It’s a pleasant thing to revisit an old favorite and discover that it’s better than you remember. The tale of Zampanò and Gelsomina is Italo neo-realism 2.0: it’s got poverty, misfortune and misery but also a bankable American star or two. The visually revamped presentation of Federico Fellini’s international breakthrough picture is a wonder — no more distorted audio and images that look as if they were filmed yesterday. Several of the extras are new, but the main charm is still provided by Giulietta Masina, Anthony Quinn and the Nino Rota music.
La Strada
Blu-ray
The Criterion Collection 219
1954 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 98 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date November 2, 2021 / 39.95
Starring: Anthony Quinn, Giulietta Masina, Richard Basehart, Aldo Silvani, Marcella Rovena, Livia Venturini.
Cinematography: Otello Martelli, Anna Primula.
Production Designer: Mario Ravasco
Art Direction: E. Cervelli, Brunello Rondi
Film Editor: Leo Cattozzo
Original Music: Nino Rota
Written by ederico Fellini,...
La Strada
Blu-ray
The Criterion Collection 219
1954 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 98 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date November 2, 2021 / 39.95
Starring: Anthony Quinn, Giulietta Masina, Richard Basehart, Aldo Silvani, Marcella Rovena, Livia Venturini.
Cinematography: Otello Martelli, Anna Primula.
Production Designer: Mario Ravasco
Art Direction: E. Cervelli, Brunello Rondi
Film Editor: Leo Cattozzo
Original Music: Nino Rota
Written by ederico Fellini,...
- 11/6/2021
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Rome Open City, Paisan, Germany Year Zero: Filmed mostly on the streets in newly-liberated territory, Roberto Rossellini’s gripping war-related shows are blessed with new restorations but still reflect their rough origins. The second picture, the greater masterpiece, looks as if it were improvised out of sheer artistic will.
Roberto Rosselini’s War Trilogy
Rome Open City, Paisan, Germany Year Zero
Blu-ray
The Criterion Collection 500 (497, 498, 499)
1945-1948 / B&W / 1:37 & 1:33 flat full frame / 302 minutes / Street Date July 11, 2017 / available from the Criterion Collection 79.96
Starring: Aldo Fabrizi, Anna Magnani; Dots Johnson, Harriet White Medin; Edmund Moeschke, Franz-Otto Krüger.
Cinematography: Ubaldo Arata; Otello Martelli; Robert Julliard.
Film Editor: Eraldo Da Roma
Original Music: Renzo Rossellini
Written by Sergio Amidei, Alberto Consiglio, Federico Fellini; Klaus Mann, Marcello Pagliero, Alfred Hayes, Vasco Pratolini; Max Kolpé, Carlo Lizzani.
Directed by Roberto Rossellini
Criterion released an identical-for-content DVD set of this trilogy in 2010; the new Blu-ray...
Roberto Rosselini’s War Trilogy
Rome Open City, Paisan, Germany Year Zero
Blu-ray
The Criterion Collection 500 (497, 498, 499)
1945-1948 / B&W / 1:37 & 1:33 flat full frame / 302 minutes / Street Date July 11, 2017 / available from the Criterion Collection 79.96
Starring: Aldo Fabrizi, Anna Magnani; Dots Johnson, Harriet White Medin; Edmund Moeschke, Franz-Otto Krüger.
Cinematography: Ubaldo Arata; Otello Martelli; Robert Julliard.
Film Editor: Eraldo Da Roma
Original Music: Renzo Rossellini
Written by Sergio Amidei, Alberto Consiglio, Federico Fellini; Klaus Mann, Marcello Pagliero, Alfred Hayes, Vasco Pratolini; Max Kolpé, Carlo Lizzani.
Directed by Roberto Rossellini
Criterion released an identical-for-content DVD set of this trilogy in 2010; the new Blu-ray...
- 6/19/2017
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Relax, it’s for an adaptation of ‘Fahrenheit 451’
Seems like every day 2017 looks a little more like a dystopic novel: civil disorder, totalitarian rulers, an increase in military spending at the expense of social and cultural programs, Teen Wolf got cancelled; bottom line, it’s pretty dour out there.
Unless you’re the author of one of these dystopic novels, like Brave New World, 1984, or The Handmaid’s Tale, then you’re having the best sales of your career thanks to the teeming masses trying to adjust to the New World Order.
HBO’s looking to capitalize on this unrest by adapting the other really famous dystopic novel — Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, about a future where books are outlawed — into a movie, and now they’ve got their stars. Oscar-nominee and general badass Michael Shannon (Nocturnal Animals) will be playing Beatty, chief of the firemen who burn books, and...
Seems like every day 2017 looks a little more like a dystopic novel: civil disorder, totalitarian rulers, an increase in military spending at the expense of social and cultural programs, Teen Wolf got cancelled; bottom line, it’s pretty dour out there.
Unless you’re the author of one of these dystopic novels, like Brave New World, 1984, or The Handmaid’s Tale, then you’re having the best sales of your career thanks to the teeming masses trying to adjust to the New World Order.
HBO’s looking to capitalize on this unrest by adapting the other really famous dystopic novel — Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, about a future where books are outlawed — into a movie, and now they’ve got their stars. Oscar-nominee and general badass Michael Shannon (Nocturnal Animals) will be playing Beatty, chief of the firemen who burn books, and...
- 4/20/2017
- by H. Perry Horton
- FilmSchoolRejects.com
Plus: News roundup, our best articles, and five perfect shots.
Though it wasn’t a deafening defeat, Paul Feig’s Ghostbusters wasn’t a resounding success, either. All sexist nonsense aside, the film performed only average at the box office, casting doubt upon the future of the new franchise it was supposed to kick off. And while it seems unlikely we’ll be seeing the women of last summer’s movie suit up again anytime soon, we do know that the show will go on, in a sense.
In an interview with io9, the original film’s director and new franchise producer Ivan Reitman admitted that while the future is still a little up in the air, he’s got a plan to get it going forward.
We jumped into an animated film [after the last movie] and we are developing [a] live-action film. I want to bring all these stories together as a universe that makes sense within itself. Part...
Though it wasn’t a deafening defeat, Paul Feig’s Ghostbusters wasn’t a resounding success, either. All sexist nonsense aside, the film performed only average at the box office, casting doubt upon the future of the new franchise it was supposed to kick off. And while it seems unlikely we’ll be seeing the women of last summer’s movie suit up again anytime soon, we do know that the show will go on, in a sense.
In an interview with io9, the original film’s director and new franchise producer Ivan Reitman admitted that while the future is still a little up in the air, he’s got a plan to get it going forward.
We jumped into an animated film [after the last movie] and we are developing [a] live-action film. I want to bring all these stories together as a universe that makes sense within itself. Part...
- 3/22/2017
- by H. Perry Horton
- FilmSchoolRejects.com
Bitter Rice
Written by Giuseppe De Santis, Carlo Lizzani, Gianni Puccini
Directed by Giuseppe De Santis
Italy, 1949
The opening credits of Bitter Rice parade an array of Italian film industry luminaries, figures who would help redefine the country’s national cinema, picking up where neorealism left off and setting the stage for the remarkable work that would emerge in the decades to come. Screenwriters Carlo Lizzani and Giuseppe De Santis (who also directed) were two of eight individuals contributing in one way or another to the script, though they were the two who would share an Academy Award nomination for its story. Cinematographer Otello Martelli had nearly 50 films under his belt by the time of Bitter Rice, but in the years that followed he would most memorably man the camera for Federico Fellini’s finest films. And producing the movie was the venerable Dino De Laurentiis, really just at the start of his legendary career.
Written by Giuseppe De Santis, Carlo Lizzani, Gianni Puccini
Directed by Giuseppe De Santis
Italy, 1949
The opening credits of Bitter Rice parade an array of Italian film industry luminaries, figures who would help redefine the country’s national cinema, picking up where neorealism left off and setting the stage for the remarkable work that would emerge in the decades to come. Screenwriters Carlo Lizzani and Giuseppe De Santis (who also directed) were two of eight individuals contributing in one way or another to the script, though they were the two who would share an Academy Award nomination for its story. Cinematographer Otello Martelli had nearly 50 films under his belt by the time of Bitter Rice, but in the years that followed he would most memorably man the camera for Federico Fellini’s finest films. And producing the movie was the venerable Dino De Laurentiis, really just at the start of his legendary career.
- 1/19/2016
- by Jeremy Carr
- SoundOnSight
Forget the proletarian messages, this Italian Neorealist classic is really an exploitation film about ogling brazen, buxom babes in short-shorts, up to their knees in a rice paddy. Hollywood actress Doris Dowling is the nominal star but new discovery Silvana Mangano became the knockout dream of every Italian male suffering from postwar shortages (cough). Giuseppe De Santis delivered the perfect combo -- an art film that pulled in every lonely guy nella cittá. Bitter Rice Blu-ray The Criterion Collection 792 1949 / B&W / 1:33 flat full frame / 109 min. / Riso amaro / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date January 12, 2016 / 29.95 Starring Vittorio Gassman, Doris Dowling, Silvana Mangano, Raf Vallone. Cinematography Otello Martelli Film Editor Gabriele Varriale Original Music Goffredo Petrassi Written by Corrado Alvaro, Giuseppe De Santis, Carlo Lizzani, Franco Monicelli, Carlo Musso, Ivo Perilli, Gianni Puccini Produced by Dino De Laurentiis Directed by Giuseppe De Santis
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
Way back in...
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
Way back in...
- 1/12/2016
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Criterion digs Bitter Rice out of obscurity this month, a pulpy mix of social drama and dime store pathos from director and screenwriter Giuseppe De Santis. Premiering at the 1949 Cannes Film Festival, the title was also nominated for an Oscar in 1950 for Best Story. Lumped in with the neo-realism movement, it’s been a well-regarded minor title, but its problematic noir elements seem to have denied it prominent classification, at least compared to De Santis’ contemporary, Roberto Rossellini, whose Rome, Open City (1945) birthed the movement (and had just finished his notable war trilogy the year prior to release of this title). But De Santis creates something a bit stranger with this hybrid, a darker examination of sex and violence from the perspective of two central female characters. In its native language, the title is a pun since the Italian word for rice can also be substituted for the word laughter,...
- 1/12/2016
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
Federico Fellini casts a serio-comic eye on the modern day decay of man, morals and civilization circa 1960. Stunningly photographed by Fellini’s long time collaborator, Otello Martelli, the film avoids any number of pretentious pratfalls due to the self-mocking demeanor of its world-weary leading man, Marcello Mastroianni. Nominated for four Oscars and winner of the Palme d’Or at the 1960 Cannes Film Festival, the movie is that rarity, an esoteric product of the arthouse that was also a formidable box office hit.
- 4/20/2015
- by Trailers From Hell
- Thompson on Hollywood
La Dolce Vita
Directed by Federico Fellini
Written by Federico Fellini, Ennio Flaiano, Tullio Pinelli, Brunello Rondi
Italy, 1960
Right from the start of Federico Fellini’s 1960 film La Dolce Vita, we know we’re in for something different, something exciting, something audacious. Fellini’s choice of initial imagery announces immediately that this is a film about the contradictions of modern life. First, we get a helicopter carrying a large statue of Christ over Rome. It’s a powerful image with extensive connotations. This holy figure stands as the traditional and the sacred, and is slightly vulgarized in its absurdity here. But it moves on, and what follows further illustrates that things have changed: out with Christ, in with Marcello (Rubini in the film, Mastroianni in real life). He and his “photo reporters,” now known because of this film as paparazzi, take time away from their coverage of the transport to...
Directed by Federico Fellini
Written by Federico Fellini, Ennio Flaiano, Tullio Pinelli, Brunello Rondi
Italy, 1960
Right from the start of Federico Fellini’s 1960 film La Dolce Vita, we know we’re in for something different, something exciting, something audacious. Fellini’s choice of initial imagery announces immediately that this is a film about the contradictions of modern life. First, we get a helicopter carrying a large statue of Christ over Rome. It’s a powerful image with extensive connotations. This holy figure stands as the traditional and the sacred, and is slightly vulgarized in its absurdity here. But it moves on, and what follows further illustrates that things have changed: out with Christ, in with Marcello (Rubini in the film, Mastroianni in real life). He and his “photo reporters,” now known because of this film as paparazzi, take time away from their coverage of the transport to...
- 10/28/2014
- by Jeremy Carr
- SoundOnSight
I've made no secret when it comes to my love for the work of Federico Fellini's films, especially his classic La Dolce Vita, which was the first entry in my Best Movies section earlier this year. For the longest time I've owned the Koch Lorber, 2-Disc DVD edition of La Dolce Vita, continuously awaiting the day Criterion would be given the chance to add it to their esteemed collection with a transfer the film most definitely deserved. I speculated as to whether it would finally happen once Paramount had been granted exclusive rights last June and lo and behold, it is finally here and the result is exactly what fans of this film have been waiting for with visuals and sound so rich it will be almost as if you are seeing it for the first time. When it comes to the film itself, I'll point you to my...
- 10/16/2014
- by Brad Brevet
- Rope of Silicon
I first watched Federico Fellini's 1960 film, La Dolce Vita, just over five years ago and with this week marking what would have been the filmmaker's 94th birthday I've chosen La Dolce Vita as the debut film in my Best Movies feature. Not because I believe it to be his best (though it certainly is one of the best), but largely because I've had the urge to watch it again ever since learning Paramount has finally been granted exclusive rights to the film, prompting me to hope it will finally receive a domestic Blu-ray release sometime soon. Captured in lovely black-and-white, Otello Martelli's cinematography lives up to the literal translation of the film's title -- "the sweet life" -- while the narrative focuses on a character living a life more empty than "sweet". Marking the first time Marcello Mastroianni and Fellini would work together, Mastroianni plays Marcello Rubini, a...
- 1/22/2014
- by Brad Brevet
- Rope of Silicon
Included in the Toronto Film Festival’s “Masters” selection -- and for very good reason -- “Concrete Night” marks the return of the Finnish filmmaker Pirjo Honkasalo (“The Three Rooms of Melancholia”) to the realm of fiction for the first time since 1998, with a story that explores the poverty of the soul; the poverty of the pocketbook; life, death, Helsinki and the cosmos. Based on a novel by Honkasalo compatriot Pirkko Saisio, “Concrete Night’ is a mood piece and a poem, a coming-of-age story and a parable about how one generation warps the next. It’s also, not coincidentally, one of the most gorgeous things to appear at Tiff.Shooting in widescreen black-and-white (a distinctly Finnish gesture), Dp Peter Flickenburger’s camera creates a look that suggests B&W social realist films of a bygone era, perhaps one of the great ‘50s films of Elia Kazan, or something shot by...
- 9/12/2013
- by John Anderson
- Thompson on Hollywood
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