News

When first-time documentary director Leonard Manzella premieres his award-winning “Shoe Shine Caddie” at the Portobello Film Festival in London on September 16, it will represent a kind of return to the former actor’s roots in the international film scene.

A professional family therapist for the past 30 years in California, Manzella’s earlier career began when the native Angeleno left Los Angeles for Rome in 1968 “when everything was burning.” In his early 20s and armed with “no contacts and about $50 bucks in my pocket,” a fortuitous introduction to American actor Brett Halsey got Manzella into movies, first as an extra and eventually as a leading man.

Halsey, who landed in Rome in the ‘60s and worked steadily in Euro crime thrillers and in the burgeoning spaghetti western scene, often toiled under the moniker Montgomery Ford and Leonard Manzella became famous as Leonard Mann.

“I went to Rome to study political science,...

The most popular Brazilian film for decades, this funny & steamy erotic ghost story took the world by storm and made a star of Sonia Braga. Bruno Barreto adapted a Jorge Amado ‘Bahía’ novel, one that celebrates the positive role that plain old-fashioned carnal lust can play in this world. The bereaved widow Dona Flor does Gene Tierney one better — her desire literally brings her love object back to life . . . but in bed. Rich music, earthy culture. . . Film Movement’s version is the uncut original, and has a new director commentary.

Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands

Blu-ray

Film Movement Classics

1976 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 118 min. / Street Date July 26, 2022 / Dona Flor e Seus Dois Maridos / Available from Film Movement / 39.95

Starring: Sonia Braga, José Wilker, Mauro Mendonça, Dinorah Brillanti.

Cinematography: Murilo Salles

Production Designer: Anisio Medeiros

Film Editor: Raimundo Higino

Original Music: Chico Buarque de Hollanda, Francis Hume

Written by Bruno Barreto, Eduardo Coutinho,...

Luchino Visconti’s handsome final feature adapts a classic Italian novel about an arrogant aristocrat whose selfish double-standard philosophy causes ruin and misery. The 19th century villas and ornate costumes dazzle, but the depressingly fated story will be tough going for sensitive audiences. This new disc encoding highlights the intoxicating atmosphere, and the intense performances of Giancarlo Giannini, Laura Antonelli and Jennifer O’Neill.

L’innocente

Blu-ray

Film Movement Classics

1976 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 129 112 min. / Street Date July 14, 2020 / 29.95

Starring: Giancarlo Giannini, Laura Antonelli, Jennifer O’Neill, Rina Morelli, Massimo Girotti, Didier Haudepin, Marie Dubois, Roberta Paladini, Claude Mann, Marc Porel.

Cinematography: Pasqualino De Santis

Film Editor: Ruggero Mastroianni

Original Music: Franco Mannino

Production Design: Mario Garbuglia

Costumes: Piero Tosi

Written by Suso Cecchi D’Amico, Enrico Medioli, Luchino Visconti from the novel by Gabriele D’Annunzio

Produced by Giovanni Bertolucci

Directed by Luchino Visconti

The availability of European art cinema became spotty in the 1970s,...

By Howard Hughes

New to DVD in the UK is ‘Arabella’, an Italian period comedy set in that hotbed of hilarity, pre-wwii fascist Italy. Virna Lisi stars in the title role – known variously in the film as Arabella Danesi and Arabella Angeli – who determines to save her grandmother from destitution by finding ingenious ways to pay off her elderly relative’s crippling tax bill.

The film is structured rather like those 1960s Italian portmanteau comedy-dramas, such as ‘Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow’, ‘The Witches’ or ‘Woman Times Seven’. Such films were intended as vehicles for one female star, be they Sophia, Silvana or Shirley, to demonstrate their versatility in a variety of roles. But instead of separate stories, with different characters, ‘Arabella’ has one continuous story arc, with Lisi’s sexy heroine adopting various costumes, personas and wigs to seduce and blackmail her way through a string of lovers, who are then...

Germany's Explosive Media company has a serious itch for American westerns, and they have a trio of new releases. One is a minor Hollywood classic with major graces, from the late 1950s. A second sees an American producer based in England filming in Italy with a rising international star, and for the third an established American star goes European  to stay in the game. The best thing for Yankee buyers? The discs are Region-free.

Gunman's Walk, Land Raiders, A Man Called Sledge Three Westerns from Explosive Media Blu-ray Separate Releases 1958-1970 / Color Starring Van Heflin, Tab Hunter; George Maharis, Telly Savalas; James Garner

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

The majority of American studios now choose not to market their libraries for digital disc, and license them out instead. Collectors unwilling to settle for whatever's on Netflix or concerned about the permanence of Cloud Cinema, find themselves increasingly tempted by discs from Europe,...

Actor who rose to fame in a series of Italian sex comedies in the 60s and 70s

In the 1960s and 70s, while most serious filmgoers associated Italian cinema with great directors such as Federico Fellini, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Michelangelo Antonioni and Luchino Visconti, Italy was also producing a series of popular sex comedies, sold predominantly on the pulchritudinous charms of the leading lady. One of the prima donnas of the popular commedia all’italiana films was Laura Antonelli, who has died of a heart attack aged 73.

An often scantily clad Antonelli would allow herself to be leered at by men on screen and in the audience, subject to what feminist critics defined as “the male gaze”. Yet despite the raunchy nature of her roles, she was always a subtle performer.

Continue reading...

Reel-Important People is a monthly column that highlights those individuals in or related to the movies that have left us in recent weeks. Below you'll find names big and small and from all areas of the industry, though each was significant to the movies in his or her own way. Laura Antonelli (1941-2015) - Italian Actress. She starred in Luchino Visconti's L'innocente, Salvatore Sampieri's Malicious and Mario Bava's Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs. She died of a heart attack on June 22. (THR) William Bronder (1930-2015) - Character Actor. He memorably appears in Stand By Me as the junkyard owner (see below), plus Return to Me and Best Seller. He died on May 6. (THR) Jack Carter (1923-2015)&nbsp...

Read More...

Reel-Important People is a monthly column that highlights those individuals in or related to the movies that have left us in recent weeks. Below you'll find names big and small and from all areas of the industry, though each was significant to the movies in his or her own way. Laura Antonelli (1941-2015) - Italian Actress. She starred in Luchino Visconti's L'innocente, Salvatore Sampieri's Malicious and Mario Bava's Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs. She died of a heart attack on June 22. (THR) William Bronder (1930-2015) - Character Actor. He memorably appears in Stand By Me as the junkyard owner (see below), plus Return to Me and Best Seller. He died on May 6. (THR) Jack Carter (1923-2015)&nbsp...

Read More...

Laura Antonelli: 'Malizia' actress. Laura Antonelli: 'Malizia' sex symbol who led troubled life found dead (Note: This Laura Antonelli article is currently being revised and expanded.) Laura Antonelli, for a brief while an international star thanks to scandalous sex-themed movies such as Malizia and The Divine Nymph, and who later became enmeshed in scandal and personal turmoil, was found dead by her housekeeper on Monday morning, June 22, '15, at her home in Ladispoli, in the outskirts of Rome. Antonelli had reportedly suffered a fatal heart attack. She was 73. Long after her cinema heyday, in the early '90s Antonelli made headlines following a botched plastic surgery that left her face somewhat disfigured. Also at that time, she found herself accused of drug trafficking by Italian authorities. Both incidents led to lengthy, traumatizing judicial battles. From gym teacher to 'girl bomb' Born Laura Antonaz on Nov. 28, 1941, in Pula, in the then Italian province of Istria,...

Marie Dubois, actress in French New Wave films, dead at 77 (image: Marie Dubois in the mammoth blockbuster 'La Grande Vadrouille') Actress Marie Dubois, a popular French New Wave personality of the '60s and the leading lady in one of France's biggest box-office hits in history, died Wednesday, October 15, 2014, at a nursing home in Lescar, a suburb of the southwestern French town of Pau, not far from the Spanish border. Dubois, who had been living in the Pau area since 2010, was 77. For decades she had been battling multiple sclerosis, which later in life had her confined to a wheelchair. Born Claudine Huzé (Claudine Lucie Pauline Huzé according to some online sources) on January 12, 1937, in Paris, the blue-eyed, blonde Marie Dubois began her show business career on stage, being featured in plays such as Molière's The Misanthrope and Arthur Miller's The Crucible. François Truffaut discovery: 'Shoot the...

Rossana Podestà dead at 79: ‘Helen of Troy’ actress later featured in sword-and-sandal spectacles, risqué sex comedies (photo: Jacques Sernas and Rossana Podestà in ‘Helen of Troy’) Rossana Podestà, the sensual star of the 1955 epic Helen of Troy and other sword-and-sandal European productions of the ’50s and ’60s — in addition to a handful of risqué sex comedies of the ’70s — died earlier today, December 10, 2013, in Rome according to several Italian news outlets. Podestà was 79. She was born Carla Dora Podestà on August 20, 1934, in, depending on the source, either Zlitan or Tripoli, in Libya, at the time an Italian colony. According to the IMDb, the renamed Rossana Podestà began her film career in 1950, when she was featured in a small role in Dezsö Ákos Hamza’s Strano appuntamento ("Strange Appointment"). However, according to online reports, she was actually discovered by director Léonide Moguy, who cast her in a small role in...

DVD Release Date: Dec. 11, 2012

Price: DVD $49.98

Studio: Entertainment One

Helmut Berger and Romy Schneider star in Visconti's 1972 epic Ludwig.

Luchino Visconti: Four Films is a five-disc collection that spotlights a quartet of the great Italian filmmaker’s works that span nearly three decades.

Through an impressive and highly acclaimed canon, Luchino Visconti (Senso, Conversation Piece) contributed significantly to the post-World War II revolution in Italian filmmaking, earned him the title of “Father of Neorealism” in the process.

The collection’s four films include the following:

La Terra Trema (1948): This a haunting film uses the early neorealism format developed by Roberto Rossellini and Vittorio De Sica to trace the doom and disintegration of one Sicilian fishing family. Winner of the International Award for Best Film at the Venice Film Festival, the movie was a New York Times Critic’s Pick when it ran theatrically in 1965,

Bellissima (1951): Anna Magnani...

Article by Dana Jung

Dr. Goldfoot And The Bikini Machine (1965) was a wild and funny send-up of beach movies, James Bond spy films, and horror movie cliches. It boasted Frankie Avalon, Dwayne Hickman (TVs Dobie Gillis), and the beautiful Susan Hart as a robot who speaks in a variety of foreign accents. The great Vincent Price also stars as the mad scientist/evil supervillain of the title, a role he would reprise in both a television musical special promoting the film, The Wild Weird World Of Dr. Goldfoot (which also included Hart), and the Italian-made sequel Dr. Goldfoot And The Girl Bombs (1966), directed by giallo and horror meistro Mario Bava. And while Bikini Machine and Wild Weird World have both been released on DVD (but are currently out-of-print), the Girl Bombs sequel still has yet to find a home on DVD.

Dr. Goldfoot And The Girl Bombs is interesting in...

Each day we're celebriting the birth of various cinematic persons. Can someone in Hollywood please give their Oscar to Ed Harris today? I mean, my god how long does he have to wait for that damn thing? The rest of today's Sagittarians are less easy to shop for. What could we give Jon Stewart, for example, that he doesn't already have?

Ed, Laura and Jon

1896 Lilia Skala, Oscar nominated actress (Lilies of the Field)

1923 Gloria Grahame, Oscar winner (The Bad the Beautiful)

933 Hope Lange, Oscar nominated actress (Peyton Place, The Young Lions, Death Wish)

1941 Laura Antonelli, Italian actress, sex symbol

1946 Joe Dante He'll always have Gremlins, such a great 80s picture.

1949 Alexander Godunov, like Baryshnikov, he was a Russian ballet star who defected to America and co-starred in movies. It didn't go quite as well. He never achieved anything close to Misha's level of fame though he made for a memorable screen presence (Witness,...

Laura Antonelli, one of Italy's best-loved sex symbols, is suing the state after her career collapsed amidst drug allegations. In her Seventies and Eighties heyday, Antonelli starred in movies such as La Rivoluzione Sessuale and Divina Creatura, and was described by one critic as, 'a Madonna by Caravaggio'. In 1991, police raided Antonelli's home, found a small amount of cocaine, and charged her with dealing. A long trial followed until the actress was eventually found guilty and sentenced to a form of house arrest. Lawyers acting on Antonelli's behalf finally had her conviction quashed last year after a ten year fight - and now the 59- year-old is seeking $900,000 in damages. Antonelli's lawyer Lorenzo Contrada says, "Laura Antonelli's health and wellbeing have been devastated by this episode. She has been robbed of her artistic career and her reputation." A court official adds, "This will be a test case. If Laura gets her compensation, then anyone in the public eye who has been badly treated by the law will be getting their own applications in."...