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| "Fantasmi a Roma" |
Antonio
Pietrangeli: A Retrospective
December 3–18,
2015
The Roy and Niuta Titus Theaters – MoMA (11
West 53 Street New York, NY 10019)
The Museum of Modern Art celebrates the Italian cinema
with Antonio Pietrangeli: A Retrospective (December 3–18, 2015), presented by
MoMA, in collaboration with Luce Cinecittà, Rome, and organized by Dave Kehr,
Adjunct Curator, Department of Film, MoMA, and Camilla Cormanni and Paola
Ruggiero, Luce Cinecittà. Exploring the filmmaker’s career from the early 1950s
to the mid-1960s, Antonio Pietrangeli will feature 11 feature films, from
Pietrangeli’s best-known work to a number of rediscoveries.
The opening night will take place on Thursday, December
3rd at 8:00pm with the international premiere of the restored version of I Knew
Her Well (Io La Conoscevo Bene) at MoMA. The film, which is also Pietrangeli’s
last completed feauture, stars Ugo Tognazzi along with Stefania Sandrelli. Like an inversion of La Dolce Vita with a woman at its
center, I Knew Her Well follows the gorgeous, seemingly liberated Adriana (Sandrelli)
during the sixties in Rome, as she dallies with a wide variety of men, attends
parties, goes to modeling gigs, and circulates among the rich and famous.
"I Knew Her Well" will then open in New York at the Film Forum from
February 5th, 2016. It is part of the Criterion Collection and will be released
by Janus Films.
Antonio Pietrangeli passed away in Gaeta in 1968, while
he was working on the film How, When and with Whom? (Come, Quando, Perché?).
His sudden death, at age 49, was a tremendous loss for the world of Italian cinema. As a
major practitioner of the Commedia all'Italiana genre and a leading figure of
Neorealism, Pietrangeli explored the evolving role of women in Italian society
after the fall of Fascism. From the provincial woman (Irene Galter), working as
a maid in Rome in his first film, Empty Eyes (Il Sole Negli Occhi, 1953), to
the amazed starlet (Stefania Sandrelli), suddenly elevated from the working
class, in I Knew Her Well (Io La Conoscevo Bene, 1965), Pietrangeli’s
protagonists experience the promises and dangers of a new yet ambiguous
freedom.
Born in Rome and trained as a physician, Pietrangeli
started his film career as an assistant on Luchino Visconti’s Obsession
(Ossessione, 1943), and went on to contributing to the screenplays of
Visconti’s La Terra Trema (1948) and Roberto Rossellini’s Europa ’51 (in which
he also appears as a psychiatrist). But as a director, Pietrangeli quickly
departed from the standards of Neorealism, plunging into the social satire of
The Bachelor (Lo Scapolo, 1955, with Alberto Sordi), and flirting with the
postcard romanticism of It Happened in Rome (Souvenir d’Italie, 1957) and the
supernatural whimsy of Ghosts of Rome (Fantasmi a Roma, 1961, with Marcello
Mastroianni). But it was with The Visit (La Visita), in 1963, that Pietrangeli
found his signature style, combining a relaxed pace, an anecdotal structure,
and an open visual field to create a sense of freedom and possibility, even as
that freedom eludes his characters. Had Pietrangeli continued his work, he
would have made a crucial contribution to the redefinition of cinema in the
late 1960s, yet his completed films are more than enough to earn him a
prominent position in the history of Italian film.
Antonio
Pietrangeli: A Retrospective
“Io La
Conoscevo Bene” (I Knew Her Well). 1965. Directed by Antonio Pietrangeli.
Screenplay by Antonio Pietrangeli, Ruggero Maccari, Ettore Scola. With Stefania
Sandrelli, Mario Adorf, Jean-Claude Brialy, Nino Manfredi, Ugo Tognazzi.
Pietrangeli’s best-known film stars the willowy Tuscan
actress Stefania Sandrelli, who entered the movies as the 15-year-old winner of
a provincial beauty contest, in a tragicomic twist on a story that might well
have been her own. As the innocently sexual, minimally ambitious Adriana
Astarelli, she’s a hairdresser who arrives in Rome as the protégé of a dubious
promoter (Nino Manfredi) and finds herself drifting from man to man as she
circles the periphery of modeling and show business. Indifferent to her own
exploitation, she experiences a measure of material success without
understanding what, if anything, she wants from life. 99 min.
THU, DEC 3, 8:00 T1; FRI, DEC 18, 4:30 T2
Reluctantly liberated when a reform movement closes the
legal brothels of Italy in 1958, four Roman prostitutes (Simone Signoret,
Sandra Milo, Emmanuelle Riva, and Gina Rovere) are forced to take their work
underground, opening a restaurant on the outskirts of the city that will, under
the orders of their shady sponsor (Claudia Gora) serve as a front while they
practice their former profession in the rooms upstairs. But the restaurant
proves to be a success, and the women find new loves and new happiness—until
the sponsor decides that respectability isn’t profitable enough. A touching
portrait of female friendship and a cutting indictment of social hypocrisy. 106 min.
FRI, DEC 4, 7:00 T2; THU, DEC 17, 4:30 T1
SAT, DEC 5, 5:00; WED, DEC 16, 4:30, T1
Pietrangeli’s star-studded comic fantasy displays the
fine hand of the Roman satirist, playwright, and screenwriter Ennio Flaiano,
fresh from the success of La Dolce vita. Life is still sweet for the aging
aristocrat Prince Hannibal Roviano (Eduardo De Filippo), although he lives it
alone among the ancestral ghosts who haunt the family mansion. But when the
prince dies and ownership passes to his dissolute nephew (Marcello Mastroianni,
in one of his three roles in the film), the ghosts must intervene to prevent
the decaying palace from being turned into a discotheque. Their solution:
recruit the ghost of a 16th-century painter (Vittorio Gassman) to whip up a
hidden fresco magnificent enough to certify the building as a national
treasure. 105 min.
SAT, DEC 5, 8:00; SUN, DEC 13, 5:30 T1
SUN, DEC 6,
2:30; FRI, DEC 11, 4:30 T1
Pietrangeli’s second feature is a classic example of
Commedia all’Italiana, starring the genre’s defining figure, Alberto Sordi, as a self-absorbed small
businessman who prides himself on his dubious abilities as a ladykiller. But
when the specter of loneliness finally looms, his search for a wife quickly
turns desperate. 90 min.
SUN, DEC 6,
5:30; THU, DEC 10, 4:30 T1
After a decade as a screenwriter and critic, Pietrangeli
made his directorial debut with this striking example of late Neorealism, which
announces most of his major themes. Celestina (Irene Galter) is a naïve peasant
girl who leaves her small village to look for work as a maid in Rome, where her
innocence is rapidly exploited by thoughtless employers and predatory men. She
places all her trust in a handsome plumber (Gabriele Ferzetti), who vanishes
the minute she discovers she is pregnant. Pietrangeli gracefully dramatizes her
transition from country bumpkin to disillusioned urbanite, as she joins Rome’s
sisterhood of exploited domestic workers. 98 min.
“Fata Marta” 1966.
Directed by Antonio Pietrangeli. Screenplay by Rodolfo Sonego. With
Alberto Sordi, Capucine, Olga Villi, Gigi Ballista, Anthony Steel.
Pietrangeli’s episode from the omnibus film Le Fate (The
Queens)
MON, DEC 7,
4:30; WED, DEC 9, 4:30 T1
“
"Nata di Marzo”
(March’s Child). 1957. Directed by Antonio Pietrangeli. Screenplay by Antonio
Pietrangeli, Agenore Incrocci, Ruggero Maccari, Furio Scarpelli, Ettore Scola.
With Jacqueline Sassard, Gabriele Ferzetti, Tina De Mola, Gina Rovere.
"Nata di Marzo”
(March’s Child). 1957. Directed by Antonio Pietrangeli. Screenplay by Antonio
Pietrangeli, Agenore Incrocci, Ruggero Maccari, Furio Scarpelli, Ettore Scola.
With Jacqueline Sassard, Gabriele Ferzetti, Tina De Mola, Gina Rovere.
A teenage girl (the French actress Jacqueline Sassard)
falls passionately in love with an older architect (Pietrangeli regular
Gabriele Ferzetti), but finds she isn’t prepared for the depth of emotion and
unwavering commitment of a real marriage. 109 min.
MON, DEC 7, 8:00; SAT, DEC 12, 2:00 T1
Forced to leave her village because of a scandalous love
affair with a seminarian, Dora (Catherine Spaak) looks for work and refuge in
Parma, where she becomes involved with a petty criminal (Nino Manfredi).
Another of Pietrangeli’s bitter comedies of deracination, reflecting the sudden
urbanization of Italy during the industrial boom years of the late 1950s and
early 1960s. 95 min.
A happily married businessman (Ugo Tognazzi) allows
himself to be seduced by the wife of a colleague—a meaningless affair that
makes him realize how easy it would be for his young and beautiful wife
(Claudia Cardinale) to betray him as he betrayed her. His unfounded suspicions
grow into madness, as he obsessively imagines her in the arms of other men.
Adapted from a 1921 farce by the Belgian playwright Fernand Crommelynck. 117
min.
TUE, DEC 8, 8:00; TUE, DEC 15, 4:30 T1
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