
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
NRThe story of Granada, the company responsible for Britain's most enduring soap opera Coronation Street, the current affairs series World in Action, and highly praised drama from Brideshead Revisited to Prime Suspect. With contributions from Jeremy Isaacs, Gus Macdonald, David Plowright, Michael Parkinson, Gerry Robinson and Sir Denis Forman. Director David Thompson
Granada: From the North
1992
NRPerhaps at first glance, the filmography of Silvio Narizzano appears unremarkable. Thanks to his sleeper hit Georgy Girl (1966), he's known largely as a "one-hit wonder" director. Upon closer inspection, however, likely no other filmmaker used cinema as effectively to exorcise personal demons in ways both ugly and beautiful. And few directors' sensibilities were more gay, both overtly and covertly. Film historian Daniel Kremer is your tour guide through an obscure, perplexing body of work heretofore ignored and often unfairly shunned. Cruel, Usual, Necessary: The Passion of Silvio Narizzano is an essay documentary of discovery.
Cruel, Usual, Necessary: The Passion of Silvio Narizzano
2024
NRA 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
Behind the camera
6.6A 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
5.9A young man is torn between the woman he loves and his loyalty to his father, the leader of a Mexican gang.
Blue
1968
4.2A 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
6.2A 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
4.4Franco 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
4.4Franco 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
A farmer who lives alone decides to advertise for a companion-housekeeper to come and live with him.
The Little Farm
1973
5.2A dedicated teacher tries to reach out to juvenile delinquent students at a London alternative school.
The Class Of Miss MacMichael
1978
A country cottage is the cause of marital strife.
The Simple Life
—
NRMercurial, 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
5.7Two 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
7.0An 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
5.6A 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
4.7Chicken, 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
6.4It'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
7.0A british colonel and his wife decide to remain in India after the departure of the British raj in the 1940s.
Staying On
1980
NRAn eccentric Jewish writer is drawn into the world of an apparantly delusional young woman and her invalid father
The Cafeteria
1974
5.0Helen 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
7.0John 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
NRCourtroom 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
NRA 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
NRWhen 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
10.0Two sworn enemies, one black and the other white, are forced to confront their prejudices when they are forced together by circumstance.
Pal
1971