Italian Cinema Today

Terrance Stamp in a scene from Fellini's "Toby Dammit" Long before he portrayed General Zod in the first two “Superman” movies, English actor Terence Stamp lived in Italy and collaborated with some of the country's most renowned filmmakers, including Federico Fellini , Silvana Mangano , Monica Vitti and Pier Paolo Pasolini . The actor died in August at age 87, so to pay homage to his  extraordinary six-decade-long career, we are spotlighting his collaboration with Fellini on a short film that served as the final segment in a three-part film inspired by Edgar Allen Poe tales. Loosely adapted from Poe’s story “Never Bet the Devil Your Head,” Fellini’s contribution to the 1968 “Spirits of the Dead” is notable for being as close to a horror film as Fellini ever created. A 40-minute frenzy of celebrity, decadence and damnation, his “Toby Dammit” appears along with contributions by Louis Malle and Roger Vadim, and stands out as the film’s most imaginative, unsettling and i...

Born Saturnino Manfredi on March 22, 1921, in Frosinone, Nino Manfredi was one of Italy’s most prolific actors from the 1950s to right before his death in 2004. Manfredi graduated with a law degree but famously declared while delivering his thesis, “Ladies and gentlemen, I swear to you, I will never be a lawyer.” Shortly thereafter, he began his acting career in the theater, working on numerous productions with the likes of Eduardo De Filippo and Vittorio Gassman. In 1949, he made his big-screen debut in Mario Sequi’s World War II drama, “Monastero di Santa Chiara.” He spent the 1950s honing his skills, often playing a friend and confidant of the protagonist. Among his most popular supporting roles during that decade are Peppino in Antonio Pietrangeli’s 1956 “Lo scapolo” (The Bachelor) and Raffaele in Camillo Mastrocinque’s 1956 “Totò, Peppino e la … malafemmina” (Totò, Peppino and the Hussy). The following decade brought more substantial roles that revealed his talent for comedy, whic...

Producer Dino De Laurentiis was one of the most prolific filmmakers ever, having produced or co-produced more than 600 films during a career that spanned seven decades. His legacy continues not only through the work of his children and grandchildren but also through a new generation of filmmakers in his Italian hometown. De Laurentiis was born in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius on Aug. 8, 1919, in the city of Torre Annunziata, located just minutes from the ruins of Pompeii. As a child, he worked at a local pasta factory owned and operated by his father. That experience had a profound effect on him, shaping a lifelong passion for food and an appreciation for business. At the age of 17, he decided to leave home for the big city. He arrived in Rome and enrolled in the prestigious film school, Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia. After attending the school for about a year, he managed to produce one film in 1940, The Last Combat , before having to leave Rome temporarily for m...

He was one of the masters of the popular post-WWII genre of filmmaking, Commedia all’italiana. Now, his daughters are carrying on his legacy. Born in 1916 in Salò, a town located near Lake Garda in northern Italy, Luigi Comencini studied architecture in Milan. He began his shift to filmmaking in the mid-1940s as a photojournalist  documenting the ruins and reconstruction of his native North and the Po Valley. Combining his architectural knowledge with his keen eye, he created telling photographs of the post-war years that chronicled the devastation of poverty on children in particular.  He transitioned to filmmaking in the late 40s with his first feature film,  Guaglio , which follows a young priest after his luggage is stolen in the Naples train station. The film was a hit, paving the way for some major talent to sign up for his second project,  L'imperatore di Capri  (The Emperor of Capri). Released in 1949, the comedy stars the beloved Neapoli...

After watching Italian films, the two things I love doing are traveling around Italy and indulging in the country's amazing regional food. Celebrity chef and Food Network star Giada De Laurentiis has found a way to showcase all three in her new series "Giada in Italy". The show airs every Sunday on the Food Network at 12:00 eastern/11:00 central and features the gorgeous chef cooking her way through Italy. Giada is the granddaughter of Silvana Mangano and Dino De Laurentiis, a power couple of the Golden Age of Italian cinema. Giada carries on her grandmother's looks and grace as well as Dino's passion for food. Giada's mother Veronica De Laurentiis is an actress and advocate for women. She recently started her own show, "Dillo a Veronica" in which she profiles ordinary women who have overcome the struggles of life. To read the history of the three generations of De Laurentiis women, check out an article that I posted last year about the  legac...

Silvana Mangano is one of Italy's most memorable leading ladies. She was born in Rome on April 21, 1930, and grew up amid conditions of poverty during World War II.   She persevered through those tough times, training as a dancer.   Then in 1946, she won the Miss Rome beauty pageant, a victory that gave her the push she needed to discover her destiny. Just three years later, she landed a role in one of the most influential films of Italian cinema, "Riso Amaro" (Bitter Rice) by Giuseppe De Santis. The film was one of the first of the Neorealist film movement and received an Academy Award nomination in 1950. Produced by Mangano's husband, the prolific filmmaker Dino De Laurentiis , "Riso Amaro" is a multi-layered story that called on Mangano's talent and sex appeal to portray a peasant girl who could manipulate just about anyone with her beauty. The story follows three main characters through the rice-planting season in northern Italy during World W...

Roman Holiday Fendi’s forthcoming travel collection conjures a romantic bygone era through an icon of Italian cinema. The origin of Fendi’s Continental-infused new travel collection (which hits select stores in March and is available to preorder now) began, fittingly, somewhere over the Atlantic: Childhood friends Silvia Venturini Fendi, the brand’s creative director of accessories, and L.A.-based Veronica De Laurentiis, the eldest daughter of Italian actress Silvana Mangano and film producer Dino De Laurentiis, reconnected on a flight from Los Angeles to Rome in 2010.    That high-altitude meeting prompted a trip down sartorial memory lane, during which the pair revisited Mangano’s longstanding relationship with the label—from the faille fabric and leather-trimmed trench coat she wore in the 1974 Luchino Visconti film  Gruppo di Famiglia in un Interno (Conversation Piece)  to her more personal items, including a vintage Pergamena suitcase t...

Update May 14, 2016 Veronica De Laurentiis recently launched her new web series called "Dillo a Veronica" (Tell it to Veronica) and honestly, I am hooked. The series has a very simple premise- Veronica meets with one woman for about 20 minutes to talk about her struggles in life and how she overcame them. Veronica should know because she overcame years of abuse and her empathy for the pain of others helps her when interviewing these women. The conversations are friendly and casual but gripping. You do need some knowledge of the Italian language because the interviews are done in Italian and there are not yet subtitles. Personally, I love watching them in Italian because it's like a 20-minute language lesson on conversational Italian, especially with the different accents. The show is entering its fourth week, and new episodes are posted every Friday. There are three episodes currently available. You can watch them on the show's YouTube page or on Facebook . I hi...