La Ciociara
Vittorio De Sica (1960)
Rome, 1943. Cesira is a widow who, together with her daughter Rosetta, decides to leave the city to seek refuge from the bombing. She arrives in San’Eufemia with great difficulty and there she meets and falls in love with Michele, an anti-fascist intellectual. Michele is captured by some German soldiers to guide them in the mountain territory and when the Allies arrive, Cesira decides to return to Rome with her daughter. During the journey, they suffer an assault and atrocious aggression by a group of soldiers from the French army. The traumas suffered bind mother and daughter even more, especially when they learn of Michele’s tragic fate.
Vittorio De Sica directs and adapts the novel La ciociara by Alberto Moravia together with Cesare Zavattini. The film tells crudely and truthfully about the scourge of violence perpetrated by allied troops on civilians. Sophia Loren for the great test of her in such a tragic and demanding role of her receives 1962 the Academy Award for Best Actress. In the cast also Jean-Paul Belmondo, Eleonora Brown, Carlo Ninchi and Andrea Checchi.
The Night
Michelangelo Antonioni (1961)
The seventh feature film by the Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni, The Night, is the central chapter of the trilogy of incommunicability directed by the director, including, in addition to the aforementioned film, The Eclipse, and The Adventure. Shot in 1961, the film stars Marcello Mastroianni, Monica Vitti, and Jeanne Moreau, and boasts Tonino Guerra’s collaboration on the screenplay. The film was an important stage for Italian cinema, full of innovations in themes and language. The Night was also praised by intellectuals of the time such as Alberto Moravia and Pierpaolo Pasolini, who compared it to Moravia’s work called La Noia.
The film deals with the theme of the couple’s crisis and how the protagonists deal with it. Giovanni is a successful writer, and Lidia is his wife, bored by the couple’s relationship. Their relationship is at the center of the story, which initially was to accompany a total of seven couples in crisis. Eventually, Antonioni drastically changed the script by adapting it only for the main couple in the film. The night was a powerful influence for many of the directors to come, including Jean Luc Godard, Wim Wenders, and Wong Kar-wai. Stanley Kubrick said Night is one of his favorite films.
Medea
Pier Paolo Pasolini (1969)
Fortunately, on the Amazon streaming platform, we find a film by Pier Paolo Pasolini, one of the most important Italian directors and intellectuals ever to exist. In addition to being a director, Pasolini was a translator, writer, poet, linguist, and journalist. He was very often contested, censored, and criticized for his works, very often direct and influential. Pasolini is interested in talking about the weakest, the periphery, human impulses, and vices. This is seen in both his original films and film adaptations.
Medea is one of these: based on Euripides ‘ theatrical tragedy, the film tells the story of Medea, the wife of Jason, a member of the Argonauts. In addition to Medea, Pasolini brought to the screen other adaptations such as Oedipus Re, or adaptations from prose such as the Decameron, the Canterbury Tales, or The Thousand and One Nights. In all these works it is interesting to note how the director’s style and aesthetics always come out while maintaining the themes and intent of the original works. They are stories of men and women, of human emotions and virtues, who very often fall into sin or are tempted by evil.
Tristana
Luis Bunuel (1970)
Amazon Prime Video allows us to see a film by one of the masters of Spanish cinema of the 70s, Luis Bunuel. Controversial, dreamlike, and surreal director, he has often questioned many Western taboos. Anti-clerical, against consumerism and the bourgeoisie, Bunuel very often brings tormented and revolutionary stories to the screen, which make the viewer uncomfortable with very often crude scenes.
In this case, Tristana deals with the story of a girl who, on the death of her mother, is placed in the care of a middle-class guardian. You will come up with the rotten and sexual side of the boss and his colleagues, showing how much hypocrisy there is in the world and in the way of thinking of right-thinking people. This is one of those films to watch especially for the social and controversial value it has, and then seeing one more Bunuel film is a positive thing for anyone to do.
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