News

Just about every movie buff knows that Clint Eastwood shot to international fame after starring in Sergio Leone's "Dollars Trilogy," but what came next? It's a good pub quiz question because many people might leap straight to the year 1968 when a trio of hits cemented his status as one of Hollywood's top tough guys: "Hang 'Em High," "Coogan's Bluff," and "Where Eagles Dare." But tucked away in his filmography is a forgotten 1967 Italian movie called "The Witches," not to be confused with the Hammer production of the same name from the year before. Originally titled "Le streghe" in Italian, it's an offbeat anthology movie that isn't a horror film at all and has very little to do with witches, unless you squint really hard at its themes.

"The Witches" was the brainchild of legendary producer Dino De Laurentiis, who would later make an impact in Hollywood with the 1976 "King Kong" remake,...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. To keep up with our latest features, sign up for the Weekly Edit newsletter and follow us @mubinotebook on Twitter and Instagram.News Peter Pan.Disney will no longer include content warnings before classic films that feature racial stereotypes on its streaming service Disney+ as part of a shift in Dei strategy following President Trump’s second inauguration. In 2020, the company began appending an introductory text to movies like Dumbo (1941) and Peter Pan (1953) cautioning viewers of “negative depictions and/or mistreatment of people or cultures,” insisting that “these stereotypes were wrong then and are wrong now.” Now, a disclaimer stating that a film “may contain stereotypes or negative depictions” will be buried in its “details section.”Shiori Ito has pledged to reedit sections of her film, Black Box Diaries (2024), which chronicles her own sexual assault case, to remove unauthorized content.

Back in 1977, Shelley Winters, Max von Sydow, Renato Pozzetto, and Alberto Lionello starred in a dark comedy called Black Journal (or Gran Bollito), which was directed by Mauro Bolognini and was loosely based on the true crime case of serial killer Leonarda Cianciulli. Now, Variety reports that Trouble Every Day director Claire Denis is in talks to direct a remake of that film, titled The Soap Maker.

The approach being taken this time around is to make this a cannibalistic elevated real crime drama in the vein of The Silence of the Lambs, Seven, and Get Out, “with a decidedly dark tone and a psychological thriller feel.” So we’re not getting a dark comedy from Denis. Variety notes that the producers hold the rights not only to the Black Journal screenplay but also to “a diary that Leonarda Cianciulli allegedly wrote in the psychiatric prison were she spent the...

Claire Denis, set to turn 79 this year, has not slowed in the least. As cameras roll on Cry of the Guards she’s entered negotiations to direct The Soap Maker, an update-of-sorts of Mauro Bolognini’s 1977 horror feature Gran Bollito, itself a spin on real-life killer Leonarda Cianciulli––an Italian whose methods for murdering three women involved the composting of their bodies into soaps, candles, and sweets enjoyed by her contemporaries. Producers have acquired rights to both the original film and Cianciulli’s diaries which, per Variety, she “wrote in the psychiatric prison were she spent the rest of her life after confessing her crimes,” while their EFM-friendly package is comparing it to Silence of the Lambs, Se7en, and Get Out.

What is a slightly odd pairing at first glance only makes too much sense when comparing such material with Denis’ oeuvre. Hers is, at heart, a corpus about...

French filmmaker Claire Denis (High Life) made waves in 2001 with the erotic cannibal thriller Trouble Every Day. Now, the auteur is in talks to venture back into cannibal territory to helm crime drama The Soap Maker, Variety reports today.

The English-language film is a remake of the 1977 dark comedy Gran Bollito (Black Journal) by director Mauro Bolognini. The cult film starred Shelley Winters as “a serial killer who cooked the bodies of her victims into soap, cake and cookies.”

What’s even more intriguing is that both The Soap Maker and Gran Bollito are based on the infamous true account of Italy’s Leonarda Cianciulli, a serial killer who emerged in the late ’30s and disposed of her victims’ bodies by incorporating them into baked treats, soaps, and candles. Producers of The Soap Maker have access to Cianciulli’s diary, which was allegedly written in the psychiatric prison where she...

Revered French auteur Claire Denis is in advanced talks to direct cannibalistic crime drama “The Soap Maker.”

The project, being shopped around at Berlin’s EFM, is an updated remake of Italian director Mauro Bolognini’s 1977 cult movie “Gran Bollito,” which starred Shelley Winters as a serial killer who cooked the bodies of her victims into soap, cake and cookies.

The English-language film is inspired by the true story of Italy’s Leonarda Cianciulli, who in the late 1930s and early ’40s murdered three local women in the central Italian town of Correggio and disposed of their bodies with chemicals — using what was left to make soaps, candles, cookies and cakes that she shared with people in her community.

“The Soap Maker,” which is lead-produced by the Los Angeles- and New York-based Gerry Pass via his Chrome Entertainment shingle, is being packaged by CAA and has been pitched to prospective buyers at the EFM.

The Criterion Channel’s at its best when October rolls around, consistently engaging in the strongest horror line-ups of any streamer. 2024 will bring more than a few iterations of their spooky programming: “Horror F/X” highlights the best effects-based scares through the likes of Romero, Cronenberg, Lynch, Tobe Hooper, James Whale; “Witches” does what it says on the tin (and inside the tin is the underrated Italian anthology film featuring Clint Eastwood cuckolded by Batman); “Japanese Horror” runs the gamut of classics; a Stephen King series puts John Carpenter and The Lawnmower Man on equal playing ground; October’s Criterion Editions are Rosemary’s Baby, Night of the Hunter, Häxan; a made-for-tv duo includes Carpenter’s underrated Someone’s Watching Me!; meanwhile, The Wailing and The Babadook stream alongside a collection of Cronenberg and Stephanie Rothman titles.

Otherwise, Winona Ryder and Raúl Juliá are given retrospectives, as are filmmakers Arthur J. Bressan Jr. and Lionel Rogosin.

Margaret Menegoz, the pioneering producer who was a central figure in France’s film industry during a career spanning decades, has died. She was 83.

The Hungarian-born German-French producer served as president of Les Films du Losange from 1975 until 2021, and was president of Unifrance from 2003 to 2008.

During a career that included a key role at the Cesar Academy, Menegoz produced films for directors such as Eric Rohmer, Barbet Schroeder, Wim Wenders, Andrzej Wajda, Agnieszka Holland and Michael Haneke, including the latter’s Palme d’Or-and Oscar-winning Amour in 2012.

After her tenure at Les Films du Losange ended, Menegoz handed over the...

Margaret Menegoz, the pioneering producer who was a central figure in France’s film industry during a career spanning decades, has died. She was 83.

The Hungarian-born German-French producer served as president of Les Films du Losange from 1975 until 2021, and was president of Unifrance from 2003 to 2008.

During a career that included a key role at the Cesar Academy, Menegoz produced films for directors such as Eric Rohmer, Barbet Schroeder, Wim Wenders, Andrzej Wajda, Agnieszka Holland, and Michael Haneke, including the latter’s Palme d’or-and Oscar-winning Amour in 2012.

After her tenure at Les Films du Losange ended, Menegoz handed over the...

We know what an American in Paris looks like, but an American in Italy…now that’s all the rage in recent years.

Italian costume designer Nicoletta Ercole, who was Emmy-nominated for her work on HBO film “My House in Umbria,” exclusively told IndieWire that the rise in Italy-set American productions have fumbled when capturing the romantic aesthetic of the nation. From “Mafia Mamma” to “The Book Club: The Next Chapter” to “Spin Me Round,” more and more American productions are opting to film in Italy. Now with Michael Mann’s “Ferrari” set to speed into theaters and the trendy second season of “The White Lotus” awaiting Emmy nominations, it’s proof that Italy is the country of the moment in stateside culture.

Yet according to Ercole, American filmmakers have an antiquated idea of Italian fashion. “They want to see really the Italian style, or in the case of ‘House of Gucci,...

The Lumière Festival’s International Classic Film Market (Mifc) in Lyon, France, is highlighting heritage documentaries, examining Cuban and Swedish cinema and showcasing the work of the Wim Wenders Foundation as part of a newly revamped program.

In overhauling the Mifc, organizers are seeking to position the event closer to industry needs, offer improved services and offer a clearer picture of the ever evolving heritage content market.

The change will “modify the market to be less institutional and more business oriented,” says Gérald Duchaussoy, who oversees programming and coordination for the Mifc.

The market, which runs Oct. 17-20, kicks off with a keynote by Claire Brunel and Hella Wenders, the managing director of the Wim Wenders Foundation.

The Düsseldorf-based organization, created for the purpose of preserving, maintaining and disseminating Wenders’ works, is very unique and its presentation will be a very interesting opportunity for Mifc participants to learn how it...

Claudia Squitieri with Manuel Maria Perrone at the Italian Cultural Institute book launch for Claudia Cardinale. L’indomabile. The Indomitable (Cinecittà and Electa Editore) Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Luigi Comencini's La Ragazza Di Bube opened Cinecittà and the Museum of Modern Art’s retrospective celebrating Claudia Cardinale on Friday. Pietro Germi’s Un Maledetto Imbroglio; Mauro Bolognini’s Il Bell’Antonio, La Viaccia, and Senilità; Valerio Zurlini’s La Ragazza Con La Valigia; Luchino Visconti’s Rocco E I Suoi Fratelli, Il Gattopardo Sandra (1965); Federico Fellini’s Otto E Mezzo; Sergio Leone’s Once Upon A Time In The West (1968); Marco Bellocchio’s Enrico IV; Pasquale Squitieri’s Atto Di Dolore (1990), and Manoel de Oliveira’s O Gebo E A Sombra are some of the many highlights.

Claudia Squitieri with Anne-Katrin Titze on Claudia Cardinale shooting The Leopard and 81/2 at the same time: “Visconti wanted her hair very dark and not...

Above: Italian poster for The Lovemakers. Illustration by Mauro Innocenti.Over the past ten years I’ve surveyed the illustrated likenesses of stars like Lauren Bacall, Kirk Douglas, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Bruno Ganz and Monica Vitti as in memoriams after their passing, so I am happy to say that the occasion of this look at Claudia Cardinale in movie posters is simply that, starting today, the 84-years-young Ms. Cardinale is being fêted with a three-week, 23-film retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art.Claudia Cardinale is one of my favorite actors, but while exploring her career for this piece I realized that my affection for her really comes down to one film, albeit one of my all-time favorites: Once Upon a Time in the West (1968). The fact that she is the focus of perhaps my favorite single shot in all cinema—Sergio Leone's magnificent crane shot as Cardinale’s Jill...

Rarely one finds a friend on the Criterion Channel—discounting the parasitic relationship we form with filmmakers, I mean—but it’s great seeing their March lineup give light to Sophy Romvari, the <bias>exceptionally talented</bias> filmmaker and curator whose work has perhaps earned comparisons to Agnès Varda and Chantal Akerman but charts its own path of history and reflection. It’s a good way to lead into an exceptionally strong month, featuring as it does numerous films by Pier Paolo Pasolini, the great Japanese documentarian Kazuo Hara, newfound cult classic Arrebato, and a number of Criterion editions.

On the last front we have The Age of Innocence, Bull Durham, A Raisin in the Sun, The Celebration, Merrily We Go to Hell, and Design for Living. There’s always something lingering on the watchlist, but it might have to wait a second longer—March is an opened floodgate.

See the full...

Above: Italian poster for The Girl with a Pistol. Artist: Giorgio Olivetti.Monica Vitti, who died on February 2nd at the age of 90, was an icon of modern cinema—one of its most famous and most beautiful faces—but she is best known outside Italy for just four films, all of which she made for her one-time partner Michelangelo Antonioni. In the original Italian poster for L’avventura (1960), the film that made both their names, her head is tilted to the side, her face barely visible: she is mostly a shock of blonde hair. But in the posters that were created as that film travelled the globe, and in her ensuing posters for Antonioni's La notte (1961), L’eclisse (1962), and Red Desert (1964), she gets her close-up, usually staring into the middle distance or directly at the viewer. Always impassive, never smiling. But of course, in a career that lasted another 25 years there were many more films,...

Versatile film, avant-garde classical, jazz and pop composer Ennio Morricone died in a Rome hospital after falling and breaking his leg, his lawyer Giorgio Assumma announced, according to Variety. He was 91.

Known as “the Maestro,” Morricone is best known as the composer of the scores and themes of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Once Upon a Time in the West, and his Academy Award winning soundtrack for Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight. He also toured frequently, and expanded his sonic visions to reflect contemporary sounds. Besides his collaborations on the spaghetti Western films of Sergio Leone, Morricone composed for Bernardo Bertolucci, Dario Argento, Don Siegel, Brian De Palma, and John Carpenter. He composed for such diverse artists as Andrea Bocelli, Sting, k.d. lang, and Pet Shop Boys. Morricone never became fluent in English. When he won his 2007 honorary Oscar, his speech was translated by Clint Eastwood.

Morricone...

Long gone are the days when a vignette styled filmed would be crafted for the purposes of showcasing a talented performer, at least to the auteur spangled heights which matched many such items out of Italy. Anna Magnani was the muse of Rossellini’s Amore (1948) and then Silvana Mangano was the scintillating subject spearheading 1967’s The Witches.

The very same year, Vittorio De Sica would command all seven segments of Woman Times Seven, each featuring the talented Shirley MacLaine as an American in Paris.…...

Valeria Bruni Tedeschi has been cast as a morally and economically bankrupt matron in Italian director Leonardo Guerra Seràgnoli’s movie adaptation of “The Time of Indifference,” author Alberto Moravia’s scathing critique of the Fascist-era bourgeoisie.

Seràgnoli, a young helmer known for “Last Summer” and “Likemeback” – which bowed at the Rome and Locarno fests, respectively – has started shooting his contemporary take on the widely translated novel in Rome. First published in 1929, when Moravia was 21, “Gli Indifferenti” captured the middle-class malaise of its time and established Moravia as a world-class writer.

The story sees members of an upper-crust Rome family reacting to a financial crisis that is undermining their social status. Mariagrazia, played by Bruni Tedeschi, is a widow with an unscrupulous lover, Leo, played by Edoardo Pesce (“Dogman”). She has two children by her dead husband: Carla, whom Leo has the hots for, and Michele, who is aware that...

Alfonso Cuarón's Sólo con tu pareja (1991) is showing January 4 – February 2 and Y tu mamá también (2001) is showing January 5 – February 3, 2018 on Mubi in the United States as part of the series What Is An Auteur?: Director Double Features.Daniel Giménez Cacho’s Don Juan-esque Tomás Tomás loves women with the same unbridled fervor he hates syringes. Catching up with Alfonso Cuarón’s feature debut Sólo con tu pareja a whopping 26 years after its 1992 premiere, I was less impressed by the protagonist’s sexual escapades than the terrified look he gives nurse Silvia (Dobrina Liubomirova) as she readies him for a blood test. A diehard Casanova and beacon of heterosexual prowess reduced to a hypochondriac bundle of quivering limbs. “Pull yourself together, señor Tomás,” the girl giggles, a needle in her hand. “Will it hurt?” he mutters, terrified. “A lot.” Deemed too controversial and banned for many years in its home turf,...

One of international cinema’s undisputed greats in costume design, Piero Tosi’s work first faced the awards season spotlight 64 years ago with only his third film, Luchino Visconti’s masterwork “Senso,” which competed for the Golden Lion in Venice in 1954.

Nominated for five Oscars for costume design and recipient of an honorary Oscar in 2013, Tosi’s impact on the art of film is immeasurable. Visconti’s films such as “The Damned,” “Ludwig,” “Death in Venice” and the incomparable “The Leopard” garnered international acclaim as stunning period visual masterpieces and were all spectacular showcases for Tosi’s celebrated designs. Other triumphs included “La Cage Aux Folles,” “The Night Porter,” Federico Fellini’s “Toby Dammit” and Oscar foreign language film-winner “Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow.”

Also noted as mentor and teacher for generations of costume designers, Tosi’s work in this field is on view in “Piero Tosi. Exercises on Beauty. The...

The strangest Italian portmanteau picture of the sixties features glorious Silvana Mangano in dozens of costume changes, directed by big names (Visconti, De Sica, Pasolini) and paired with a woefully miscast Clint Eastwood. The other major attraction is a delightful music score by Piero Piccioni, with an assist from Ennio Morricone.

The Witches

Special Edition Blu-ray

Arrow Academy

1967 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 120 (?) 111 105 min. / Le streghe / Street Date January 30, 2018 / 34.95

Starring: Silvana Mangano, Clint Eastwood, Annie Girardot, Francisco Rabal, Massimo Girotti, Véronique Vendell, Elsa Albani, Clara Calamai, Marilù Tolo, Nora Ricci, Dino Mele Dino Mele, Helmut Berger, Bruno Filippini, Leslie French, Alberto Sordi, Totò, Ciancicato Miao, Ninetto Davoli, Laura Betti, Luigi Leoni, Valentino Macchi, Corinne Fontaine, Armando Bottin, Gianni Gori, Paolo Gozlino, Franco Moruzzi, Angelo Santi, Pietro Torrisi.

Cinematography: Giuseppe Rotunno

Film Editors: Nino Baragli, Adriana Novelli, Mario Serandrei, Giorgio Serrallonga

Original Music: Ennio Morricone, Piero Piccioni

Written by Mauro Bolognini, Fabio Carpi,...

Review by Roger Carpenter

In a day and age when video distribution companies are mostly concerned with the bottom dollar and release or re-release films they know are guaranteed to sell (anyone care to count the number of Us releases of The Evil Dead series or Night of the Living Dead?), one of my favorite things about Arrow Video USA is their apparent fearlessness in releasing films and box sets that are probably only going to appeal to a very small niche audience.

Along with Arrow Academy, Arrow Video USA’s arthouse imprint, the company has released a good portion of Walerian Borowcyzk’s films and is busily releasing the early works of Seijun Suzuki as well as other, relatively obscure, 50’s and 60’s Japanese films. While I applaud Arrow for releasing these films and enjoy them all immensely, I’m just not sure the typical movie fan has a...

The Witches (1967) is now available on Blu-ray from Arrow Academy. It can be ordered Here

In the mid-sixties, famed producer Dino De Laurentiis brought together the talents of five celebrated Italian directors for an anthology film. Their brief was simple: to direct an episode in which Silvana Mangano (Bitter Rice, Ludwig) plays a witch.

Luchino Visconti (Ossessione, Death in Venice) and screenwriter Cesare Zavattini (Bicycle Thieves) open the film with The Witch Burned Alive, about a famous actress and a drunken evening that leads to unpleasant revelations. Civic Sense is a lightly comic interlude from Mauro Bolognini (The Lady of the Camelias) with a dark conclusion, and The Earth as Seen from the Moon sees Italian comedy legend Totò team up with Pier Paolo Pasolini (Theorem) for the first time for a tale of matrimony and a red-headed father and son. Franco Rosso (The Woman in the Painting) concocts a...

Even though everyone is pretty much amped that Pennywise and the newest adaptation of It are making their home entertainment debuts this Tuesday, we also have more great Blu-rays and DVD releases to look forward to as well. It’s a big week for Troma, as not only their latest feature, Hectic Knife, comes home on Blu this week, but Troma alum Trent Haaga’s wickedly wild crime caper 68 Kill is being released by Scream Factory and IFC Midnight.

Arrow Academy has put together a Special Edition release of The Witches, and a film that I really enjoyed out of Sundance 2017—Bad Day for the Cut—gets released this week via the fine folks over at Well Go USA. Other notable releases for January 9th include Friend Request and Nails.

68 Kill (Scream Factory/IFC Midnight, Blu-ray & DVD)

Trailer-dwelling, sewage-pumping Chip (Matthew Gray Gubler, Criminal Minds) may not lead the most glamorous life,...

We’re a couple of weeks away from the organizers at Cannes unveiling their full slate, and we’re still yet to hear about the opening film, but for now they’re tiding us over with this terrific poster for the 70th edition of the festival.

Claudia Cardinale continues the recent tradition of movie icons gracing the one-sheets for the fest, with the actress dancing in this lovely promo. Cardinale has spent plenty of time on the Croisette, with Valerio Zurlini’s “Girl With A Suitcase,” Mauro Bolognini’s “La Viaccia,” Luchino Visconti‘s “The Leopard,” Federico Fellini’s “8 1/2,” Liliana Cavani’s “La Pelle,” Werner Herzog’s “Fitzcarraldo,” Marco Bellocchio’s “Henry IV,” Diane Kurys’ “A Man In Love,” and Claude Lelouch’s “And Now… Ladies And Gentlemen” all landing at Cannes.

Continue reading Claudia Cardinale Dances On Poster For 70th Cannes Film Festival at The Playlist.

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...

Honorary Oscars have bypassed women: Angela Lansbury, Lauren Bacall among rare exceptions (photo: 2013 Honorary Oscar winner Angela Lansbury and Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award winner Angelina Jolie) September 4, 2014, Introduction: This four-part article on the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Honorary Awards and the dearth of female Honorary Oscar winners was originally posted in February 2007. The article was updated in February 2012 and fully revised before its republication today. All outdated figures regarding the Honorary Oscars and the Academy's other Special Awards have been "scratched out," with the updated numbers and related information inserted below each affected paragraph or text section. See also "Honorary Oscars 2014 addendum" at the bottom of this post. At the 1936 Academy Awards ceremony, groundbreaking film pioneer D.W. Griffith, by then a veteran with more than 500 shorts and features to his credit — among them the epoch-making The Birth of a Nation and Intolerance — became the first individual to...

Above: Pedro Costa's Horse Money

The Locarno Film Festival has announced their lineup for the 67th edition, taking place this August between the 6th and 16th. It speaks for itself, but, um, wow...

"Every film festival, be it small or large, claims to offer, if not an account of the state of things, then an updated map of the art form and the world it seeks to represent. This cartography should show both the major routes and the byways, along with essential places to visit and those that are more unusual. The Festival del film Locarno is no exception to the rule, and I think that looking through the program you will be able to distinguish the route map for this edition." — Carlo Chatrian, Artistic Director

Above: Matías Piñeiro's The Princess of France

Concorso Internazionale (Official Competition)

A Blast (Syllas Tzoumerkas, Greece/Germany/Netherlands)

Alive (Jungbum Park, South Korea)

Horse Money (Pedro Costa,...

Catherine Deneuve: 2013 European Film Academy’s Lifetime Achievement Award recipient Catherine Deneuve has been named the recipient of the the European Film Academy’s 2013 Lifetime Achievement Award for her "outstanding body of work." And outstanding it is. Yesterday, I posted an article about Dirk Bogarde (Victim, Death in Venice, Despair), one of the rare performers anywhere on the planet to have consistently worked with world-class international filmmakers. The Paris-born Catherine Deneuve, who turns 70 next October 22, is another one of those lucky actors. (Photo: Catherine Deneuve at the Potiche premiere at the 2010 Venice Film Festival.) Deneuve’s directors have included an eclectic and prestigious list of filmmakers from various countries. Those include Belle de Jour and Tristana‘s Luis Buñuel; Le Sauvage and La Vie de Château‘s Jean-Paul Rappenau; The Hunger‘s Tony Scott; Un Flic‘s Jean-Pierre Melville; The Mississippi Mermaid and The Last Metro‘s François Truffaut...

Above: a publicity still from Avoveteen (1938), the absent inspiration behind this retrospective.

When Simon Popek of the Ljubljana International Film Festival invited us to present a carte blanche at these year's edition (November 9th - 20th), our first thoughts went into totally different directions from the one we finally followed. Problem was: Once we got going, the going... To cut a long story short: We either ended up with programs that were too complex and huge to do inside Simon's parameters (six slots; majority of films should be from Europe) or long lists of titles that didn't add up to anything varied, inspiring and fun.

Then, it hit us: Let's do a carte blanche like probably nobody ever did before. Normally, it works like this: The honoree shows a bunch of generally well-known and -respected films, plus maybe—maybe—one slightly less-known item. Now, what would be the opposite of that?...

Producer of Pier Paolo Pasolini's early films

Though an enterprising film producer, often ahead of his times, Alfredo Bini, who has died aged 83, is best remembered for having given the poet Pier Paolo Pasolini the chance to make his debut as a film-maker with Accattone (1960), when no other film company was prepared to back it. Bini produced more than 40 films, including all the features made by Pasolini up until 1967, including Il Vangelo Secondo Matteo (The Gospel According to St Matthew, 1964). Among his other films were many starring his wife, Rosanna Schiaffino.

Bini was born in Livorno, Tuscany, and, during the second world war, ran away from home to join the army. He was wounded and got a medal, but went back to finish his studies in biology. He soon gave up the idea of a scientific career and in 1945 moved to Rome, where, after taking on various jobs, he managed a theatre group.

'Dostoevskian' French actor with an aura of tormented youth

With his emaciated but hypnotically handsome face and lithe body, the French actor Laurent Terzieff, who has died of respiratory infection aged 75, graced the stage and films for more than half a century. There was always an aura of tormented youth about Terzieff which he carried into the classic roles of his maturity such as Luigi Pirandello's Henry IV (1989) and Shakespeare's Richard II (1991). His perfect diction and rhythmic precision made his rendering of Jean Cocteau's narration of Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex in Bob Wilson's production at the Théâtre du Châtelet in 1996 particularly exciting.

Terzieff's special talents were used by many of the great theatre producers of the day: Jean-Louis Barrault, Peter Brook, Roger Planchon, Maurice Garrel, Roger Blin and André Barsacq. He also directed dozens of plays, many at the Théâtre du Lucernaire in Montparnasse. Paradoxically, given his tormented persona as an actor,...

Italian model and film actor, she left the cinema and joined the jet set

Rosanna Schiaffino, who has died aged 69, was one of those Italian beauty queens who began a promising acting career in the post-neorealist cinema of the 1950s. She gave up the cinema in the 1970s and married the handsome playboy and steel industry heir Giorgio Falck. Their marriage and, a decade later, their break-up and divorce, had overtones of melodrama more piquant than the content of any of the 45 films in which Schiaffino had starred.

She was born in Genoa, in north Italy, into a well-off family and, although her father wanted her to pursue studies as a surveyor, her mother encouraged her showbusiness ambitions, helping her to study privately at a drama school and then to take part in beauty contests, which she usually won. These led to modelling jobs, with photographs in important magazines, including Life.

Rosanna Schiaffino, Vince Edwards in Carl Foreman’s The Victors (1963) Rosanna Schiaffino, the sensual leading lady of dozens of Italian (and a few international) productions of the ’60s and early ’70s, died on Oct. 17 at her home in Milan following a long battle with cancer. She was 69. The Genoa-born (Nov. 25, 1938) actress, referred to by some as the "Italian Hedy Lamarr," began her film career in the late 1950s. Among her best-known roles are those in Francesco Rosi’s first feature, La Sfida / The Challenge (1958); Mauro Bolognini’s La Notte brava / The Big Night / Bad Girls Don’t Cry (1959), winner of the Italian Film Critics’ Silver Ribbon for Pier Paolo Pasolini’s screenplay; and André Hunebelle’s historical [...]...