Saturday, April 27, 2019
CASTRO THEATRE, SAN FRANCISCO

Presented by Luce Cinecittà, in collaboration with The Italian Cultural Institute and the Consul General of Italy in San Francisco.

For our ninth program at the Castro Theatre, we are proud to present Italian icon Ugo Tognazzi. As an actor, director and screenwriter, Tognazzi performed in over 150 films in the Golden Age of Italian Cinema. Together with Vittorio Gassman, Marcello Mastroianni, Alberto Sordi and Nino Manfredi, Ugo Tognazzi invented and popularized the commedia all'italiana, a genre mixing comedy and melancholy, that swept the box office in Italy from 1960 to 1970. All five films will be projected from 35 mm prints.

April 27th Full Schedule:

10:00 am - Elio Petri’s Property is No Longer a Theft (1973), 127 min., Cinecittà 35 mm, Titanus.

12:45 pm - Bernardo Bertolucci’s Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man (1981), 116 min., Cinecittà 35 mm, Warner Bros.

3:30 pm - Dir. Dino Risi’s In the Name of the Italian People (1971), 102 min., Cinecittà 35 mm, Rialto.

6:30 pm - Édouard Molinaro’s La Cage aux folles (1978), 97 min., 35 mm, Park Circus.

8:30-10:00 pm - The Big Feast Party

10:00 pm - Marco Ferreri’s La Grande Bouffe (1973), 129 min., Cinecittà 35mm, Drafthouse.

On Thursday, April 25th at 6:30 pm at the Italian Cultural Institute: Screening of the documentary Ritratto di mio padre (Portrait of my Father) (2010), 87 min. DVD courtesy of Surf. Directed by Maria Sole Tognazzi. Limited seating.

For more information about this free event, please click here.

Image: © colaimages/Alamy Stock Photo

1973. Italy. Directed by Elio Petri. Screenplay by Elio Petri, Ugo Pirro. With Ugo Tognazzi, Flavio Bucci, Daria Nicolodi. In Italian with English subtitles. 127 min.

In the early 1970s, the revolutionary Red Brigade waged its terrifying campaign to bring down Italy through kidnappings, murders, and bank robberies. Elio Petri made this proto-giallo, Brechtian satire about a neurotic bank clerk (Bucci) who commits to a Marxist life of thievery, choosing as his principal target a client known as The Butcher (Tognazzi).

Archival 35 mm film print from Luce Cinecittà. Courtesy of Titanus.
Image: © Cineteca di Bologna

1981. Italy. Directed and written by Bernardo Bertolucci. With Ugo Tognazzi, Anouk Aimée, Laura Morante. In Italian with English subtitles. 116 min.

Tognazzi gives the performance of his career as the impotent, “ridiculous” man in Bertolucci’s extraordinary late-period film, about the anguished relationship between a failing industrialist and his son, who is kidnapped by left-wing terrorists under mysterious circumstances.

Archival 35 mm film print from Luce Cinecittà. Courtesy of Warner Bros.
Image: © Licensed by Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc., All Rights Reserved.

1971. Italy. Directed by Dino Risi. Screenplay by Agenore Incrocci, Furio Scarpelli. With Ugo Tognazzi, Vittorio Gassman, Ely Galleani. In Italian with English subtitles. 102 min.

Set in early 1970s Rome, a city of rotting garbage and moral decay, this rarely screened piece of political buffoonery stars Vittorio Gassman as a vainglorious industrialist who would sooner commit his father to an insane asylum than face charges in the murder of a young girl. His foil, played by Ugo Tognazzi, is the cynically bemused magistrate bent on holding him accountable not only for this sordid crime, but for the venal sins of an entire populace.

Archival 35 mm film print from Luce Cinecittà. Courtesy of Rialto Pictures.
Image: © Pierluigi Praturlon/Archivio fotografico della Cineteca Nazionale – Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, Roma

1978. France/Italy. Directed by Édouard Molinaro. Screenplay by Jean Poiret, Francis Veber, Édouard Molinaro, Marcello Danon. With Ugo Tognazzi, Michel Serrault, Claire Maurier. In French and some Italian with English subtitles. 97 min.

An international blockbuster that begat two sequels and a Tony Award-winning Broadway musical, La Cage was adapted from Jean Poiret’s warm-and-winning stage farce about a pair of aging queens—Renato, owner of a scandalous St. Tropez nightclub (Tognazzi), and Albin (Serrault), his transvestite “roommate”— who, through a series of exquisitely timed comic set pieces, attempt to conceal their gay “lifestyle” from the ultraconservative soon-to-be in-laws of Renato’s son.

35 mm print courtesy of Park Circus.
Image: © United Artists/Photofest

The Big Feast party in the mezzanine level will be the natural introduction to “La Grande Bouffe,” presenting on a traditional buffet-style of the best of Italian food, catered by chef Rudy Duran of C’era Una Volta restaurant. Nero d’Avola and Grillo white wines will be served courtesy of Il Gattopardo.

1973. France/Italy. Directed and written by Marco Ferreri. With Ugo Tognazzi, Marcello Mastroianni, Michel Piccoli. In French and some Italian with English subtitles. 129 min.

A pilot (Marcello Mastroianni), a cook (Ugo Tognazzi), a TV star (Michel Piccoli) and a judge decide to gorge themselves to death on fine cuisine. Ferreri’s notorious orgy of Rabelaisian appetites brings together some of Europe’s greatest actors for a defiantly scatological Last Supper.

Archival 35 mm film print from Luce Cinecittà. Courtesy of Drafthouse.
Image: © Courtesy of Arrow Films & American Genre Film Archive

Thursday, April 25th at 6:30 pm at the Italian Cultural Institute
Limited seating.

For more information about this free event, please click here.

2010, Italy. Directed by Maria Sole Tognazzi.

Screenplay by Manuela Tempesta, Tognazzi. With Ugo Tognazzi, Bernardo Bertolucci, Mario Monicelli, Michel Piccoli. DCP courtesy Surf Film. In Italian; English subtitles. 85 min. Directed by his daughter, this affectionate portrait reveals the complicated brilliance of Ugo Tognazzi, both as a famous actor and as a family man, through rare home movies, film clips and on-set footage, and warm and witty remembrances by his children and close collaborators.