Italian
Articles and Essays on Italian Films
Rome, Open City (1945)
“All roads lead to Rome, Open City,” said the great French director Jean-Luc Godard. Along with Vittoria De Sica’s masterpiece Bicycle Thieves, Rome, Open City is considered the quintessential example of the Italian neo realism movement. The great Italian director Roberto Rossellini created not only a film of such powerful documentary like realism but also a film that can be […]
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L’ Eclisse (1962)
At the time Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’ Eclisse was released, other filmmakers from all around the world were experimenting with the possibilities of film. At a time when other European filmmakers were taking cinematic chances, like Godard with Breathless, Luis Bunuel with Viridiana, Alain Resnais with Last Year in Marienbad and Ingmar Bergman with Persona, Antonioni’s film […]
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Nights of Cabiria (1957)
One of the great attributes in Federico Fellini’s tragic masterpiece Nights of Cabiria is the sensational performance by his wife and leading lady Giulietta Masina; who won the Best Actress award at the Cannes Film Festival. The way she manipulates her wide eyes, her large eyebrows and her walk and manner is a complete character performance and […]
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Conformist, The (1970)
In one of the greatest of all art films comes Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Conformist; a film that combines the controversial topics of politics and sexuality into one of the most fascinating and complex character studies in all of film history. The Conformist tells the story about the rise and fall of Italian Fascism between the years of […]
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La Dolce Vita (1960)
Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita which in English is titled ‘The Sweet Life’ follows a gossip columnist named Marcello (Marcello Mastroianni) whose job chronicles ‘the sweet life’ of fading aristocrats, second-rate movie stars, aging playboys and vapid women of commerce. The movie follows Marcello as he chases down stories and women, and attends high-class elaborate parties, all the […]
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