Wednesday, November 4th – CLO 110 @ 6:30pm

Seven Beauties

1975 – Italy – Directed by Lina Wurtmuller – 115 min.

Seven Beauties isn’t the account of a man’s fall from dignity, because Pasqualino (the main character) never had any – and that’s what makes it intriguing. Why did Wertmuller make it? To explore banality and cruelty? To give us a vision of the Nazi experience in which moral choices are irrelevant and the characters join together in a grim mutual debasement? To make, as an exercise, an ultimate black comedy? The movie seems to be a working out on a subconscious level of behavior patterns Miss Wertmuller finds both fascinating and inexplicable. – (Roger Ebert)

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Thursday, November 12th – CLO 110 @ 6:30pm

White Nights

1957 – Italy – Directed by Luchino Visconti – 101 min.

Marcello Mastroianni, as a lonely city transplant, and Maria Schell, as a sheltered girl haunted by a lover’s promise, meet by chance on a canal bridge and begin a tentative romance that quickly entangles them in a web of longing and self-delusion. Luchino Visconti’s White Nights, an exquisite adaptation of Dostoyevsky’s short story of the same name, translates this romantic, shattering tale of two restless souls into a ravishing black-and-white dream. – (Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, The Criterion Collection)

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Wednesday, November 18th – CLO 110 @ 6:30pm

I Vitteloni

1953 – Italy – Directed by Federico Fellini – 103 min.

I Vitelloni – “young bulls” or “slackers” (my translation) – is above all a story about friends mired in a seaside town. This is a film that crackles with rebellious energy and yet is also shot through with a sort of melancholy for Fellini’s own formation as a young artist: it marks both the central and the end point of his apprenticeship as a great filmmaker. It is about leaving youth behind. Half a century on, with Fellini’s films now viewed down the long end of the telescope, “I Vitelloni” seems, like its young protagonists, the first edgy stirrings of a young artist, confident, ready for anything, but also profoundly, disturbingly modern. – (Jonathan Dawson, Senses of Cinema)

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Thursday, December 2nd – CLO 110 @ 6:30pm

Gomorrah

2009 – Italy – Directed by Matteo Garrone – 135 min.

Gomorrah is a dense, sprawling exposé of the corruption plaguing the communities of Naples and Caserta in modern-day Italy. The all-powerful Camorra syndicate influences the lives of even the most innocent citizens. In a manner similar to The Wire, Garrone tells his story from many different angles, resulting in a complicated narrative that often feels novelistic. In many cases, the revolving stories never overlap or intersect. While that may be jarring to those viewers who are used to having their strings tied neatly for them by a film’s conclusion, Garrone’s decision results in an experience that feels much more honest and true. – (IFC Films)