For Immediate Release
April 2001

ANNUAL PROGRAM OF POSTWAR ITALIAN CINEMA

AT THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART SPOTLIGHTS FILMS RARELY SCREENED IN UNITED STATES

Series Opens with New, Restored Print of Federico Fellini’s Toby Dammit (1968)

Second Act: Fourth Season

April 26 – May 7, 2001

The Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 1

The Museum of Modern Art’s popular series of postwar Italian cinema returns for another engagement in Second Act: Fourth Season, running from April 26 to May 7, 2001 in the Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 1. By screening quality prints of important Italian films that were never released or have fallen out of distribution in this country, the series aims to foster an appreciation for the richness and variety of Italian cinema over the last five and a half decades.

This year’s program features 13 films including Rob Renato Castellani’s Due soldi di speranza (Two Cents Worth of Hope), 1952, Luchino Visconti’s La terra trema, 1948 and Bruno Bozzetto’s Allegro non troppo, 1976.

Second Act: Fourth Season

was organized by Laurence Kardish, Senior Curator, Department of Film and Video, and Antonio Monda, professor of cinema at New York University and film curator at the Center for Jewish History, New York. Second Act is presented in cooperation with the Fondazione Scuola Nazionale di Cinema (Lino Miccichè, President); Cinema Forever (Capolavori Salvati), a film restoration project of Gruppo Mediaset; and Winstar TV & Video (Al Cattabiani, President), and with the support of the Italian Cultural Institute, New York (Paolo Riani, Director), and Alitalia.

 

Second Act: Fourth Season Screening Schedule:

Thursday, April 26, 6:00 p.m.; Saturday, April 28, 2:00 p.m.

Toby Dammit.

1968. Italy. Directed by Federico Fellini. Screenplay by Fellini and Bernardino Zapponi. Cinematography by Giuseppe Rotunno. Music by Nino Rota. With Terence Stamp, Salvo Randone, Polidor, Fabrizio Angeli, and Ernesto Colli. Fellini was reluctant to participate in the French-Italian production of three short films based on the stories by Edgar Allan Poe. However, his episode, Toby Dammit, a desperate journey toward death and darkness, is one of his greatest achievements. 41 min.

I Miracolo (The Miracle).

1948. Italy. Directed by Roberto Rossellini. Screenplay by Rossellini, Federico Fellini, and Tullio Pinelli. Cinematography by Aldo Tonti. With Anna Magnani and Fellini. The Miracle was banned for blasphemy in New York, and the case was argued in the U.S. Supreme Court. The film follows a simple-minded woman, pregnant by a shepherd, who believes that the baby she is carrying is Jesus Christ. Fellini wrote the original story, served as assistant director, and played the offending shepherd. 68 min.

Friday, April 27, 2:30 p.m.; Saturday, April 28, 4:30 p.m.

La terra trema.

1948. Italy. Directed by Luchino Visconti. Screenplay by Visconti, based on I Malavoglia by Giovanni Verga. Cinematography by G. R. Aldo (Aldo Graziati). This milestone of Italian Neorealism—featuring actual fishermen and inhabitants of Aci Trezza, a Sicilian village—created an uproar when presented at the Venice Film Festival. Part of the film’s financing came from the Italian Communist Party. 160 min.

Friday, April 27, 6:00 p.m.; Monday, April 30, 2:30 p.m.

Quattro passi tra le nuvole (Four Steps in the Clouds.)

1942. Italy. Directed by Alessandro Blasetti. Screenplay by Blasetti, Cesare Zavattini, Giuseppe Amato, Piero Tellini, and Aldo De Benedetti. Cinematography by Vaclav Vich. With Gino Cervi, Guido Celano, Adriana Benetti, Lauro Gazzolo, and Giacinto Molteni. Thanks to Zavattini, this bittersweet comedy about a harried salesman who agrees to pose for a day as an unwed mother’s husband is a noble precursor of Neorealism. 95 min.

Friday, April 27, 8:00 p.m.; Sunday, April 29, 5:00 p.m.

Palombella Rossa

. 1989. Italy. Written and directed by Nanni Moretti. Cinematography by Giuseppe Lanci. With Moretti, Silvio Orlando, Mariella Valentini, Alfonso Santagata, and Claudio Morganti. Moretti is celebrated as one of the most acute and witty chroniclers of the shifting social landscape. As a water polo fan mysteriously plunked down in the middle of an allegorical championship match, the hero becomes the most waterlogged star this side of Esther Williams. 87 min.

Sunday, April 29, 2:00 p.m.; Monday, April 30, 6:00 p.m.

Una vita difficile (A Difficult Life).

1961. Italy. Directed by Dino Risi. Screenplay by Rodolfo Sonego. Cinematography by Leonida Barboni. With Alberto Sordi, Lea Massari, Claudio Gora, Alessandro Blasetti, and Lina Volonghi. The film recounts the grotesque and bittersweet adventures of Silvio Magnozzi (Sordi) in a country passing from postwar anxiety to expectations of an economic boom. 118 min.

Tuesday, May 1, 2:30 p.m.; Saturday, May 5, 5:00 p.m.

Allegro non troppo.

1976. Italy. Directed by Bruno Bozzetto. Written by Bozzetto, Maurizio Nichetti, and Guido Manuli. Cinematography by Mario Masini and Luciano Marzetti. With Nichetti, Néstor Garay, and Maurizio Micheli. The film, a spoof of Walt Disney’s Fantasia, immediately acquired the status of a cult movie and became the most popular European animated film of the 1970s. After the success of Vip, mio fratello superuomo (1968), Bozzetto realized his most ambitious project with the collaboration of Nichetti (The Icicle Thief) as screenwriter and actor. Bozzetto doesn’t simply try to visualize the music; instead he seeks out contrasts and finds irony in the pairing of animation and classical music. The film’s greatest accomplishment is its version of Maurice Ravel’s Bolero. 85 min.

Tuesday, May 1, 6:00 p.m.; Friday, May 4, 2:30 p.m.

Adua e le compagne.

1960. Italy. Directed by Antonio Pietrangeli. Written by Ettore Scola, Pietrangeli, and Tullio Pinelli. Cinematography by Armando Nannuzzi. With Simone Signoret, Marcello Mastroianni, Sandra Milo, Claudio Gora, and Emmanuelle Riva. Four prostitutes are forced to fend for themselves when a new law ("Legge Merlin") closes the brothels. They open a rustic "trattoria" in the outskirts of Rome, but life demonstrates that it is impossible to escape the past and prejudice. An underestimated and gifted filmmaker, Pietrangeli modernizes the realism of the previous decade, adds melodramatic elements, and brilliantly uses a jazz score by Piero Piccioni. The film, with a highly effective ending, was released the same year as La dolce vita, Rocco and His Brothers, and L’avventura. 116 min.

Thursday, May 3, 2:30 p.m.; Friday, May 4, 6:00 p.m.

Un maledetto imbroglio (Facts of Murder).

1959. Italy. Directed by Pietro Germi. Written by Germi, Ennio De Concini, and Alfredo Giannetti, based on Carlo Emilio Gadda’s novel Quer pasticciaccio brutto de via Merulana. Cinematography by Leonida Barboni. With Germi and Claudia Cardinale. One of the most gifted and cultured Italian directors of his generation, Germi was underrated for his enthusiastic exploration of genres, from melodrama (The Railway Man) to Western (In the Name of the Law). This film marks the passage from his early Neorealist films (The Way of Hope) to the hugely successful comedies of the 1960s (Divorce Italian Style, Seduced and Abandoned). Adapting a masterpiece of Italian literature, Germi decides to follow the rules of a thriller and finds a solution in the unsolved mystery of the novel. Reviewing the film, Pier Paolo Pasolini declared, "I had the impression that I was seeing fragments of a masterpiece." He wrote about Cardinale’s performance, "She is able to act even with the corners of her eyes." 115 min.

Thursday, May 3, 5:00 p.m.; Saturday, May 5, 2:00 p.m.

Il mafioso (Mafioso).

1962. Italy. Directed by Alberto Lattuada. Written by Marco Ferreri, Rafael Azcona, Bruno Caruso, Agenore Incrocci, and Furio Scarpelli. Cinematography by Armando Nannuzzi. Antonio Badalamenti (Alberto Sordi, in one of his most unforgettable performances) is a Sicilian who migrates to Milan in search of his fortune. While spending his vacation in his hometown, he is approached by mafiosi who make him a proposal he cannot refuse: he must kill a man in New York if he wants to remain alive. In his seventeenth film in the first twenty years of his career, Lattuada directs with wit and fun a cruel script in which the artistic collaboration of Ferreri and Azcona is evident. 105 min.

Friday, May 4, 8:15 p.m.; Sunday, May 6, 2:00 p.m.

Il Posto (The Sound of Trumpets).

1961. Italy. Directed by Ermanno Olmi. Written by Olmi and Ettore Lombardo. Cinematography by Roberto Barbieri and Lamberto Caimi. With Sandro Panseri, Loredana Detto, Tullio Kezich, and Mara Revel. Domenico and Antonietta are suburban youths who meet while looking for a "job for life" in a large company in Milan during the 1960s economic boom. After a bizarre and elaborate hiring procedure, and the possibility of a tender flirt, they land jobs as clerks. When an older employee suddenly dies, Domenico gets a better position, and at the same time he starts considering his life and his future. Olmi’s stunning debut film is also his most lyrical and influential. Il posto means both "the job" and "the place" in Italian. 90 min.

Sunday, May 6, 5:00 p.m.; Monday, May 7, 2:30 p.m.

Catene (Chains).

1949. Italy. Directed by Raffaello Matarazzo. Written by Libero Bovio, Gaspare di Majo, Aldo De Benedetti, and Nicola Manzari. With Amedeo Nazzari, Yvonne Sanson, Aldo Nicodemi, Teresa Franchini, and Gianfranco Magalotti. A huge hit in Italy when released, Catene made Nazzari a star. Matarazzo followed this commerical triumph with a long series of melodramas, the most notable being I figli di nessuno (Nobody’s Children, 1951), Il tenente Giorgio (Lieutenant Giorgio, 1952), and Tormento (Torment, 1953). There is nothing subtle in this story of extreme passions and guilt, but Matarazzo’s solid, passionate direction serves the melodrama genre intelligently. Often compared to Douglas Sirk, Matarazzo was rediscovered by Italian critics in the 1980s and became a camp favorite. The film is presented in its English-language version. 86 min.

Monday, May 7, 6:00 p.m; Tuesday, May 8, 2:30 p.m.

Due soldi di speranza (Two Cents Worth of Hope).

1952. Italy. Directed by Renato Castellani. Written by Titina De Filippo, Ettore Maria Margadonna, and Castellani. Cinematography by Arturo Gallea. With Luigi Astarita, Maria Fiore, Vincenzo Musolino, Felice Lettieri, and Gina Mascetti. A simple story about poverty and love, set in a world where marriage is a forbidden luxury for the povera gente, the poor people. Castellani enjoyed huge popularity in the 1950s, but his fame declined rapidly with the advent of the great innovators of postwar Italian cinema. He was a strong, passionate filmmaker who deserves more of a second act. In Italian without English subtitles; synopsis provided.