Metello. 1970. Italy. Directed by Mauro Bolognini. Screenplay by Luigi Bazzoni, Bolognini, Suso Cecchi d’Amico, Ugo Pirro, based on a novel by Vasco Pratolini. With Massimo Ranieri, Ottavia Piccolo, Frank Wolff, Tina Aumont, Lucia Bosè. 4K digital restoration by Cinecittà; courtesy Cinecittà. In Italian; English subtitles. 107 min.
The Italian filmmaker Mauro Bolognini was known for intense explorations of obsessive, doomed love affairs that usually involved impotent, desiccated men falling for voluptuous, vampiric women, as we saw in MoMA’s tribute to Claudia Cardinale last year. Such is the case with Metello, about an aspiring labor activist in 19th-century Florence (played convincingly by pop star Massimo Rainieri) who strays from his wife and child when he is seduced by an older woman (Lucia Bosè). Ennio Morricone composed a sumptuously romantic orchestral score for this, his fourth collaboration with Bolognini; the film’s theme, with its tremulous violins, became the hit song “Io e te” for Ranieri in the early 1970s.