AN HOMAGE TO THE MASTER OF THE COMEDY ITALIAN STYLE
Saturday, April 22, 2017
The Castro Theatre
429 Castro Street, San Francisco
Presented by Luce Cinecittà, in collaboration with The Italian Cultural Institute and the Consul General of Italy in San Francisco.
A few months after the 100th anniversary of his birth, we celebrate the genius, the irony, the disenchantment, the quick and amazing inventions that Dino Risi has created behind the camera.
Luce Cinecittà, in collaboration with The Italian Cultural Institute and Cinema Italia San Francisco are proud to announce Dino Risi - A Film Series, showing four of his most significant films. All featuring renowned Italian actor Vittorio Gassman in his shooting star roles.
Dino Risi’s comedies describe the changing society in postwar Italy. He had great commercial and critical success during “Il Boom,” the Italian economic miracle of the ‘50s and ‘60s, together with Mario Monicelli, Luigi Comencini, and Ettore Scola. As social satire, his films are full of shameless characters portraying the stereotypes of commedia all’Italiana (Comedy Italian Style) incarnated in the best actors of the time: Alberto Sordi, Vittorio Gassman, Nino Manfredi, Ugo Tognazzi, and Sophia Loren.
After the Museum of Modern Art Premiere (December 2016-January 2017), the series will showcase the regional premiere of the new 4K restorations of Il Sorpasso (The Easy Life) and Profumo di donna (Scent of a Woman), and new 35 mm prints of Il mattatore (Love and Larceny) and I mostri (15 from Rome – Opiate ’67).
Following "The Easy Life", celebrate at the sensational Commedia all’Italiana Party in the Castro Theatre mezzanine level with food and fun.
Tickets are $12 per screening. Tickets for the party are $15. A pass to see all four films and attend the party is $60.
SCHEDULE
1:00 PM - Il mattatore (Love and Larceny) – 1960, 104”
3:30 PM – Profumo di donna (Scent of a Woman) – 1974, 103”
6:00 PM - Il sorpasso (The Easy Life) – 1962, 108”
8:30 PM - Commedia all’Italiana Party
10:00 PM - I mostri (15 from Rome – Opiate ’67) – 1963, 118”
All films will be presented with English subtitles.
DINO RISI – A Film Series is produced by Luce Cinecittà (the Italian agency for the promotion of Italian cinema abroad), under the auspices of the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism and the Consulate General of Italy in San Francisco, in collaboration with the Italian Cultural Institute of San Francisco and Cinema Italia San Francisco, with the support of the Leonardo Da Vinci Society. The series is organized by Camilla Cormanni and Paola Ruggiero (Luce Cinecittà); Amelia Antonucci (Cinema Italia SF); Paolo Barlera (Director, IIC San Francisco).
(1960 - 104 min. Italy / France - B/W)
In Italian with English subtitles.
Director: Dino Risi Screenplay: Ettore Scola, Ruggero Maccari, Sandro Continenza Starring: Vittorio Gassman, Peppino De Filippo, Maria Luisa Mangini (Dorian Gray)
Risi’s wonderfully enjoyable episodic comedy, starring Vittorio Gassman as the chameleonic actor who disguises his passion for thievery and Peppino De Filippo as his accomplice, was filmed in Rome and its newly erected suburbs, reflecting a city undergoing rampant (and rampantly corrupt) growth. “It was a game of Chinese boxes,” Risi noted, “a phase of transformation for Gassman who didn’t yet have a real, recognizable face on film. Vittorio wore the faces of others in Il mattatore, a schizoid Gassman teetering between serious, but already ‘over the top,’ theater and rigid cinema. Before doing my film, Gassman’s voice had often actually been dubbed.”
New 35 mm print from Luce Cinecittà
International Sales: Surf Film
(1974 - 103 min. - Italy - Color)
In Italian with English subtitles.
Director: Dino Risi. Screenplay: Dino Risi, Ruggero Maccari Starring: Vittorio Gassman, Agostina Belli, Alessandro Momo
In Risi’s Oscar-nominated box-office hit—remade in an American version with Al Pacino in 1992—Vittorio Gassman plays a lecherous cad (as only he can), but the carefree exuberance he showed in The Easy Life shades here, some 20 years later, into mercilessly funny misanthropy. Gassman won Best Actor at Cannes for his performance as the blind military captain who leads a younger sidekick, Ciccio (“Babyfat”), on an amorous (and odiferous) exploration of irresistibly unattainable women. Making his way from Turin to Naples, he encounters a girl who has loved him since childhood. Digital restoration by Luce Cinecittà and Cineteca Nazionale.
DCP from Luce Cinecittà
International Sales: True Colours
US distribution: Criterion
(1962 - 108 min. - Italy - B/W)
In Italian with English subtitles.
Director: Dino Risi. Screenplay: Dino Risi, Ettore Scola, Ruggero Maccari Starring: Jean-Lois Trintignant, Vittorio Gassman
Premiering in a new 4K restoration, The Easy Life is Italian comedy at its best—hedonistic, ironically detached, and at times vicious and gloomy. A consummate road movie, Risi’s masterpiece charts the fickle bromance between the devil-may-care Bruno and his polite and gentle friend Roberto as they blaze in a sports car across the Italian countryside from Rome to Tuscany. Vittorio Gassman, as the unscrupulous scoundrel (in a role originally intended for Alberto Sordi), and Jean-Louis Trintignant, as the uptight law student, are a match made in cinematic heaven, their blooming (and fleeting) companionship colored by memorable encounters along the roadway. “This was the first time Gassman had made a comedy with his own face,” Risi observed. “Gassman’s character was prone to wishful thinking, inconsistent, superficial, aggressive, a bit of a Fascist, but with a certain impact, and I had a few people I knew in mind when I was creating him.” Digital restoration by Luce Cinecittà, Cineteca di Bologna, Surf Film, Lyon Film Ltd, RTI Gruppo Mediaset.
DCP from Luce Cinecittà
U.S. Distributor: Janus Film
(1963 - 118 min. - Italy/France - B/W)
In Italian with English subtitles.
Director: Dino Risi. Screenplay: Agenore Incrocci, Ruggero Maccari, Elio Petri, Dino Risi, Furio Scarpelli, Ettore Scola Starring: Vittorio Gassman, Ugo Tognazzi
“The ultimate Italian omnibus film, with no fewer than 20 episodes depicting, as director Dino Risi put it, ‘a distrust in humanity’ resulting from the Italian economic boom of the late 1950s. Ugo Tognazzi and Vittorio Gassman interpret a variety of human monsters, from princes to prizefighters, in brief, satirical sketches that spare no one, including the viewer. Released in the United States in a radically shortened version, I mostri is back—at some 31 minutes longer—in the full fury of its original Italian release” (Dave Kehr). Digital restoration Cineteca di Bologna and Museo Nazionale del Cinema di Torino in collaboration with Surf Film, Lyon Film, RTI Gruppo Mediaset.
New 35 mm print from Luce Cinecittà
U.S. Distributor: Janus Film
SPECIAL THANKS TO THE 2017 SPONSORS OF THIS PAST SPRING'S DINO RISI SERIES
Produced by Luce Cinecittà (the Italian agency for the promotion of Italian cinema abroad), under the auspices of the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism and the Consulate General of Italy in San Francisco, in collaboration with the Italian Cultural Institute of San Francisco and Cinema Italia San Francisco, with the support of the Leonardo Da Vinci Society.
2017 SPONSORS
Istituto Luce Cinecittà
Italian Cultural Institute of San Francisco
Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism
Consulate General of Italy San Francisco
The Leonardo da Vinci Society
C'era Una Volta -Ristorante Italiano
Colpa Press
Mr. Espresso
Della Toffola
John & Karen Diefenbach
Italfoods, Inc.
Poesia Osteria Italiana
Tartufi italiani
Lemoncoco
SF Weekly / The San Francisco Examiner
Il Gattopardo S.r.l. (wine sponsor)