Silvio Narizzano

Directing

Silvio Narizzano

Born 1927-02-08 · Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Silvio Narizzano is among the vanguard of early English Canadian filmmakers that also included Sidney J. Furie, Ted Kotcheff, Norman Jewison, Lindsay Shonteff, and Arthur Hiller. Born in Montreal, his first theatrical work was with the city's Mountain Playhouse before joining the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. He was the first among the aforementioned Canadian filmmakers to emigrate to England to work in British television, and was creatively instrumental in the formation of Granada Television. In transitioning to cinema later than Furie, Kotcheff, and Jewison, he made his debut with the Hammer Studios classic Die! Die! My Darling (1965), before scoring his greatest acclaim as director of Georgy Girl (1966). He followed that up with Blue (1968), a misunderstood critical and commercial flop, but a film that remained, to him, the most personal film of his career. He continued making films in mainland Europe throughout the 70's, before returning to Canada to make Why Shoot the Teacher? (1977) and England to make The Class of Miss Macmichael (1978). Narizzano spent his twilight years in relative seclusion, having immersed himself in religious studies.

Acting credits

Behind the camera

Fanatic poster
6.6

A young woman is terrorized by her former fiance's demented mother who blames her for her son's death. Also known as Die! Die! My Darling!

Fanatic

1965

Blue poster
5.9

A young man is torn between the woman he loves and his loyalty to his father, the leader of a Mexican gang.

Blue

1968

Fade In poster
4.2

A sophisticated Hollywood film editor, on location for a film she is working on, falls for a local cowboy who is hired to work on the film.

Fade In

1973

Georgy Girl poster
6.2

A homely but vivacious young woman dodges the amorous attentions of her father's middle-aged employer while attempting to please her glamorously stuck-up roommate Meredith.

Georgy Girl

1966

Redneck poster
4.4

Franco Nero and Telly Savalas star in the story of a trio of jewel thieves on the lam after a heist goes very wrong. Wrecking their car they take another unaware that there is a teenager hiding in the back. As the flight becomes more frantic, the young man is discovered, upsetting the balance of the thieves.

Redneck

1973

Redneck poster
4.4

Franco Nero and Telly Savalas star in the story of a trio of jewel thieves on the lam after a heist goes very wrong. Wrecking their car they take another unaware that there is a teenager hiding in the back. As the flight becomes more frantic, the young man is discovered, upsetting the balance of the thieves.

Redneck

1973

No artwork available
NR

A farmer who lives alone decides to advertise for a companion-housekeeper to come and live with him.

The Little Farm

1973

The Class Of Miss MacMichael poster
5.2

A dedicated teacher tries to reach out to juvenile delinquent students at a London alternative school.

The Class Of Miss MacMichael

1978

No artwork available
NR

A country cottage is the cause of marital strife.

The Simple Life

Poet Game poster
NR

Mercurial, hard-drinking poet Hugh Saunders (Sir Anthony Hopkins) awaits his fortieth birthday, trying to preserve his art and his marriage against the temptations of celebrity and addiction.

Poet Game

1972

Loot poster
5.7

Two bank robbers, Dennis and Hal, are on the run from the police after a successful heist. Needing somewhere to hide the loot, they turn to a funeral parlour where they stash the cash in Hal's recently-deceased mother's coffin. Taking the coffin, they turn to Hal's father and hide it in the bathroom of his hotel. Before long the hotel is host to the eccentric Inspector Truscott.

Loot

1970

Come Back, Little Sheba poster
7.0

An emotionally remote recovering alcoholic and his dowdy, unambitious wife face a personal crisis when they take in an attractive lodger.

Come Back, Little Sheba

1977

Choices poster
5.6

A popular high school student seems to have it all; a spot on the football team, the love of playing music in the school orchestra and a girlfriend. His world seems to come apart when the school doctor discovers he is partially deaf, causing him to be cut from the football team on the advice of the doctor. The student's friends fight to keep him on the team; while he struggles with his problem by withdrawing from everything he loves and starts falling in with the wrong crowd.

Choices

1981

The Sky is Falling poster
4.7

Chicken, a desperate hippie junkie living in a small Spanish village, is finding it difficult to separate fantasy and reality. This isn't helped by the villagers practising magic and child sacrifice, or his involvement with a group of boozy expatriates lost in their own dreams and regrets.

The Sky is Falling

1975

Why Shoot the Teacher? poster
6.4

It's the winter of 1935 and Max Brown is newly arrived in Willowgreen, Saskatchewan - a rural Canadian prairie town - on his first teaching job in a one room schoolhouse. He quickly realizes that this is not a dream situation: the winter is harsher than he's ever experienced, he's living in the basement of the school, the older of his students treat him poorly and his wages are paltry if and when he ever does get paid.

Why Shoot the Teacher?

1977

Staying On poster
7.0

A british colonel and his wife decide to remain in India after the departure of the British raj in the 1940s.

Staying On

1980

The Cafeteria poster
NR

An eccentric Jewish writer is drawn into the world of an apparantly delusional young woman and her invalid father

The Cafeteria

1974

24 Hours in a Woman's Life poster
5.0

Helen Lester is in love with a man she has known just 24 hours, a playboy who spent time in jail for passing bad checks. Though the man has promised to change, most of her strait-laced relatives are up in arms. But Clare Lester, Helen's grandmother, says the girl is free to join the man she loves. On one condition, that she listen to the story of a day in Clare's own life and of a man she tried to change.

24 Hours in a Woman's Life

1961

Young Shoulders poster
7.0

John Wain adapts his own novel, about a young man who accompanies his feuding parents to Portugal for the memorial service of his sister, who died in a plane crash with her entire class.

Young Shoulders

1984

The Trial of Oscar Wilde poster
NR

Courtroom account of the prosecution of Oscar Wilde for gross indecency with other men followed Wilde's disastrous libel charge against the Marquess of Queensberry, father of his lover Lord Alfred Douglas.

The Trial of Oscar Wilde

1960

The Public's Right to Know poster
NR

A documentary in which Kenneth Griffith, actor and filmmaker, endeavors to find the truth behind the banning of two of his films, one on the life of Michael Collins and the other on Badon Powell. Featuring interviews with the legendary 60 Minutes journalist Morley Safer, actor Peter O'Toole, Jeremy Isaacs, Benny Green, and William Deedes.

The Public's Right to Know

1974

Thunder on Sycamore Street poster
NR

When Joseph Blake, who once did prison time, and his daughter, Anna, move to Sycamore Street, their neighbors on the otherwise "peaceful" street converge to chase them out. But the Blakes don't back down.

Thunder on Sycamore Street

1957

Pal poster
10.0

Two sworn enemies, one black and the other white, are forced to confront their prejudices when they are forced together by circumstance.

Pal

1971