September 25 - October 7, 1999

Sponsored by Grand Marnier

Additional suppport from La Perla
and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

CONFERENCE (FREE ADMISSION): Pietro Germi and the Italian Cinema:
Sunday, Sept 26: 3:30 pm
Scheduled to appear:
Irene Bignardi, lead film critic for La Repubblica (Rome)
Peter Brunette, Professor of English and Film Studies, George Mason University
Antonio Monda, Professor of Filmmaking, New York University and curator of Pietro Germi: The Latin Loner
Moderated by Richard Peña, Program Director of the Filmn Society of Lincoln Center

Quoted material included in many of the descriptions of the Germi films is drawn from the first scholarly study in English of Pietro Germi's work: Pietro Germi: The Latin Loner, edited by Mario Sesti, published by Edizioni Olivares, and on sale in the Walter Reade Theater and Alice Tully Hall during the New York Film Fesival.

"Pietro Germi: The Latin Loner" was curated by Antonio Monda, and has been organized by the Film Society of Lincoln Center in collaboration with Cinecittà International. Special thanks to Mario Sesti, Fedele Confalonieri (Mediaset), Giorgio Gosetti, Medusa Films and the Istituto Italiano di Cultura of New York.

Extremely popular during his life and almost forgotten after his death, Pietro Germi is one of the greatest and most underrated of the Italian directors. Although his films triumphed with audiences all over the world (DIVORCE ITALIAN STYLE was nominated for three Academy Awards and won for Best Foreign Film in 1961), Germi always had a difficult relationship with the press. His distancing himself from the the major themes and preoccupations of neorealism and his growing interest in the potential of the genre picture (e.g., action films, Westerns, comedy) irritated many critics throughout his career. His tough, almost brutal attitude never alleviated this situation, and even his political position--he was a social democrat in a cultural world dominated by Marxists--were "scandalous" and "politically incorrect." Viewing his films today, we encounter an eclectic director, with a powerful and stylized vision, who was never afraid of his ideas and feelings. Germi was always able to achieve magnificent results with films that embraced various genres, such as the thriller, comedy, melodrama and noir. Federico Fellini, one of his best friends and screenwriter of some of his best movies, nicknamed Germi "the great carpenter." It eloquently defines a man who was a passionate creator but proud to be a craftsman-often achieving art without deliberately seeking it. - Antonio Monda

IN NOME DELLA LEGGE / IN THE NAME OF THE LAW / MAFIA
(1948; 99m)
Think John Ford's My Darling Clementine set in a sun-baked Sicilian "West": a magistrate comes out of nowhere to stand up for law and order in an isolated town where a peasant has been robbed and killed. Young Guido Schiavi (Massimo Girotti) must contend with mafiosi every bit as savage as Apaches in American Westerns--and, in the end, just as impressed by an enemy's courage and honor. The dynamic cutting and composition (inspired by Eisenstein), along with longtime Germi collaborator Leonida Barboni's striking high-contrast photography, make this Italian "Western" an action film fueled by unforgettable, integral style. Just reading Mario Sesti's description of the film's Eastwoodian hero makes IN THE NAME OF THE LAW a must-see: "Schiavi may not be quite like someone out of a painting by Magritte; but at times, he does seem almost like one of those middle-class travelers in the works of Hopper--a man who, having landed in the middle of the landscape setting of some short story by a writer of the verismo school, is aware of both the necessity and the futility of his mission of justice."
Sat Sept 25: 1
Mon Sept 27: 4 and 8:15

IL CAMMINO DELLA SPERANZA / THE WAY OF HOPE
(1950; 107m)
"The most lyrical film I've ever seen." - Nicholas Ray
Adapted from a novel based on an actual postwar event, THE WAY OF HOPE follows the superhuman trek of dispossessed sulphur-mine workers from Sicily north through Italy to a new life in France. During this incredible odyssey, tensions erupt among Saro; Barbara, the woman he comes to love; and Vanni, a convicted criminal who also has a yen for Barbara. Germi marries a strong neorealist vision to the Fordian poetry of The Grapes of Wrath--but "if Paisa and Grapes are its openly acknowledged models, the film is...turned into something different...by the myth-like rhythm of its characters' traversal of an unknown, fabulous landscape." THE WAY OF HOPE, scripted by Federico Fellini and Tullio Pinelli, is above all a fantastic adventure, full of enchanted experiences and images.
Sat Sept 25: 3:15
Tues Sept 28: 4 and 8:15

UN MALEDETTO IMBROGLIO / THE FACTS OF MURDER
(1959; 111m; print provided courtesy of Mediaset)
Police Inspector Ingravello (Germi) investigates first a theft, then the murder of a woman, in the same apartment building. Guilt crops up everywhere: with Mrs. Banducci's maid, the maid's boyfriend, the victim's cousin and even her husband. And are the theft and the killing connected, or does the key to the case lie in totally unexpected quarters? Based on Carlo Emilio Gadda's experimental novel That Awful Mess on Via Merulana, MURDER was judged by Variety to be "the first successful crime picture ever made in Italy." Each castmember delivers a vivid, wholly idiosyncratic performance (Pasolini wrote of neophyte Claudia Cardinale: "she acts even with the corners of her eyes"); but Germi's triumph comes from his "translation of a complex fiction into a popular genre.... Never have mystery, high literature, and the commedia all'italiana been made to work together so shrewdly and intelligently."
Sun Sept 26: 1
Fri Oct 1: 6:1;
Sat Oct 2: 1 and 6

SEDOTTA ET ABBANDONADA / SEDUCED AND ABANDONED
(1963; 122m)
A frenetic series of tragicomic machinations possible only in a Sicilian society obsessed with macho mores follow hard upon the discovery that Agnese (Stefania Sandrelli), an underage girl, is pregnant-by her sister's fiancé Peppino (Aldo Puglisi)! Broken engagement, emergency wedding, attempted murder, jail, mock kidnapping, social ridicule--all this and more must be endured by patriarch Ascalone (Saro Urzi) before the holy state of matrimony redresses an ever-widening social crisis. "Among the most vivid, spirited and poisonous of all 'Italian-style' comedies...SEDUCED reveals Germi's passion for the...'black paintings' of Goya, an artist described by Baudelaire as fascinated by 'the feeling for violent contrasts, the terrors of Nature, and physiognomies distorted by circumstance into a state of animality'."
Sun Sept 26: 6
Mon Oct 4: 4 and 9
Tues Oct 5: 6:30

SIGNORE E SIGNORI / THE BIRDS, THE BEES AND THE ITALIANS
(1965; 118)
Best Film, Cannes Film Festival
Three sharp-toothed, satirical send-ups of illicit sex, hypocrisy and absurd moralism in a small northern Italian town (Treviso): in the first, Toni (Alberto Lionello) spreads the rumor of his recent impotence in order to lay a husband's suspicions to rest; the second tale features rapturous adultery between Visigato (Gaston Moschin) and his mistress (Virni Lisi), which naturally brings down the murderous wrath of abandoned wife, church and state; in the third, when an underage girl (Patrizia Valturi) gives herself to a group of friends in a single day, her angry father (Carlo Bagno) charges one of the men and certainly would take him to court until a lovely lady (Olga Villi) makes him an offer he can't refuse. (Unlike most portmanteau movies, a character in BIRDS may take the lead in one segment, only to turn up as a supporting player in another, so that the social fabric of Germi's mad world is seamless.)
Sun Sept 26: 8:45
Mon Oct 4: 6:30
Tues Oct 5: 4 and 9

LA CITTA' SI DIFENDE / FOUR WAYS OUT
(1951; 83m)
Four amateurs (artist, former soccer player, unemployed worker, penniless kid) execute an ill-fated box-office heist during a soccer match in this powerful blend of hard-boiled action film and social realism-cinematic kin to postwar American semi-documentary thrillers such as Jules Dassin's The Naked City, John Huston's The Asphalt Jungle and Henry Hathaway's Kiss of Death. The film opens with the hold-up in progress, a silent sequence narrated by a voice steeped in bitter knowledge of what society's "losers" must inevitably suffer. "The viewer tours bourgeois and proletarian Rome, muddily sordid stairways along the river, buildings left half-destroyed by the war, the outskirts and the residential neighborhoods...setting[s] that could easily come straight out of a short story by Jack London or Hemingway."
Mon Sept 27: 6:15;
Wed Sept 29: 4 and 8:30

IL BRIGANTE DI TACCA DI LUPO / THE BRIGAND OF TACCA DI LUPO
(1952; 97m)
The leader of crack bersaglieri (sharpshooters) takes on brutal bandits pillaging the South. During the long, bloody campaign, Captain Giordano (Amedeo Nazzari) crosses paths with a woman kidnapped and dishonored by Raffa Raffa, the bandit leader; her vengeful husband; and a cop whose allegiance seems to be up for grabs. Germi demonstrates a clear-eyed understanding of the complex socio-political forces that feed into the battle for control of the mountainous South, as well as his love of John Ford's masterful Western compositions and stylistic expressions of strong men at war in a beautiful but dangerous landscape. (The director's "maniacal attention to detail" included nightly coating the undersides of the leaves on trees with white paint, so that they would give off an intermittent shimmer when quivering in the breeze; and whitewashing all the houses on one side of a street in order to heighten the contrast with the buildings opposite!)
Tues Sept 28: 6:15
Thurs Sept 30: 4 and 8:40

IL FERROVIERRE / THE RAILROAD MAN
(1956; 114m)
Germi stars as a railway worker who, like Job, endures more than a man should have to bear: he's forced his daughter into an unhappy marriage with disastrous results and he's so stressed by problems at work he takes to wine. A moving evocation of an Italian family in all of its unruly, endearing reality, this celebration of what it is to be human delighted Italian audiences, but was dissed by single-minded critics as a betrayal of neorealist and Marxist tenets. "In his acting, as in his direction, Germi has perfected a type of realism able to contain the emotional excesses of melodrama. Rage alternates with alcoholic stupor, loneliness with sudden outbursts of joy. Here, in a word, is life."
Wed Sept 29: 6:15
Fri Oct 1: 4 and 8:30

L'UOMO DI PAGLIA / THE STRAW MAN
(1958; 120m)
A lonely, middle-aged factory worker (played magnificently by Germi himself) enjoys an interlude of intense happiness while his wife and son are away on holiday at the beach--when they return, he breaks up with the young girl who, unfortunately, can't live without him. His confession results in his family's moving out, leaving him to drink and despair. On New Year's Eve, Germi's hapless hero is unexpectedly gifted with a new lease on life. "This film may be at once Germi's most objective and his most acutely painful examination of both his cult of the family and his belief in the absolute freedom of feelings and relationships. The work's fascination stems from the ungovernable, inescapable weight of the biological contradiction between these values, and from the sorrowful, suffering precision with which it faces up to their conflict."
Thurs Sept 30: 6:15

DIVORZIO ALL'ITALIANA / DIVORCE ITALIAN STYLE
(1961; 118m)
What if you lust after your pure yet sexy cousin (Stefania Sandrelli), but are thwarted by a mustached spouse (Daniela Rocca)? If you're a Sicilian aristo, the epitome of Italian masculinity (Marcello Mastroianni), you arrange events so you can play the murderously jealous husband! (The Italian court won't grant a divorce, but a crime passionnel warrants a judicial wink and a nod.) An Oscar-winning script full of black hilarity, with a suitably soigné Mastroianni, sporting a perfectly groomed little mustache and sleeked-down hair, lounge-lizard style.
Sat Oct 2: 3:30 and 8:30

ALFREDO, ALFREDO
(1976; 106m)
In Germi's last film, Alfredo (Dustin Hoffman), a shy bank clerk, really doesn't want to be tied down by a wife but nonetheless falls in love and marries Mariarosa (Stefania Sandrelli), a possessive, loudly passionate creature who wants to get pregnant in the worst way. Hopeful of gaining his freedom from Mariarosa's noisy marital embrace, Alfredo does his frenzied utmost to get her with child--then promptly takes up with Carolina (Carla Gravina), a pretty gardener. Inevitably, things go very awry, as they must in an Italian sex comedy. When divorce dust settles, Alfredo seems to have gotten all that he dreamed of...or is the dreamer back where he started from? " ALFREDO, ALFREDO is a ridiculous and moving film about making love--about the individual's need to be alone, and about being drawn