♦♦ Amos Vogel’s “Film as a Subversive Art” ♦♦
Sentenced to life imprisonment for illegal activities, Italian International member Giulio Manieri holds on to his political ideals while struggling against madness in the loneliness of his prison cell.
Tag: ITALY
The action takes place in Florence in the 1930s. Alfred, an Englishman who moved to that city in order to write a book on Giotto, meets a boy who is fond of music and mathematics, with whom he becomes close friends. Alfred goes to Switzerland, but one day he receives an anguished letter from the boy and rushes back to Florence where he learns some terrible news.
This raw Italian political melodrama investigates the underbelly of Rome in the early ’70s, exposing drugs, crime and sexual scandal. Many of the characters and episodes are based on incidents which made Italian newspaper headlines in that period. Throughout, it implies that one important behind-the-scenes personage (“number one”) is pulling the strings of the characters. The film’s tone of outrage clearly differentiates it from a more easygoing film exploring the similar nightlife of 1960s Rome, La Dolce Vita.
A group of rogues steal a scroll granting its bearer the property of the land of Aurocastro in Apulia (south of Italy). They elect a shaggy knight, Brancaleone from Norcia, as their leader, and decide to get possession of this supposedly wealthy land. Many adventures will occurr during the journey.
A man and a woman sit in a room and when the wind blows the window open, the man imagines what would happen if he kills the woman and the following drama blurs the boundaries between reality and fiction.
A widow in a small town begins to realize that her late husband was hated by nearly everybody. She begins to receive blackmail letters that threaten to further humiliate her if she does not pay up. She enlists the help of Franz, a man who was once fired by her late husband, to track down the source of the letters…
A paralyzed old man has thought of the perfect blow to steal a stash of diamonds, but to carry it out he needs five partners. After succeeding in the hit the five kill the old man to avoid dividing the loot with him, which unleashes a series of revenges.