other - fuelled by macho posturing and, of course, booze. This is life as it was during Communism, but it's obvious it always was this way and would, in fact remain - long after the fall of Communism..

In life, squalor, ignorance and repression breeds more of the same and this is easily one of the most savage indictments of poverty I've ever seen. It's also a raw, unflinching portrait of life in Eastern Europe - a life that is sadly, not much different now. (Hey, it's not just Serbia. Recent trips to Ukraine suggest this way of life permeates many other Slavic countries. Life was always cheap in the "Old Country" and continues thus. Watching this movie made in 1968 shocked me as I felt like I was wandering through villages in contemporary Ukraine.)

Director Petrovic brings his roots in the documentary tradition to full bear in this classic of Eastern European cinema. My longtime e-pal and colleague Michael Brooke recently reminded me of the great Petrovic picture I Even Met Happy Gypsies and how Emir Kusturica owed his entire career to that movie. That is indisputable. Certainly all through It Rains In My Village, Kusturica was always in my mind. God knows I love Kusturica, and It Rains In My Village is a film that had a similar emotional response from me, though frankly, I found it had even more resonance than even my favourite Kusturica Underground. The performances Petrovic elicits in Village aren't pitched as high and, in fact, there are few films that feature a performance as delicate and exquisite as that delivered by Eva Ras as the doomed Goca. For me, it's on a par with some of the best work from Giulietta Masina. Like the aforementioned Petrovic picture I Even Met Happy Gypsies, It Rains In My Village was in competition for the Palme d'Or at Cannes, but seems to be largely forgotten.

This must change.

It Rains In My Village is definitely an important work to be seen. It's available as part of the on-demand MGM Limited Edition Collection DVD-Rs. Its subtitles have been poorly translated and given that folk music is so important to the movie, it's a shame nobody bothered to translate any of the songs sung by the gypsy bands in the film. My knowledge of Ukrainian and Russian are rudimentary enough that I was able to make out the gist of the songs due to the similarity of many words in Serbian, but I know I was missing many of the subtleties and poetic qualities of the lyrics. This movie, if not all of the work by Petrovic deserves better than this and one hopes that wither Criterion or Kino will dive in to the rescue. The picture transfer comes from a mediocre source, but the grain is clearly intentional, so this is not as much an issue. The bottom line is that this is yet another film that deserves to be seen properly, but for now, it's available for rent or sale in this watchable version at very few specialty video stores and can be purchased in a no-frills edition online. In Toronto, Canada the best places to purchase such titles directly in a retail setting are at the Sunrise Records flagship store at Yonge and Dundas and the resurrected Starstruck Video at Dundas and Tomken.


A Quiet Place In The Country (1968) dir. Elio Petri
Starring: Franco Nero, Vanessa Redgrave

**

By Greg Klymkiw

This is a strange, perverse, but ultimately pretentious Repulsion-styled thriller with Franco Nero as an artist who is going completely out of his mind and may or may not be haunted by the ghost of a woman he may or may not have murdered. His patron is a wealthy woman played by Vanessa Redgrave. He may or may not be having sex with her. The movie is replete with plenty of cool images, an amazing Ennio Morricone score and more nudity from Vanessa Redgrave than I ever thought humanly possibly. And it's great nudity, too. What a babe!

That said, I really couldn't make any sense of this. It's not suspenseful enough to work fully as a thriller - especially since its plot is such a mess - and it's not much of an art house item (or is, depending upon how you feel about arthouse picture) as it feels annoyingly, boneheadedly precious.

As a "head" film in the tradition of Alejandro Jodorowsky's El Topo or Holy Mountain, it also doesn't really cut the mustard since it never feels like it's about ANYTHING. Whether one is willing to acknowledge that Jodorowsky makes movies that ARE about something is not at issue here, they at least feel like they MIGHT be about something.

A Quiet Place in the Country is an overwrought acid trip that I ultimately didn't "get", but it's a definite curiosity piece and well worth seeing on that basis alone.

I might actually even watch it again.

Just to see if I missed something.

Just to see if it might be better than I'm giving it credit for. Or not.

It still makes for compelling viewing. One can't say that about too many movies as flawed and head-scratching as this one is. And it's one of the only films I find Vanessa Redgrave to be really sexy in.

Genuinely sexy.

That's something, mais non?

A Quiet Place in the Country is also part of the MGM DVD-R on-demand series. It's a decent transfer from excellent source material and available either through special order online or at specialty video retailers. In Toronto, Canada the best places to purchase such titles directly in a retail setting are at the Sunrise Records flagship store at Yonge and Dundas and the resurrected Starstruck Video at Dundas and Tomken.

La Dolce Vita (1960) dir. Federico Fellini
Starring: Marcello Mastroianni, Yvonne Furneaux, Anouk Aimee, Anita Ekberg, Alain Cuny, Walter Santesso, Magali Noel, Annibale Ninchi, Nico, Valeria Ciangottini, Alain Dijon and Lex Barker.

****

By Greg Klymkiw

It has been said that in death we all end up alone.

If we are alone in life, bereft of love, is existence itself then, not a living death?

For me, this is the central theme of La Dolce Vita, Federico Fellini’s great classic of cinema – a film that never ceases to thrill, tantalize and finally, force its audience to look deep into a mirror and search for answers to questions about themselves. This is what makes for great movies that live beyond the ephemeral qualities far too many filmmakers and audiences prefer to settle for - especially in the current Dark Ages of cinema we find ourselves in. It’s the reason why the picture continues to live forever.

What makes La Dolce Vita especially great is that Fellini – as he was so often able to achieve – got to have his cake and eat it too. He created art that entertained AND challenged audiences the world over.

On its surface, La Dolce Vita is cool – cooler than cool, to be frank.

The title, translated from Italian into English means "The Good Life", or more appropriately, “The Sweet Life”. The movie plunges us headlong into a spectacular, decadent world of sex, sin and indulgence of the highest order. Against the backdrop of a swinging post-war Rome, the picture works its considerable magic beyond those surface details and Fellini delivers yet another magnificent entertainment that explores the eternal divide between men and women.

My poor daughter; she’s only ten years old and her Daddy has been showing her more Fellini movies than any ten year old has probably ever seen anytime, anywhere on God's good, green Earth. About halfway through La Dolce Vita – after an umpteenth sequence where Marcello Mastroianni indulges himself in the charms of yet another woman whilst his faithful girlfriend waits home alone by the phone, my daughter (who recently watched I Vitelloni, that great Fellini male layabout picture) turned to me with the sweetest straight face I will always remember and she said, “Dad, when I get older, remind me never to date Italian men.” I reminded her it wasn’t only Italian men who behaved this way. After all, had she not also recently seen Barry Levinson’s Diner? “Okay,” she added, “remind me not to date American men either.”

For those from Mars (and/or anyone who has NOT seen this movie), La Dolce Vita tells the episodic tale of Marcello (Marcello Mastroianni), a journalist in Rome who covers the society and entertainment beat of a major tabloid newspaper. He spends most of his days and (especially) nights, hanging out in clubs, restaurants, cafes, piazzas and parties covering the lives of the rich and famous with his trusty photographer sidekick Paparazzo (Walter Santesso). (The word paparazzi, used to describe annoying news photographers came from the name of this character.)

Downright ignoring and/or paying lip service to his beautiful, sexy long-suffering live-in girlfriend Emma (Yvonne Furneaux) whilst dallying with an endless parade of gorgeous women he’s writing about, Marcello is as much a celebrity as those he covers. Though he lacks the wealth his subjects are endowed with, he certainly wields considerable power.

It would seem that Marcello is living the sweet life to its fullest – at least on the surface.

It is, of course, the surface details of La Dolce Vita - both its cinematic style and content - that made it one of the biggest Italian films at the box office worldwide.

Of course, though, what audience would NOT be susceptible to the stunning form of one of the picture's ravishing stars, Anita Ekberg? As Sylvia, the Swedish screen sensation visiting Rome to make a movie, Ekberg squeezes her to-die-for curves into a series of fashionable outfits. Ekberg is style personified. From her spectacular entrance from within a private jet, posing willingly for hordes of slavering reporters to her gossamer movements round a huge luxury suite as she throws out delicious quips during a press conference and then, to her lithe, gazelle-like bounding up the endless St. Peter’s staircase until she and Marcello, who follows her avidly to the balcony, enjoy a quiet, magical, romantic interlude, perched in a holy nest towering above the Vatican.

It is the Ekberg sequences that everyone most remembers – possibly because they appear so early in the film and serve as the most sumptuously sexy introduction to Marcello’s world.

Granted, prior to Ekberg’s entrance we’re treated to the famous opening sequence of Jesus Christ in statue form being airlifted into Rome on a helicopter as Marcello and Paparazzo follow closely behind in their own whirlybird, snapping photos and hovering briefly over a bevy of bikini-clad beauties to try and get their phone numbers.

Following closely behind, we’re indulged with the ravishing beauty of Anouk Aimee as Maddalena, the bored heiress who whisks Marcello away from a nightclub, drives him through the streets of Rome in her swanky Cadillac, picks up a street whore, hires her to provide a dank, sleazy, water-flooded basement suite – a sordid love-nest, if you will, for a night of lovemaking with Marcello whilst the whore waits outside for the rest of the night - arguing with her pimp about how much room rent to charge the kinky couple.

To cap off the shenanigans we're further tantalized by Marcello’s gorgeous, heart-broken Earth Mother girlfriend Emma, writhing about from a dangerous overdose whereupon our duplicitous hero races her madly to the hospital professing his love to her all the way into the recovery room until he steps out to telephone Maddalena.

These stunning episodes not only provide insight into Marcello’s stylish rakishness, but also careen us to and fro within a veritable roller coaster ride of pure, unadulterated hedonism.

There’s no two ways about it, Marcello’s a cad, but we love him.

And seemingly, so does everyone.

By the time we get to the aforementioned Anita Ekberg sequences, it’s as if Fellini had structured the movie to luxuriate us in ever-more potent fixes of pure speed-ball-like abandon:

Jesus flying above Rome; screw it, not enough.

Gorgeous heiress banging our hero in a whore’s sleazy digs; nope, still not enough.

Lonely sex kitten girlfriend pumped on drugs and near death; uh, yeah, we still need more.

What act could possibly follow any of this?

Anita Ekberg, of course.

Fellini ups the ante on overindulgence to such a degree, that as an audience, we’re as hyped up as Marcello and those who populate this world.

As if this wasn’t enough, Fellini manages to get Ekberg to out-Ekberg Ekberg with MORE Ekberg. From airport to press conference to the Everest of Rome above the Vatican, he plunges us from the clouds of Heaven deep into the bowels of a party within the ancient walls of the Caracalla Baths. Here Marcello gets to dance arms around waist, cheek-to-cheek and chest to breast with La Ekberg until all Hell breaks magnificently loose with the arrival of the flamboyant Mephistophelean actor Frankie Stout (Alain Dijon). Marcello is banished to a table with Ekberg’s sloshed, thickheaded beefcake boyfriend Robert (played hilariously by the genuine B-movie idol Lex Barker, RKO’s Tarzan and star of numerous Euro-trash action pictures) while Frankie and Ekberg heat up the floor with a cha-cha to end all cha-chas.

Fellini continues topping himself. The next sequence of Ekberg-mania is cinema that has seldom been matched.

Can there be anything more sumptuous and breathtaking in Rome, nay – the world – than the Fountain of Trevi?

Yes, the Fountain of Trevi with Anita Ekberg in it.

I can assure you this beats any wet T-shirt contest you're likely to see.

As Fellini has incrementally hoisted us to dizzying heights, we are only one-third of the way through La Dolce Vita .

Where can the Maestro possibly take us from here?

We go where all tales of indulgence must go – down WITH redemption or down with NO redemption. Fellini forces us to hope (at times AGAINST hope) that Marcello will see the light or, at the very least, blow it big time and gain from his loss.

What we come back to is what I feel the central theme of our picture is – that if living life to the fullest is at the expense of love and to therefore live life alone, then how can life itself not ultimately be a living death?

For me, one of the fascinating ways in which Fellini tells Marcello’s story is by allowing us to fill the central character’s shoes and experience the seeming joy and style of this “sweet life”. For much of the film’s running time, we’re along for the ride – not just willingly, but as vicarious participants.

The magic Fellini conjures is subtle indeed. The whole business of getting the cake and eating it too plays a huge part in the proceedings. So often, great stories can work by indulging us in aberrant behaviour – glamorizing it to such a degree that we’re initially unable to see precisely what the protagonist’s real dilemma is. Not seeing the dilemma in the early going allows us to have some fun with the very thing that threatens to be the central character's potential downfall.

For Marcello, it eventually becomes – slowly and carefully – very obvious. He is surrounded by activity, enveloped by other people, the centre of attention of those he is reporting on, yet he is, in a sense, an island unto himself.

Marcello is, in spite of those around him, truly alone.

His real challenge is to break free of the shackles of excess in order to love. Alas, to love another and, in turn, accept their love, he must learn to love himself. On the mere surface, Marcello is all about self-gratification, but as the story progresses and Fellini places him at the centre of yet more sumptuous and indulgent sweet-life set pieces, we see a man struggling with the demons – not only of excess, but those ever-elusive opportunities to gratify the soul.

Even the roller coaster ride of Marcello’s relationship with Emma, the one constant person in his life willing to die for love of him, is a story element that keeps us with his journey. When he is annoyed and/or even disgusted with her, so too are we – and yet, we have the ability – one that Fellini bestows upon us by alternately keeping us in Marcello’s perspective and at arm’s length from it to see just how unconscionable and even wrongheaded he’s being. Most importantly, we begin to feel for Emma and understand her love and frustration. We see how brilliant and charming Marcello is also and a part of us craves for him to find peace.

Finally, what is especially poignant and tragic is that Marcello can only admit to both Emma and himself that he does love her when he is alone (or as in one great scene - seemingly alone) with her. Strangely, these are the few times in the movie when Marcello is truly NOT alone.

When Marcello is together with Emma in the presence of others, it's a different story altogether. When he brings her along to cover a Madonna-sighting which turns into a wild carnival of Catholic hysteria, he withdraws from Emma and she finds herself caught up in the craze of this "miracle". The miracle is, however, false. The two young children who have been put up to claiming they can see the Madonna by their fortune-seeking family, run to and fro - hundreds of the faithful following madly in their footsteps - even Emma, who begs God for Marcello to be with her exclusively and forever.

When Marcello seeks solace in his old friend Steiner (Alain Cuny) a man who has filled his own life with art, literature, culture and most importantly, a sense of home and family, Marcello sees a potential way of escape. Alas, further set pieces involving Steiner dash Marcello’s hopes.

During a vicious argument that eventually ensues between Marcello and Emma, Fellini once again proves that – in spite of his excesses as a stylist – he is ultimately a filmmaker endowed with considerable humanity. Though the bile rises and invective is hurled violently from both parties, we are placed squarely in front of humanity at its most raw and vulnerable.

The final sequences in this film are laden with excess, but they’re certainly no fun anymore. Nor is Marcello. After a pathetic failed attempt at instigating an orgy amongst an especially ragtag group of drunks (climaxing with Marcello riding on a woman's back horsey-style), the party goers (included here is a cameo from the iconic rock legend Nico) stumble out in the early morning onto the beach.

Caught in the nets of some fishermen is a dead sea creature - a strange cross between a stingray and coelacanth, its eyes still open and staring blankly into the heavens. It's the first of two images Marcello encounters on the beach which he bores his own gaze into.

This one is dead - surrounded by many, but finally, ultimately and unequivocally alone.

He then encounters, from a considerable distance across the sand and water, the angelic figure of Paola (Valeria Ciangottini), a pure, youthful young lady he met much earlier in the film - one of the few times when beauty and innocence seemed to touch him far deeper than surface fleshly desires. They look at each other - as if they can see into each others' eyes. The stunningly beautiful young woman, with her enigmatic smile, tries in vain to communicate with Marcello, but the wind drowns out her words and Marcello, his eyes at first bright, turn blank like the dead leviathan. He gives up, turns and joins his coterie of losers.

There is, however, hope in Paola's eyes - perhaps even the hope of a new generation.

Finally, though, Fellini offers no redemption for Marcello.

All that remains is the inevitability of a living death in a sweet life lived without love.

The sweet life, such as it is, proves sour, indeed.

A gorgeous restored film print of La Dolce Vita is being presented in Toronto at the TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival) Bell Lightbox as part of the phenomenal programme entitled “Fellini: Spectacular Obsessions”. The film screens August 13, August 28 and September 2. On August 28, there will be a special pairing of both film and food. Following the screening, moviegoers will feast on delectable morsels prepared by Executive Chef Jason Bangerter. The three-course Italian menu, inspired by La Dolce Vita, will be accompanied by Italian wine via sommelier Anthony Demas. While this seems like a perfectly good idea, I have to admit that a movie that so powerfully and provocatively explores the emptiness of decadence in a world without love might not best be served by bourgeois indulgence. Oh well, ‘tis to be expected, I suppose. It is Toronto, after all. That said, upon experiencing any great work of art, the last things I usually want to do are stuff my face and guzzle wine. But, hey! That’s my trip. You’re welcome to yours. La Dolce Vita is, frankly, a trip enough for this fella’.

Under the Sun of Rome - Sotto il sole di Roma (1948) dir. Renato Castellani
Starring: Oscar Blando, Liliana Mancini, Francesco Golisari, Maria Tozzi, Ferrucio Tozzi, Gisella Monaldi and Alberto Sordi

***½

By Greg Klymkiw

At one point in Renato Castellani’s strange neorealist comedy-drama Under the Sun of Rome, the layabout teen hero Ciro (Oscar Blando) and his hard-working beat cop Dad (Ferrucio Tozzi) are sleeping not-so-soundly during the day for very different reasons.

Ciro busily toils day and night doing nothing – save for occasional forays into mischief with his equally lazy pals. Pops, on the other hand, is on perpetual night shift – patrolling the dark streets and punching in tediously at the requisite check-in points. The son is only at risk getting caught for petty thievery. Pops is at risk every night keeping the eternal city as safe as possible.

One works, the other doesn’t – but as the sun of Roma beams through the windows of their tiny walk-up – both men on this particular morning, are getting no sleep.

Roly-poly Mamma (Maria Tozzi) is multitasking like only a mother can and berating both of them – at the top of her considerable lungs.

In a brief moment of respite from her justifiable haranguing (she works harder than the two of them together – multiplied, no doubt, to infinity), bleary Ciro calls out to his equally groggy Dad asking if ALL married women are like his mother.

Dad sighs with resignation and replies, “All.”

Ah, the eternal chasm ‘twixt man and woman.

Luckily, for the not-so-gentle sex, they have each other.

Under the Sun of Rome unfolds its episodic coming-of-age tale during World War II, but for a good portion of the picture, we’d never know it. Ciro and his buddies busy themselves with the fine rituals of doing nothing. Our hunky hero, adorned in a sporty new pair of white shoes and to-die-for shorts that outline the supple form of his delectable posterior and swarthy gams – Yes, GAMS! They’re that gorgeous – is supposed to be getting a presentable haircut for his new job.

Ciro has other plans. He rounds up his buddies for a day of slacking. Wandering through the crumbling Coliseum they come across Geppe (Francesco Golisari) a lad of the streets who makes his home there. Ciro and Geppe hit it off immediately and the new pal joins the layabouts for a dip in a secluded creek on railway property.

When rail company bulls show up to intimidate trespassers, Ciro loses his new shoes and the money Mamma gave him for a haircut. Nor has he bothered to go to work as promised. Terrified with the severe beating he’ll receive, Ciro does what any young lad would do – he doesn’t go home and instead, spends the night with Geppe in his magical little Coliseum hideaway.

This affords both young dreamboats the opportunity to gaze intently at each other’s fresh, lean man-boy perfection – replete with gentle digital gesticulations. Here Castellani directs veteran cinematographer Domenico (Ossessione) Scala’s camera in loving compositional directions to highlight the bountiful facial and physical attributes of both actors. (Larry Clark – eat your heart out.)

As time moves on, the picture recounts several entertaining incidents in the life of Ciro – stealing shoes from a shopkeeper (the great Alberto Sordi of The White Sheik and I Vitelloni fame), an on-again-off-again relationship with Iris (Liliana Mancini) the proverbial girl-next-door, dabbling in black marketeering once the German army enters Rome, dallying gigolo-like with the BBW-splendour of Tosca (Gisella Monaldi) a married-woman-cum-streetwalker and eventually crime that leads to the expected tragic ending.

Castellani’s storytelling technique and, in fact elements of the story itself, are delicately odd. I suspect his approach is intentional, though it is, at times slightly off-putting.

First of all, there is the first-person narration, which I think, IS exceptional. It’s literary AND literal. Often the voiceover will describe a physical action just before or during its execution as well as describing characters whom we see as described during said descriptions. Further to this, we will often hear narration to the effect of “So-and-so said…” and we’ll then hear the character recite the line of dialogue. The basic tenets of Screenwriting 101 suggest you should NEVER do any of the above. This, of course, is why the self-appointed scenarist gurus the world over are so often wrong. If it works, it works and IT does so splendidly here.

Secondly, I’m not so sure Castellani’s perspective on his female characters is as deep and sensitive as it could and should be. Even in I Vitelloni, the pinnacle of all male layabout films, Maestro Fellini is able to render strong female characters without turning them into borderline harridans as Castellani does with Mamma or worse, Iris – a harridan-to-be. (Not that the performances of the actresses are bad though – they’re as good as can be expected within the shallow dimensions they’re given to work with.)

Strangely, the female character that seems the most well rounded and lavished with the greatest degree of sensitivity is that of the plump, whorish Tosca. Even Scala’s cinematography of the women – save for the latter female character – is certainly competent, but lacking the loving detail and care so copiously drenched upon the young boys. One could argue this is intentional, but to that I say – argue away. Larry Clark rests MY case on this one – boys AND gals need equal cinematographic love. (In fairness though, there is ONE boner-inducing close-up of Liliana Mancini slowly opening the door.)

Finally, the strange element I find most appealing and flawed is the manner in which Ciro is portrayed – not in Blando’s performance, which is excellent within the parameters provided by Castellani, but the odd turns the character takes. When he is at his rakishly appealing, Ciro is a character we’re completely rooting for, but often he does and says things so abominable (for example, the way he continually professes love to Iris, kisses her passionately then hurls some invective that clearly hurts her feelings) that we turn on him so violently that it occasionally threatens to wrench us out of the drama. That said, what may feel like a storytelling flaw might well be completely intentional. In retrospect, Ciro’s eventual coming-of-age, his redemption if you will, has even greater force. The problem for me is that it’s in retrospect and not within the drama as it unfolds. Perhaps this is the film’s literary quality working, as it should and if so, I applaud Castellani’s brave choice in making such a bold series of moves.

What I love most about this picture is the craft employed in the forward thrust of its episodic narrative. The movie never feels like it’s overstaying its welcome at any point and yet, very often, it has a rhythm not unlike that of a lazy day and as such, is easily in the same sphere attained by Fellini in I Vitelloni. In fact, the slicing and dicing of editor Giuliano Betti is not only exceptional, but at times it is utterly breathtaking. Among many spectacular cuts, the one that stays with me is a gorgeous cut to a foot-level shot on the stairs in the walk-up when Ciro and Iris go into the hallway from his flat. Not only is this a cut of exquisite beauty, but also it leads us into a shot that is equally stunning (followed by a move that’s richly evocative and romantic.

Wow! This is rare cutting indeed.

Many of the cuts are suitably "silent", but only when they need to be. On occasion they knock you completely on your ass and force you to almost re-focus your gaze IN to the action on screen.

I have to sadly admit to having seen only one Castellani picture before (a weird English-dubbed public domain VHS tape of Hell in the City during the mid-80s - issued I think, to capitalize on Chained Heat and other babe-in-prison flicks starring Linda Blair and rented pour moi to satisfy my babe-in-prison fetish). Because of my Castellani-deprived state, I couldn't begin to claim that these cuts are a DIRECTORIAL trademark style of his and can only assume they were made in collaboration with a brilliant editor.

The credited editor is one Giuliano Betti. I have scoured the Internet quite extensively - including Italian sites, and found virtually no information about him. In fact, this appears to be his only editing credit (along with a bunch of assistant directing and continuity credits). Go figure. Whoever was responsible is a genius.

Under the Sun of Rome is a tremendously entertaining picture and even if it occasionally feels like a Diet Chinotto precursor to Federico Fellini’s I Vitelloni (made six years before the Maestro’s masterpiece), it’s a worthy entry in the Italian neorealist sweepstakes.

The movie is playing Saturday August 6 on 35mm in the Toronto International Film Festival’s home at TIFF Bell Lightbox (as part of the delicious series “Days of Glory: Masterworks of Italian Neoralism”). Under the Sun of Rome will be a rare treat for those who make the effort to see it on a big screen as the picture still does not appear to be available on DVD other than as a non-subtitled Italian import. I Vitelloni will, by the way, screen in the same venue on Monday August 8 on a cool double-bill with Barry Levinson’s Diner. If you’re interested in reading several thousand words on the TIFF Bell Lightbox series and the Fellini-Levinson double bill, feel free to read my article at Electric Sheep Magazine.

Nights of Cabiria (1957) dir. Federico Fellini
Starring Giulietta Masina, Francois Perier, Alberto Lazzari

****

By Greg Klymkiw

Can there be any greater feeling than that which comes from ascension?

Movies at their very best can make you feel this way. They make you soar.

Federico Fellini’s Nights of Cabiria is just such a movie. Screening in Toronto at the TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival) Bell Lightbox cinemas on Sunday, August 14 at 6:15pm, it is part of a sumptuous celebration entitled “Fellini: Spectacular Obsessions” and includes a very cool series of double bills that pairs a Fellini picture with the work of another filmmaker treading similar (or contrasting) waters.

(My only criticism of this great collection of pictures is that Il Bidone is not screening at all. In fact, a perfect pairing for it would be something like Your Three Minutes Are Up, the neglected 70s American classic by Douglas Schwartz. A personal note to TIFF Bell Lightbox topper Noah Cowan: "Get on this, bud – it’ll be an evening guaranteed to blow us all away".)

In the TIFF Bell Lightbox Gallery, one will also find a series of exquisite exhibitions that include screen tests of Fellini grotesques, the inspiration for the Trevi Fountain sequence from La Dolce Vita and a whack o’ photos of pure tabloid genius.

As for the upcoming Nights of Cabiria I can freely and happily declare that it never fails to cascade me emotionally into what feels like another dimension. As a filmmaker, Fellini makes it all seem so effortless. His genius notwithstanding, he (nor we) would ever get there, I think, without some experience, or at least understanding of Judeo-Christian tradition (particularly, the Christian portion, and more precisely, that of Catholicism). The maestro was, of course, Italian and what is it to be of that heritage if one has not been touched, shaped, moulded, pounded and cudgelled by the patriarchal power that is the Catholic Church? (Doing the math on this, Fellini's childhood would have corresponded quite neatly with that of Pope Pius XI - Mr. Anti-Contraception and Pro-Sex-For-Procreation himself.)

Fellini knew all too well and continually explored the notion of redemption via false prophets. And I do not mean Christ, but rather, those within, and most often at the highest levels of any organized faith who seek to dominate and control by proselytizing distorted teachings to the weakest and most vulnerable of society.

Cabiria (Giulietta Masina) is just such an individual and it’s no surprise that even the film’s title states clearly that we are to journey through the Nights of Cabiria. It’s the darkness of night that roots us in a place from where we are allowed find the light.

One of the picture’s screenwriters was none other than the iconoclastic Pier Paolo Pasolini (Salo: The 120 Days of Sodom). In both life and his art, he knew a lot about sexual exploitation – most notably, the world of prostitution wherein the body becomes the sought after commodity through which money is paid to experience la petite mort. (Pasolini was the go-to boy for those in Italian cinema seeking an "expert" on the fine art of whoring and whoredom.) In Nights of Cabiria it is, finally, the “little death” that seeks to undermine our title character – the dashing of hopes and dreams that come from unspeakable and/or unwanted acts of cruelty perpetrated upon those hoping to achieve a higher state – a state of grace, if you will.

And so goes this simple tale of Cabiria, a waif-like, almost Chaplinesque figure of innocence (or naiveté) who works the world’s oldest profession to preserve a standard of living (owning her own home and having a bank account - vaguely and interestingly rather bourgeois values) that is achieved by a life of “sin”.

Her goal is to find love. What she gets in return is redemption. From the opening scene where a loathsome pimp steals her money and shoves her into the river, to the horrendous moments when Carlos (François Périer) the man she thinks loves her, contemplates murder to secure a life’s worth of savings, Fellini delivers a powerful drama. We see, ultimately, a woman who is abused and exploited at the hands of men within a society that is rooted in the abovementioned patriarchy of persecution - indelibly linked, as it is, to the “business” of spirituality, of religion – the monetization of faith.

Thankfully, through all this remains Fellini’s command of the filmmaking process and his faith in the title character. His beloved Cabiria is no fool, nor is she a pushover. She’s a tough cookie in a den of lions – a fighter, a wise cracker, a street-smart streetwalker who, when she accompanies a good Samaritan on the rounds to feed the poor, is still able to see in others a mirror image of what could become of her if she doesn’t remain wary, and most importantly, IN CONTROL.

Control is, of course, the continued plight of those women who work in the sex trade. Their buyers are men and often, their true exploiters are not always the Johns, but rather, a society that allows – through the demonizing and criminalizing of the profession – a systematic exploitation of those same women at the hands of pimps, gigolos and gangsters (many of whom are corrupt cops, lawmakers and more often than not, men). In one of the picture’s more harrowing sequences, we follow Cabiria and a group of other whores as they attend a religious miracle revival outside of Rome as the disenfranchised, seeking quick-fix redemption, are surrounded by the cheap hucksterism and circus-like atmosphere of the root of this exploitation – religion itself, or, if you will, the corruption and exploitation of faith.

It is finally faith that is at once shattered and just as quickly restored in the film’s final moments. Cabiria believes in the lies of the seemingly sensitive and very charming Carlos, but it is her will to survive and to persevere and finally, her belief in her own goodness and that of humanity that allows her to go on – to disappear back into the world and begin again.

None of this would be possible without Fellini. In fact, Nights of Cabiria is really the last of his great works in the neo-realist tradition of I Vitelloni, La Strada, Il Bidone (a film in which Fellini purportedly came to know a prostitute who provided him much of his inspiration for the Cabiria role) and The White Sheik (in which Cabiria appears as a supporting character). From La Dolce Vita and onwards, there would be occasional dollops of neo-realism, but more often than not, his work became increasingly surreal and fantastical. While there is considerable greatness in many of them, nothing really comes close to the overwhelming compassion of this earlier phase.

With Nights of Cabiria, I’d also argue that we see Masina’s finest work as an actress (somehow she truly does embody the spirit of Chaplin) and among a lifetime of indelible scores, Nino Rota’s music for this is at his most heartbreakingly eloquent.

Like I said before, the picture will have you soaring higher than you ever thought possible. That’s the real greatness of Fellini’s Nights of Cabiria – it allows you the freedom to be weightless within the overwhelming spirit of humanity.

While “Nights of Cabiria” is currently out of print on the Criterion Collection DVD label, it can still be found for sale or rent.

Come Undown (2009) dir. Silvio Soldini
Starring: Alba Rohrwacher, Pierfrancesco Favino and Teresa Saponangelo

***1/2

By Alan Bacchus

Two ordinary, seemingly normal people start an affair. It's a familiar story we‘ve seen before, but one which always seems to make for good cinema. After all, if done right we get to live vicariously in the lives of people who fall victim to their carnal desires, but without suffering the pains of the damage which always occurs.

Co-writer/director Silvio Soldini doesn't break new ground with Come Undone, a modest Italian festival traveller, but a pair of completely accessible and grounded performances, including smoldering red hot chemistry bordering on alchemy by his two leads makes this a marvelous little gem.

Anna is a middle class gal with a loving husband. Nothing's particularly wrong in her life, but like a random strike of lightening, or cupid arrow if you will, she falls victim to the coy flirtations of a handsome caterer. Domenico is the caterer, a working class charmer struggling to make ends meet supporting his wife and two children. The build up to their first sexual encounter is well played. A couple of meetings, and even a couple of attempts at consummating fail. Their inability to get together, both due to their jobs and their domestic situations has the sexual tension is bursting at the seams. But eventually they do finally get a room and merge as one in sexual splendor.

It can't be all bliss and we know something has to go wrong. And it's Anna who turns into the crazy stalker bitch when she turns up unexpectedly at Dom's scuba class, a turn which perhaps comes too suddenly and betrays the sensabilities and accessibilies of the characters. The film threatens to fall into Fatal Attraction territory, but thankfully Soldini regains his footing and charts the course of the demise of their relationship with real world believability.

The love scenes are arousing but natural without being stylized in an Adrian Lyne sort of way. The couple have sex passionately and we feel the cathartic feeling of them being together. To compliment the mood the motel room is lit with warm yellows and reds, contrasted with the coolness of their outside world.

Melodrama is kept to a minimum, instead Soldini lets his actors gain our trust. We're strictly in their characters' point of view, and though they're commiting heinous acts of adultery we feel their pain and anguish of the illicitness of their affair.We feel the pressures of the domestic lifestyle they have put themselves into, and the trueness of their love they just can't express outside of their bedroom.

There's a scene towards the end showing Anna and Domenico waiting for their bags in an airport. They are embracing one another causally, with physical skin on skin contact and gentle naturally carassing of their hands together, subtle but dramatic realization of their true love for one another. Come Undone succeeds because of moments like these.

'Come Undone' is the November selection for the DVD-of-the-Month club. Visit http://www.filmmovementcanada.com/ to sign up.

I Am Love (2010) Dir. Luca Guadagnino
Starring: Tilda Swinton, Gabriele Ferzetti, Marisa Berenson

***1/2

By Alan Bacchus

In the special features interviews of the newly released DVD director Luca Guadagnino and her actress/muse/co-producer make numerous references to Luciano Visconti (The Leopard) when discussing the inspiration for this film. It’s an appropriate reference to Visconti’s elegant bourgeois style of filmmaking in the 60’s, a tone Mr. Guadagnino has tried to capture with this film. It’s not his first feature, but his sublime sense of cinematic enthusiasm or passione brings the same feeling of excitement we felt from the first films of Godard, Tarantino, Welles, etc.

The Visconti comparisons are worthy, but a more accurate comparison would be to Tom Ford’s chiselled visual elegance in A Single Man, or even Bernardo Bertolucci’s razzle dazzle in The Conformist. Like both of these pictures I Am Love is classiness personified, showing an unabashed love for the good things in life, good clothes, good food, and nice cars. But like any good storyteller he puts his characters through the emotional ringer, spitting out his hero, Emma, on the other side a changed woman, a new zest for life.

The opening puts us in the preparations for a dinner party gathering in a gorgeous Italian estate to celebrate the birthday of Edoardo Recchi Sr, patrirach to a wealthy aristoctratic Italian family. Guadagnino’s hero, Emma Recchi (Tilda Swinton), daughter-in-law to Papa Recchi seems to be the head of the household making all the arrangements and coordinating everyone’s movements. A bold pronounciation by Edoardo announces his retirement and renounciation of control of the family textile business to his son (Emma’s husband) and his grandson.

As the ripple effect makes its way through the family Emma, who, by her gender and by her poor immigrant background, seems lost and forgotten in the mix, discovers love with her son’s new friend Antonio, a chef whose charm, good looks and culinary skills are an irresistable aphrodesiac. But Emma doesn’t act on her impulse immediately.

Guadagnino, admirably holds back as long as possible before putting them in the same bed together - actually I think it was a table, or a sideboard where they consummated. Either way, the moment occurs in the third act releasing a flood of overflowing silent tension which Guadagnino has built up inside Emma. It’s a great award-worthy performance from Swinton, playing an Italian immigrant, who has to speak both Russian and Italian but not English. Her character is deep and has a lifetime of angst and turmoil which reveals itself carefully. Even after Emma beds Antonio Guadagnino stays on the far side of melodrama while providing us a riproaring energetic and wholly satisfying finale, a sequence so perfectly crafted, it sends the film out with such a bang it had me on my couch at home smiling and nodding in admiration.

Deservedly, Luca Guadagnino was placed on the Variety’s annual list of top ‘10 Directors to Watch’ this year, beside, namely, Tom Ford (A Single Man), David Michod (Animal Kingdom), Sam Taylor-Wood (Nowhere Boy) and Rodrigo Cortes (Buried).

Gorbaciof - The Cashier Who Liked Gambling (2010) dir. Stefano Incerti
Starring:Toni Servillo, Mi Yang, Hal Yamanaouchi

*1/2

By Greg Klymkiw

Do you, perchance, salivate over the prospect of watching a beautiful young Asian woman lovingly massage the dirty, stinking gnarly toes of an old Italian tough-guy-sad-sack-loser-gambler-thief who thinks he's Buster Keaton (albeit with a birth mark on his balding forehead)?

Well then, have I got a movie for you!

Gorbaciof - The Cashier Who Liked Gambling is exactly the sort of movie film festival programmers, purported film critics and pseuds-who-patronize-film-festivals-to-pretend-how-much-they-like-art-films just love to bits.

The rest of us can feel free to vomit anytime.

Starring the great actor Toni Servillo (who played the corrupt longtime Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti in the fabulous Il Divo) is the title character in this film. While his world weary, hang-dog mug is fascinating to look at, especially as he wanders about like a cross between Humphrey Bogart and Rondo Hatton, adorned in cheap sport coats and greasy, slick-backed hair, the fascination only lasts so long.

On one hand, the bare bones of the story could have worked. By day, Gorbaciof is a petty clerk in a prison who takes cash deposits from visitors, processes their deposits and places them in a safe he has access to. By night, he's an inveterate gambler who patronizes the back room of an Asian cafe in order to play relatively high stakes poker with the Asian proprietor, a sleazy Italian mob-tied lawyer and many other unsavoury types. He stakes himself by lifting money from the deposits, taking a huge chance that he'll be able to replace the dough next morning - provided he doesn't lose.

That said, the cafe is run by the proprietor's daughter, played by the gorgeous Asian actress Mi Yang. Gorbaciof is smitten with her Oriental charms and when her Dad needs a gambling-related bail-out, he unwisely uses his stake money and winnings to help the unlucky proprietor out. When Gorbacioff begins losing, he gets deeper and deeper in debt with his "borrowings" and soon, he succumbs to securing loans from the sleazy lawyer. He also begins openly courting the daughter and she slowly starts to fall for him, while he lavishes her with gifts and outings.

Needless to say, there's only one way this story is going to go.

Imbued with elements of noir and 70s existential male angst in addition to Servillo's weighty presence plus some truly stunning gritty cinematography, the picture could have been a winner. Alas, several crucial elements render the film dead on arrival.

First of all, the picture goes out of its way to create a central character who is a man of few words. This shouldn't have been a problem, but the manner in which it's executed certainly is. Playing up the silent man stuff so relentlessly, it doesn't take long for it to feel like a major and obtrusive contrivance. Even the fine Servillo seems unable to carry this off since the film strains to keep dialogue from him to such a ridiculous degree that it feels forced.

Secondly, making Yang's character unable to speak Italian is another major flaw. The character quickly descends into the cliche of Asian women being docile and mute.

Thirdly, the contrivance of a love story between two people who cannot communicate verbally is not without merit, but within the context of the ethnic stereotype and the silent trait of the central character, it again feels like a contrivance.

(As a sidenote - contrivance and manipulation are not a bad thing, but they are when you can see them play out so obviously.)

Finally, there's something vaguely offensive of presenting an Asian woman so purportedly lonely and bereft of human contact that she's willing and able to submit to the dubious charms of this misfit Rice King. It could have worked so magnificently if the filmmakers had chosen to present her as someone with some spunk, individuality and the ability to converse, however the whole thing smacks of contrivance again. Oooohhhhh, two people, separated by language, find each other through the universal language of love.

It's sickening - pure and simple.

Even more sickening is when she massages his feet.

Lovingly.

I don't, however, think I need to remind you again of that repellent image. It was enough to make me want to douse my eyes with the kind of heavy-duty optical wash used in factories when horrendous accidents occur.

Even now, I am compelled to wish, as Kirk Douglas wished in The Detective Story for the ability to remove my brain and hold it under a tap of water to clean the "dirty pictures" that were put in there.

And even now, the bile rises at the very thought of those gnarly toes being stroked and massaged by those delicate hands.

This is a memory I desperately need to repress.

And so you will also.

Passione (2010) dir. John Turturro
Documentary

***

By Alan Bacchus

I loved John Turturro sorely neglected musical Romance and Cigarettes, and so the potential of Turturro’s take on the culture of music of the great city of Naples was a great tease. While not up to the standard of cinematic inspiration of Romance, Passione provides lovers the best slice of Italiana since Dean Martin sang 'That's Amore.'

I exagerrate slightly. Passione is nothing like anything Dean Martin did. It's kind of an unclassifyable experimental hybrid of documentary, musical and music video which acts like an commissioned artwork for the Naples tourism bureau.

In the opening, Turturro steps out in front of the camera to address the camera and tell us what we're about to see. The effect has the flavour of an old documentary, or an old trailer when it was customary for the filmmakers to audience directly.

Naples, Turturro explains to us, is a city which, historically, despite a life cycle war, invasion and volcanic eruptions, has had a rich and unique culture of music. Over the 95mins, Turturro gives us a self-guided tour of Naples through the nooks and crannies of its cobblestone roads, cramped old world streets and on the edges of its magnificent coastal cliffs and beaches, unfolding as a series of narrratively unconnected set pieces. Sometimes, it's interviews with local residents discussing their favourite singers, or a choreographed song and dance routine, maybe a band playing to camera in a garden, or sometimes it's B&W stock footage of a famous Neopolitan crooning on an old Italian variety show.

Lovers of swooning hopelessly romantic Italian music unite, to those inclined it adds up to an orgasm of neopolitan flavour, but for only casually interested parties, its sadly only something we can admire and respect but not fall in love with. We can certainly feel and admire Turturro’s ‘passion’ for the city, but his direction lacks the cinematic inspiration of Romance and Cigarettes which would elevate the film to another level.

Salo: Or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975) dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini
Starring:Paolo Bonacelli, Giorgio Cataldi, Umberto Paolo Quintavalle, Aldo Valletti

***1/2

It's been 34 years since 'Salo' and the notorious last film from Italy director Pier Paolo Pasolini is still the sickest, more gruesome and controversial film ever made. A tonally faithful adaptation of the Marquis de Sade’s torture novel written while in prison '120 Days of Sodom', set in Fascist Italy - The story of a small group of libertine Italy aristocrats who gather a kidnap of 18 young men and woman and subject them to 4 months of heinous sexual acts, torture, rape, and basically any kind of sexual defiance known to man.

However depraved, 'Salo' actually works as a jet black comedy. Admirable as a piece of bourgeois surrealism, mocking class systems and the rights of men over other men, in the tradition of Luis Buneul and Salvador Dali. Pasolini bravely doesn’t hold back showing us the most despicable acts of sex and violence, including bondage, forcing people to eat faeces, body mutilation and of course lots of sodomy, in order to a) exercise his own personal fetishes on screen and 2) to give another stab into the notion of right and title of the class system.

There's very little in the way of a through line, characters or even a narrative purpose. And perhaps the most disturbing aspect is that the torturers never get their comeuppance. So what’s the purpose of this all? Made in Pasolini’s elder age it serves as an artistic statement to test the boundaries of cinema and art. The final moments of torture before the boys and girls are executed are the most horrific displays of torture ever put to screen. Thus the film becomes a metaphor for the degradation of man and civilization told with terrifying audacity.

Taking away the raping and debaucherous acts, visually Pasolini's photographs nudes like artists have been doing for centuries - another contrast between sophistication and the sordid. His imagery is continually fascinating, the site of the naked men and women with leashes on crawling up the stairs is an indelible image. The formal compositions and classical Roman art direction match well together. Pasolini’s style even resembles Stanley Kubrick. His symmetrical compositions and use of the female nude body as background art decoration. The orgy rituals also is evident in 'Eyes Wide Shut'.

Salo isn’t a film to 'enjoy' per se, but to be shocked by. Pasolini doesn't 'enjoy' showing us these images. It's different than Lars Von Trier, who in his films seems to enjoy punishing his characters. Of course we don’t ever get to know any of the characters in Salo, they all seem to be props and furniture for the film more than emotional beings. Pasolini purposely doesn't have his characters react to any of the torture either, thus keeping a distance emotionality from the events like a clinical analyst.

Curiously, in a truly bizarre moment of life intimately art, Pasolini was murdered shortly before the picture was released. Apparently killed by a male prostitute who ran over Pasolini’s body numerous times near his home. The boy confessed, although later rescinded it claiming he covered up for a more nefarious group of anti-communists. Is this perhaps an act of Karma? Michelangelo Antonioni remarked Pasolini was a victim of his own characters. Regardless, 'Salo' continues to be a film which cinema just cannot ignore.

Il Divo (2009) dir. Paolo Sorrentino
Starring: Toni Servillo, Anna Bonaiuto, Giulio Bosetti, Flavio Bucci, Carlo Buccirosso

**

By Alan Bacchus

The story of seven-time Italian prime minister Giulio Andreotti's controversial leadership in the latter stages of his 50-year service, which saw him accused and tried for having an alliance with the mafia, as well as being an accomplice to several murders of his key rivals, is an impressively stylized and cinematically-inspired take on what could have been familiar and morose subject matter.

Comparisons of director Paolo Sorrentino to Martin Scorsese were made after its Cannes premiere, and were not unfounded, as the film works best in its numerous, energetic, pop culture aware montage sequences. Scorsese's style never trumps his substance though, which can't be said about Il Divo, whose dense and near-incomprehensible narrative is neglected in favour of Sorrentino's cinema gymnastics.

If anything, the film comes off like the Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels of political films. Nicolas Winding Refn's Bronson also makes a good comparison. Like Refn's film, Il Divo works best as a subjective expression of a man, as opposed to a traditional narrative story. Unfortunately, Sorrentino wants to have his cake and eat it too. Even up until the last moments of the film we're still meeting new characters, so many that each person has to be introduced with a graphic describing his/her name, title and relation to Andreotti. Granted, the design and use of these graphics are incorporated with wicked hipness into the composition of the scene, but it's just too much information to keep track of.

Style aside, Il Divo suffers most from Sorrentino's direction of lead actor Toni Servillo; his performance, which has been lauded by other critics as an enigmatic, Yoda-like, zen master portrait of political savvy, comes off as un-expressive, robotic and dull as cardboard, under cover of a bad wig that wouldn't pass muster on a Saturday Night Live sketch.

To each his own, as the virtues and failings of this picture will likely divide audiences. It's a shame foreign releases like these don't get the Blu-Ray treatment because for a film that relies so heavily on its stunning visuals, the boring old standard definition DVD just doesn't cut it. The DVD contains just the movie with no special features.

This review for appeared on Exclaim.ca