Fresh off of the international success of La Dolce Vita, master director Federico Fellini moved into the realm of self-reflexive autobiography with what is widely believed to be his finest and most personal work. Marcello Mastroianni delivers a brilliant performance as Fellini's alter ego Guido Anselmi, a film director overwhelmed by the large ...
In the first in a series of detective comedies from director Blake Edwards starring Peter Sellers as bumbling French Inspector Jacques Clouseau, the mishap-prone snoop is actually a supporting player. David Niven stars as Sir Charles Litton, a suave jewel thief known as "The Phantom." Vacationing in a deluxe Alpine resort, Litton's real purpose is ...
Grant (Ralph Bellamy) is a wealthy rancher who hires four mercenaries to retrieve his wife, Maria (Claudia Cardinale), from the clutches of the desperado Raza (Jack Palance) in this Western adventure set in 1917. Dolworth (Burt Lancaster) is a munitions expert who joins gunslinger Fardan (Lee Marvin), horse trainer Hans Ehrengard (Robert Ryan), ...
Arguably Luchino Visconti's best film and certainly the most personal of his historical epics, The Leopard chronicles the fortunes of Prince Fabrizio Salina and his family during the unification of Italy in the 1860s. Based on the acclaimed novel by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, published posthumously in 1958 and subsequently translated into all ...
In Sergio Leone's epic Western, shot partly in Monument Valley, a revenge story becomes an epic contemplation of the Western past. To get his hands on prime railroad land in Sweetwater, crippled railroad baron Morton (Gabriele Ferzetti) hires killers, led by blue-eyed sadist Frank (Henry Fonda), who wipe out property owner Brett McBain (Frank ...
In this wartime melodrama, Lieutenant Colonel Raspeguy (Anthony Quinn) is a French peasant who has worked his way up the military ladder during the French involvement in Indochina. Sent to Algeria, Raspeguy must mold a group of raw recruits into a competent fighting unit. He calls on Esclavier (Alain Delon), his sensitive assistant who eventually ...
The title character, played by Claudia Cardinale, is a young woman who heads out alone to the big city after being dumped by her lover. She is befriended and protected by her ex-suitor's younger brother Jacques Perrin, who eventually becomes her new romance, despite the difference in ages (Perrin is 16, while Cardinale is...somewhat older). When ...
German filmmaker Werner Herzog has never done anything by halves. When Herzog tackled Fitzcarraldo, the story of an obsessed impresario (Klaus Kinski) whose foremost desire in life is to bring both Enrico Caruso and an opera house to the deepest jungles of South America, the director boldly embarked on the same journey, disdaining studios, process ...
This Italian version of Henry IV is based on the Luigi Pirandello play rather than Shakespeare's historical work. Moreover, the Henry depicted herein is not the English king, but the 11th-century Holy Roman emperor. In addition, central character Marcello Mastroianni doesn't play emperor Henry, but instead a contemporary man of wealth who thinks ...
Filmed in Cinerama and Technicolor, Circus World may have drawn the crowds for various reasons -- not the least, perhaps, for the big names. John Wayne stars as circus owner Matt Masters, who takes his show to Europe hoping to save it from financial ruin. Accompanying Matt, is young Toni (Claudia Cardinale), whom Matt had raised since her ...
Imagine, for a moment, that a town in the American Old West was founded by and for French people, and that two of the sexiest women in modern times were rivals for control of that town. In Les Petroleuses, Frenchy (Brigitte Bardot) and Maria (Claudia Cardinale) are at war over an oil lease. Maria and her gang of train-robbing brothers got a poor ...
The original British version of Escape to Athena ran 125 minutes; American prints were judiciously cut to 101 minutes, emphasizing the action content and neutralizing the duller dialogue sequences. Roger Moore stars as Major Otto Hecht, an anti-Nazi German who presides over a World War II POW camp. The prisoners, played by such diverse types as ...
Jean-Paul Belmondo romps his way through the role of 18th century French bandit chief Cartouche. At first robbing from everyone in sight (he has to -- he's head man of a Parisian crime syndicate) Cartouche is rechanneled into becoming a Gallic Robin Hood by beauteous gypsy Venus (Claudia Cardinale). In Highwayman fashion, Venus eventually ...
Mario Monicelli's classic crime comedy Big Deal on Madonna Street (I Soliti Ignoti) features Vittorio Gassman and Marcello Mastroianni as a pair of thieves who head a group of criminals in a break-in attempt. Their plan involves digging an underground tunnel from an apartment that leads to a neighboring business and drilling their way inside. In ...
In what must be the longest lapse of time between a film and its sequel, 70-year-old Abel Gance continues his nearly legendary, 1927 historical drama Napoleon with this tale of Napoleon's life after his victories in Italy. The first half of Austerlitz delves into the private life of Napoleon Bonaparte (Pierre Mondy), the prodigal son of Corsica. ...
After the death of Peter Sellers in 1980, writer/director Blake Edwards assembled a new "Pink Panther" film from outtakes of Sellers as Inspector Clouseau from previous movies in the series (the result was called The Trail of the Pink Panther) and later made two attempts to revive the series with another actor. In this case, Edwards cast Roberto ...
This melodrama is the second of a two part story based on a novel by Judith Krantz. In this episode, Daisy, the daughter of a Russian prince and an American movie star, must leave college and begin looking for a job in New York so that she can pay her sister's enormous medical bills. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
In this fast-paced action/drama, a downtrodden farmer turns to crime and quickly rises to prominence in the Sicilian mafia. Along the way, he learns the importance of political connections and of having legitimate businesses to funnel ill-gotten cash into. Determined to do away with the old and more violent ways of doing things, he lays the ...
British director Alexander MacKendrick helmed this farcical romantic comedy set in Southern California. Carlo Cofield (Tony Curtis) is a footloose tourist who meets Laura Califatti (Claudia Cardinale) when she accidentally edges his car off the highway. Laura invites Carlo to her home; he seems interested in her, but discovers she's already ...
The Gift was based on Bankers Also Have Souls, a play by Valme and Terzolli. To honor retiring co-worker Gregoire (Pierre Mondy), a group of bank employees pool their money and purchase a farewell gift: gorgeous prostitute Barbara (Clio Goldsmith). Since Gregoire is married to the luscious Antonella (Claudia Cardinale), one wonders what planet his ...
Directed by the comparatively unknown Mauro Bolognini, the Italian Bell' Antonio is distinguished by its screenplay, cowritten by directorial giant Pier Paolo Pasolini. Marcello Mastroianni and Claudia Cardinale are happily married until she finds out he's impotent. It takes her a year to find this out, which ought to give an indication of how ...
The literal translation of this title is Certain, Very Certain, As a Matter of Fact...Probable. This indeed was the title by which this trivial Italian comedy was known during its limited American release. The star is international glamour plate Claudia Cardinale, improbably cast as a telephone switchboard operator. It is believable that Cardinale ...
The true story of a tragic 1928 arctic expedition provides the basis for this adventure drama that was a joint Italian and Russian co-production. Peter Finch stars as General Umberto Nobile, who is visited in Rome by the ghosts of those whose lives were taken in his ill-fated mission forty years earlier. In flashback, Nobile recalls the attempt to ...
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