Naples, 1959. Renato Caccioppoli, university professor in pure mathematics, is a disillusioned and tormented man who lives the last days of his life. Grandson of Bakunin on his mother’s side, interned in a psychiatric hospital for his anti-fascist acts, abandoned by his wife, and now become estranged from his own Communist Party comrades and his University collaborators, he lives his life with disenchanted detachment until his last act, suicide.
Category: Drama
Kon Ichikawa’s rich adaptation of Natsume Soseki’s classic novel depicts a complex relationship between a student and an older man he calls “sensei.” The older man’s relations with his wife seems curiously strained to the student. When the boy goes to the country to tend to his dying father, he learns that “sensei” committed suicide.
A handsome but penniless young man takes a summer job as a swimming instructor in a picturesque Alpine lake resort. He falls in love with a young heiress who is staying there with her father, but he also grabs the attention of tomboyish Puck who lives on the other side of the lake and who saves him from drowning one foggy night. Further havoc is caused by the arrival of Eric’s old sweetheart whose husband is wanted by the police.
This suspenseful Italian crime drama is set in a Colombian river town and chronicles the series of events that led up to murder. Based on a novel by distinguished author Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the tale begins in the present as a middle-aged doctor returns to the village after a twenty-year absence to investigate the murder that occurred just before he left.
Louis Coline assists the head of advertising of a department store in decline. He has little to do, but seems content with his marriage to Nina, his visits to his mother and grandmother, and poker games with friends. When new boss Bernard Malair arrives to turn the store around, Louis fears for his job; but Bernard, with his numbers man Paul and his factotum François, invites Louis into an inner circle of long hours of work, nightclubs, and dinners with an androgynous vamp. Nina objects, but Louis cannot say no to Bernard’s demands, no matter how personal. In desperation, Nina leaves Louis, but that drives him further into Bernard’s orbit. Can anything break this spell?
Parigi e Sempre Parigi was the second feature-length effort from famed Italian documentary director Luciano Emmer. Parigi concentrates on a gentle cultural clash between a band of Italian sports fans and the citizenry of Paris. The hero, DeAngelis has heard so much about “naughty Paree” that he’s determined to experience that naughtiness first hand. This plot device, of course, obliges the director to introduce several delectable French mademoiselles in the proceedings. Ultimately, DeAngelis realizes that reports of French libertinism have been grossly exaggerated, but he has a high old time finding this out.
Chris Waring is a government investigator trying to gather the necessary evidence to convict a shipping magnate, DeBrock, of selling his ships to the United States but is suspected of holding up and preventing their delivery because of bribes from foreign powers. DeBrock’s conscience, nor his flirty wife, Valerie DeBrock, give him any peace of mind.