Ave Ninchi
1915 - 1997Ninchi has worked with some of Italy's top movie stars, including Sophia Loren, Anna Magnani, Marcello Mastroianni, Alberto Sordi, and Gina Lollobrigida; her performances playing in duo with Aldo Fabrizi and Totò are particularly memorable. Her television career was at its peak during the 1960s and 1970s when she was appearing in some of Italy's top-rated series.
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Patto col diavolo
Luigi Chiarini
Annibale Betrone, Guido Celano
The title of this Italian melodrama translates to Pact with the Devil. However, His Satanic Majesty does not appear in the film. Rather, this expensively produced period piece is more along the lines of Romeo and Juliet, with young love threatened by warring families. In his first Italian film, Hollywood veteran Eduardo Cianelli goes through his usual villainous paces as the scheming father of the male lead (Jacques Francois). The most fascinating performance is rendered by Umberto Spadaro, as the village idiot, or is he? Patto col Diavolo makes the most of the visual dynamics of Italy's mountainous Calabrian region.
Pact with the Devil
Guardie e ladri
Steno, Mario Monicelli
Aldo Fabrizi, Totò
Esposito is a thief who cons tourists in Rome. Officer Bottoni manages to catch him and starts persecuting him. When Esposito manages to flee, Bottoni's superiors inform him that he'll lose his job if he can't catch Esposito.
Cops and Robbers
Lacombe, Lucien
Louis Malle
Pierre Blaise, Aurore Clément
In Louis Malle's lauded drama, Lucien Lacombe is a young man living in rural France during World War II who seeks to join the French Resistance. When he is rejected due to his youth, the resentful Lucien allies himself with the Nazis and joins the Gallic arm of their Gestapo. Lucien grows to enjoy the power that comes with his position, but his life is complicated when he falls for France Horn, a beautiful young Jewish woman.
Lacombe, Lucien
Anni difficili
Luigi Zampa
Massimo Girotti, Umberto Spadaro
Aldo Piscitello, a minor government clerk, is forced in 1934 to join the Fascist party. When the war comes, he finds himself able only to talk ineffectually in secret against Mussolini, even as his own son Giovanni is sent into battle. By the end of the war, Aldo has found the courage to stand up for his beliefs, but by then it is too late.
Difficult Years
Murmur of the Heart
Louis Malle
Lea Massari, Benoît Ferreux
This loosely plotted coming-of-age tale follows the life of 15-year-old Laurent Chevalier as he stumbles his way over the burgeoning swell of adolescence in 1950s France. After having his first sexual experience with a prostitute and dodging the lips of a priest, Chevalier contracts a case of scarlet fever. When the fever leaves him with a heart murmur, Chevalier is placed in a sanatorium, along with his over-attentive and adulterous mother.
Murmur of the Heart
Un giorno nella vita
Alessandro Blasetti
Elisa Cegani, Massimo Girotti
Some Italian partisans want to take refuge in a convent to escape German raids. The nuns are a little perplexed at first but then agree since one of the men is seriously wounded. When the partisans eventually leave, the Germans take a terrible revenge.
A Day in the Life
L'onorevole Angelina
Luigi Zampa
Anna Magnani, Nando Bruno
A rowdy woman is so forceful that she outdoes her husband in a loud cry against speculators who refuse poor people entrance to a block of new apartments, built after WW2. Without noticing it, she starts a people's movement, and leads a march to the capital. She returns to her village a winner, an honourable MP. Yet, she is still the same simple, fiery woman, able to get in a hair-pulling brawl with the local barmaid for the affection of her man.
Angelina
Il delitto di Giovanni Episcopo
Alberto Lattuada
Aldo Fabrizi, Roldano Lupi
Giovanni used to be a humble, mild-mannered government clerk whose life was turned upside down when he met Giulio, a notorious forger who at once set about manipulating the over-confident man. Giovanni did what he should never have done: he associated himself with the crook. Giulio soon laid hands on Giovanni's money, ruined his career and manhandled him into marrying his own mistress, the beautiful Ginevra. It was of course an unhappy marriage but Giovanni found a little solace when his son Ciro was born. Seven years later though, Wanzer resurfaced...
Flesh Will Surrender
