gbreeze's - Rented List
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The Garden of the Finzi Contini (1970)Il giardino dei Finzi Contini / The Garden of the Finzi-Continis
Set at the outbreak of War, De Sica's film tells the story of the Finzi Contini, an aristocratic Jewish family protected by the walls of their idyllic estate. Whilst outside Mussolini bans Jews from tennis courts, the Finzi Contini are not worried as they rally on their own, living in their dreamland. Giorgio (Lino Capolicchio) is the middle-class Jew in love with his childhood friend, Micol (Dominique Sanda) of the Finzi Contini family, but she is in love with a gentile and wanting of experiences outlawed by the new government. With Giorgio's separation of Micol, De Sica tracks the loss of an idyllic way of life, from the tennis courts to the waiting rooms where Jews await transportation to the concentration camps. - Director:
- Vittorio De Sica
- Cast:
- Dominique Sanda, Lino Capolicchio, Helmut Berger
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Christ Stopped at Eboli (1979)Cristo si e fermato a Eboli
The triumph of the human spirit is the theme of Rosi's epic film, in which Carlo Levi is exiled in 1935 by the ruling fascist dictatorship to a poverty-stricken village in the Basilicata region of southern Italy. Levi finds himself in a stark world little changed since the middle ages in which the peasants scratch a meagre living from the land. But as Levi grapples with this new environment, it is the peasants' wisdom, humanity and spirit that help him to cope with his sense of helplessness and isolation. - Director:
- Francesco Rosi
- Cast:
- Gian Maria Volontè, Paolo Bonacelli, Alain Cuny
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Quai des Orfèvres (1947)Jenny Lamour / Quay of the Goldsmiths
A marriage that has fallen on hard times is further tested by the couple's implication in a murder. Jenny Lamour (Suzy Delair) is a music hall chanteuse married to her pianist husband Maurice (Bernard Blier). Keen to get ahead, Jenny leaps at the chance when an ageing wealthy businessman (Charles Dullin) offers her the chance of some gigs. However, when she agrees to a meeting at his home and he is found dead later in the evening - Maurice's untamed jealousy is in the frame. A Maigret-esque detective, Antoine, played by Louis Jouvet leaves no stone unturned in his exceedingly private investigations of the down-at-heel showbiz couple's sad, tempestuous life. 'Quai des Orfevres' was Henri-Georges Clouzot's first film in four years. He had been banned from film making following the controversy surrounding the release Le Corbeau. - Director:
- Henri-Georges Clouzot
- Cast:
- Louis Jouvet, Simone Renant, Bernard Blier
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Rome, Open City (1945)Roma, città aperta
One of the greatest foreign language films ever made, Roberto Rossellini "Rome, Open City" was filmed in the direct aftermath of World War II on the war-ravaged streets of Italy. Based on real events that took place in the Nazi-occupied Italy in 1944, it examines the choices that people are forced to make in wartime. Centring on the Resistance and its members, this is a tragic and emotional exploration of human spirit and the effects of war. - Director:
- Roberto Rossellini
- Cast:
- Anna Magnani, Aldo Fabrizi, Marcello Pagliero
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With her Oscar-winning turn in 'Klute', Jane Fonda reinvented herself as a new kind of movie star. Bringing nervy audacity and counterculture style to the role of Bree Daniels - a call girl and aspiring actor who becomes the focal point of a missing-person investigation when detective John Klute (Donald Sutherland) turns up at her door - Fonda made the film her own, putting an independent woman and escort on-screen with a frankness that had not yet been attempted in Hollywood. Suffused with paranoia by the conspiracy-thriller specialist Alan J. Pakula, and lensed by master cinematographer Gordon Willis, 'Klute' is a character study thick with dread, capturing the mood of early-1970's New York and the predicament of a woman trying to find her own way on the fringes of society. - Director:
- Alan J. Pakula
- Cast:
- Jane Fonda, Donald Sutherland, Charles Cioffi
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The Trial (1962)Le Procès
One morning, Josef K. (Anthony Perkins) is arrested without knowing the charges against him. Completely stunned, K. slowly finds himself trapped in a dehumanised nightmare and realizes he is the victim of a grotesque plot. He is accused by everyone, friends and enemies, until, worn down, he ends up doubting his own innocence... - Director:
- Orson Welles
- Cast:
- Anthony Perkins, Jeanne Moreau, Elsa Martinelli
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1900 (1976)Novecento
It is turn-of-the-century Italy, and in the summer of 1900 two children are born in the rich agricultural countryside in the region of Emilia. Olmo Dalco (Gerard Depardieu) is the bastard son of a family of farmworkers and Alfredo Berlinghieri (Robert De Niro) is heir to a wealthy family of landowners. Although they come from two different worlds, a friendship develops that will endure the sweeping changes of the 20th century. - Director:
- Bernardo Bertolucci
- Cast:
- Robert De Niro, Gérard Depardieu, Dominique Sanda
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Based on the infamous Johnson County War of 1892, Michael Cimino's epic western is now hailed as a masterpiece of American cinema...Harvard graduate James Averill (Kris Kristofferson) has returned to Wyoming as a Marshall and is facing a county with growing divisions and escalating tensions. The powerful, government-backed cattle barons are waging war on the immigrant settlers they brand 'thieves and anarchists' and are drawing up a 'death list' for their hired mercenaries to act upon. As hostilities mount, the inevitability of a full-scale and bloody war edges ever closer. - Director:
- Michael Cimino
- Cast:
- Kris Kristofferson, Christopher Walken, John Hurt
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Hands Over the City (1963)Le Mani Sulla Citta
Beginning with the collapse of an apartment building in a working-class district, the film zeroes in on the subsequent investigation of responsibility surrounding the disaster. At the centre is Edoardo Nottola (Rod Steiger), a wealthy land developer and council member of the government's ruling party, who is determined to keep his personal and professional interests in the building of new government housing as intertwined as possible. - Director:
- Francesco Rosi
- Cast:
- Rod Steiger, Salvo Randone, Guido Alberti
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The film that made Francesco Rosi's international reputation, this Citizen Kane-style investigative portrait was originally called Sicily 1943-60, as Rosi sought not so much to depict Giuliano himself as the society from which he sprang, in which the police, the Carabinieri and the Mafia all have strong vested interests. Filming in the exact locations and utilising court reports as primary source material, Rosi mainly cast local Sicilians, some of whom knew Giuliano personally. The only professional actors were Frank Wolff (Once Upon a Time in the West} and Salvo Randone (L'Assassino). - Director:
- Francesco Rosi
- Cast:
- Frank Wolff, Salvo Randone, Frederico Zardi
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Lucky Luciano (1973)Re: Lucky Luciano
This powerful biography of the notorious American racketeer Charles 'Lucky' Luciano (Gian Maria Volontè) covers the events in his life after he was extradited to Italy by the US Government in 1946. Luciano organizes 'hits' on 40 other mafia bosses, closely watched by his nemesis Charles Siragusa former federal narcotics agent (playing himself) in an attempt to gather enough evidence to jail him forever, when he is taken off the case Luciano believes he has beaten the system, but does fate have something else in store for him. - Director:
- Francesco Rosi
- Cast:
- Gian Maria Volontè, Vincent Gardenia, Silverio Blasi
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Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019)Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood
Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood visits 1969 Los Angeles, where everything is changing, as TV star Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his longtime stunt double Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) make their way around an industry they hardly recognize anymore. The ninth film from the writer-director features a large ensemble cast and multiple storylines in a tribute to the final moments of Hollywood's golden age. - Director:
- Quentin Tarantino
- Cast:
- Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie
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The Battle of Algiers (1966)La Battaglia di Algeri
Gillo Pontecorvo's multi-award winning picture 'The Battle of Algiers' has perhaps never been as pertinent as it is now. Set from 1954 to 1962, the movie uses documentary-style black and white photography to recreate real events. Algerian liberation fighters use terrorist techniques against the French colonial occupiers; the French retaliate with brutal military force. Brilliantly directed set-pieces and remarkable crowd scenes make the film a masterpiece; the ominous familiarity of its subject makes it a must-see" - The Times How to win battle against terrorism and lose the war of ideas. Children shoot soldiers at point blank range. Women plant bombs in Cafes. Sounds familiar? The French have a plan. It succeeds tactically, but fails strategically. To understand why, come to a rare showing of this film.'' - Pentagon tlyer for their in-house screening of Battle Of Algiers All the armies of the world - including the Pentagon - will never, but never, be able to conquer a country which wants to control its own destiny" - Saadi Yacef - Director:
- Gillo Pontecorvo
- Cast:
- Brahim Hadjadj, Jean Martin, Yacef Saadi
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With his eighth and most personal film, Alfonso Cuaron recreated the early-1970's Mexico City of his childhood, narrating a tumultuous period in the life of a middle-class family through the experiences of Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio, in a revelatory screen debut), the indigenous domestic worker who keeps the household running. Charged with the care of four small children abandoned by their father, Cleo tends to the family even as her own life is shaken by personal and political upheavals. Written, directed, shot, and coedited by Cuaron, 'Roma' is a labor of love with few parallels in the history of cinema, deploying monumental black-and-white cinematography, an immersive soundtrack, and a mixture of professional and nonprofessional performances to shape its author's memories into a world of enveloping texture, and to pay tribute to the woman who nurtured him. - Director:
- Alfonso Cuarón
- Cast:
- Yalitza Aparicio, Marina de Tavira, Diego Cortina Autrey
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El Topo (1970)El topo / The Mole / The Gopher
With 'El Topo', Alejandro Jodorowsky gave birth to the countercultural phenomenon of the Midnight Movie and carved out a place in history as one of cinema's most unique and visionary filmmakers, impressing John Lennon and Yoko Ono so much that they enthusiastically endorsed the film at one of its first New York screenings. Part Luis Bunuel, part Sergio Leone, this bizarre, ultra-violent Western features a brutal, black-clad gunslinger who, accompanied by his young son, sets off on a murderous mission to challenge four zen masters of gun-fighting. When his mission is complete he then goes on a quest for peace and personal redemption, but finds that death is never far away. - Director:
- Alejandro Jodorowsky
- Cast:
- Alejandro Jodorowsky, Brontis Jodorowsky, José Legarreta
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