Amanti

To be honest, I am a fan of this type of Italian movie and I have been to the Villa in outside of florence where the opening was shot.There is a certain feeling for this type of Late 60's Italian movie that one has to feel good about. I adored the soundtrack and If anyone know of any disk that "Ella" sang that title song, Please let me know

One of those late, very sensitive and poignant Vittorio de Sica films, concentrating entirely on a personal relationship. I always regarded Faye Dunaway as one of the most beautiful actresses ever, but here she surpasses herself both in beauty and acting. Mastroianni is always reliable and original, and he actually matches Faye Dunaway more than well, although this is not Sofia Loren. There are two additional factors making this film extra remarkable, the fact that the script writer is Cesare Zavattini, who wrote all of de Sica's best films, and the overwhelmingly beautiful music by Manuel de Sica, his son, I suppose, that veils the film in a silken bandage of urgent soothing beauty, just like in his last film "The Voyage" with Sofia Loren and Richard Burton. The locations are among the loveliest in north eastern Italy, by the coast north of Venice and in a central hill station in the Dolomites. The story might seem superficial at first, especially if you don't know anything and haven't read anything about it, as the casual relationship by hap doesn't seem to amount to anything special, but it does. The cars play a prominent part in this film, as Mastroianni manufactures car accident protections, and there are several risky car journeys. which eventually must lead to some concern. Also the end is typical of Vittorio de Sica - all has been said, and life will continue anyway whatever happens - even the greatest passions are only episodes, even though they sometimes are marked unforgettable by the circumstances.

Italian upper class environment in the 1960's: beautiful houses and interiors, women of course also and so well dressed but, as in Dolce Vita, bored and wont to indulge in ambiguous erotic games - exciting for some and decadent for others. Mastroianni and Dunaway meet in such a venue before the evening festivities begin and fall in love and escape to the mountains at Cortina. The director Vittorio De Sica keeps the film viewer at a distance by introducing a "third party", the breathtakingly beautiful mountain scenery. Intense love and imminent death of one of the lovers is not an unusual story. Through the beautiful photography, the cool and tight directing of De Sica, one senses that the dangerous mountains will provide the ending. The acting does not drag you in willy-nilly to experience ardently the emotions but leaves you to decide how you would have acted in such a tragedy. Some might agree with the American critic Maltin who found it pseudo romantic slop, others with a European sensitivity may decide like the lovers or remain ambiguous, but definitely not unmoved by their own thinking and their own feelings.

A beginning entirely from the pen of Hollywood, with a Hollywood star and Hollywood sounds. Take a look at this Faye Dunaway if you want to know what was being talked about, or better still raved about, at the time. In terms of content, however, we are not in the American New World, but in old Italy and the director is also an old Italian. A late work for Vittorio De Sica and obviously another cinematic experiment. Neorealism meets New Hollywood? Not at all, most likely contemporary European. A dramatic romance, at least on paper, but in its realisation it's quite offbeat. Enter Marcelo Mastroianni, the contrast is complete. In the course of the film, the viewer is certainly also confused. No wonder with such an inconsistent tone. Love. Illness. Happiness. Misfortune. Hope, so far, so good. But then there's jazz droning, loads of bizarre scenes, overacting and, despite the exaggerated emotions, somehow undercooled melancholy. To the point, it gets silly in places and consistently erratic, which can be seen as a warning or a promise, depending on your expectations. You should leave them where they are anyway and just try to let the special atmosphere, the great images and the two icons work their magic. Dunaway and Mastroianni don't go together? Apparently they do, in real life they had an affair, one alongside their marriage. And in the film, well, one looks good, one plays well, in a way a complement. The chemistry was right, see the aforementioned gossip. I'm noticeably not quite as critical of the film as the public was at the time, because I could feel what I was seeing, not something special, but unusual, somehow intoxicating. I also really wanted to know how this hot-blooded love would end, or not. An interest in the film that the film first has to create.

... is a rather odd and thankless task. I never dreamt of thinking about the likes of Vittorio De Sica, Faye Dunaway and Marcello Mastroianni without using the highest of praise, but this uninteresting, plodding 1969 film provided me with a chance to do so.

This film is proof that the unthinkable, what we judge to be impossible and beyond imagination, can happen.

Dunaway is Julia, a peculiar, to say the least, american woman who makes a living out of designing gowns, who has an affair with Valerio, a married italian engineer working on the development of the airbag.

They're rich, they're glamorous, they're beautiful, they're in love... nothing could part them. Except Julia is suffering from a terminal illness, and is bound to die in a matter of days.

Sticking to the basic rules of screenwriting as I know them, this movie is irritatingly plodding. We only discover that Julia is dying towards the end, and we never know whose is the main dilemma - Julia's or Valerio's. Should they stick together and face bravely Julia's last days on Earth? is the main query, I guess. The only problem is that this query, this dilemma, is presented to the audience in the last twenty minutes of film, and resolved - better yet, unresolved - in the last five. The other 70 minutes or so of film are spent as they stay together and play amusing little games with each other. A time in which the five writers of the film could easily delve into their main characters psyches - if anything else - is wasted. Julia's just plain weird and depressed, and Valerio seems terribly cold and unfeeling.

It also clearly aspires to be profound. It aims at being something lyric, but, trapped inside it's own pretentious attitude, it becomes a schmaltzy tearjerker.

The acting is not bad at all, though. But the script provides Dunaway and Mastroianni with little chance to showcase their many talents. Also, the set designs are gorgeous, as mentioned by the first reviewer, and the soundtrack is lovely. The title song, written by Manuel De Sica - hail, nepotism! - is sung by none other than Ella Fitzgerald.

Well, all in all, this movie is a bizarre one, but it is worth viewing nevertheless, mainly as existing proof that nothing - I mean, nothing - is impossible. :)