Una vita difficile (A Difficult Life). 1961. Directed by Dino Risi

Film

No upcoming events

Una vita dificile (A Difficult Life). 1961. Italy. Directed by Dino Risi. Courtesy Photofest

Una vita difficile (A Difficult Life). 1961. Italy. Directed by Dino Risi. Screenplay by Rodolfo Sonego. With Alberto Sordi, Lea Massari. In Italian; English subtitles. 118 min.

Arguably Dino Risi’s most courageous film, A Difficult Life traces Italy’s swift descent into crony capitalism and rampant consumerism in the decades following World War II. Alberto Sordi, who could play high-minded idealists and miserable cynics with equally brilliant conviction, here plays a mixture of the two: a partisan resistance fighter who, suffering no end of disappointment both in his career and his marriage, is stripped of all illusion, including that of his own deeply felt principles. Archival 35mm print from Cineteca Nazionale; courtesy Rialto Pictures.

This film accompanies Dino Risi.

Past events

Sun, Dec 18, 2016, 2:00 p.m.

MoMA, Floor T2, Theater 2

The Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 2
Thu, Dec 15, 2016, 6:30 p.m.

Introduced by Sergio Toffetti, Cineteca Nazionale

Education Center, Mezzanine, Theater 3

The Celeste Bartos Theater

Licensing

If you would like to reproduce an image of a work of art in MoMA’s collection, or an image of a MoMA publication or archival material (including installation views, checklists, and press releases), please contact Art Resource (publication in North America) or Scala Archives (publication in all other geographic locations).

MoMA licenses archival audio and select out of copyright film clips from our film collection. At this time, MoMA produced video cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. All requests to license archival audio or out of copyright film clips should be addressed to Scala Archives at [email protected]. Motion picture film stills cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. For access to motion picture film stills for research purposes, please contact the Film Study Center at [email protected]. For more information about film loans and our Circulating Film and Video Library, please visit https://www.moma.org/research/circulating-film.

If you would like to reproduce text from a MoMA publication, please email [email protected]. If you would like to publish text from MoMA’s archival materials, please fill out this permission form and send to [email protected].