Monica Vitti

An Italian documentary about Italian cinema.

Charismatic and resourceful, seducer and daredevil, Jean-Paul Belmondo has always played his roles as he lived, at a thousand miles an hour. He had only one passion: to entertain the public with his smile, his naturalness, his energy, his stunts. But contrary to appearances, his destiny was full of pitfalls. This film lifts the veil on a founding childhood that allowed him to overcome many obstacles throughout his life thanks to the tutelary figures of his father and mother. Told from the inside with the help of his autobiography, interviews and unpublished archives, this epic story traces the career of this turbulent young actor who launched the New Wave in Breathless before becoming the popular Bebel, an indestructible and provocative vigilante. From film to film, this documentary paints an intimate portrait of a man who built himself up to reach the top: his triumphs but also his trials, his doubts, his secrets, his angers, his clowning, his disappointments or his personal dramas.

We thought we'd seen, read, and heard everything there was to see about the Cannes Film Festival, from the glitz and gossip to the scandals and censorship. And yet, Emmanuel Barnault's "Morceaux de Cannes" (Pieces of Cannes), by this leading expert on Italian and French cinema, convinces us otherwise. The third largest event in the world (after the Olympic Games and the FIFA World Cup) reveals its secrets only sparingly, as this film attests. The result of passionate research in the INA archives, these 52 minutes, without interviews or voice-over narration, string together rare and sometimes previously unseen footage. Taken together, they tell a surprising, original, and heartwarming story of the Festival. On the beach, on a street corner, in a restaurant, or in the privacy of a hotel room, these forgotten archives summon the greatest filmmakers, actors, and actresses of the last seventy years, from Jean Cocteau to David Lynch, for an anthology of the Festival's history.

Inspired by a famous exchange of letters between Michelangelo Antonioni and Mark Rothko, Esterno giorno is an experimental love letter to Italian cinema. Embarking on an intimate journey in the footsteps of Monica Vitti’s characters, the filmmaker poetically intertwines contemporary footage shot across Italy and the Jordanian desert with excerpts from Antonioni’s films, creating an illusion of continuity between past and present.

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An account of the life of actress Jeanne Moreau (1928-2017), a true icon of the New Wave and one of the most idolized French movie stars.

By presenting archive footage along with his own life story, filmmaker Gabriele Salvatores mediates an illustration of the economic boom in Italy during the 1960s.

A short film containing some of the highlights of the Cannes Film Festival's storied history.

Federico Fellini died on October 31, 1993. In the following days, his funeral chapel was set up in Cinecittà's historic Studio 5, often used by the maestro as a film set. Sergio Zavoli shot footage of his funeral, which he later edited together with archive material. The film also documents the reactions to Federico Fellini's death and funeral.

A documentary portrait of Michangelo Antonioni based on Roland Barthes' essay.

The investigations of a private eye shake up the almost broken marriage of a middle aged couple.

A film of Enrico Berlinguer's funeral in Rome, briefly tracing his career as leader of the Italian Communist Party.

An omnibus of two different stories: In the first a divorced couple (actress wife and director husband) refresh their old passions via their common flat. In the second a well-to-do dentist-wife is attacked by her petty bourgeois family when she writes a sex novel.

Twenty-three years after L'Avventura (1960), Michelangelo Antonioni returns to Lisca Bianca Island. The rarefied atmosphere of Anna's (Lea Massari's) disappearance is recalled by some audio excerpts from the original movie.

On entering her bathroom, Luisa finds a naked man showering. She calls the police at once and the man is arrested. At the police station Alberto, a psychiatrist, recognizes the man: he is Paolo, Luisa's husband. Alberto offers to help Paolo, but when the two men arrive at his home, Paolo still in his bathrobe, Luisa hugs Alberto and calls him Paolo. The two men try everything they think of to help Luisa regain her memory until the last (but not too unexpected) surprise.

A man, mirroring the assassinated King, infiltrates a castle to kill the Queen but hesitates, leading to a deadly dare and revelation of shared history.

After a 22 years marriage, a couple shows the signs of a crisis. She thinks he has a lover, and it actually seems so, but does the other woman really exist?

A documentary about the Italian cinema as art form and industry.

A couple of young movie makers have secretly filmed for over a year what was going on in a hotel room, trying to realize a "live act" of common people living their life. They get in touch with old and money-tight producer Mengaroni to edit their movie, but while they contact the accidental actors for gathering authorization, he starts to manipulate their work.

This Surrealist film, with a title referencing the Communist Manifesto, strings together short incidents based on the life of director Luis Buñuel. Presented as chance encounters, these loosely related, intersecting situations, all without a consistent protagonist, reach from the 19th century to the 1970s. Touching briefly on subjects such as execution, pedophilia, incest, and sex, the film features an array of characters, including a sick father and incompetent police officers.

Construction worker Oreste and young fiancee Adelaide meet Nello, a cook in a pizzeria. This love triangle often goes to communist rallies, and enjoys the filthy beaches of Ostia. Will the hostile environment pave a way to jealousy?

Tina is on trial for the murder of her lover, Gino. The violent nature of their relationship, revealed in the trial, seems to make obvious that she accidentally killed him during a fight. The lone female jury member compares her life to Tina's and, believing her to be innocent, sets out on her own to find a missing witness that can prove Tina's innocence.

8 comic sketches set in Italy, with 4 of the most famous European sex symbols of the 70's playing 2 roles each.

The film consists of twelve episodes, all with Monica Vitti as the protagonist.

Three episodes. Episode 1 - The Refrigerator (Monicelli). A married couple of two poor emigrant workers spend almost all their money to buy a refrigerator (a must in the '70s). The purchase is too expensive for their family balance sheet. To earn some money they decide to go for prostitution. The wife is not so unhappy to the perspective. Episode 2 - The Room (Sordi). To celebrate ten years of marriage a couple decides to spend a quick holiday in top luxury hotels in Sardinia. But the fashion luxury VIP world is too hard to enter; they soon will end in prison. Episode 3 - The Lion (De Sica). Two adulterous, Antonio and Giulia, are blocked by a lion, staying on the exit in the place they met. They both have to come back home, but couldn't move because of the lion’s presence. The critical situation soon drives them to their limit, revealing their real essence.

An idealistic first-time director lives for his art — until he meets a wife of an Italian producer at the Cannes Film Festival. A passionate affair begins, but the couple's romance is tested as they face the temptations of fame and fortune.

Giorgia, an unhappy housewife tired of marriage with her husband Amedeo, starts to hear a voice that orders her to perform actions out of the ordinary.

Annalisa is married to Marco, a journalist too busy with her career, who neglects her even though she loves him deeply. He therefore decides to find another husband, the university professor Antonio, who marries without the first being able to notice it. Until she gets pregnant.

Two racy women decide to chuck their mundane lives and go on a wild adventure.

For having suffered the violence of seven Himalayan Sherpas, the Countess Valentina Contarini has fallen ill of "fallophobia" and consults a healer, a supposed extraterrestrial who is actually a young Swedish man who "works" for certain American psychologists.

The comedy, centered on five characters (Rita, Rodolfo, Agostino, Bettina, and Don Attilio - "o viecchio pazzo"-), has as background the Italy of the 60s between the economic boom and the perennial unemployment crisis. The cylinder, well explained by "Agostino-Eduardo" in the comedy, is a representation of power, designed to intimidate the ignorant for its only evocative "power". It can also be seen as a sort of "Pirandellian mask", where the character of Augustine wears it to defend himself and represent something that he is not.

Three episodes of casual erotic character: a porn scriptwriter and his secretary, a man locked up among homosexuals, and a shy man who decides to hire a prostitute over the phone.

A journalist preparing a story on extremist youth falls in love with a young radical who fears being killed by his companions when he is unable to commit a political assassination.

Don Vincenzo, a priest sent to a mining village in Australia, seeks to redeem the Sicilian Susanna.

Professor Marrot obtains the secret documents containing evidence of the illegal weapon transactions between the French government, in the face of its high official Leroi, and two African countries. Before making the public statement, Marrot finds himself under surveillance. In the critical circumstances his Italian friend and partner Angela takes action and the game continues.

Teresa gets her first taste of crime -- and its consequences -- when, during World War II, she is nabbed for robbing an apartment. But being poor and perpetually starving, the pretty petty thief doesn't give up her quest for ill-gotten gains and soon turns to pick-pocketing. Despite her questionable thieving skills, the bumbling crook tries scheme after scheme, pilfering from strangers and dodging the law as she searches for a way to fund an adequate meal.

The lives of two local professional dancers change suddenly as American soldiers stop in their town hoping to be entertained in accordance with the Broadway style. Effectively, they perform up to their expectations. However, as the army men have to march northward, their moment of glory finishes heartlessly.

When his wife wants a divorce -- in preference of a romantic Frenchman -- husband Livio seemingly accepts. But when he sets up a last weekend together with his secretary and his wife's lover, the trip turns out to be part of an elaborate plan to win his wife back.

Rome, 1800. Napoleon threatens the power of the Church and executions of Jacobins are constant. Angelotti, the most famous of them all has escaped from prison and the chief of police is on his tail. Angelotti is being helped by a painter, lover of "La Tosca", a famous singer. The police chief suspects the truth and tries to arouse the jealousy of "La Tosca" to catch the escapee.

Comedy set at the time of King Umberto I of Monza (Italy) about Maria Sarti, aka Ninì Tirabusciò, actress/singer who caused a scandal with her raunchy dancing.

A pimp is suspected of murdering his lover. He is convicted based on the testimony of a single witness. The woman begins doubting her memory of the event and then, her feelings towards the convict...

Vittoria is a beautiful literary translator living in Rome. After splitting from her writer boyfriend, Riccardo, Vittoria meets Piero, a lively stockbroker, on the hectic floor of the Roman stock exchange. Though Vittoria and Piero begin a relationship, it is not one without difficulties, and their commitment to one another is tested during an eclipse.

In an industrializing Italian town, a married woman, rendered mentally unstable after a traffic accident, drifts into an affair with a friend of her husband.

Claudia and Anna join Anna's lover, Sandro, on a boat trip to a remote volcanic island. When Anna goes missing, a search is launched. In the meantime, Sandro and Claudia become involved in a romance despite Anna's disappearance, though the relationship suffers from guilt and tension.

Modesty Blaise, a secret agent whose hair color, hair style, and mod clothing change at a snap of her fingers is being used by the British government as a decoy in an effort to thwart a diamond heist. She is being set up by the feds but is wise to the plot and calls in sidekick Willie Garvin and a few other friends to outsmart them. Meanwhile, at his island hideaway, Gabriel, the diamond thief has his own plans for Blaise and Garvin.

A chastity belt provides an endless amount of grief for a woman whose jealous husband has gone off to the Crusades.

A day in the life of an unfaithful married couple and their steadily deteriorating relationship in Milan.

A Sicilian woman is dishonored by her lover, then goes to London with a pistol intending to murder him.

This semi-amusing sex (romance) comedy has four separate stories: "The Telephone Call", written by Rodolfo Sonego, directed by Dino Risi. "A Treatise on Eugenics", written by Tullio Pinelli from a story by Luciano Salce and Steno, directed by Luigi Comencini. "The Soup", written by Rodolfo Sonego and Luigi Magni, directed by Franco Rossi. "Monsignor Cupid", written by Leo Benvenuti and Piero de Bernardi from a story by Boccaccio, directed by Mauro Bolognini.

Four different directors present lighthearted stories about married Italian couples and their dilemmas with jealousy, sex and love. Segment 1: Scandaloso / The Scandal (Franco Rossi) Segment 2: Peccato nel poeriggio / Sin in the Afternoon (Elio Petri) Segment 3: La sospirosa / The Victim (Luciano Salce) Segment 4: Gente moderna / Modern People (Mario Monicelli)

Gerard, a young man from a "good family" dreams of becoming an actor. To do this, he follows everywhere his sister Frédérique who is infatuated with cinéma vérité.

Giovanni and Raffaella are happily married from ten years, but their relationship goes into crisis when Raffaella falls in love with Valerio Mantovani, a handsome forty-year-old man she knew during the concerts of chamber music she weekly attends with her mother.

Four comedic shorts explore quirky relationships and misadventures: a teenage girl's journey home, a self-serving babysitter, a husband confronting infidelity, and a wealthy woman's drunken escapades with her butler.

"Les quatre vérités" aka "The Four Truths" is a movie anthology that consists of four segments, all loosely parodying fables from the 17th-century French poet Jean de la Fontaine. The US cut usually features only 3 segments.

An exasperated police inspector receives different eyewitness accounts surrounding a downed saucer and its female occupant.

Comedy about a self-made woman in Paris contemplating the idea of suicide at first, then murder.

An old castle in Sweden, inhabited by a family of 18th century dressing eccentrics, holds secrets, deception, and rumors of murder.

Pietro is a young bourgeois lawyer who married Giuliana, a pretty girl who was a little unscrewed, and met at a party of artists. Despite the premises, everything between the two seems to work best.

In this documentary, giants of italian cinema such as Rossellini, De Sica, Fellini and Zavattini talk about the importance of cinema after WW2, and about huge moments of social rebellion. This movie gives the floor to the creators of italian neorealism.

A newlywed couple win the lottery and the prize is a mink fur which might change their lives forever.