Italian Cinema Today

With a gift for melding disparate clips into compelling documentaries, he has captured the spirit of Italian cinema from the 1930s to the present. Marco Spagnoli is one of Italy’s most prolific film journalists, having made numerous documentaries on the country’s beloved film icons and reporting in-depth about cinema for a variety of publications.   Among his most compelling works is the 2011 documentary “Hollywood Invasion,” which zooms in on Italian and European cinema during the “Dolce Vita” decades from 1950-80. Utilizing NBC newsreels to tell his story, Spagnoli offers an extraordinary take on this period in cinematic history.   The film features rare clips of Hollywood stars like Gregory Peck, Marlon Brando and Marilyn Monroe roaming about Italy in the 1950s, as well as tantalizing behind-the-scenes glimpses of several American productions. Marilyn Monroe in a scene from  “Hollywood Invasion”  You’ll have a front-row seat to the creation of iconic moments like...

The lightheartedness with which Walter Chiari graced the screen was a defining trait in his life. It led to dramatic professional successes as well as personal travails that seemed better suited for one of his movies. Born Walter Annicchiarico in Verona to Pugliese parents on March 8, 1924, Chiari spent his teenage years excelling in sports, earning championships in boxing, bocce and swimming. During the early 1940s, he worked as a radio technician and bank clerk. While at the bank, he became known for his imitations of Adolf Hitler, which ultimately got him fired. That proved to be a blessing in disguise, motivating him to give acting a try. He started out in theater while maintaining side jobs as a cartoonist and writer. At the start of World War II, Chiari enlisted in the Italian navy and contributed to the newspaper L’Orizzonte as a satirical cartoonist. In January 1944, he participated in an amateur stage competition in which he revived his imitation of Hitler. The performance was...

He’s been called the “mustachioed matinee idol,” but a newfound interest in 1950s melodramas has made him an international arthouse legend. Amedeo Nazzari was born Salvatore Amedeo Buffa on Dec. 10, 1907, in Sardinia. Assuming his maternal grandfather’s last name and moving to Rome during the 1930s to pursue a career in acting, he found an immediate place in theater but struggled to break into film because of his towering height and slim build. Nazzari landed small film parts during the mid-’30s before scoring the title role in Goffredo Alessandrini’s 1938 “Luciano Serra, pilota” (Luciano Serra, Pilot), about an American pilot attacked by Ethiopian soldiers. The film won the Mussolini Cup for Best Italian Film at the 6th Venice International Film Festival and launched Nazzari’s silver-screen career. Although he rose to fame during tumultuous times and was personally invited by Mussolini to join the Fascist Party, Nazzari remained politically neutral and worked prolifically in postwar I...

Fellini and Masina on the set of "La Strada" As open-hearted and sunny as Federico Fellini was dark and complex, they were perfect counterpoints during a half-century of marriage and professional collaboration.  Nicknamed a  “female Chaplin” and described by Chaplin himself as  the actress who moved him most,  Giulietta Masina confronted the tragedy of her characters with an eternal innocence and enthusiasm that gave Italians hope in the most challenging of times.  Born in 1921 in San Giorgio di Piano, a commune north of Bologna, Masina was the oldest of four children born to a father who was a music professor and violinist and a mother who was a grade-school teacher. Her parents sent her as a child to live in Rome with her widowed aunt while she attended school there. As Masina took an early interest in gymnastics, her aunt saw in her a passion for performing and encouraged her to pursue acting. So after high school, Masina attended Rome’s La...