Cinema, Italian-style

[therouxxx]

Can anyone point me to some good writing on Salò? Far too many people have seen this, so I'm having trouble wading through all the trash surrounding it...

[therouxxx]

In any language btw. I don't mind forcing something through translation

[niminy-piminy]

2015 poll viewing No5:
SON OF THE LOVELY CAPITALISM (Suranga Deshapriya Katugampala)
https://letterboxd.com/film/son-of-the- ... apitalism/

Suranga D. Katugampala is a Sri Lankan filmmaker and a naturalized Italian.
Born in Sri Lanka, he immigrated to Italy with his family at a young age.

https://youtu.be/NmL6b3Wfxm4

[niminy-piminy]

Finished all "Eight Films by Cecilia Mangini"...
https://www.another-screen.com/cecilia-mangini

DIVINE LOVE
STENDALÌ (STILL THEY TOLL)
As there is a recording of the last remaining Kauai 'O'o bird's mating call (can be heard in the other thread), these two films capture two different vanishing traditions of the human specie — either 1/ various rites connected with a religious pilgrimage or 2/ a mourning chant.

When Mangini arrived in the town in 1960, she could find only two women who remembered fragments of the chants.

BEING WOMEN
MARIA’S DAYS
Plights of women (in general) in capitalism (labor exploitation & domestic slavery) vs. a portrait of one specific individual elderly lady.

THE BRIDLE ON THE NECK
THE SONG OF THE SWAMPS
Poverty (born of exploitation) giving rise to uninhibited brats whose destiny is either to become 1/ social reformers/revolutionaries (eventually saints) or 2/ criminals. If anyone wonders how to deal with those brats before they come of age (and either become adult activists or adult prisoners), the clue is given in MARIA’S DAYS.

She (Maria) is ... the witchy woman with piercing eyes who causes mischief-making children to flee.

BRINDISI ’65
TOMMASO
Elaboration on labor exploitation in general vs. individual delusions related to labor in capitalism.
1/ In TOMMASO one can hear about the plights of the working class (unemployment, occupational accidents, labor exploitation), and in-between naive rambling of young Tommaso about soon going to work in a factory, earning a lot of money and buying possessional goods (first of all, a fancy motorcycle).
2/ In the grand finale of BRINDISI ’65 a crowd of young men (in majority soon to be workers in the local factory) watches a scene of puppet theater in which a suitor is asking for a hand in marriage, but is kicked in the ass by the father due to his precarious (penniless) condition. All the young boys (with just one exception of a thoughtful young gentleman) laugh heartily (not realizing puppets are enacting their fate).

I never heard of Cecilia Mangini before.
I lived in socialist Czechoslovakia till my late teen years and heard then a lot of anti-capitalist rants (even in prime time news on daily basis) but Cecilia Mangini was never mentioned.
Even in 1980s socialist Czechoslovakia, (i believe) Pasolini would be kicked out of the communist party and Cecilia Mangini would face censorship.
The then anti-capitalist agenda was rather vague (so it would not slip into domestic fault-finding typical of the Prague Spring in 1968 that had to be "corrected" by Warsaw Pact invasion) and was always followed by extensive easy-going numbing entertainment for masses (less glamorous than numbing entertainment in capitalism but otherwise basically the same).
Me and most of my 1980s countrymen (living in quasi-socialism and having naive notions about capitalism) were (many still are) quite similar to Tomasso or the laughing crowd in the puppet theater.
Even in 1980s Czechoslovakia (and (i believe) in other countries of the Soviet block as well) anarcho-communist Cecilia Mangini would be an outcast.
Socialist regime that would fully appreciate Cecilia Mangini's work is yet to come!

[nrh]

think evelyn & rischka have already written about it here a little, but riccardo freda's theodora, empress of byzantium is just wonderful. a lot of what you expect from freda operating at his peak is here - there is a long, climactic insurrection/riot sequence that just gets more and more incredible by the minute, culminating in one of the great melodrama images of all time, where theodora is surrounded a wall of spears and will be strangled by a man she betrayed unless her spineless emperor husband can realize she was faithful to him all along - but it is also lush and dramatically complicated in ways that are surprising.

i think i mostly prefer the great swashbucklers but this isn't a bad first step if you're interested in the director, and the upgraded version now available looks pretty nice....

[nrh]

i love pirandello's one act plays, and his man with a flower in his mouth has stuck with me ever since i read it - this eerie nighttime conversation between two men, and shadow of two (very differently) broken lives behind it.

bellocchio's adaptation is great, in his 90s style (my favorite bellocchio period) - total control of mise en scene, controlling mood through color temperature and sparse music, cutting for emphasis rather than continuity. minor, at least.

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

I've always wanted to get into '70s gialli and poliziotteschi, but I've had a few roadblocks: my lack of interest in following their convoluted plots (especially by subtitles), and my squeamishness at their upsetting violence.

My quirky new solution is that I'm only going to watch them without subtitles in Italian, so that I purposefully am not called to follow the plot or understand what shitty dialogue some shitty man is spouting. Just enjoy the beautiful visuals/music/atmosphere/Italian as background music.

My understanding is that these movies were originally made for half-attention terza visione audience contexts anyway, so I don't feel it's radically inappropriate, if anything rather fitting. Will report back to see how it goes!

[brian d]

that might be more enjoyable than paying attention to the stories, yep i watched 52 of these in one year several years back as a challenge to myself because i never really like gialli movies. i feel the same about them now, but did find a few that weren't bad, so if you want some recommendations or there are things you do/don't want to see, i can try to remember films that would fit the bill.

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

Oh sure, that would be great!

[brian d]

so here are the films that i thought were at least decent. i didn't care too much about whether something was giallo or poliziotteschi or krimi or whatever else, just things that seemed giallo or -adjacent. obviously a lot of these blend together at a certain point, and i can't recall all the details of quite a few, but if you want anything more refined than this i can do my best.

Very Nice Work:
Don't Torture a Duckling (Fulci)
The House That Screamed (Ibáñez Serrador)

Enjoyable!:
Cat O' Nine Tails (Argento)
Black Sabbath (Bava)
Erotic Games of a Respectable Family (Espinosa)
Torso (Martino)

Surprisingly decent:
Night of the Scorpion (Balcázar)
Kill Baby, Kill (Bava)
The Possessed (Bazzoni; Rossellini)
Psychout for Murder (Brazzi)
The Case of the Bloody Iris (Carnimeo)
Black Belly of the Tarantula (Cavara)
The Etruscan Kills Again (Crispino)
What Have They Done to Your Daughters? (Dallamano)
What Have You Done to Solange? (Dallamano)
A Lizard in a Woman's Skin (Fulci)
One on Top of the Other (Fulci)
Short Night of Glass Dolls (Lado)
Who Saw Her Die? (Lado)
Naked You Die (Margheriti)
All the Colors of the Night (Martino)
The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh (Martino)
Crimes of the Black Cat (Pastore)
The Girl in Room 2A (Rose)
The Red-Headed Corpse (Russo)
The Laughing Woman (Schiavazappa)
The Blood-Stained Butterfly (Tessari)

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

Awesome, thanks! Looking forward to digging through some of these