Il giudizio universale | |
---|---|
Directed by | Vittorio De Sica |
Written by | Cesare Zavattini |
Produced by | Dino De Laurentiis |
Starring | Alberto Sordi Nino Manfredi Vittorio Gassman Jack Palance Ernest Borgnine Paolo Stoppa Fernandel |
Cinematography | Gábor Pogány |
Music by | Alessandro Cicognini |
Release date |
|
Running time | 92 minutes |
Country | Italy |
Language | Italian |
The Last Judgment (Italian : Il giudizio universale) is a 1961 commedia all'italiana film by Italian director Vittorio De Sica. It was coproduced with France.
It has an all-star Italian and international cast, including Americans Jack Palance, Ernest Borgnine; Greek Melina Mercouri and French Fernandel, Anouk Aimée and Lino Ventura.
The film was a huge flop, massacred by critics and audiences when it was released. It was filmed in black and white, but the last sequence, the dance at theatre, is in color.
At the morning of a normal day of a Naples that begins to hear complex and not always positive effects of the economic boom, a stentorian voice (Nicola Rossi-Lemeni) which seems to come down from heaven announces that "At 18 begins the Last Judgement!". The announcement is repeated with increasing insistence, first treated with disdain and then more and more frightening. The plot is fragmented into a series of scenarios and stories intertwined: the preparation of the great ball of the Duke to whom all Naples is requested, the struggle to get dressed up in the poorest districts, bored rich you are courting, a husband who accidentally discovers his wife with her lover, a cynical imagine that ekes out a living selling children in America, a young man of good company made the subject of sneers from fierce populace, the unlikely defense of a lobbyist by a wordy lawyer (the by De Sica), and the impact of the increasingly mysterious voice shaking innovation of this human variety. Those who repent too late, he who gives himself to the mad joy, who flaunts a false indifference. Announced time, the city is impacted by a terrible flood (the mysterious voice that has already passed the stage of sanctions?) After which, with great solemnity, the Last Judgment begins and ends, however, as mysteriously as it is announced. The sun came out, people rushed to the ball of the Duke and soon everything is forgotten, the sound of an ironic "Lullaby", coined shortly before by a hypocritical and false slavery.
Vittorio De Sica was an Italian film director and actor, a leading figure in the neorealist movement.
Maria Amalia "Melina" Mercouri was a Greek actress, singer, activist, and politician. She came from a political family that was prominent over multiple generations. She received an Academy Award nomination and won a Cannes Film Festival Best Actress Award for her performance in the film Never on Sunday (1960). Mercouri was also nominated for one Tony Award, three Golden Globes and two BAFTA Awards in her acting career. In 1987 she was awarded a special prize in the first edition of the Europe Theatre Prize.
Marriage Italian Style is a 1964 romantic comedy-drama film directed by Vittorio De Sica, starring Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni.
Angiolino Giuseppe Pasquale Ventura, known as Lino Ventura, was an Italian-born actor and philanthropist, who lived and worked for most of his life in France. He was considered one of the greatest leading man of French cinema during the 1960s and 1970s, known for his portrayal of tough characters on both sides of the law in crime dramas.
Francesco Rosi was an Italian filmmaker, screenwriter and theatre director. His film The Mattei Affair won the Palme d'Or at the 1972 Cannes Film Festival. Rosi's films, especially those of the 1960s and 1970s, often appeared to have political messages. While the topics of his later films became less politically oriented and more angled toward literature, he continued to direct until 1997, his last film being the adaptation of Primo Levi's book, The Truce.
The Garden of the Finzi-Continis is a 1970 Italian historical drama war film directed by Vittorio De Sica. The screenplay by Ugo Pirro and Vittorio Bonicelli adapts Italian Jewish author Giorgio Bassani's 1962 semi-autobiographical novel, about the lives of an upper-class Jewish family in Ferrara during the Fascist era. The film stars Lino Capolicchio, Dominique Sanda, Helmut Berger, Romolo Valli, and Fabio Testi in his breakthrough role.
Enzo Petito was an Italian film and stage character actor. A theatre actor under Eduardo De Filippo in the 1950s in the Teatro San Ferdinando of Naples, with whom he was professionally closely associated, Petito also appeared in several of his films, often co-starring Eduardo or/and brother, Peppino De Filippo, brothers who are considered to be amongst the greatest Italian actors of the 20th century. Petito played minor roles in some memorable commedia all'Italiana movies directed by the likes of Dino Risi and Mario Monicelli in the late 1950s and early 1960s, often appearing alongside actors such as Nino Manfredi, Alberto Sordi, Peppino De Filippo, Anna Maria Ferrero, and Totò.
Valerio Zurlini was an Italian stage and film director and screenwriter.
Commedia all'italiana, or Italian-style comedy, is an Italian film genre born in Italy in the 1950s and developed in the 1960s and 1970s. It is widely considered to have started with Mario Monicelli's Big Deal on Madonna Street in 1958, and derives its name from the title of Pietro Germi's Divorce Italian Style (1961). According to most of the critics, La Terrazza (1980) by Ettore Scola is the last work considered part of the commedia all'italiana.
Furio Scarpelli, also called Scarpelli, was an Italian screenwriter, famous for his collaboration on numerous commedia all'italiana films with Agenore Incrocci, forming the duo Age & Scarpelli.
Ottavio Bugatti was an Italian footballer from Lentate sul Seveso, in the province of Milan, who played as a goalkeeper.
Carlo Romano was an Italian actor, voice actor and screenwriter.
Franco and Ciccio were a comic comedy duo formed by Italian actors Franco Franchi (1928–1992) and Ciccio Ingrassia (1922–2003), particularly popular in the 1960s and 1970s. Their collaboration began in 1954 in the theatre field, and ended with Franchi's death in 1992. The two made their cinema debuts in 1960 with the film Appuntamento a Ischia. They remained active until 1984 when their last film together, Kaos, was shot, although there were some interruptions in 1973 and from 1975 to 1980.
Lino Capolicchio was an Italian actor, screenwriter, and director. He won a special David di Donatello acting award for his role in Vittorio de Sica's 1970 film, The Garden of the Finzi-Contini.
Sergio Bruni was a popular Italian singer, guitarist, and songwriter. He was often called "The Voice of Naples".
Alberto Molinari is an Italian actor, producer, and director, mainly of documentary films. He made his debut in the 1988 film Un bel dì vedremo.
The list of the A hundred Italian films to be saved was created with the aim to report "100 films that have changed the collective memory of the country between 1942 and 1978". Film preservation, or film restoration, describes a series of ongoing efforts among film historians, archivists, museums, cinematheques, and non-profit organizations to rescue decaying film stock and preserve the images they contain. In the widest sense, preservation assures that a movie will continue to exist in as close to its original form as possible.
Andreina Pagnani was an Italian actress and voice actress.
Gábor Pogány (1915–1999) was a Hungarian-born Italian cinematographer. Born in Budapest and educated in Britain, Pogány emigrated to Italy and spent much of his career in the country. He worked on over a hundred films during his career, mainly Italian films as well as some international productions. He worked frequently with the director Vittorio De Sica on films such as Two Women (1960). In 1960 he won a Nastro d'Argento for best cinematography for his work in Alessandro Blasetti's European Nights.